Week 4-that time we were real missionaries for an hour

 wed: we met the newest member of our district, Elder Fonicello. He's
from belguim. None of the instructors know what to do with his name. I
mean neither do any of the americans, so the poor kid has to respond
to literally any thing that vaugly sounds like his name. THURSDAY:
District english fast all day long! (so no speaking english) we did
surprisingly well! But by the end of the day I was so exhausted Irmão
Tavares had to repeat everything he said 3x before I understood it. So
basically I learned my lesson and take a break at dinner or something
now. AND TO THINK 2 WEEKS FROM NOW EVERY DAY WILL BE AN ENGLISH FAST
BECAUSE NO ONE SPEAKS ENGLISH. Thatll be rough. We also that day
learned that "Valmir" has cancer, and wow none of us were prepared
during that lesson! Thankfully Sister Dewey and I had a sort of backup
lesson on the enabling power of the atonement (except we only
kiiiindof had that planned) so it went ok. (Valmir is a character,
don't worry my instructor is fine!) FRIDAY: WE WENT PROCELYTING. Like
for real. Oliveira took us out of the building and gave each of us 3
Books of Mormon and basically said "good luck" and that was it. Within
45 minutes every one of us had placed 3 Book of Mormons. It was
literally that easy. And everyone that took one seemed genuinely
excited. Someone in our branch had the coolest experience with this.
He has a speech impediment, and when he speaks portuguese and when he
gets nervous it gets way worse. So he's on the bus out of the ctm
trying to talk to the person next to him but hes soooooo nervous all
he managed to say was "hot. outside. no like. you?" and the man next
to him reached out to take a BoM, started reading it right there on
the bus and kept it. It didnt even matter that he couldnt speak
portuguese well! He could tell the kid was trying sooooo hard and
apparently that was enough. SATURDAY: today I was reminded that we
teach people not lessons, so we taught "Rosmer" a lesson that wasnt
specifically in the 5 lessons. It was on how to increase your faith
and recieve answers to prayers using Nephi 17-18 as examples and I led
the ENTIRE lesson for the first time, and it went super well! I think
it was exactly the kind of lesson Irmão Tavares was digging
for/thought Rosmer needed. Irmão Tavares told me after wards that it
was a really good lesson (for which I was relieved because I can never
tell, because my portuguese was so choppy but its ok he understood
what I was trying to say). SUNDAY: so plot twist, our new elder is our
new district leader. Cant say I was surprised. He already has had some
suggestions that I think will help our district a lot. The change is
weird, but he's definitely up to the task. MONDAY: my poor companion
had to drag around me as dead weight because I had the worst sinus
headache and as a result she took charge in all 3 of our lessons
(soooo sorry about that) because wow when anything distracting happens
I cannot speak or think portuguese, I need all my brain power for
that. So wash your hands kids, the ctm is a breeding ground for
colds/flu with the dorm style housing and up to 80 new people coming
in every week. TUESDAY: For 2 days straight we spoke NO english and I
learned that one of the gifts God gives his missionaries is the
ability to laugh at the stupidest of jokes because our vocabulary isnt
good enough to tell quality jokes and yet we were laughing SO MUCH all
day long. ALRIGHT I'm about out of time so I guess that's it. AGAIN
sorry its so all over the place and that the enter key doesn't work!
Oh how I miss my quality internet connection. <3 LOVE YOU ALL. ~Sister
Steele

Week 3 where I learn to be brief sort of‏ (Sister Steele)

 Last weeks email felt like a downer! Im sorry! I promise it was a
better week than that. So. This week I'm going to be brief for once in
my life. FINALMENTE this week it hit me that my bad attitude (sempre
dizendo "não posso fallar português") was killing my progress so I
stopped complaining and BAM instant portuguese. My district named me
"most improved" and both teachers expressed how impressed they were.
Friday and Saturday Sister Madarani was in doctors appointments so
Sister Jones was with us as a trio, and none of us were expecting it
so we were in the middle of our lesson with "Valmir" Sister Jones
knocked on the door and just barged her way in because she had no idea
how to explain the situation in portuguese, and I was so impressed
because I was laughing so hard but Irmão Oliveira never broke
character! Our lessons have been going SO MUCH BETTER THIS WEEK
because for all of last week we taught exclusively from a script, but
this week we had our scripts covered up the entire time and taught
much better lessons actually. "Valmir" asked us to explain Lehi's
dream to him and we were 0% prepared for that and yet the lesson
actually went better than any lesson we'd done before! Our instructors
have been really fun this week, especially Irmão Tavares (he was Yago
if I didn't explain that well and now he's "Rosmer"). He taught us
head shoulders knees and toes and then we played a very dangerous game
of "batata quente " (hot potato) in which I nearly killed Sister Jones
and nearly peed my pants but its all good! We also started TRC this
week which is teaching members, and I was so proud of myself I managed
to share personal stories IN PORTUGUESE without a script. It was good.
It was really good actually. And tuesday we did an english fast
meaning only portuguese all day (or most of the day at least) and I
was impressed at how well I managed to communicate in portuguese (also
I learned words I never would have before for example cocô de ave is
bird poop). A FEW GENERAL STUFF I WANTED TO GET IN so the building
literally doesnt have a back wall for some reason, so the hallway in
the back was FILLED with the biggest caterpillars ive ever seen, like
2x as big as ive ever seen but apparently those were small. And
apparently the huge roaches ive seen are small too. yayyyy. They made
us move from floor 3 to floor 4 (and here the ground floor is 0 so its
really floor 5 ew) which used to be a mens floor so its got all these
signs like "elders, please dont pee on the floor" and "no being naked
in the hallway". The girls floor didnt have those signs and yet we
never seemed to have those problems...just saying ;) Our instructors
are all super fresh off the mission so they're literally 20-22 which I
think is hilarious. AND THE RING THING so here in brazil, a silver
ring on your right ring finger means youre in a serious relationship.
gold on the right means engaged. when you get married you move it to
the left. boys too. so all our instructors are engaged but our
"investigators" are married so they always switch their ring (as if we
actually would notice) to stay in character. Personally I think this
needs to be a thing in Utah because my dating life would be much
easier if men had engagement rings too and also I just like it its
cute. OK LOVE YOU ALL BYYYYYE thanks for your emails! Sorry the enter
key isnt working again :) <3 -Sister Steele

FW: week 2

Forwarded from my Sis Tayo. Hopefully, she gets this to work soon; although, I very happily do any errands she asks of me.   I can't lie. She made me cry. But this time it wasn't because I miss her to pieces but because I am so proud of her. She's is trying so hard.  I still do miss her to pieces. So many times I catch myself wanting to text her about something really  funny that *no one* would understand like she would. Or vent about something because we are two peas in a pod and feel the same way about most topics. Then I quickly realize that she's not at the end of a phone or holed up in our basement.  She's doing something far greater and our vents and laughs will have to wait for another day.  Love that girl of mine.
 

> Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2015 13:48:53 -0300
> Subject: week 2
> From: taylor.steele@myldsmail.net
> To: steeleml@hotmail.com; jer_steele@hotmail.com
>
> So I talk A LOT in person so I wrote this all out beforehand so I
> wouldn't run out of time like last week but WOW I TALK A LOT. I just
> want to tell you all everything!!! I can't believe I've only been here
> 2 weeks and yet similtaniously I can't believe its already been 2
> weeks. The 1st week felt like a month oh goodness. This week the days
> were long but the week was short.
>
> SLANG IS SO HARD TO GIVE UP BY THE WAY
>
> I was in such a rush last week the email
> made no sense! If I didn't make it clear, "Yago" was our investigator
> played by our someone who would later be our teacher.
>
> So on Wednesday we taught "Yago" for the
> last time. We went in with no script, just tried to answer his
> questions about heaven and living with families forever and all that.
> It went super super well. Even Yago could tell we were in better moods
> than usual. But then he told us he'd see us the next day and we were
> like????? "Não?? We'll see Irmão Tavares tomorrow not Yago?" and he
> pretended not to understand. Classic Yago.
>
> Thursday we had to go to the police station for
> the Brazillian government to let us stay here, so we missed out on our
> personal scripture study in the morning which was SUCH A BUMMER. I
> sooooo need that time in English in the mornings, nothing goes well if
> I skip it. And surprise nothing went well and I couldnt understand
> anything and poor Irmão Oliveira had to talk to me in english because
> I was literally crying (I promised I'd be honest in these emails,
> right??) but its ok it had just been a long day.
>
> Last week from 18:00-21:00 we were
> usually taking turns teaching Yago and failing to focus because we're
> too tired at that point, but this time right at 18:00 we get a knock
> on the door and I opened it and SURPRISE (no one was surprised) it was
> Yago! Oh how the tables have turned, Yago. Now we're the ones inviting
> *you* in so you can share a message while *we* fall asleep halfway
> through! No, but it was fun. He told us how happy he is to finally get
> to know us as Irmão Tavares rather than an actor and told us "Yago"
> was someone he taught on his mission (like last year or something,
> he's practically our age). We kept trying to answer his questions in
> English and he was like eu não fallo ingles and we're all like serio??
> Yago falle ingles. he said "yago" spoke some ingles but he doesn't and
> we were all just like Irmão stop lying but he wouldn't so whatever. I
> mean, so he actually doesn't know very much english we now know but
> after Irmão Oliveria saying he knows nothing and then actually being
> COMPLETELY FLUENT in english we just dont trust anyone.
>
> The last hour thank goodness he didnt do
> more grammar, I would have died. Instead he made us all read the
> portugues book of mormon out loud, which was terrifying actually, but
> then he went inhto testimony mode saying he loves us already and is so
> excited to be able to help us and he knows we can do it and "O Senhor
> confia em você!" (the Lord trusts you) which was cute. He talked a lot
> about how much God loves us and believes in us because he wouldnt have
> sent us here if we couldnt learn portuguese and it was really really
> nice. And even with the major language barrier, he's hilarious which I
> need to keep me awake after 12 hours in that same classroom. And he
> thinks I'm hilarious because I am.
>
> On friday I maaaaaaaaaaaaaay have burst into tears
> because Irmão Tavares asked me to teach him about faith and I didn't
> know any words. Ok so yeah I did. He tried to speak some English but
> really doesn't know a lot but it was fine (dont cry! if you cry ill
> cry!) and told me to say a prayer with him in english so it would
> actually be a sincere prayer instead of memorized and then walked me
> through the words while I calmed down. It was a long week, ok?
> Portuguese is hard and my companion is literally Hermione Granger in
> portuguese while I'm Neville Longbottom. But thats ok because that
> means by the end I'll "Neville Longbottom" and become super smart and
> strong and awesome (and attractive), right?
>
> Saturday we got two new investigators, Valmir
> (Irmão Oliveira) and Rosmir (Irmão Tavares). Valmir's lesson was
> frustrating because he asked a question and my companion said we'd
> answer it later and I was like "no no! We'll answer it now!" but I
> didnt have the words to answer it so i couldnt so we left it
> unanswered which is never good! Rosmir's lesson went better because we
> learned our lesson and answered his questions immediately. Also we
> bullied Irmão Tavares into saying a prayer for us in english since he
> always makes us pray in portuguese. It was weirdly reassuring because
> even though it was half in portuguese half in english and everything
> was conjugated wrong, we knew exactly what he was saying. So people
> will understand me when I conjugate literally everything wrong. Also
> he kept apologizing for his english and we all told him stop
> apologizing that was 900000x better than our portuguese.
>
> Sunday we had a devotional about how God
> always works throught he weak and simple and thats sooooo true. Moses
> was slow of speech. Joseph of Egypt saved egypt by being a slave. Most
> of the 12 apostles were just fisherman, and many of them were probably
> quite young. Alma and the sons of Mosiah were a bunch of loser trouble
> makers and they became the greatest missionaries ever. The strippling
> warriors were 13! Joseph Smith was 14 and practically illiterate. God
> calling me to Brazil and making me speak Portuguese is hardly the
> craziest thing he's ever done
>
> Monday we had THREE lessons but one was a member so it was
> easier. We taught on the enabling power of the atonement. I used a
> favorite scripture of mine- Alma 26:12 "as to my strength I am weak
> therefore I will not boast of my self but i will boast of my God for
> in his strength I can do all things" and bore testimony that thats
> true and I know it is because I am an american living in Brazil
> learning portuguese. missions are hard. Portuguese is hard. I cannot
> do that on my own. I say I know no portuguese but I know way more than
> I could have on my own, because God is on my side.
>
> So we have that prepared and we get
> there and our member is literally Irmão Tavares again (we cant escape
> him) and I couldn't help but laugh given what our lesson was when 2
> days ago he was trying to say all of that to me. But it was easy. He
> made it easy by talking to us a lot about our interests and such
> before hand (tried to say I look like I would be a justin beiber fan
> thanks a lot). But our other lessons that day, both investigators
> threw us a curve ball question so we had to scrap the entire lesson
> and just answer their questions-something i cannot do- so I said
> literally nothing the whole time. Rough.
>
> Tuesday ONLY ONE LESSON which went reasonably ok
> because I know how to teach the plan of salvation fairly well without
> a script but its so frustrating because I cant explain it well at ALL
> and thats my favorite thing about the gospel! But its ok. The gospel
> is beautiful in English. It is also beautiful in Portuguese. Just not
> in *my* portuguese.
> LOVE YOU
> ALL. THANKS FOR ALL YOUR EMAILS. I READ THEM ALL EVEN IF I DONT HAVE
> TIME TO RESPOND!!!
> -the mtc
> makes it hard to sent to groups but after this I'll send it out
> myself! Mom, please send this to everyone (and the blog email) like
> last time :) :)

Re: From my darling Sister "Tayo"

That was weird.... Sorry for the strangely placed line from me thrown into Sis Steele's letter. Technical difficulties after it was sent, I guess. ;)

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 7, 2015, at 1:34 PM, Melanie Steele <steeleml@hotmail.com> wrote:

 Ohhhhhh  my gooodness this was the craziest and longest week of my
life! Each day feels like 3 days and each night feels like 3 hours
here at the good old CTM. Language bootcamp is the only way I can
describe it. From day one they had us memorizing the missionary
purpose in Portuguese and every single class was given in Portuguese.
Thankfully Irmão Oliviera speaks slow for us...ususally.

                  On day 2 (Thursday) we taught a lesson to an
"investigator" (we know its fake but it feels sooooo real) ALL IN
PORTUGUESE. That was rough. Sister Dewey and I were so nervous we
tripped over every single word. "Yago" (its actually Irmão Taveres,
he'll begin being our teacher tomorrow most likely) asked us "so,
Joseph Smith wrote the book of Mormon?" and it took us probably 10
minutes to answer just because we didn't know the word for translate.
We used a lot of charades. I'm impressed Irmão Taveres didn't laugh.
Too good of an actor, that one. Also we were super late to our lesson
because they told us to go to room 11 but he was actually in room 12,
and we had no idea how to explain that in Portuguese so we just kept
repeating "eleven" (onze) and pointing to the other room and "Yago"
doesn't speak English so he acted confused but "Irmão Taveres" clearly
does so at least he knew why.

         Two elders in my district though made the best mistake they
could have possibly made. They meant to have Yago read Amos 3:7 "for
surely the lord god will do nothing, but he revealeth his secrets to
his servants the prophets" but instead because their portuguese was so
bad they handed him Psalms 3:7 "for thou hast smitten all mine enemies
upon the cheekbone; though hast broken the teeth of the ungodly" and
then immediately started talking about how God works through his
servants the prophets...probably not the message they were trying to
convey.
                                                       We probably had
way too much fun on Friday, but when you spend 16 hours in the same
room studying a language you don't speak, you'll go stir crazy if you
don't joke around a bit. My district gets along well. Elder Francis is
quite the fan of puns and keeps trying to make them work in
portuguese. Elder Ferris seems to be a fan of toilet humour which is
fine by me. The other two-Elder Shepard and Elder Bishop are funny as
well. District Leader Elder Hyland keeps us on track though.

                                     We're district 39B, and the
others on the plane with us are 39A. An elder from 39A came into our
room and we asked how the Portuguese is going over there. He groaned
and said "no bueno" and we were all like "well thats spanish so
clearly not". That basically sums up all of us on day 2 though.

                                       Our second lesson with Yago,
Irmão Taveres was really hard on us. Given that this was day 3, asking
"was Eve a sinner?" and then bringing up the infant baptism issue is
mean!! Those are hard questions to answer in ENGLISH. The only
scripture we could remember about infant baptism was when Mormon
totally loses his temper in a letter or talk or something to Moroni
and keeps saying how abomitable it is, so we didn't think that was the
one to have him read...we fumbled out a "we'll answer that next time"
and practically ran away. And we were the only ones he was asking the
hard questiosn for a while! Finally the other sisters in our
district-Sister Jones and Sister Madarani (she's the English one I
mentioned) were asked, of all things, "when I die will my grandma's
spirit go into my dead body?" and then asked about being reincarnated
into animals? Not exactly vocabulary we went over on day one...

                                        After that I think Irmâo
Taveres felt bad for being so difficult on us so he was nice and
halfway through our very choppy language on baptism he got super
emotional-literally cried, man what a good actor-and said he wanted to
be baptised. So much of a mood lifter!
Taylor couldn't get this to send so she asked me to copy and send to all of you. Love my girl so much. Thank you so much to all of you who support her. I love you all for it.
                
 
                  Sister Madarani has been introducing us to English
slang (which we're not supposed to use because we need to sound
professional) so that had to end, but until then we got a kick out of
"cheeky nandos" and "minging" and started using them ourselves.
"Cheeky" is like spontaneous so we kept saying cheeky tender mercy of
the lord.
                                                              the food
is WEIRD. Sometimes its super good and sometimes you dont understand
what the lunch ladies are saying and they put mashed potatoes on your
hotdog. Or give you a crepe filled with hotdog meat. Ew.

                                    So much fun here in the CTM, but
also a lot of not fun (stress) and lots of hard work and lots of
"you're making jesus sad" when you speak english....I'll get it down
soon! Portuguese is gorgeous though. Not when I speak it but when the
Brazillian missionaries speak it. One thing Ive loved seeing though is
how many countries people here are from! The common language is
portuguese-not because we all speak it but because we're all learning
it, at least half the ctm seems to be spanish speakers but we've also
met several people from Zimbabawe (they liteally spoke 7 langauges and
saying their name involved making some sort of buzzing noise that none
of us could figure out. They laughed at us a lot.) The spanish elders
in the classroom next to us speak a tiny bit of english but mostly all
they can say is "give me all your money, punk!" and "fierce" complete
with the hand signal thing.

Tchau, Sister Steele.

From my darling Sister "Tayo"

 Ohhhhhh  my gooodness this was the craziest and longest week of my
life! Each day feels like 3 days and each night feels like 3 hours
here at the good old CTM. Language bootcamp is the only way I can
describe it. From day one they had us memorizing the missionary
purpose in Portuguese and every single class was given in Portuguese.
Thankfully Irmão Oliviera speaks slow for us...ususally.

                  On day 2 (Thursday) we taught a lesson to an
"investigator" (we know its fake but it feels sooooo real) ALL IN
PORTUGUESE. That was rough. Sister Dewey and I were so nervous we
tripped over every single word. "Yago" (its actually Irmão Taveres,
he'll begin being our teacher tomorrow most likely) asked us "so,
Joseph Smith wrote the book of Mormon?" and it took us probably 10
minutes to answer just because we didn't know the word for translate.
We used a lot of charades. I'm impressed Irmão Taveres didn't laugh.
Too good of an actor, that one. Also we were super late to our lesson
because they told us to go to room 11 but he was actually in room 12,
and we had no idea how to explain that in Portuguese so we just kept
repeating "eleven" (onze) and pointing to the other room and "Yago"
doesn't speak English so he acted confused but "Irmão Taveres" clearly
does so at least he knew why.

         Two elders in my district though made the best mistake they
could have possibly made. They meant to have Yago read Amos 3:7 "for
surely the lord god will do nothing, but he revealeth his secrets to
his servants the prophets" but instead because their portuguese was so
bad they handed him Psalms 3:7 "for thou hast smitten all mine enemies
upon the cheekbone; though hast broken the teeth of the ungodly" and
then immediately started talking about how God works through his
servants the prophets...probably not the message they were trying to
convey.
                                                       We probably had
way too much fun on Friday, but when you spend 16 hours in the same
room studying a language you don't speak, you'll go stir crazy if you
don't joke around a bit. My district gets along well. Elder Francis is
quite the fan of puns and keeps trying to make them work in
portuguese. Elder Ferris seems to be a fan of toilet humour which is
fine by me. The other two-Elder Shepard and Elder Bishop are funny as
well. District Leader Elder Hyland keeps us on track though.

                                     We're district 39B, and the
others on the plane with us are 39A. An elder from 39A came into our
room and we asked how the Portuguese is going over there. He groaned
and said "no bueno" and we were all like "well thats spanish so
clearly not". That basically sums up all of us on day 2 though.

                                       Our second lesson with Yago,
Irmão Taveres was really hard on us. Given that this was day 3, asking
"was Eve a sinner?" and then bringing up the infant baptism issue is
mean!! Those are hard questions to answer in ENGLISH. The only
scripture we could remember about infant baptism was when Mormon
totally loses his temper in a letter or talk or something to Moroni
and keeps saying how abomitable it is, so we didn't think that was the
one to have him read...we fumbled out a "we'll answer that next time"
and practically ran away. And we were the only ones he was asking the
hard questiosn for a while! Finally the other sisters in our
district-Sister Jones and Sister Madarani (she's the English one I
mentioned) were asked, of all things, "when I die will my grandma's
spirit go into my dead body?" and then asked about being reincarnated
into animals? Not exactly vocabulary we went over on day one...

                                        After that I think Irmâo
Taveres felt bad for being so difficult on us so he was nice and
halfway through our very choppy language on baptism he got super
emotional-literally cried, man what a good actor-and said he wanted to
be baptised. So much of a mood lifter!
Taylor couldn't get this to send so she asked me to copy and send to all of you. Love my girl so much. Thank you so much to all of you who support her. I love you all for it.
                
 
                  Sister Madarani has been introducing us to English
slang (which we're not supposed to use because we need to sound
professional) so that had to end, but until then we got a kick out of
"cheeky nandos" and "minging" and started using them ourselves.
"Cheeky" is like spontaneous so we kept saying cheeky tender mercy of
the lord.
                                                              the food
is WEIRD. Sometimes its super good and sometimes you dont understand
what the lunch ladies are saying and they put mashed potatoes on your
hotdog. Or give you a crepe filled with hotdog meat. Ew.

                                    So much fun here in the CTM, but
also a lot of not fun (stress) and lots of hard work and lots of
"you're making jesus sad" when you speak english....I'll get it down
soon! Portuguese is gorgeous though. Not when I speak it but when the
Brazillian missionaries speak it. One thing Ive loved seeing though is
how many countries people here are from! The common language is
portuguese-not because we all speak it but because we're all learning
it, at least half the ctm seems to be spanish speakers but we've also
met several people from Zimbabawe (they liteally spoke 7 langauges and
saying their name involved making some sort of buzzing noise that none
of us could figure out. They laughed at us a lot.) The spanish elders
in the classroom next to us speak a tiny bit of english but mostly all
they can say is "give me all your money, punk!" and "fierce" complete
with the hand signal thing.

Tchau, Sister Steele.