and to all a grand day, and night, or whenever you're reading this....

well, it's the last week here in the CTM, which means please do not send me any letters to this address, the new and hopefully constant address of the mission home where you can send my letters is as follows...:

(Mom, please verify this address, because I wrote it down, and I can't tell if the first number of the zip code is a seven or a nine...thanks!)

Elder Tyler Eliason

Brazil Porto Alegre North Mission

Av. Visconde de. Macaé, 245 Cristo Redentor

71350-290 Porto Alegre - RS

Brazil

Alright, so for the happenings of this week.....

First, the piano fiasco...

So I was to accompany the CTM Choral (choir) with my violin skills again this Sunday with a nice rendition of Called to Serve (an arrangement I've never heard before, but when practicing sounded really nice). I had the piece down pat; it was difficult, but doable. Well, we get to the Choral practice, and the pianist plays with the starting soloist, I'm supposed to be playing also, but after the first two notes, I realize that we were playing different pieces of music. I look at the piece that I think she is playing off of (there's five sheets of music on the piano board) and it's the same arrangement, so I continue to try and come in and play...no luck. Confused out of my mind...I try and find a spot to come in on...I eventually figure out where they are...about the third verse, and bam, I play my notes, and it sounds atrocious....actually, it was exactly the right notes, but the music writen for my part was an entire whole step below the acompanying harmony being played on the piano, so as I try and figure out what to do, the song ends, and the director, Sister Steadman dismisses everyone. I'm sitting in my chair, considering what to do, so I go up and talk to her three minutes before the song is supposed to start, and she looks at me, gets huge eyes, and starts appologizing profusely, she had changed the key signature to a more compfortable range for the soloist without telling me. She had also changed the first half of the song to a different arrangement- she then tells me that I can come in after the third verse and it'll be fine...I get up and play with the Choral, and as we get to the third verse, I realize that it is still one whole step off, and sounds terrible, so I stop for 2 measures, readjust my fingers, and transpose the entire harmony part on a whim into the new key signature and everything (difficult on the violin because of the muscle memory for where all the notes are is up to distance between the fingers, changing it is rediculously difficult)....all in all, I played about 30 measures wonderfully out of a 200 measure harmony part, but hey I did it! (we later found out that somebody had tampered with piano, as it was electric, and had actually pressed the transpose button on the piano, so it was the pianos falt, not mine or the music for sounding bad...)

also, that morning I had played a rendition of A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief for sacrament meeting, the first verse normally as written, the second verse in a minor key (1/2 step lower w/ 2 flats I think?) the final verse in 2 sharps, all by ear...it was awesome!

Second story...Proselyting (I have no idea how to spell it...I know how in Portuguese though!)

Monday we went proselyting for the first time! amazing! we just went out and did street contacting, talking to everybody we could find, passing out copies of the Book of Mormon with the phone number for the local missionaries...I also wrote my testimony on the inside cover (in portuguese of course) and highlighted and tabbed Moroni 10:3-5 The first couple of guys we talked to seemed somewhat interested, but just curious about the book...the second to last one spoke so ridiculously fast that neither I nor my companion could understand a single word he was saying...but he accepted the book of mormon and asked where the church building was...we pointed him in the right direction and went on our merry little way... the last guy we talked to was way out in the Ghettos of São Paulo...we stopped him on the street and introduced ourselves, told him that we were representatives of Jesus Christ and his Church, and asked if he believed in Jesus...he did, but then he stopped and thought for a minute and then told us that he didn't belong to any church because none of the churches had prophets. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I could have sworn I heard trumpets blowing and angels singing....we told him about president Thomas S. Monson, and about Joseph Smith, and then read him the promise from the ancient Prophet Moroni...he was super excited and wanted to know so much more, we were only 2 blocks from the local chapel, so we told him where the building was, and showed him the number to call, he said that he would as soon as he got home. he thanked us and left...as we were walking I turned around and looked at him, and he had stopped in the middle of the street (it wasn't busy at all thank heavens) and was reading out of it. :D :D :D I had also written my testimony in there beforehand about Joseph Smith and President Monson, so hopefully something will come out of it. He was an awesome guy, real humble and down to earth, so I really hope he finds what he was looking for.

anyways, much love always...

Elder Tyler J. Eliason

P.s. I just got your letter Nicole...congrats, it brought tears to my eyes :)