January 3, 2012

January 3, 2012

The Brazil CTM is absolutely amazing! The rooms are kind of really tiny and it feels like I’m at EFY but the garden and the building compared to everything else around us is extremely nice! I can see why most people of Brazil think that we are "the rich church" because all the church buildings out here are amazingly gorgeous! The temple kind of stands out a little and I love being able to go to that every week! I’m gonna have the movie memorized soon enough haha but yeah the cafeteria is just kind of a cafeteria… nothing too special going on there but the food is amazing! I am shockingly still liking the rice and beans and have that with every meal but I just cover it with hot sauce or cilantro so switch it up seeing as not much changes around here…the same daily schedule may be starting to get to me. I adapted to waking up at 6 alright but just doing the same thing everyday and getting frustrated not learning the language when it feels like everyone else has it down.  That’s when times get tough but getting the banner from the whole family in the mail was amazing! Give Michael crap because he didn’t write on it and I may have been a little bummed about that but I loved hearing from everyone else and seeing Hans Portuguese in action! Its cool how some little thing like everyone writing Merry Christmas can just make your day or your week down here! Mail is like gold and I still get the butterflies every time we open that magic box up haha

Oh have another big announcement! I am now the Assistant to the President! Did not see that one coming at all!! I didn’t think they would dare drop me from being District leader but apparently they did... everyone thought it was gonna be my Comp Elder Bodily (including me), who is great by the way, so i feel like everyone is kind of shocked/ "oh no not again" but i guess we’ll see how things work out. I’ve only had the calling since Monday so don’t have much to report when it comes to that but I’m sure next week ill have plenty to ramble on about!

Grandma and Grandpa Pinegar emailed me last week but I didn’t have time to respond until this week but he essentially wrote the whole thing with scriptures haha they are just the greatest! And I have been using all of grandpa’s books and my district all copied some pages that had all the scriptures by theme plus I used grandmas kite story in my talk during sacrament meeting!

But New Years in Brazil is crazy!! The Brazilians are always on one but even more so when it comes to holidays haha they were all walking around with English music playing and they have no idea what the words were saying so needless to say a few songs were played that definitely shouldn’t have haha gotta love those Brazilians :) but since i was DL I felt like I couldn’t stay up to watch the fireworks because I’m really trying to stick to this whole obedience thing but it is unbelievable hard because they have rules for just about everything and being AP now means I will never be able to have fun haha jk...hopefully. apparently when midnight struck the whole sky was covered with fireworks and people were shooting them down the street and everything so i was kind of really bummed I didn’t get to see all of it but i know it will all be worth it in the end but right now its just really frustrating and I’m not gonna lie it gets really hard at times. Good thing I know I’m supposed to be here or else this would be even worse.

I’m out of time again for this week! So i hope you get better Mom and I really will keep you in my prayers! Tell everyone hi for me :) I don’t know how the whole email thing is working at home if people want to do the individual emails or what but just know I love you all.

Elder Gubler