Week 2 in da MTC!!

well lets start this off right........

i love the MTC and everything.... but...... i have literally NO one to talk celeb gossip with. The only worldly thing i have is talking Eazy E to elder zaccaria... i dont even care about eazy e that much but its the best thing i got. I NEED some kardashian updates!!!! Kaylee/ Syd? allie? jess? somebody hoook me up!!!Well today is my 2nd P-day here in the MTC and I just got my GTL on for the day.. gym, temple, laundry. (yeah.. I could def use a jersey shore update too.. Allie. you're in charge of that.)

 

Okay OMBRIGADA para um package. it couldn't have come at a more perfect time! that morning i was just barely experiencing my first symptoms of homesickness and then after lunch... i got a package slip! I WAS SO MUITO ANIMADO!!!!! and my district was just as happy about all the candy... we already ate it all... sooooo..... send lots of candy! we got the shaft in the meal plans... breakfast is at 630 and dinner is at affing 4!!! so we're always muito starving. Martis if you could..... bring like 2 giant bags of candy for my district when you come to the MTC next week...... i and my whole district will love you forever! or for the next week... as long as the candy lasts haha

 

 

 

The other day we were doing our hour of service and i was finished mopping the floors and they told me to go see if my companion was finished in the basement so i go down this creepy dark stair way..all i could hear was an industrial vaccuum.. turn the corner and at the bottom of this dimly lit creepy narrow staircase was my companion sitting on a little chair all by herself vaccuuming buckets of chalkboard erasers! hahaha okay I don't know if it's as funny as i think it was... but i was dying! muito funny!

 

For all of you future missionarios out there, especially Martis.. I highly suggest memorizing the First Vision and The Missionary Purpose in ENGLISH before you get in here! (oh and the baptismal challenge if you can) especially if you are learning a language! cause now i'm tryna memorize it in portuguese and i dont even know what im saying and its muito hard! i have to memorize it in both languages and yeah just do it before you get in here. also study the crap out of 2 Nephi 31. cause that is all we focus on and talk about for 15 hours a day.

 

This week we had to seperate from our companions and teach a 10 minute lesson.. in portuguese.. by ourselves.. 10 minutes is a LONG freaking time! so I had to teach Elder Bowden, he went first and I could feel the spirit and understand all his portuguese. Then I went and I was so nervous. I didn't have my companion there to bail me out or help me know what i'm trying to say, but i just taught the most chopped up version of the first vision half in portuguese/ half in english.. I felt the spirit so strongly. and Elder Bowden told me he could feel it really strongly too and he thinks I know a lot more Portuguese than I think I know cause he could understand everything i was trying to say. I was so happy to hear that, but it was so hard to teach and super humbling. i have A LOT of work to do on the language. but it's coming..

 

Tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. my favorite Elders (Harp and Manley) are headed off to Canada and I am sooo sad! They're like our only friends outside of the district and I am gonna miss them muito! Our elders in our district hate them haha they always get mad at us for "33-ing" (33 is the page in the white handbook that says no flirting haha) the other day we were sitting by Harp and Manley at dinner and I looked up to see Elder Zaccaria shaking his head disapprovingly and flashing a 33 at us. haha it was exactly like 2 dollars.... on Better Off Dead for whoever's seen that. haha i was dying. but really i'm gonna miss those guys! Who the heck am i going to bond with about rap music i actually care about? who the heck am i going to vent to when elder lee, my pipsqueak little 18 year old justin beiber twin district leader holds my mail hostage until 930... (i know i know we're not supposed to read our mail till bed time, butttt whatever happened to YOLO?? and Free agency??) just gimme my letters yo! it's so obnoxious, so now everything else he does is that much more obnoxious.. oh goish. BUT he has a sweet spirit and he really is a good district leader.

 

 

Okay i can handle a lot of things in the shower... the humming.. the pitch perfect riff-offs... the single jet spray of water..... but i can NOT handle the opera singer who showers every night from 9:30-10 and just freaking belts the hymns.. like honestly just shut up. She starts singing before she even turns the water on.. I'm over here tryna rap under my breath so i dont get chastised by all the "holier than thou" sisters and i got freaking opera over here making it so i can't even hear myself think... just shut up. also the wall of hair in the shower was okay when I lived with Smorg or Martison.. ya know, it was hard to deal with, but i got over it...but the MTC shower wall of hair has got to go. I gag. literally gag, everytime i shower. it's awful.

 

i LIVE for the 50 minutes of volleyball everyday. but the Elders are a little too good. like it's scary how hard they haul that ball at you! when there's only like me and one other sister on the court... they have no mercy and then laugh their aces off when I duck instead of attempting to break every single finger trying to set it back to them after they just spiked it in my face. So yesterday, the guy was like okay gym times over and elder harp was like k just keep going till the ball hits the ground! so we're playing.. everyones hitting it everyones doing good, it hits the wall.... but we saved it and kept playing.. like this is going on for a while, finally Harp bumped it over to me and I am feeling so confident, i got my arms set in the right position, the ball is aiming perfectly for me to hit it and everything.... uh guess not.. it freaking drilled me straight in the face. I have never seen someone laugh so hard. the elders were dying. it was funny... but so stupid, i was so confident and then BAM good night. right in my face. hahahaha so dumb.

 

Yesterday Sister Hancock had to go to the bathroom, so we go to the door and theres a sign that says "please knock" so she starts knocking and like puts her ear next to the door trying to hear something cause it was so loud in the hallway and i am like all about it, i was like oh yeah maybe the lock is just broken, thats kinda weird.. then i look over and the door next to us all huge says WOMEN she was just knocking on some ones office door hahaha i was laughing so hard i almost peed, good thing we figured out where the bathroom was now hahaha. I wonder if that lady gets her door knocked on all the time for the bathroom or if we're just stupid...

 

 

I made a new goal for myself last night. Be my companions favorite companion. I know it shouldnt be too hard for me, but for real imma try to do it for all my comps.

 

I made it as the second quote ever on the quote board!!! (if you know me at all... you know how much i value getting my credit when it's due so this was muito exciting for me) so the day was dragging on...... studying for days.. literally.. and i found it it was only 630 and we STILL had another 3 hour class with Brother Taylor..... oh my i wanted to just die and I was being so dramatic, but serious and i said "I feel like I've been living this day for a year..." oh my district thought that was just about the funniest thing they've ever heard, they threw it up on the quote board next to elder zaccarias quote, now he is funny so that is quite the compliment.

 

Well my companheira is rushing me, so i gotta go, but i LOVE YOU ALL! keep the letters coming! tchao, ate logo!

Love, Sister Dumas

ps. Boa Sorte to Ash hole and Joysticle on friday!! wish i could be there :( so sad.... but as the honorary bridesmaid i expect a letter and pics with ALL the deets.

 

 

 

 

 

Translation:

Martis = Madi (Kristen's Sister)

Ash hole = Ashley, Kristens friend who is getting married

Joysticle = Jace, Kristens other friend who is marrying Ashley ^^

YOLO = you only live once

 

First P Day.......

OH MY GOSH I LOVE THE MTC!!!

honestly i am having the best time here. Minha companheira is Sister Hancock. She is a doll. She's from Oahu and she is just super simple and super cute. She went to byu in provo oh and she knows Elder Graham by the way.. but she is super knowledgable about the gospel and she took Portuguese before coming here so she is a HUGE help to me. Love her. except the first day i met her she asked me where utah state even was..... go aggies. I get so excited everytime  i see someone in here in their Utah state gear! seriously that's like more exciting than getting letters haha  

The first day I got here, i was checking in a the lady helping me was Allie Howe's mom.. so S/O to her! haha then every where i went after that it was SO HOT. i wanted to die. I didn't want to be that sick girl that takes her shoes off in class, but i was dying... don't tell Martis, she'll be pissed. but i couldn't help it i was roasting in those things! Then that night we had our little introduction devotional and sang "We'll Bring The World His Truth" and on the line that says "and we will be the Lord's missionaries.." we sang "and we are now the Lord's missionaries.." wow. I am on a freaking mission. I could feel the spirit so strongly that this is where I am supposed to be. i love it here.

 

My district is amazing. It's weird cause you only have a teacher in the class for like 3 hours everyday.. you would think have 6 elders and 4 sisters squashed in a tiny room for 8+ hours a day things would get a little cray cray, but no. Everyone is so dedicated and so faithful that we all continue studying like we are supposed to. I mean yeah sometimes we go a little crazy and get off topic, but really not that much. and if we do lose focus, we pray. We are constantly on our knees as a district. If we're tired, we pray. if we get off topic, we pray. before we leave the classroom, we pray. it's so amazing. The other day our teacher didn't show up for class and Elder Zaccaria suggested we take turns each reading a verse in the B.O.M in English and then in Portuguese. so we went around doing that, seriously my district is the best! i know everyone says that about their district, but NO. mine is the best. Except yesterday i told them we need to do our emails in the laundry room cause the computers aren't timed and they all looked at me like i just told them i hate portugal or something..... chill out irmaos......

 

Plus my district is so funny. Elder Zaccaria.. oh he's a hoot. he just says things in English and adds a Portuguese accent and acts like it's portuguese haha it is so dumb, but so funny. and last night at dinner, we were showing off our bodily talents, and Elder Bowden grabbed my chicken strips and started juggling them.. haha i wasn't planning on eating them anyway.........  

I don't know why everyone dogs on the food here in the empty sea... it's freaking bomb. it's the water that's gross!! seriously it tastes like an old rusty drinking fountain in an orthodonists office. ew.

And I know why everyone says make it to Sunday.... The blueberry muffins on sunday mornings are divine. literally. I was dying. I made my whole district go get one, even if they hate/ are allergic to blueberries.. I still made them try it. Yes, they were that good. Then the rest of the day is pretty laid back, just a lot of personal study and devotionals and temple walk which is like the best thing ever! better than recess in elementary school! and sacrament is pretty much all in portuguese and they call 2 people at the beginning of the meeting who will be speaking so you have to prepare a talk erry week... holla! not.

 

My 3rd day in the MTC we had to teach a full 30 minute lesson ALL in Portuguese. ahhh. good thing minha companheira is so good at Portuguese. Last night I lost my B.O.M. or should i say L.D.M. (o livre de mormon)... but it's okay cause i lost it to Vander our investigator who we committed to reading the book of mormon!!!! I was so excited! I can't even imagine how great it is gonna be when it happens for real in Portugal!.

 

There is a tree here that smells like cream soda. i'm not even joking. I can not wait for 2 more weeks Martis gets here!!! It is so exciting to see people you know here! I have seen....... Amy Crofts, Brent Syphus, Chincy, Jake Hutchins, Emily Sheffield, Kelsey Christopolus, Melodee Young, Hayden Stofferan, Gage Marberger, Brenna (sabricks cuz) and every single day i see BUH!! (Elder Neiderhauser) his classroom is right by mine so i see him erryday. but for real, it is like Christmas in the MTC when you see someone you know, but what is better than that.. It's like being front row and getting a shout out from Macklemore when you get letters!!! so write, email, dear elder.. whateva it takes, and i promise i'll write ya back ;) Shout out to all my homies who have written me! love you all.

 

well I'm running out of time, and i wanna send pictures, write and send pics plz!!!

 

I am SO happy. I love the MTC, I love my district, i love my companion, I love Portuguese, I love my mission, I love the gospel.

Eu sei que a igreja es verdadeira e o livre de mormon e palavra de deus. THE CHURCH IS TRUE and i love you all

until next week,

xoxo, Sister Dumas

 

Minha companheira sister Hancock

Brenna!

Meu Districto!

Elder Gage Marberger

my two favorite elders in the MTC who leave to vancouver canada next week :( Elder Harp and Elder Manley

S/O to sbluis!
happy birthday!

 how i read during personal study so i don't fall asleep....... so uncomfortably comfortable, it just works