Conference Weekend

Hello family

Hey my loving family! What a crazy week it has been. Lots of good stuff happened. First Tuesday devotional was amazing! But I am having the hardest time remembering who it was! lol A week is like a year in here. But I do know he was of the Seventy, so that's cool. He gave such good advice to everyone. He was so funny and so spiritually uplifting. The talks that are given here are one of the biggest things that help me keep going. It always seems like whenever I am really down we have a great speaker that totally changes my attitude and helps me realize why I am here and what I need to be doing. The MTC has once again played some crazy mind tricks on me. lol Once again the whole time thing in here is all messed up. Second I have totally forgotten things I thought I could never forget like what the heck my cell phone looks like! lol I was just sitting there and I saw one of the teachers using his and I remembered Hey! I used to have one of those things! I then tried to remember what the thing looked like and no luck. lol I just laughed at myself. The longer I am in here the more and more the real world is unreal and fades out of my head. When I got set apart to be an Elder I was literally set apart from the world. They really stress that here. That we are no longer part of the world and our setting apart is to be taken literally.
The most exciting news of the week was Wednesday!! The travel office called me down to fill out my Online Visa Stuff!!! So that's awesome because now I could get my Visa at any time! But the bad news is it could still be awhile. One kid here filled his online stuff out and two hours later her had his Visa! Crazy! But some people have filled their stuff out and they have been waiting a couple months still. So I am hoping I will get my Visa very soon so I can head to Brazil ASAP!!! So that's the really good news of the week so I will let you know if I hear anything about anything this week.
The Language is coming along good. Tuesday was a horrible day for Portuguese and I was so frustrated because I couldn't say anything in my lessons or even talking to people! Lets just say it was a long, long day for me. And that next day our district was planning on having a day where we only speak Portuguese... I was not very excited lol So that night I had a very long conversation with the Lord begging for help with the language. I haven't really prayed that hard for something. So after the prayer I tried to change my attitude and be happy and went to bed. The happiness shortly left when my alarm then went off at 6:30! lol I hate that time!! It feels like I get absolutely no sleep. But I get up and go to the shower which always cheers me right up! lol So after I got all clean The time came that we all had to speak nothing but Portuguese I tried to start the day with a good attitude towards it because I knew if I didn't, it would be bad. So needless to say the Portuguese was great! I remembered almost everything and I really did good with the language! I was so excited and the more I spoke that more I wanted to speak to people in Portuguese! It ended up being a great day because we had lessons and I did pretty well in them and I was able to talk to everyone in Portuguese! I was so excited and knew that God had truly heard my prayer and helped me greatly. I have been so humbled by this whole experience of learning a new language it really has helped me gain a better relationship with my father in heaven. He has helped me so much more than I could ever think and more than I could ever repay. This helps me a lot when I feel like being lazy or get distracted. I remember all that he has done for me and I really have no good reason to be lazy so I kick myself back into gear.
I am very thankful for everything I learned before this. I am so thankful for you mom and dad who have shown me how to work hard and never give up. That is one of the greatest blessings you have given me. I thank you so much for dong that. And for never giving up on me when I did want to give up. Thank you for this great blessing mom and dad it has really changed my life and will continue to make me the missionary I need to be as I work hard and put myself in the Lords hands. Thanks for the great examples you have been to me and making me realize the importance of hard work. I love you!!
General Conference was awesome!! and such a nice break from the everyday routine. It was the first time I have actually watched all the sessions of conference. It was a very good experience though and I will forever try and watch every session of it from now on. All the talks where so good! I have a ton of notes to go over now lol But all the talks helped me in some form, which was really cool. I had a lot of questions going in because our teacher said to write questions down that you want to have answered during conference and low and behold, all my questions got answered. Pretty cool I thought. It really helped me realize that all the words and speakers of conference are inspired. I loved hearing from the prophet it was really amazing how he can speak. It really touched me; everything he said. And he is a very funny guy haha I loved his stories. During Priesthood session Jeffrey R. Holland spoke. I'm sure dad saw it but wow! that man blows my mind. He speaks with such strength and power of the Holy Ghost. It reminded me of when he spoke here my first week. It was amazing it was like his talk at Priesthood but directly to missionaries and he really got passionate haha he speaks with amazing power. I love him!
After Conference was all over we had a Sunday Fireside. Not really looking forward to sitting in the same chairs for two more hours haha I was kinda reluctant to go. And to tell the truth Conference really made me think of home a lot and eating all the food and watching with family. I was pretty home sick during the whole thing which wasn't good but my spirits where getting lifted by the spirit of the talks. I was missing home and seeing and being with everyone. So another meeting didn't sound very good to me. Then just like I said earlier, whenever I was down we always have a great talk. Then bam! Chad Lewis was our speaker!! And Holy Cow he did amazing!! my second favorite talk since being here, he snuck right in behind Jeffrey R. Holland. haha he did so good. He is a great motivational speaker and was really able to connect to me personally. He spoke of his mission and how it has blessed him and his family and how his mission opened so many doors for him in life. It was crazy and I wish you could have all been here to hear it!! He gave me so many good ideas and thoughts and inspiration and now I cant wait even more to get out into the field and teach. He is pretty much living the perfect dream life but he was so humble and thankful for everything he has. Its crazy the things he has gotten to do and be apart of. But once again he was so humble and a great guy. After the talk I was filled once again with the fire to do missionary work like never before and I cant wait to get into the field and fall in love with all the people I come into contact with. I really cant wait to meet the people of brazil!
A little fun story of the week was after the Saturday morning conference session Elder Rawlings and I went on a Temple walk ( which are like the best things ever in the MTC!!!!) lol But we where just walking and we started talking to this family who was visiting from California. It was so great to talk to "real people" as we call them here in the MTC. So anyone not in the MTC is a "real person" and we don't get to see them a lot so being able to actually talk to "real people" was a dream come true! I only talked for like 5 minutes and I felt a love for all of them! It was really cool! They where so cool and had really cool accents! It was great we found out one of them had gotten baptized three weeks earlier which was cool. Then the parents said they had gotten baptized 30 years ago because of two missionaries like us. He shared how thankful he was for what we where doing and the time we are putting forth to serve a mission. I felt the Spirit so strongly as he thanked us for being who we were. It was such a cool experience and I will never forget. This experience made me want even more to get into the field and bring this truth that we have to people. Well that's my story for the week its pretty cool.
Our last roommates moved out so Elder Rawlings and I were alone for a couple of nights and we were very excited to get knew Elders so we could raise them! lol Wednesday passed and no new Elders. We were very sad about this. Then on Friday two Elders moved in to our room and we were very excited till we found out they had already been here for two weeks! We then got very sad about not getting to raise new Elders. But some good news is they might be moving out this week so we could get real new Elders. So that's what I am hoping for!!! Oh and they are gong to Tahiti. All I want is some real new Elders this week lol Or my Visa would be nice!!
That's about it for this week it was a good one with some homesickness but everything is great and I am doing great. The Language is coming good, that makes me happy. And I am even learning some Japanese lol the room right next to us are going to Japan so we talk to them a lot lol. And oh some sister missionaries contacted us and they said they would be speaking Italian so I was like oh great more languages I don't understand lol then they started speaking and for some strange reason I knew what they were saying and could understand them! My companion then made fun of me for being able to understand more Italian than Portuguese because the two are very similar. I haven't seen Sister Novakovich at all but the sisters in my district said they say her so I will keep looking, it would be really cool to meet her so hopefully soon.
Thanks for all of your letters love and support I love you all!!! have a great week family!!!

Love Elder Novakovich