Second P-Day in the CTM!

Elder Olivier is doing well!  Every Friday I sit and wait for his emails (sad..I know...).  He always sends me one first:)..then he sends his big email to everyone else.  He told me that he received the most snail mail letters in his mailbox out of all the Elders in his district.  I was so worried that he wasn't getting written mail, but now I can relax... and thanks so much to everyone who has emailed or written him!  He thanks you too!!

Here is his email from this week:

Tudo bem tudo bem tudo bem tudo bem tudo bem tudo bem tudo bem tudo
bem tudo bem tudo bem tudo bem tudo bem! That is 99% of the
conversation you hear in the hallways here at the CTM. It is so
awesome being here and learning portuguese, but it´s kind of scary to
know that in three and a half weeks I´ll be on a plane to Manaus. I
always joke with everyone in my district that we all sound like idiots
to the Brasileiros, because we do. The americans in the cafeteria
always say "maçã" (apple) over and over again. Go on google translate
and listen to how it´s pronounced. It´s the best word in the
portuguese language.
This week has been awesome. Every day we wake up, do personal
scripture/gospel study, eat desjejum, come back to the classroom, do
language study with our instructors, teach lessons, eat almoço, do
more language study, more instructor time, more lessons, more gospel
study, eat jantar, play basqetebol, do more language study, companion
planning, and go back to sleep x1,000,000. It´s so mentally and
physically draining but it´s so rewarding. We are all being
strengthened so much by prayers and by the spirit.
Every friday (preparation day) we have the chance to go to the temple
(either São paulo or Campinas) and we get to walk around São paulo.
It´s so awesome. 

Today we went the the São paulo temple. It´s so
beautiful! I took a ton of pictures but I can´t send them while I´m
here so I´ll have to wait until I´m in my mission. Walking around São
paulo is so fun. We go the all the shops around the CTM. They have a
lot of american stuff like coca cola and cheetos but they have mostly
brazilian stuff like guaraná and weird brazilian candy. The city looks
so cool. It is freaking massive. If you can, go look on Google earth
how big it is. There are skyscrapers for like millions of miles in
every direction. Also everything here is covered in graffiti
(proabably except the temples and the CTM). It is crazy. There are
also tons of motorcyclists and they are insane. They drive really fast
in between cars and stuff. We say one guy who was on his phone on his
motorcycle and he was still swerving between cars. People are crazy.
This week we had two devotionals. Every devotional the "choir" (every
single missionary) sings. One of the devotionals was yesterday and it
was by an area general authority (I didn´t catch his name bc
portuguese). He talked about the importance of families and how we as
missionaries have the responsibiliy to bring the gospel and the
opportunity for eternal families to families all over brasil. It was
really good. The other one was a recording of a
devotional Jeffery R. Holland gave at the Provo MTC in January 2013.
It was so good. He talked about our role as missionaries in the last
dispensation and how because we are in the last dispensation, we will
not fail. We are bringing the gospel to more of the world than ever
before. He also talked about conversion. He said that we all better
come home from our missions with at least one convert, and it better
be ourselves. After the devotional we had a district meeting/testimony
meeting/cry sesh. It was so spiritual. The spirit is so strong here.
It has only been two weeks and it feels like everyone in my district
has become 54339392 times better being missionaries. But we still have
0986803478234763287945843 kilometers to go (they use kilometers here).
Eu amo vocês! Stay awesome!
Elder Olivier

(written 8/28/2015)