Monday, October 6, 2014

After 14 Months of Waiting . . . I made it to Brazil!

Dear Family!!! 

Thank heavens for english! I´m grateful that we all know english and that we can communicate. Sorry I didn´t write last week. I didn´t get a p-day. I left for Campinas on Tuesday and the p-days here are on Monday.

One of the best things that happened in the past two weeks is that I got to go to the temple since being in the Provo MTC. Man, that brought so much peace and comfort. We went to the Sao Paulo temple. (This is when I was still in the MTC). We got to watch the session in English. After not being able to go to the temple for about a year, it was so nice! I can´t even begin to describe how nice that was for me!! 

The people in Brazil are much different from the people in TN. They are much, much more open! On the very first day that I got here, we went street contacting and we were told to invite people to be baptized. So, on my very first day out in the field in Brazil, I committed a lady with a small daughter to be baptized. Yeah, super legit!! 

This past week we saw another miracle. We were out trying to contact a person, and she wasn´t home, so we decided to go down the street and see who was home. From that, we found this family. Marina and Mauro with 3 daughters (all grown, only the daughter Rafeala lives at home). We were able to teach them the Restoration this week. It was my first time teaching the REstoration in Portuguese in the field!! Man, it was so great. I got to share the first vision, and the spirit was so strong. My Portuguese wasn´t perfect, but I´m pretty sure that I made sense. This is the first family that I have gotten to teach on my mission and I am super excited about them!! 

We have two other investigators with a baptismal date right now. Silvia and Ivan. Silvia is going to be baptized on the 12th of October and Ivan on the 19th of October. I don´t really know a whole lot about them now, but I am learning and things are good!! 

Language. Oh boy is it difficult sometimes. My companion is extremely patient with me thank heavens!!! This past week she was saying something, I didn´t catch all of it, but from what I understood, she said "Eu preciso colocar torta em tambem".... which, from what I know, means "I need to put the pie in as well." I couldn´t figure out for the life of me what she was talking about! We got a good laugh out of that though.... I have a lot of those moments, but each day things get better. For me it is simple, when I feel the spirit, I can understand what people are saying for the most part. When I don´t, things are a lot more difficult. I find though that the Lord has blessed me SO MUCH for doing my language study in TN. As of right now, I think I can understand about 65-70% of what people say...needless to say, miracles exist on the earth today!!! 

Also, we walk a ton!! Thank goodness for bandaids. I have a few blisters on my heels, but those should go away this next week I am hoping!! 

My companion is Sister Mitchell from Maryland. She´s super nice and patient!!! Thank heavens for that! I really like being companions with her. Turns out that we were in the MTC at the same time in Provo. I´ll be out in the mission longer than her though since I will most likely be extending for another month. We´ll see what happens though! 

Brazil does have some weird things that I am not quite used to. 

Well, I love you all tons!!! 

I have some píctures to send home, so I´ll do that now! 

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