28 March 2016

Oi family! I will start by answering some questions from last time. Dad: I had 2 flights to get here, first to Porto Alegre which was 2 hours and then about an hour and a half to santa maria which is a tiny one room airport with no security and a little empty parking lot right outside it was kind of funny. Amy: unfortuintely I will not be able to go to the temple during my mission. Kate: I am making LOTS of great friends inlcuding my awesome companion! I have the best, sweetest, funniest companion. She is from a cool city in the Amazons called Manaus which is surrounded by the Amazon river. I am trying to teach her some enlish and she wants to open a brasilian restaurant in the US one day. By the way the food here is so good and I eat so much of it, you might not recognize me when i come home. Portuguese is fine, but I don´t undertstand it and speak it well enought to participate in a lot of conversations with memebers and investigators, so it is a little frustrating, but its to be expected. I had no idea it was already easter time untill Mom´s email last week. I guess I just kind of expected time to freeze in February while I am here but I can´t believe it is already spring there. But happy Easter everyone! I watched the church´s new easter video in portuiguese yesterday which was good so I imagine it is pretty good in english but I liked how it said we can find a new life through the atonement. Not only will we be resurrected and live again after this life but we can find a  new life heare and now and start fresh every single day by letting Chrst take our burdens away from us and just trying to be better. It was really hot and sunny my first week and then it went straight to cold and rainy this week. We have a few porgressing investigators which is good, 2 of which are these adorable 11 year old kids that are really awesome and funny and their mom and grandma are somewhat interested too. Daniel: congrats on the internship! Wow! Idaho! You will have to tell me all about that. Mom and Grandma I hope you had fun in Illinois! I miss and love you all! :)

22 March 2016

Hi everyone! first i need to apologize that i might not respond to your individual emails and questions until next week because the internet was not working and i don´t have very much time. But i took pictures of all of them to read this afternoon. I will try to attach some photos but i might not have time for that either. my first area is santa rosa and it is so awesome! it is a cute little city with a lot of people with german ancestry and the people are all really nice. apparently in this area everyone is really nice but not very receptive or motivated to change. Rio grande do sul is like the texas of brazil and there are tons of gauchos and the accent is really hard to understand. Sometimes i can speak and they understand me but sometimes not... one time a kid thought i was speaking german so that was fun. I love my companion sister moraes. she is a really hard worker and great example. she knows no english but we understand each other pretty well so i am thankful for that. and she is just really cute and fun. yesterday i had chorrasco (brazilian barbeque) for the first time and it was SO. GOOD. But it was also probably the hardest week of my life. People weren´t joking when they said missions are hard, but it is also the best. Whenever we had a good lesson or contact i was too happy to think about all the hard things. Anyay you all should read mosiah 24:15 it shows me how God doesn´t take away our burdens but makes them light and gives us the strength and patience to endure them and I definately saw that this week and know that to be true. Tchau! I also don´t know what pictures I sent because I can´t see the actually pictures on this computer so i just guessed and hopefully they are good ones!

11 March 2016

There is not a whole lot to say today because this week has been just
like the last 5 weeks here. But i am so ready and excited to go the
the field on Tuesday! The CTM has been great and a lot of fun and I
have learned a lot, but I feel like I have reached the point where I
have learned as much as I can here and now just need to experience the
real everything. That is so cool that Nathan went to India and
Switzerland! Traveling is so fun. What was it for specifiaclly? I want
to hear cool things about it. This morning we went to the Campinas
temple again because the são paulo temple is closed for cleaning. Last
P-day we bought some good food in the area and I felt exactly like
Elder Calhoun in The Best Two years when I ordered and they said
something back to me. My gospel portuguese is a lot better than my
``street´´ portuguese. I encourage you all to read Alma chapter 5 this
week and ask yourself all 44 questions in that chapter and I garuntee
you will finishe reading it a better person and knowing what you need
to improve in your life. I love and miss you all, thanks for being
such a good family! :)

4 March 2016

Ola todomundo! Como estão?

Happy Birthday this week to Nathan and Alli! I am scanning you notes at the cookie shop later, but apparently you have to pay for a subscription to see the pictures I sent, so let me know if you don´t get the letters either.

Yesterday was the 1 month mark so that is crazy. I just have 17 left. We got new Brasilian roommates that are so nice, I love them already! On Sunday I was called to be the sister training leader for our zone, so now I am the one to remind people to go to bed at 10:30. On Tuesday we did an all day English fast which went well for the most part.

Our district has the 2 best instructors ever, I love them so much! Irma Bakr is the nicest person ever and she is so funny. She is expecting a baby and finds out if it is a boy or a girl today! Irmão Ettmüller is the best teacher and motivator I have ever met. Before his mission he was a ju-jit-zu (or however you spell it) world champion and then on his mission he was such an effective missionary. He would go into stores, speak to everyone at once and then get a contact from each person all in about 5 minutes. After his first 3 months on his mission he became assistant to the president for the rest of his mission. And now he is proposing to his girlfriend that works at the CTM and our district gets to help!

Anyway Irmão Ettmüller taught us a really important lesson Monday on obedience that I want to share. He asked us why we are obedient and had us ready John 14:15 - If you love me, keep my commandments. We don´t keep the commandments ``because it is a commandment´´, we keep them because we love God. We need to be obedient because we love God. We are missionaries because we love God. We want to teach other people to keep the commandments because they love God. I just thought it was a great reminder of why we do what we do in the Church and in our lives.

Have a good week everyone! Let me know if I am not telling you stuff you want to know about! or If I AM telling you stuff you DON´T want to know about. either way. Eu amo vocês!!

Tchau