I'm Going to BRAZIL!!!

"Ola familia! Como vai? Eu vou bem..."

Dallin thoroughly enjoyed the "top secret fireside" and got to hear a great talk from Elder Oaks. All counted there were 8 Apostles present for the fireside and Dallin loved the experience. He also got to meet his new mission presidents, the Cordons. Dallin described the experience as being "super good" with more details in a letter he sent home to the parents.

On Tuesday the 2 missionaries who got their visas were dropped off to fly to Brazil and when Dallin's district got back to the MTC he heard his name being paged over the intercom and was told to report to the travel office. Once there they told him that his visa was in and he was going to BRAZIL! He leaves tomorrow, July 6th and will fly to Atlanta and then on to Brazil. It will actually be the morning when Dallin lands in Brazil so he will be one tired boy.

"I am really super incredibly uber mega psycho stoked, to understate it."

Dallin says this past week has been a bit harder than usual as they have been trying to speak Portuguese constantly.

"We have trying to speak as much portuguese as possible and now I understand what dad means when he says "Helen Keller Days". We asked on of the teachers how we could best prepare for our lesson in Portuguese and he challenged us to a 72 hour fast from english. This was on wednesday @ 11. I'm in the middle of it still. Not. Very. Fun. Especially when everyone around me is speaking english. Oh well. However, we had a lesson with one of our progressing investigators a half hour into our English fast and so we had to give a lesson we hadn't prepared for in portuguese with a half hour prep time. Needless to say, we ferventely and desperately prayed as hard as we could and we were amazed that our lesson was a huge success. However, this really gave us a lot of confidence for our two 1st lessons in portu that we had prepared for the next day so we went in over confident and totally fell flat on our faces. Lesson: rely on the spirit and not on ourselves and we can succeed. Cursed is he that putteth his trust in the arm of flesh."

One of Dallin's friends is heading into the MTC soon and he listed 3 things as good advice for him. Here they are:

1) don't trust the chicken (apparently Dallin doesn't like the chicken at the MTC)

2) pray hard, pray often

3) don't be afraid to ask lots of questions

"Well, this will be my last email from the Provo MTC. Thanks for all the dearlders and packages and everything else. I guess my flow of mail will start to slow, but that means I expect larger and longer letters. (Just kidding... well, kind of...) Thanks for everything. Love you guys."