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 )