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