Tough but Loving It!

Missions are so wonderfully hard and I am so grateful for them. They magnify our weaknesses but I've realized this is how we learn!

 

We feel a lot more settled this week which is really nice. So in our mission we have a weekly goal to speak with 70 people on the street each week. Maybe that sounds easy but I really don't think so and we haven't reached that goal yet. We're working on it. But like I talked about last week...there are just a lot of awkward things that happen on the mission and this is sometimes one of them. I was told to embrace the awkward!

 

My Portuguese isn't perfect but it's getting better and clearly it's a weakness right now that will only get better by practicing. We meet some really interesting people this way. Anyway, we taught an English class for the first time on Saturday and it was the funniest 2 hours of my week. They are all not Mormon and had some great questions about the gospel, as well as America and it was just a good time. One man said there's no way I was a member of the church my whole life because all Mormons have 6 or more kids to which I had to reply that's not always true lol. But it was funny.

 

On another day this week we had divisions with our District Leader Elder Patrício and his companion Elder Myers, who came here the same day as me from the great Iowa Des Moines mission. Since our whole zone is really young in the mission (6 months or less) we have our District leaders and Zone leaders come out and teach with us once a week and this day we got to eat dinner with them at Irmã Cida's house.

Irmã Cida is like our Mom in this area. She pretty much expects us to visit her every day and you can't tell by this picture but she is HILARIOUS! She feeds us every time we visit and she may be the cause of any weight gain. Her food is so good. Oh and here we say Irmã which means sister and then their first name as opposed to the states where we say Sister and the last name. That was something I had to get used to here. But anyway Irmã Cida is amazing and loves us. I am so grateful for her.

Oh I have a challenge for all of you. We got a message from our President this week to read the Book of Mormon from now until Christmas and count how many times Christ's name appears and to mark all of the Christ like attributes we read. I know that as we do this we will inevitably become more like our Savior.

I'm so excited for Christmas! I can't believe it's so soon. Well it feels soon...I love and miss you all! Thank you for the prayers and love. Tchau!