Monday, January 9, 2017

Portuguese Improving?!?

Olá Meus Amigos! Tudo Bem?
 
On Sunday last week, President Tavares announced that the schedule for missionaries was going to change. We usually have an hour of personal study, an hour of companionship study, an hour of language study and because I am new we had an hour of training too. With this new schedule we only get 30 minutes for each companion study, language study and training. This is aimed to get us out on the street for a longer amount of time. With the old schedule, we also planned for the next day the night beforehand. Now we plan the morning of. With the new schedule, we are out on the street early and talking to people basically all day.
Since my companion is one of the Zone Leaders, we have to go on splits with the District Leaders once a transfer. We had to do two splits this week so we started calling our apartment "Hotel Odivelas". I learn a lot going on splits with other missionaries because everyone has a different style of doing things. You get to see what others do well and try to apply it into your own style. The bad part about having a Zone Leader as a companion is that he has to go to meetings a lot. This week he had a meeting so Î had to go on splits with Elder Harker who arrived here the same day I did. We have only been in Portugal for five weeks so it was pretty scary but after a little bit it was really fun. We got to see how much we have improved in our Portuguese.
 
This week I am starting to see that my Portuguese is improving. I can understand what people are saying pretty well, but I still have problems. Like yesterday a man was walking towards me and I asked if we could talk for a minute.  He said something that sounded like sure. So then I asked him what his name was. He said "Porgan". I thought,  Porgan that's a pretty weird name, but I was like eh whatever it's Portugal everybody has weird names. So then I said "Porgan have you talked to the missionaries before". He proceeded to look at me as though I had tried to explain string theory completely in all it's complexity in those 7 words. After 5 very awkward seconds the realization finally made it to his face and he waved me off like most the other people we try to talk to. That was pretty normal so I continued walking when I realized a couple steps into the road that Elder Thompson was not walking next to me.  I turned around and say that he was laughing his head off. When I asked why he was laughing he explained "The guy asked Porque, he didn't say his name was Porgan". So yeah, I guess I don't understand people that well.
 
Elder Fogg

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