Letter #4: LOVE YOU!

I love this place so much I could live here for the rest of my life and be totally content. Seriously though I am just always so happy and loving life and its because the spirit here is so strong and there is so much love. The days are starting to blur together and the weeks are going faster. We’re starting week 5 here! But they number it weird cause we're actually hitting four weeks in the mtc tomorrow. And then Saturday is my month mark! Like WHAT HOW DID THAT HAPPEN I GOT HERE YESTERDAY. I ONLY have 17 months left I’m going to cry. jk but time is flying and its craziness. 

Tuesday:

This was the day that I got a dearelder from my dear sister Katie about the new Harry Potter movie and I DIED. This is the best news of LIFE!!!! My district FREAKED out about it cause we all love harry potter of course and oh my goodness Katie thank you for sending that. We had devotional that night at the Marriott center. Walking up there all together is always such a cool experience. Missionary mass its great. Also at devotional I saw Sorella ALLISON YOST!!!! we made faces at each other from across the building for like thirty minutes cause that’s just what we do. And then I ran up and hugged here and it was like a scene out of a cheesy love movie and I cried because I always do when I see her because I love her. Okay best quote from devo was "every day on your mission you will think about home. But when you get home, every day for the rest of your life you will think about your mission." this hit me so hard! It’s SO important to make the most of my time here serving the Lord. I ONLY have a year and a half to serve. And I want to be proud of the service I give.

Wednesday:

I saw Alli again! Ahhh God loves me. I actually saw her 4 TIMES this week! Crazy. She was walking to the temple and then we saw each other again at the next devo. I spotted her from across the auditorium. My companion was freaked out and was like you two can like sense each other from across the room how do you do that?!? Hehe. Also on Wednesday our whole district got sick cause when one person gets sick everyone does cause we spend all day in an itty-bitty living space together. That night we taught Paulo and he committed to baptism!!!! WOOOOOHOOOOO! That was AWESOME. I can’t even tell you Sister Davis and I walked out that lesson like YES CHURCH IS TRUE I LOVE LIFE AND BEING A MISSIONARY!! 

Thursday:

Today we found out that we'll for sure most definitely be singing at the relief society session of general conference!!!!!! There was a bit of a selection process so not all of the sisters get to go. So it’s a blessing and I’m so excited!! Me and Sister Kimbrell and Sargent get to go but Sister Davis doesn’t and that makes me sad :( ill probs be next to Sister Sargent so look for a really tall blonde sister and ill be the short one next to her. So yah on Saturday they’ll load us all onto the buses and take us into Salt Lake City! I’m so stoked I miss that place!! We practice every morning this week for 1.5 hr. to get ready for it so we have to miss some class and had to miss going to the temple this morning. But that’s okay. Mom I hope this makes you happy!! I wish the camera worked the other way around so I could see you too. Ohh and LISTEN TO THE LYRICS!!!! Seriously they are so powerful I cry every time we sing them. My favorite is when we sing "more faith in my Savior. More sense of His care. More joy in His service. More purpose in prayer." all of the lyrics are wonderful so listen for their meaning

Friday:

We had choir practice just like every other day and the entire general relief society presidency came to listen to us sing!! So cool. They are so beautiful and such amazing woman and I love them. Also today during gym time Sister Whittney tricked me into running 2.5 miles with her and it was rude and I died. I realize that this is probably not a big deal for most people but it was for me. Ahhh minha vida (my life) I don’t think this is even proper Portuguese but we say it anyways cause nothing we say is really proper anyways

Saturday:

In the morning we paired up with another district and taught each other a lesson. This was really encouraging to see how much we could say with zero warning or practice. Oh and also our whole district got Brazil shirts today! Matchy matchy :) we're so cute. We’ve been waiting FOREVER for them to get a shipment in of them because the Brazil shirts always run out the fastest. Okay funniest investigator story so far. I’ve said this before but actually this one wins for all time. So Sister Forsyth was teaching her investigator about keeping our bodies clean and sacred. So she goes to read him a scripture in 1 Corinthians but accidentally read from the wrong chapter cause it was in Portuguese and we don’t know Portuguese. And so she ends up reading him a scripture about how circumcision is a commandment and then continues to talk about treating our bodies like temples without even realizing what she just read. hahaahha and our teacher/their gator was like WHAT SO CONFUSED HAHAAH. 

ALSO MY PACKAGE CAME FROM MY AMAZING LITTLE SISTER AND MOM!!!! Thank you!!! I love you both and my district is obsessed with you! You are too good to me. All of the sister feasted on them that night.

Sunday:

I brought the elders their cookies and they loved you also because they ate them for breakfast and thought that that was the best thing of life. haha elder nixon told sister kimbrell that i was the new district leader and she believed him all morning. but elder lott is the actual new district leader. okay DAD GET READY TO BE PROUD. so our district had to do a musical number during sacrament meeting so i rearranged that army of helaman piece that you love so much so that it would work with a violin and people singing. so i played the piano and sister whittney played violin and my district sang! So yah thanks for putting me in piano lessons. 

For MTC choir that night we sang "nearer my god to thee" and I got chillsssssss. Go look at the lyrics they’re beautiful! The choir director told us the story behind the song and it’s about Jacob in the bible and how he had to leave home and as he lied to sleep on a stone that night he had a vision of heaven. I’m not doing the story justice but the song does so yah go look at it :)

Monday:

We had our BEST LESSON EVER! We taught Dalmiro about the word of wisdom because he is an alcoholic. He’s a father and his whole family are members. So I told him about the influence a father has on his family and bore testimony of how my own father's obedience blesses our family. And I saw it click in his eyes and it was amazing!!!! I got your letter that day too mom and it was so inspiring and such a perfect thing to hear. I loved that it said EVERYONE has the light of Christ. SO TRUE. It was the perfect thing to end my day with THANK YOU!!!!!!

Olivia Mayer: CONGRATULATIONS on passing your tests I’m SOOOOOO PROUD OF YOU!! Also for your letter it was beautiful and I wrote you back and hopefully you get that soon I love you

RACHEL: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. I almost cried when I saw that I had a package from the chocolate and I KNEW it was from you because that’s our place and I love you and that was the most glorious thing you could have possibly ever sent me and my roommates were jealous but sorry for them cause I didn’t even share heeheh ahhhh you’re the best!! I was impressed by your considerateness ;)

Nan: you are the most brilliant woman I have ever met. Seriously who thinks of that?? hahah sending a letter on a harry potter cover! Ahhh I loved it! Also so did my district I brought it in to show it to them because I knew they would appreciate it and they did and we took turns holding it because we all miss harry potter and holding the cover was as close as we're gonna get. I’m writing you back soon so that’s all ill say about that now! Love you :)

Katie: your letter was hilarious and I am also writing you back as soon as I possibly can. You’re beautiful and I want to be just like you when I grow up

Aunt carol: that story you shared with me gave me Goosebumps and I read it to all of my roommates and we loved it thank you! It’s always so great to hear from you

Aunt Julie: thank you for writing me! Its good to hear that Carrie and trey are doing well. I hope matt is loving ASU! Tell him I love him and that I need an update on his life so he should send me a letter please :) love you all!

Michael monster: the day after the byu game my teacher told us he would wear either a blue or red tie depending on who one. And guess what color he wore?!? RED :( sad day. Miss you goober!!

dad: the elders in my district have started singing Christmas songs and it reminded me of you and how much you would disapprove of that. hahah I love you! Also remember how I played the piano in church like you told me to? Yah me too :) k love you!

EMS: I MISS YOU EVERY DAY AND I LOVE YOU WITH ALL OF MY HEART. I want to hear about how being at the naval base is going! CAPOTE :) 

John, Heidi, and J.D.: thank you so much for the beautiful journal and pen! That was so perfect and I love it! You are so sweet to think of me and that made my day so thank you!

My teacher always tells us "God is in the details." Find God in the details of your life. And then give thanks to Him! He is always there for you. Sometimes we forget to look. 

I LOVE YOU ALL!!!

<3 Sister Tantillo

Alli and me

We all put our name tags on the Brazil flag

Sister Davis and Sister Forysth and Me

Letter #3: Fast and Crazy

This week went so fast it was crazy!!!!! Halfway done with the MTC I don’t know where time is going. First of all.... KATIE that's awesome that you're mia maids president!! Dad told me about that and I’m super duper proud of you. Way to be. Atta girl. Go get em. Remember your standards. ect. Mom I’m glad Emily emailed you!! I got a letter from her this week and it made my life. Isn’t that adorable that she gets to work in the navy base??? She’s going to have a pearl harbor love story and fall in love and I cant wait it’ll be beautiful! ummm tell sister lambert that I used the flashcards she gave me this week to study and they’re wonderful and thank you :) Rachel and Tanner I got your dearelder today thank you thank you I will write you a letter in response today! Oh my goodness this morning was so stressful cause the internet has been down here and super glitchy and we couldn’t get on to our emails and that would’ve been terrible! Okay here goes my week.
Tuesday
This is old news but Elder Horton got his visa!!! So exciting! I’ll talk more about that later. We had devotional that night and I saw Mr. Elder Bradykins Johnston!!!!!!!! It was so hard not to hug that boy but we were seriously bouncing off the walls with excitement of seeing each other. And then we took a super classy shaking hands missionary picture. After the devotional I had an interview with brother Jackson and he had me teach him a gospel principle in 30 seconds in English. It was the first time I had taught in English here and it felt awesome to be able to actually articulate my testimony. he was so nice to me and told me I had a "sweet spirit and will be a wonderful missionary." so that was an awesome experience.
Wednesday
For service they had the four of us (me, Sister Davis, Sister Kimbrell, Sister Sargent) vacuum the carpets with those rolling vacuum things that leave behind more dirt than they pick up. But it was fun and we walked around the building vacuuming and sharing college prank stories with each other. Later that day Sister Davis got a blessing from the elders cause she had been getting this really terrible headache everyday at the same time. And she hasn’t gotten it again since! Church is true. Love them elders. Priesthood power. :) Also today Elder Byron and I had a Harry Potter face off where our district quoted HP and we competed to see who could guess which movie/book it was from first. Needless to say I won.
Thursday
TRC!! Aka training resource center. People come volunteer and we teach them lessons for 20 minutes each. It’s kinda like a home teaching atmosphere type thing. We taught this one lady who is from Sao Paulo but living here in Provo now and she was so sweet and sang us a primary song in Portuguese. Also on this day I found out that "bobo" in port means "dumb" so that’s rude family I need a new nickname right now
Friday
Elder Nixon got called to the travel office and we FREAKED OUT. Like NO YOU CAN’T LEAVE US!!!! Just kidding it would’ve been excited if he got his visa but he just had to sign some papers. Another Elder Nixon story from that day though was that he accidentally called our teacher "foxy" while he was trying to say something in Portuguese. During class we practiced doing street contacts by teaching a principle in 1-3 minutes with each other. At lunchtime I saw elder Bradykins again and had to say goodbye to him and I was sad and started crying and I think Sister Davis was uncomfortable and didn’t know what to do. That night our district went and welcomed the new district in our branch and sang them the "hello!" song in Portuguese. It was easy to learn because it says the same word five million times over
Saturday
We practiced street contacting again but this time with a "younger" district (meaning they have been at the MTC shorter than us). And we felt super smart and advanced because we could say maybe five more words than them. We watched some Mormon messages today and I cried through all of them which felt awesome cause crying is the best. Seriously go watch all of them. During class Sister Kimbrell asked Brother Bitner how to say, "just kidding" in Portuguese but he told her how to say "I am ugly" instead and so for five minutes she believed him. Oh btw we have two teachers. Brother Bitner and Brother Hickman. One teaches us in the morning and the other at night. And then they are each an "investigator" for us too. They pretend to be someone that they taught on their own missions and we prepare lessons for them and practice teaching. Right now Sister Davis and I are teaching Paulo (an 18 year old boy) and Dalmiro (a 43 year old man with a family that are all members). And its soooooooo cool to teach those lessons.
Sunday
Sister Sargent and Elder Nixon got called on to speak in sacrament. Sister Sargent is practically fluent cause she new port already because she took classes at college. So she blew everyone’s mind during her talk and people were confused like how did she learn this language so quick?!? Sunday is wonderful! We walked to the temple as a district and went and sat in the grass together. And Brother Jackson from our branch presidency came with us and told us stories about Piracicaba cause he served there. That night I said goodbye to my dear cousin Elder Garrett cause he left super early the next morning. We tried to get a picture for our mom’s cause we know you would want that but none of them really turned out super great. Sorry bout that.
Monday
Started with gym time aka naptime on the yoga Matts in the corner. jk :) our district made a goal to start speaking in only Portuguese in the mornings for a certain period of time ranging from 3-6 hours. So we started that! Later that afternoon I brought the package you sent me into class and my district went absolutely NUTS!!! Elder Nixon and Sister Whittney were having sour competitions and seeing who could last the longest with the most sour stuff in their mouth. Giving Elder Nixon sugar was a mistake. He was literally bouncing off the walls and then I look over five minutes later and he's crashed in the corner of the classroom dead asleep. Then we planned a super mature prank for Brother Bitner with the pop rocks to put them in our mouths when he walked in so the room would be crackling. We took it seriously too and had lookouts for every hallway leading tot eh classroom. He was impressed I’m sure. This morning we went to the temple and I sat by the sweetest lady who reminded me so much of Sister Gee! We chatted and it was great to talk to someone from the real world. Also today I taught my roommates how to French braid hair. Its been raining here off and on this week and I love it! Me and Elder Byron who is also from Seattle get so excited about it and our district thinks we're weird.

Okay spiritual thought of the week!! John chapter 15 says "greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. ye are my friends..." Christ loves us so much! He is our friend and we can turn to him for ANYTHING.

 I LOVE YOU ALL!!

 Sister Tantillo

The District

Sour Competition Elder Nixion vs. Sister Whittney

Sometimes our district draws harry potter and that is why i love them. Appreciate the hp movie 3 theme going on

 District!
back row left to right
brother Bitner, e nixon. e barrus. sister sargent. sis forsyth. sis whittney. e. lott. e byron. e hamilton
front row left to right
sis davis. sis birch. me. sis kimbrell. sis pedilla

The Sisters

Sister Davis and I next to the Brazil flag

Letter #2: My Favorite Day Is Tuesday

BEST NEWS OF THE WEEK = my beautiful siblings are reading Harry Potter!!!!!! proud of you. keep me updated on how much you LOVE IT. Mom the chocolates you made were beautiful and I'm jealous of your skills. Look at you turning into nan! Garrett got a slip of paper today that MIGHT mean he got his visa? But I haven't seen him again yet so I'll find out when I see him at lunch what it was for.

Okay, so could you forward my emails to mik and afton too please? I gave you their emails and send them last weeks too cause the want them. thanks! I'm gonna just go through the days of the week cause thats easiest!

Tuesday:
Emailing was super stressful and still is but that's okay cause I love it. We had choir and all walked up to the Marriott center for it and I cried for joy to be on byu campus because I love that place so much. Then we had devotional which was INCREDIBLE! He talked about how the scriptures are full of examples of the relationship between God and His son and how we can have that kind of relationship with God too as His children

Wednesday:
We started the morning with service and me and my roomies got put on cleaning windows. Better than the elders - they got put on bathroom duty. suckers. We taught our investigator Ellison and it was going super great until he asked us a ridiculous question that we didn't even know how to answer in English so we were like uhhhh we'll get back to you on that one bye. haha AND THEN I GOT A PACKAGE!!! We can't open mail til 9:30 but my roommates and I went nuts over the cookies and ate all of them and it was the best thing ever THANK YOU KATIE YOU'RE THE BEST!!!!!! oh also wednesday is report day to the mtc so Sister Davis and I went and studied by the bookstore so we could see everyone coming in and I saw Brother and Sister Moulton!!! That was wonderful. And then ALLISON FREAKING YOST SHOWED UP!!!!! I cant even tell you how happy of a moment that was. It was like a scene out of the movies. I ran into her arms and we both just started crying and her host thought we were nuts and we didn't even cry because it was a glorious reunion. I'll send a pic. We look ridiculous cause we had actually been crying. She's over at west campus, though, so I haven't seen her since :(((( hopefully I will tonight at choir.

Thursday
Last lesson with Ellison! We were all super nervous for it which was weird cause normally we're like alright lets do this!! But everyone did super great and it's insane how much we've improved in just a week. The funniest stories come out of teaching these lessons though cause we like dont know this language and so who knows what we're actually saying! hahaah one sister was explaining the restoration and called Joesph Smith a midget. And her investigator was like ummm thats cool? hahah and then another sister companionship was trying to say "holy spirit" but ended up saying "spirit goose". Yeah we rock at this language. But one thing that has become so clear and that our teachers keep telling us is that the language really is not whats important! Its all about showing your LOVE to the people and teaching with the spirit.

Friday
So we walk into class in the morning and Ellison is sitting there in a shirt and tie and we FREAKED OUT. Apparently Ellison is actually Brother Hickman OUR TEACHER!!!! We all just started apologizzing immedietly like sorry for our terrible portuguese and that you had to suffer through listening to us. So during gym time Sis Davis and I usually go run the track but today I played basketball with my dear cousin Elder Horton. I totally beat him even though im ten feet shorter #skills. jk but it was fun bonding time with the cous. (thanks for teaching me how to shoot dad). okay so the elders played SUCH A MEAN JOKE ON US. they told us that elder lott got his visa and was leaving and we were so sad!!! IT WAS RUDE. umm I ran into Yevi (girl from my floor at byu) in the lunchroom! She left this week and is serving in WA!! woot woot!

Saturday
Ellison/Brother Hickman taught us again. He says "tudo bem" at the end of EVERY SENTENCE. And he doesnt even realize he's doing it!! hahha Elder Hamilton kept tally of it and not even kidding he said it five bajillion times in one three hour class. Elder Nixon has the same personality as Bradykins and its weird but awesome. Also we get along super great cause he quotes Harry Potter and I'm the only one that laughs. his girlfriend is serving in Rochester so we bonded over that too and I told him to tell her to say hi to my grandparents for me but I don't think hes actually going to pass on that message.

Sunday
BEST DAY AT THE MTC. Minus sacrament meeting that part is stressful. We all have to prepare a five minute talk every week and then they randomly call on two people to give their talk with no warning IN PORTUGUESE. But none of my district got called on cause we're newbies. for dinner we ate ice cream as a district cause our moms aren't here to tell us to eat healthy :) Then we had devo and wathced the Testament,. good stuff.

Monday
Funniest day of life. The trio of elders (byron, hamilton, lott) got locked out of their room in their towels for like half an hour while elder nixon went to get help. They thoroughly made fun of them for that one. Then Sister Sargent fell into a trash can while she was walking backwards talking to someone. Also she got a nosebleed in the middle of teaching one of her lessons. She had a rough day.

Also this week our district got moved up to the fifth floor and THE STAIRS ARE ETERNAL. Sister Kimbrell laughs at me because apparently she thinks my facial expressions are funny. Also at night time it will finally get quiet and Sis. Kimbrell will start laughing hysterically cause apparently she thinks its super funny when the room randomly gets quiet. And it takes her forever to calm down and she has to say a prayer for it to stop. Seriously, this happens every night. We had district sharing time this week and brought pics of our family. YOU ALL ARE BEAUTIFUL.

Everyone I promise I'm writing you back today!!!!!!!
Grandparents T: Thank you for you letter!!! glad you enjoyed labor day and that cookout sounds SO FUN!!! I miss you and love you!
Dad: thanks for lecturing Katie about staying out of my room. also for your dearelders they made my day and don't tell anyone but i got most excited to read yours!! :)
mom: answers to your questions. life without a cell phone is weird/liberating. the first few days i kept reaching for it and then was like oh wait... hahah and my clothes are great! Katie told me she showed you the videos of us in the car. proud of you for not crying. sorry my dance moves are epic
nan: no. dating the elders in the MTC is not allowed. I'M A MISSIONARY ;) hahaah your letter was wonderful and made me laugh! thanks for taking care of my mom in her state of emotional insanity. LOVE YOU and I'm writing you a letter today!!
Rachel: you da you da best. i will be waiting ever not so patiently for your letter. hope school isn't killing you too bad. also tell tanner that he better be taking you on Friday dates since i cant anymore
tanner: thanks for your email! i laughed cause you wrote me more than my own sister and isn't that just so typical? i cant wait to tell my district about the hand snappy thing thanks!!
Grandparents S: are you back in mesa? it is wonderful to be here with Garrett! we got to go to a temple session together and it was so special to be there with family :) i love him and he's taking such good care of me here. lucky to have him
Katie: you looks so beautiful in all of the pics that ive gotten of you and i cant even handle how gorgeous you are. STOP BEING SO PRETTY I CANT KEEP UP. hahah i love you little sis. a letter is coming your way!
mike-n-ike: thanks for the Eastlake update!!!! root for them for me: i heard you had awesome seats at the mariners game you lucky goober.


I LOVE YOU ALL!!
quote of the week " when the hour of performance has come, the time for preparation has passed."
HAVE A GOOD WEEK!!!!

With all my love,
Sister Tantillo

Letter #1: First Week, Check!

HELLO FAMILY!!!! mom. you are the best person on this planet I cannot even express to you how much I love you. THANK YOU for your letters! They got to me like the day after you sent them since you were still in park city! That was so wonderful. Okay here goes the update on my life. So after the ever so tragic and sad goodbye at the mtc curb (told ya that would be terrible) I walked around the corner and GUESS WHO WAS THERE?!?!? my dearest most gigantic cousin Garrett aka elder Horton and I accidentally called him Garrett cause I was not yet adjusted to the mtc/misionary terminology called never call someone by their first name. Then he was like lets get a picture! so we did for the sake of our dear mothers. But guess what. That wasn't allowed. Cause we were in a building that you're not allowed to take pictures or something I guess AND SO dear cousin Garrett got me in trouble on my first day in the MTC. Actually within the first five minues THANKS COUS. The rest of that day we had orientation stuff and met our district. I LOVE MY DISTRICT. Literally so much love for all of them. This keyborad sucks sorry I'm trying. Anywho there's 8 sisters and 5 elders which is like unheard of here! More sister than elders woop woop! Half the elders are only 18 and they're like our little brothers and its great and then one of them is 24 so we refer to him as the dad as the group. He's super serious and sometimes sarcastic and we can never tell when he's being which. Back to first day. We walked into classroom and BAM right away we're speaking Portuguese that was cool and scary and yah. Our teacher only talks to us in Portuguese ever. That day at dinner I saw Anna Gee!!! Oh my goodness she was SO SWEET. She came up and gave me a big hug and told me the most reassuring words of life and it was amazing. I love her. I see Mercedes and this guy Will Pusey that I know from byu all the time too cause they both got here the same day as me and are going to Brazil too so our classrooms/schedules are similar. oh. except for our schedule is ridiculous cause we're visa waiters so they basically are like okay you guys can go to breakfast at 6:30 and eat dinner at 4. so we actually have to wake up by like 6 to get started for the day. but thats all good. I've run into so many people here its crazy! My district is convinved that I know everyone here and im like yeah im popular sorry #notsorry. This email is going to be all over the place sorry. Random thoughts. The first day the elders in our district would not even make eye contact with any of us sisters cause I guess they thought they weren't supposed to talk tot us or something. But no worries. we got them to like us and now we are all the best of friends. saturday was the most unproductive study day of life cause theats when we all decided we like each other and just could not contain our love for each other. TANNER I HAVE A QUESTION. is that hand snappy thing where you flick your wrist a real thing in Brazil?  Cause its our districts goal to be able to do it by the end of the mtc #spiritualgoals. We had interviews with the branch president on our second day and they were so sweet and loving and their wives gave us sisters the biggest most wonderful hugs. ahhh this is stressful okay so my companion is Sister Davis. SHE IS THE MOST PERFECT COMPANION FOR ME. Like seriously I cannot thank God enough. We are super different but it like works and its great. Shes from Oregon and shes majoring in art at byu-i. we taught our fist lesson on Friday IN PORTUGUESE. We've taught three so far since then. The first time we seriously could not string three words together and it was a real life struggle. And then the second time was SO INCREDIBLE. We could all of a sudden say things and put thoughts together and understand what our investigator was saying! His name is Allison btw. And we came our so pumped like YEAH we rock at being missionaries. And then we had a lesson that pretty much slapped humility in our face. Being a missionary you seriously always feel like you have a million things to improve on its crazy. But, also so encouraging and every day we get better! The other girls in our room are Sister Sargent and Sister Kimbrell. Sis Sargent is 23 and like 7 feet tall and our mom. She alraedy knows a ton of Portuguese and so that's super helpful. Sister Kimbrell is like 5ft and from North Carolina and is beautiful and has the most adorable accent. We are all the best of friends. Okay story: the second night my alarm clock actually FREAKED OUT. It decided to randomly go off in the middle of the night THREE TIMES. and I'm on the top bunk so poor Sister Davis had to listen to me like fall out of bed three times to try and get it to stop. I turned it off. It went off again. I unplugged it. It went off again. I ripped the batteries out and threw it accrsos the room. It finally stopped. sorry roomies. FAMILY AND FRIENDS YOU ARE THE BEST. I get the most mail of the whole district and they all hate me for it (jk they love me) and tell me to stop hogging all the mail and I'm like SORRY. its great. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SENDING ME YOUR LOVE. Oh my goodness most random thing. I was in line in the caf getting a wrap and guess who was working there? uhh Alex Wright! yeah! Sarah's little bro who I Havent seen in like 6 years and he's HUGE now and I didn't recognize him but he was like "Bonnie?" That was a random reunion. SUNDAY = BEST DAY. It was fast sunday which made it even better. Sacrament mtg is with the whole district and is all in Portuguese and we were all super proud of ourselves cause we could actually understand most of what was being said. GIFT OF TONGUES IS REAL. Seriously I think about how much I struggled with Spanish and now I've learned as much Portuguese as I did with 2 years of Spanish (not very much but still). Then we went on a temple walk and it was weird leaving our little world called the MTC. Walking out of the gates was cray cray. Meal time here is so fun cause we sit together all as a district and just talk and talk and talk and it reminds me of canon center at byu probably cause the food is the same and I'm living off of apples and wraps. Sunday night was a devotional and Sis davis' uncle works here so he invited us to sit with him on the front row! Special treatment for us :) then we got to go watch a broadcast. They gave us like four options so we went to see "Character of Christ  LIFE CHANGING. Every missionary that writes home says that and now I get it! Seriously family go watch it now it'll blow your mind. Today is pday obvi and we got to go to the temple this morning and it was SUCH a nice break and relief. you're constantly moving and thinking and busy here and it was awesome to just have a few hours to be at peace and think about Christ and the gospel. uhh to answer your questions mom we have three hours of class time learning the language a day and then the rest of it is totally up to us. So its a lot of personal studying/companionship study. Everyone in our district got here and is leaving on the same day. Most of us are going to Piracicaba except for the trio of elders. so yah Sis Davis and iIstarted from the same spot learning the language. Its actually perfect cause she took French and I took Spanish and Portuguese is super similar to both so we can usually figure stuff our between the two of us cause chances are the word in Portuguese relates to one of those two languages. If we don't know we guess. Like say it in Spanish and put and (ao) or some weird accent on the end. Fake it til you make it. How is grandma doing?? Is she feeling better?
Aunt Carol: thank you SO Much for your card it was beautiful and SO SWEET!
Aunt Meri: I see Garrett like five million times a day. We were in the same session at the temple this morning and that was super sweet. He's basically famous in my district. I'm convinced that he never leaves the caf cause every time I go in he is sitting in the exact same spot. But he's so sweet and clears my tray for me after ever meal. So congrats you've trained that boy well! Its hard not to hug him! Oh and on the first day he kept talking to me in Portuguese and I was like uhhhh but now I can actually reply! it'll be fun when we're both back and can talk. Also thanks for your dearelder it meant a lot to me!
EMILY: I LOVE YOU MORE THAN LIFE I AM WRITING YOU A LETER TODAY
Richey fam: I use the journal you gave me every single day. It is so cute and perfect and thank you thank you thank you
Nan: I just love you. Everyone was jealous of my angel Moroni tie bag thing and I was like sorry you don't have a Nan in your life. She's amazing.
Yost family: GOOD LUCK THIS WEEK. I'm going to try to be there when Alli gets here so that I can be the first one to hug her! I love you all. Thank you for everything you have done for me.
Rach: Glad you're not pregnant. keep it up.
Katie: SEND ME THE PICTURE OF YOUR DRESS NOW
Michael: sup goober. I love you. Cheer on BYU for me please
Dadio: I love you! Thanks for the letter that I'm sure got lost in the mail or something cause it hasn't turned up yet.. weird. haha :) I miss you dad!

Well I'm loving it here! I never thought i could LOVE doing something so much that is so hard. But its seriously the greatest here. We had the most inspiring lesson last night. It was all about forgetting yourself and getting to work cause "This Isn't About You" as he said. Also that God has called me specifically to teach one of his beloved children. And THAT'S what my motivation is while I study. That its worth all of the effort and struggling to learn the language so that I'm ready when God puts that one person in my path that he has prepared for ME to teach. ahh gives me goosebumps.

 okay I LOVE YOU ALL. until next week. be safe.

 Love,
 Sister Tantillo