I LOVE YOU!

August 21, 2013

 

Dear family

I LOVE YOU! I feel the need to put this first, at the beginning of every letter. cause it’s true, and I want to make sure you know that.

Okay I’m sending you a really long letter through Mission Ties later today so forgive me for the brevity of this email. i have 9 minutes haha. Yes, mission ties works mom THANK YOU for the cinnamon roll. and also when you send a letter I get a free cookie too. Mom, the letter that you sent on Friday got to me on Tuesday, so it’s a pretty quick turnaround. Dad, I got your letter too! That one was through snail mail, right? I got it on Monday and loved every bit of it. Congrats on the job stuff, keep me posted, and finishing your archeology course!

A word about re-reading the BoM. Yes!!!! Do it!!! All of you, not just dad! We've been listening to some really amazing prerecorded devotionals, and Elder Bednar says that you should reread the BoM and just mark it up based on whatever question your trying to answer or principle you are trying to learn, and then review it at the end to see what you’ve learned. He said if you do that every time you have a question, you’ll have a bookshelf full of BoMs by the time you’re his age, like a library tracking your progression in gospel knowledge

Olivia had the baby!!!! And Michelle’s engaged!!! And Rachel’s married!!! Ahhh I leave for 3 weeks and everything happens. sheesh. Did Toni have her baby yet?

Sorry for all the typos. The Brazilians have a different keyboard here, it’s just slightly off but enough to really throw off my punctuation. I still haven discovered how to make a smiley face

So I have new roommates!!! Sister Shirts and I got two girls who only speak Spanish! One is from Chile and one is from Peru. It makes communication very difficult, because they know Spanish and we know English and we're both kind of learning \Portuguese so that’s our only common language. it’s definitely a very interesting experience. They are very sweet, we just have hard time talking to each other. But we try!

Today was the last day in the Campinas temple, were going to sao Paulo next week. Have you been getting the pictures? Send them to Mike too! I p[promise to try and send pictures next week. pinky swear.

My district has been recommitting ourselves to learning the language. We got a lot of grammar thrown at us this week and it kind of sent us into a coma as far as Portuguese was concerned. But we sang some hymns and recommitted ourselves and things have picked up quite a bit. Today is my halfway mark in the CTM, so 3 more weeks and I’ll be in the field! Everyone I’ve met that’s from Natal or has served in Natal tells me, first thing, that the people there are soooo receptive to the gospel. I cannot WAIT to be out there teaching!

The Book of Mormon is so important. If you do anything, just read a little bit every day. It will change everything for you.

I love you so much! Sorry this is so short! Thank you for all the letters, i love getting them and they make me so happy! I am wonderful, so don’t worry about me for a moment! The Lord is definitely with me. I love what my MTC President said - I know that there are angels with you missionaries, not because of faith, but because of experience.

I’m off to hang around the city and hopefully eat a Brazilian corn dog! Wish me luck!

Love always,

Sister Carroll

 

Photo from last week at the Campinas Temple 

 lucky girl will get to visit 2 temples while she is in the MTC