woot woot woot....
and thus week 4 at the CTM passes by...... more and more portuguese every day..... more and more learning how to teach and prepare lessons on a whim.... there's really not that much going on here, kinda borring, we haven't gotten rain in 7 weeks, which is blowing the minds of the Brazilians, but it might rain today finally :D like I said, there's really not that much going on...no more fascinating foods, well, thats a lie...we had fresh pork rinds last night, they're absolutely delicious, but once the north Americans realized what they were, a lot of them had problems eating them, and they resorted to the staple-rice and beans, every meal, rice and beans, rice and beans, rice and beans....you thought you were joking mom when you told me to get used to it...yeah, no.  EVERY MEAL. yay :D oh well, right now in porto alegre it's reaching negatives in celcius which is a huge deal there...people are freaking out and wearing parkas, even here in Sao Paulo, I just chuckle to myself as I walk down the street in slacks and a shortsleeve white shirt.  Last wednesday, I bought a huge can of Dulce do Leite, and last night, I realized that it was empty... >:( I've decided to stop eating sweets after today (except for cookies and milk from Mr. Cheneys) just because my companion and I, along with the entire CTM have been eating buckets and buckets of candy...I mean it's absolutely delicious, but I've never eaten this much sugar in my entire life...even on Halloween, which by the way they don't celebrate here. (I just had a flashback to that camping trip where Koa and I drank a half gallon of syrup out on the lake in Quantico...okay, maybe then did we have as much sugar, but still).  We went to the Sao Paulo temple again today, and the celestial room there is magnificent, just absolutely stunning.  Oh, and I'm playing the violin again this sunday for Mission Conference...sweet XD 
 
então.....
(so...)
 
Elder Kahl, an elder who just left for the field, was chilling in our room one night, just swapping stories and photos, when he started telling us about his ´´amazing 19 year old cousin, aka his best friend´´ and started showing us pictures of her, I jokingly asked if she was writing anybody, and he said no, so today, i´m sending a letter to her.  Well, this should be interesting to say the least...
Oh, and Uncle Ryan, if you get the poster of the bisection of your spleen, please send me a pic, I would love to have that XD
speaking of pictures, that´s one thing that I didn´t bring on my mission that I regret...pictures, so if whoever sends a letter would send a pic too...that would be just AWESOME!!! :D  or.....a sticker, my nametag has no stickers on the back, so yeah, stickers rock too!!! :D  Oh mom, by the way, the micheangelo sculpture picture turned out fantastic, and I absolutely love it!   Oh, so story time...so on Tuesday of last week, I lost my scriptures, I took them with my backpack to dinner, and we have to leave everything outside the cafeteria, but when I came back, my backpack was still there, but my scriptures and scripturecase was gone (Porto Alegre Temple case w/ English Quad and leather Portuguese Tripple)...yeah, so this has happened a couple of times in the last few months apparently...not okay. Well on sunday, a brazilian elder down the hall found them under his bed...i had never been in that room before, so who knows, but I got them back, so everythings fine.  So...by the way, the keyboards are different down here we have letter buttons for Ç ~ ¨ and ´ (forward apostrophie).... that would explain the awkward punctuation some times, sorry...and they don´t have the shift on the left hand, which is super annoying.   Brittany, I sent you a letter with pictures, so hopefully you will get that soon, I sent it last Wednesday
 
V/R
Elder Tyler Eliason
 
P.S. Blake, I absolutely love your letters, they always make me smile ^^D
P.S.S. Send letters to all of your missionaries, they make their life so much cheer-filled

My dear homies....
 
Nothing has changed, the CTM is exactly like it was last week.
 
end of email\
 
elder eliason



Just kidding

so.....week 3
 
the portuguese is coming along really well, we have no idea what the natives say, but we can ususally convey whatever kind of message we want, whether or not it was said propperly is an entirely different matter alltogether...  so letters!!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!! they literally make my week, and I reread them over and over again, they're awesome.  First shoutout is to my little brother BLAKE :D you are the best! your winkie faces and what not are possibly heartwrentching and you ask very silly questions, like if I've been tracting yet, i'm on week 3 pall, of the CTM, we don't go tracting here, we sit in a classroom for 4-5 hours at a time, multiple times a day learning portuguese and teaching techniques.  Next goes to my girls who wrote me this week: Renee Dionne, Chloe Anderson, and Haley Walker! you gals are so awesome, my roommates all want to see pictures of all yall, but that's not happening....now Haley, a card that size only requires 1 stamp, not 4 XD although I do appreciate the enthusiasm for ensuring that it gets to me :D, SO......... this is directed to CHLOE Anderson, you my dear friend, have caused quite a stir here at the CTM with the drawing of "our wedding cake" and the little figurienes of "us and the temple" ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?   um, I mean I know we're friends and all, but three weeks into the mission and I've already been proposed to?????? hmmmmm..... well, it was well countered, my companion pulled out the article about "locking your heart" right after I opened your letter, so we were able to focus and teach our investigator ten minutes later... XP  that was by far the most interesting part of the week.  on a different note, I haven't seen any jumping spiders in a week, so that's really good :D  I can't remember if I told y'all this, but we were sitting in class, and one jumped from the wall onto my face, and without hesitating, my companion decked me trying to kill it.... yeah, that was fun.  there's not really that much going on here....I bought a new tie, it's neon pink paisley, but I only paid 6 Reals for it (~3 dollars).  It's awesome and all the other Elders try and trade me for it. Legal..... (that's portuguese for cool, but it's pronounced leg-all).  Everybody here is sick, there's a really nasty upper sinus infection going around, and yes, I've caught it too, nobody's sleeping and everybody's dying from their noses being rubbed raw.  The CTM is fun, but I can tell it's going to be one of those ETTE type deals.  Oh, one of the elders who arrived last wednesday is the grandson of Elder Oaks...yeah, he has an INFINITE amount of personal family stories to share when teaching investigators, it's hillarious. Oh, by the way, go online to LDS.org and watch the President Monson 85th birthday celebration, it's pretty amazing, especially the Le Miserables piece, it literally brought tears to the eyes of everybody who was watching it (we got special permission from salt lake to watch it for our devotional), it was, in an understatement, phenomenal. Speaking of phenomenal music, there was a group of elders who did an accapella piece of "If I die before I wake..." which was really really cool...my roommates participated, along with the Schmutz brothers and Adam Thiriot, it was rocking.  Anyways, everybody take care, think before doing something stupid, and have fun! 
 
Elder Eliason
 
P.S.  Letters are the highlight of the week, please write!!!!! I mean, unless you've served a mission before, you have no idea how much they mean :D  (oh, and my companion recieves 3 letters a week from the same girl, it's hillarious because they're exactly the same; he made a jest before he left that only 1/3 of letters arrive here (they all get here fine...) so she sends 3 coppies! Lol, please don't do that)
 
~T

LDS Temple in Campinas, Brazil

Bom Noite!!!!!!!

Hey everybody....

One of my roommates, Elder Schenewark dated Sarah Ayer (my cousin)!!!! How awesome is that, he's awesome! This week has been absolutely incredible, last Wednesday, we went to the Sao Paulo temple, which the majority of it is underground actually, and there's only one floor above ground. It's about the same size as the Raleigh North Carolina temple, but it's just as magnificent as any other temple. This morning we drove 2 hours to get to the Campinas temple because the Sao Paulo temple was closed for cleaning. Holy smokes! it resembles the Washington DC temple by way of you drive down the highway, and all of a sudden, it's the only thing you see, it's amazing, out in the middle of nowhere and on a huge hill surrounded by nothing but palm trees, and yes, McCaws? It's so awesome, we did an endowment session, but all of the sisters left last week from the CTM, so the entire session was only Elders, and since there were only a couple of veil workers, it took a LONG time to get to the Celestial room. it's fine though! the people here are magnificent! I absolutely love them. the Brazilians here at the CTM are the most outrageously hillarious and sincere people I've ever met in my life. Next week I'll send photos via snail mail of my roommates and the brazillians :D There's an elder that lives 2 rooms down from me, elder Tiexiera (brazilian) and he got dear john-d two days ago, he literally threw a party that evening, he's been on his mission for 2 weeks XD So letters get here pretty fast from the US, they took 4 days to get to the CTM from the post stamped date...but apparently it takes a while to get mail to the US, especially by standard brazilian mail (the first letter was from pouch, a fast US way). So on monday, they had a very native brazilian lunch of nothing but beans and rice (pretty typical) but what made it interesting, was that the beans had basically an entire pig in it... I pulled out a very large bone (cheek bone maybe?) and an eyeball, yeah, I ate the eyeball just for kicks, and the eyelid was still attatched, that part wasn't to bad actually... um, we eat so many banananananananananananas here I LOVE IT! my companion ate 8 bananas on sunday, it's kind of insane. to answer your question mom, no we do not get unlimited captain crunch every morning like those kids in the provo MTC.... we'll get cold cereal once a week (usually tuesday mornings) but it's until the milk runs out (we only use milk for cereal, and we only use boxed milk) just different, until the cereal runs out, when that happens, it's back to grilled cheese and porridge every morning :D I love porridge by the way, it's delicious, i know, that sounds really silly, but I do, especially if you cut a couple of bananas into it. also, they have this drink, it's awesome--it's actually the official soda of brazil! Guardarna???? I have no idea how to spell it. but it's delicious. Uh, so we taught our investigator, Alexandre last night (we teach him every evening in portuguese) and it was the first time that we actually were able to not concentrate on speaking the language so much that we could feel the spirit! it was amazing, usually our lessons with him run ten minutes at the most, but last night we talked to him about the atonement and the importance of repentance in our lives. we talked for half an hour! that's such a huge stepping stone for us, and since elder White and I have only been here for 2 weeks, and since he is a man of very few words, I got to practice a ton. I absolutely love it! Portuguese is actually more similar to French and Italian than it is to spanish by the way... just FYI, it is extremely difficult for people who speak only portuguese to learn spanish just because it is a much more pheonetic and harsh language. Oh, I also ran into an elder here, I don't remember who exactly, but he said he was from Twin Falls Idaho, and so I asked him kind of jokingly if he knew Mikyla Arrington, and aparently she was the last date that he went on before his mission...small world! Oh, so I get to play the violin this sunday with the choral.... yeah, they told me that since i played for so long that I can pick it up again if i just prayed and practiced a little....and once again, i am going to be performing, but this time in front of the entire CTM. it's coming along, but I wish i had more time to practice, we literally have no time in the day to do anything like that. Letters and practicing and all other sorts of fun stuff are available in the very few and far inbetween minutes where we get lessons done early or whatever. But you know me, I absolutely love the nonstop pace of life!

yours truly,

Elder Tyler Eliason

(also, please don't put me down as Irmao eliason...that means brother eliason ;D )

Tyler's First Week

Dear friends, family, and all others who wish to inquire about my lifes tales......

Today marks the first week of my being here in the Brazilian MTC in Saó Paulo, aka the CTM.  Last Tuesday/Wednesday I flew here from Dulles, but my flight got delayed due to mechanical failure of the plane...as soon as they got that resolved, a thunderstorm rolled in and so we sat on the runway for another two hours until we got clearence to fly... needless to say, I missed my flight to Saó Paulo from Dallas, so they rerouted me through Rio, for an aditional 3 hours of flight time.  That was fine, but when I got to Rio, as soon as I stepped off of the plane, they I heard my name being called over the speaker system along with a long slur of very angry portugues, none of which I recognized...  once I got through customs, I headed over to the baggage claim, because in Brazil, in order to make a connecting flight, you have to re-check your baggage >:/ my baggage never showed, and I had missed my flight.  I knew no portuguese besides ´how much is your fee´ so I was stranded in Rio, with no baggage, and no ticket to Saó Paulo.  I found the help counter, and eventually found 3 workers there who spoke a grand total of 5 or 6 words of english each... by pointing at signs and using random spanish phrases I recall from freshman and sophomore year of high school, I was somehow able to tell them what was wrong, and that I need to go to Saó Paulo.  Well, they didn´t quite get the picture because they tried to get me to pay 1.600 R$...or something along those lines... and then somehow, a man who spoke perfect english came out of a back room, asked if my name was Tyler Eliason.  I said yes...and he told me that my bags were taken care of and that my ticket numer is...... whatever he said, the lady just plugged it into the computer and printed me a brand new boarding pass and told me to have a nice day.  I have no idea who he was, where he came from, and how he knew that I was stranded, but it happened, and I flew to Saó Paulo with no furthere incidences.  I soon got to Saó Paulo, but of course the flight that I came on wasn`t the one my bags flew in on, and so I spent the next 2 hours speaking 3 or 4 word phrases to the baggage people describing my bags, and once again.  A random guy, working in the America Airlines counter, walked up to me and just handed me my bags.  How that happened I have no ideas.  The Lord works in mysterious ways my friends, He does. 

So Brazil! oh what a place!!!! the food here is AMAZING!!! we eat rice and beans at every meal, but its so delicious I don`t think that I could ever eat enough of it.  today, being our first P-day, we were allowed to wander around the city and try different things... one of our teachers, Irmão Costa, came along, and took us to his favorite restaruant ever.  It was a Brazilian BBQ, kind of like Tucanos, except it was really run down, and it was dirt cheap! so good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It smokes the living tar out of Tucanos.  Every meal, we drink fresh squeezed juice, and it`s amazing!  We eat so much meat and fruit, it´s unreal,  I have fallen in love with Guava fruit! It´s a relative of the tomato, but it´s sweet, and so rediculously juicy!  I´ll eat probably 8-10 quarters of guava every meal!  we also have the most amazing pinneaple here, it is white, but so much more sweet and just all around juicy and crisp than those of the United States.

My first companion is Elder White.  He is from Smithfield, Utah, and has a love for basketball and golf.  He has been working out with us and absolutely loves the people and the language too!  We have fun, but he is very serious when it comes the gospel, and that is an amazing attribute.  We have been here a week, but we speak better Portuguese now, than I spoke Spanish at the end of my third year in high school. I amazed by the spirit here, and am constantly immersed in the language and the love of the people.  Portuguese is such a beautiful language, it is actually closer to Italian than it is Spanish, but I love it none the less :D  Mr. Cheney´s cookie shop/letter service is like the Dear Elder service of Provo, but they deliver mail way faster than post mail, so that´s always an option.  Send letters, they´re always loved, by everybody!

Only the Best,
Elder Eliason

P.S.To my BYU friends:  Elder Ty Higley, and the Schmutz twins are here, along with Elder Chase Bailey and Elder Adam Theriot.  We see each other every day and have a ton of fun!

Facebook post from Brittany:
So, Tyler is gone. What a great childhood we've had; 18 years together! Who will eat the stalk of the broccoli, and give me the top? Who will eat all the frosting and girl scout cookies in the house? Who can i pretend that we have country accents with? Anyways, have fun is Brazil, do the Lord's work, and teach lots of people with love!