La Cucaracha... (and last week's blog too-Bolo de Mais!)

10/28/13 - La Cucaracha

So even though the title is in Spanish (not Portuguese), I figured it was fitting for this week. We had...and are having...some crazy cockroach problems! It's not really a problem. It's normal apparently. It's just we live under another house and right next to a sewer drain thing...they come out of there to play when it's hot...which is now. And it's awful!! It doesn't help that my companion has a crazy fear of these things so she screams every time we find one in our house and I have to get it out. We have woken up to one in our house every day this week. We even barricade the door, I have no idea how they get in!It's a nightmare.!!  Ugh. It's the worst.

Anyway, aside from that, this week was great and flew by! We were so busy prepping for the baptism and running around to all our other appointments and meetings that pday came quickly. Thursday was my 6 month mark and it didn't feel real. We had interviews with President on Friday and when he asked me how much time I had on the mission and I responded with "6 months yesterday" I almost cried! It's a happy thing though. Happy and sad because I love being a missionary and I can't explain how great it is unless you've been on a mission and experienced it yourself. It's amazing. One of the best parts about being a missionary is getting to be a tool in the Lord's hands and I know I've said this before but it's true.

Antônio's baptism was Saturday and it was great! We had a problem with filling the font because it was supposed to start at 7 and when we got there it had about 4 inches of water in it! So it got delayed a bit but all went well :)


Cake Surprise!

Yesterday (Sunday) our Ward Mission leader and his family decided to surprise us with a Halloween cake at their house BUT as usual I ruined the surprise by getting there early when it wasn't done yet. Oops. - typical me. But it worked out well in the end because we got to help make little figures for it which was a ton of fun...it's the little things as my momma says.

   I had to...we had black and orange! Still have Falcon pride :)

We are so blessed in this area. We have lots of love and support from the members and time is starting to really pick up now. I don't know how I feel about it.

We also had a family night with some members last night where we taught and discussed the Atonement and how we can use Jesus Christ's sacrifice in our lives every day. It was compared to a bar of soap and how soap cleans us physically but His sacrifice cleans us spiritually. I am so grateful for my Savior. He is the Savior of the world if we will just reach out to him. I love this work here in Brazil and love the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's about all for this week! Love you all! 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!



Cake we helped finish

Yum!!

10/21/13 - Bolo de Mais!

So this week was a week of bolo. Bolo is cake in Portuguese and I sound really fat starting out like this but I really love cake. And I swear every house we walked into this week had cake to offer us. I'm not complaining. Sorry Mom and Dad you'll have to roll me off the plane in a year.

 

Speaking of a year...Thursday this week will mark 6 months in the mission! How is that possible?! Nuts. So I'll give you all a little run down of my week. Tuesday I got my first pedicure on the mission...from an investigator of course and it was for a good reason too. I had been having some serious pain in my toes due to ingrown toenail stuff going on. Gross huh? It hurt like never before but now I'm pain-free and happy. :)

 

On Wednesday we had our normal District meeting but in a different place and we didn't get lost so I mastered the bus system here. Finally. #soproud. That was my accomplishment for the day. Thursday I ate the most cake of my life (you just can't say no). And the Elders were joking and jealous that we are always welcomed into homes. It's just because we're Sisters. The rumor about that is true. But also because we're sisters the members are helping us out with the missionary work more.

 

Because of them we are now teaching 3 new couples! Perfect families ready to accept the truth and find Christ. It's been great. As for Antônio, he's getting baptized on Saturday YAY! He's so great. Friday was a monsoon all. day. long. Sister Loisotto and I left our house for lunch and I have never seen anything quite like it. The streets were just flooded...so naturally we walked right through it. We had umbrellas (thanks Dad) but nothing could prevent our feet, shoes, and bottom halves from being soaked. So we showed up to lunch pretty wet. My shoes felt like those ugly water shoes I wore as a kid at Sesame Place. It was awful. But we just sloshed around in them all day still happy and doing the Lord's work. It made for a good story. Our skirts dried throughout the day.

 

Saturday I went to my first funeral on the mission. It was the mother of one of the women in our ward here in Utinga. It was sad because I had met Maria just this past Sunday and then she passed away Friday night. She had been suffering and unable to walk for these past 2 months so the family in general had been suffering, but she was so sweet. It was so sad to see the family hurting so much but we visited Alice (woman in our ward) last night to give her some comfort. We read a scripture with her about how Jesus Christ knows what she's going through and to hold firm to her faith in Him and that everything will be okay if she does that. Yesterday on Sunday I was so exhausted! I have a really hard time with daylight savings time. Summer is coming! But we lost an hour of sleep here so I'm am super sleepy. But this will be a great week! I love you all!