Week 1--Provo Missionary Training Center

Ola familia e amigos!

Sorry, I can't do any accents on this computer.. It takes too long.

Thanks for all the letters and emails! We're actually getting a new mailing box but I'll let you know about the number when my district leader tells us.

So I'm loving the MTC!! I've never worked so hard in my life but it's great!! My companion, Sister Nance, is awesome! We work really well together and we're learning Portuguese super fast! Portuguese is such a beautiful language! Especially the continental Portuguese. Also, I don't think I've prayed in English since Thursday.. Kinda cool how fast they teach us stuff here.

So we have an awesome zone and district! Our zone is all the Portuguese speaking missionaries. That's about 24 of us I think. 13 of us are the "continentals" and the other 11 are the "brasileiros" or at least that's what we call each other. So all the continentals used to be one district but there were so many of us that they split us into two districts. Now we have four elders and Sister Nance and I together. It's awesome! We also got a new teacher. He served his mission in Cabo Verde but he's been teaching so many brasileiros that he has a Brazilian accent now. He's been trying to switch back to continental for us which is super awesome of him. He's a great teacher. So out of the 13 continentals, only four of us are going to Porto, me, Sister Nance, Elder Leatham, and Elder Kartegean (sp?). Elder K. is from India!! He's awesome! His family is Mormon and one day, he was taking a test and had a strong prompting that he should serve a mission. So he walked out of his test, called his dad, and started his papers. He was supposed to leave in January but because of visa problems, he had to wait about six months!! Crazy!! He knows like eight languages so Portuguese is coming pretty easy to him. He's not in our district but he'll be with us in Porto! What a blessing!

Yesterday, we went to the MTC Choir rehearsal with Brother Eggett. He's awesome!! There was one time when he was trying to say "I love you" in as many different tones as he can and some Elder shouted "I love you" back so Brother Eggett said "And I love you too random citizen! We died!!

Last night at devotional we heard from the President Ostergard from the Provo City Center Temple. He told us to focus on the light in our lives and to really understand our purpose which is "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." It was great!

Then we got to watch the "Character of Christ" devotional by Elder Bednar. Oh how that humbled me... I realized that there are so many ways I can improve myself to become more like Christ. He turned outward when he was in pain when we would have turned inward. I'm trying to work on that this week.

We taught our first lesson on Friday!! Our investigator's name is Marcos and he's amazing! (He's not a real person, he's and actor but he's portrayed as an investigator our actor had on his mission. Our first lesson was sooooo bad. Our Portuguese was pretty good but we kinda just dumped information on him about the restoration. No spirit there. Then we taught our second lesson on Saturday and ohhh it went soo much better. We really prayed about what we thought would help him the best. We taught him about how God loves him and how he can become closer through the Atonement and prayer. We meet with him again tomorrow so we'll see how that goes.

I really learned that you have got to LOVE the people you teach. LOVE THEM with all your coracao!! It really helps you know how to teach them better.

Ya'll can send me letters through the Dear Elder website! I get them the same day and it's super fun to see them :)

Anyways.. I love the mission and the MTC! It's amazing and I feel like I've grown so much in just a few days!

Send me pictures of your wonderful lives!! I hope I got everything I needed to in here!

Com amor,

Sister Hillam