Ebbert, Lawson

This week, I ate a double dogged brazlian hot dog, and it was pretty much the best experience of my life. For those unaware, the brazilian hot dog (or at least the one I had) has mashed potatoes, lettuce, the dogs, and a packet of mayo, ketchup, and mustard slathered on. Of course, for two dogs, I had to use twice as much of every other ingredient. I'm pretty sure that meal catalysed a reaction in my body which created a new kind of neurochemical. Anyways, I also accidentally started a mosh pit at the Missionary Training Center. And by mosh pit, I mean tie trading frenzy. I had heard about trading ties but I went out into the halls with a bunch of ties and went around saying "trocar" (portuguese for to trade) and literally the entire hall flooded out and was stuffed with people negotiating tie trades in english, spanish, and portuguese. It was epic. I know everybody was looking forward to my spiritual thought/pop culture conection this week but I honestly don't really...

MTC is so weird. I should say CTM because that's what its actually called. But it's like insanely difficult and super edifying at the same time. And by difficult I mean exhausting. I'm so tired. But I love working! I feel like I have some good spiritual thoughts to share sometimes but a solid 80% of them are about the Cradle series. I can't talk about Cradle all the time for the sake of all those poor souls out there who haven't read it so I'll try to generalize it.  Basically, God does not choose "strong" or "great" men and women to become strong and great. The parallel to Cradle here is that, early on, a character with a critical deficiency is chosen by a Divine being to advance beyond his weakness; in fact, it is the desire to overcome his flaws which drives this character to be greater than he was. It's the exact same way with us: God chose Joseph Smith, an insignificant farmboy, to become one of the greatest Prophets of any dispensat...

I have a class in like 10 minutes so its definitely not P-day. P-day was the same day I traveled for 24 hours which I think is a little bit of a scam. But Its tudo bem to send my weekly email today anyways so we're chilling. The only thing that flies faster than my fingers typing this email is time! I'm having the time of my life. I assume that I will run out of energy at some point but for now I'm just so voracious for learning and feeling the spirit. I'm like the Wei Shei Lindon of learning portuguese, and Eithan speaks to me in a still small voice. For those of you who havent read Cradle by Will Wight, you should, and I apologize because that sentence probably didnt make any sense. Ok I have class now with Gandolfe Cinzenta so bom dia to you all and I AM HAVING SO MUCH FUN ITS AWESOME YOU GUYS Deus é bom, Elder Ebbert

Olá Amigos! Elder Ebbert here reporting in after 2 weeks of home MTC. I will not miss zoom. I'm still having a blast though. I'm now done with home training though and on Monday I'll be flying out to Brazil for real. I'll be traveling by myself most of the way and I won't have a phone but I'm sure it will be all right. I ate a ton of feijoada this week. I also ate like two whole batches of pão de queijo. Brazilian food is so tasty. Honestly, not a lot to report this week cuz I'm still just doing classes, learning Portuguese, and watching The Chosen. The Chosen is an amazing show by the way- such a powerful depiction of Christ and his Apostles. I think that's all for this week! God is good, Elder Ebbert P.S. the Subject is in reference to the truly epic conclusion of a Risk Legacy campaign 7 years in the making that we just finished tonight. Long live Imperial Balkania! 1. guys 2. brigadeiro 3. megafresca 4. tamsty 5. WorldofEmporerLawson 6. feijoada 7. y...

Olá amigos! This is Elder Ebbert here, reporting after my first week of MTC. It's going amazing! I felt a huge difference even as soon as I was set apart and I couldn't be more thrilled to be a full time disciple. Feels nice that I get to delete all my apps too, highly recommend getting rid of everything on your phone. Or not. I'm not your mom. My district is muito muito bem. I love these Elders and Sisters and I love learning portuguese with them. As stated in the subject line the gift of tongues is crazy because even though sometimes me and my companions feel like we don't know any portuguese we know a crazy amount already and some Elders who were at the MTC in person interrupted our class and they spoke crazy good portuguese but they've only been there like 3-5 weeks! Super excited for my teachers to keep teaching us slang words so I can coé all meu manos. I don't really know what else to talk about because really I've just been doing zoom classes which a...