It is so crazy how I have been gone for almost 17 days. I can't believe how fast time goes by when you look back at it. But when you're living in those days they feel like the longest days ever. The CTM definitely has its prison attributes, like they tell you when you wake up, when you eat, when you study, when you teach and when you sleep. I am not going to lie to you guys, it is for sure the hardest thing I have ever done. Completely changing all my routines to follow strict day to day routines that you never would follow in a million years. I am in a trio my two companions names are Elder Cleverly, he is from Kaysville, Utah and Elder Torgerson also from Utah. They are awesome. We are all complete opposites from each other, but that is why it works. Elder Cleverly likes to do FBLA stuff in school and loves accounting and all that school stuff. Elder Torgerson was a choir singer and a soccer player from Price. They both are really smart and scored really good scores on the ACT. They both are picking up the language really fast. Me on the other hand, I am struggling really bad with the language. I can understand about 75% of what a person is saying but I can't speak back to them. It is so frustrating to me for some reason I am not going to lie, I cry majority of the nights out here because of homesickness, stress on learning the language, and freaking stress on trying to teach our religion in a language I don't even know (haha). I sound like the biggest baby in the world but man it is so hard. We study from 6:30 in the morning till 9:30 at night. The first week I heard was the worst week of your life but I didn't believe that. I was so confident in myself. But that got shut down the minute classes started. I forgot to mention though how amazing Brazilians are. All the elders from Brazil come from bad families and horrible living conditions. But are some of the most humble, selfless people I have ever met in my life. I have two Brazilian roommates named Elder Pacheco and Elder Santos. Me and Elder Pacheco have have said maybe 4 words total to each other for the whole time we have known each other. But we have the best relationship ever. We do push ups and sit up every night we laugh at each other every second even though we have no idea what either person is saying. He's the man. And Elder Santos is so kind even though he speaks no English either. Every time I am down or depressed he brings over his scriptures in Portuguese and shows me scriptures that help him when is down. Brazilian culture is so amazing to me. The amount of heart they put into everything is purely touching to me. One more thing before I go. Even though trying to feel the spirit when a million things are going on here is hard, feeling the spirit is the best feeling in the world. In my blessing it talks about following exact obedience on my mission. And I was really struggling these last two weeks and I was wondering why I was struggling so bad. I kept having the feeling that it was because I wasn't going to bed at 10:30 even though at almost every lecture they tell us to go to bed then. But I didn't for the first two weeks. I had the feeling I should try to go to bed on time so I hopped in bed before 10:30 and I slept the whole night perfectly and ended up having the best day of my entire time down here thus far. It's so amazing to me how God speaks to us in such little ways like telling us to go to bed at 10:30 and just little things like that. It boosted my testimony up a whole lot more. I know this church is true and I would not be out here if it wasn't. I miss you all so much and would love an email here and there from anyone.
Much love,
Elder Meyer
