Week 1 Email from Braden! 8-9-2011

hello everyone!
well it has been one hole week here at the MTC!!!!!!!!!! it has been absolutely amazing! the spirit here is so strong! i have 2 companions, Elder Ogasawara and Elder Cox. Elder Cox's real companion never showed up for some reason and we don't know why... but that is ok cause we are having a great time here! so wed when we got here we we had an orientation and all the beginning Missionary stuff. it was very cool how everyone says WELCOME ELDER to the people with the dork dots! hehe! it was fun! thursday morning we were told we would have to teach a lesson on friday in all portuguese!! so our 3rd day here we had to teach! our lesson was very sktchy and i understood slim to none of what our "investigator" was saying. but it was a good experience, it was neat to see where i could be in not too long of a time! it was so cool! we also taught again on sat, our lesson went better that day, but we were doing something wrong cause our investigator was falling asleep during our lesson! hehe! but i think i spoke better that day. sunday was AMAZING! here in the MTC you don't really have a choice but to fast cause they don't serve breakfast and lunch. but there are vending machines so i guess there still is a choice, anyway! we had sacrament meeting at 8 and it was so much fun singing hymes in portuguese! everyone bore their testimony in portuguese too! it was pretty cool! even though i didn't understand too much i still got the gist of most of the testimonies! and guess what! i was even crazy enough to get up and bear mine! talk about scary! if any of you are afraid of bearing your testimony, try doing it in a language you have been learning for 3 days! hehe! but it went well and everyone said i had a good accent! no word on the visa yet, but i don't think i will until it get here, oh well. but my district is awesome, there are 11 of us and everyone has a very strong testimony for being here! sunday nite we also had a fireside where Elder Bateman came and spoke to us! it was amazing! the spirit here is so amazing! it is hard to believethat you can continue to feel the spirit stronger each day when the day before was already so strong! i love it here! this is truely a calling from God! it gets a little overwhelming at times but i know it will start to get easier as we go, or maybe not.. but either way, everything will work out if i work hard! thank you for all the prayers! i love you all! don't forget to write!
Elder Knudson!