Semana 36
Olá família!!
So the transfer results are in
and.... I GAVE BIRTH!! Monday night I got a phone call from the zone leaders,
and President called me to TRAIN! My heart did a few flip flops, but all in all
I felt prepared and excited and calm for the new responsibility. I only had 3
worries - 1, if she spoke Portuguese already, 2, if she was shy or confident,
and 3, if we would have anything in common and get along. Thank heavens all of
my prayers were answered! My novinha is Sister Gallo, from Cordoba Argentina!
Although she isn´t Brasilian, she does speak Portuguese really well for coming
right out of the MTC, she loves to talk and is really confident, is humble and
wants to learn everything, takes advantage of every moment to learn, and thinks
I´m the greatest missionary on the planet and thinks I´m perfect (which I just
have to laugh because it is so not true but boosts my self esteem a little),
and best of all... she studied MUSIC in college! She sings beautifully, and we
have already spent MUCH time singing duets and geeking out about music.
Awesome. Love her.
So tuesday I went to Natal to pick up
sister Gallo and found out that 3 other American sisters are training with me!
Sister J. Baker (AGAIN), Sister Hernandez (loveeeeee her with all my heart),
and Sister Weatherford. 3 American sisters arrived from the MTC as well.
Finally our mission is increasing in size! Wednesday we had our training with
President, and travelled back to Mossoró (the 5 hour bus ride). Also tuesday
while I was gone in Natal, both Daniel and Karen were baptized!! I´m sad that I
missed their baptisms and don´t have pictures to send home, but I heard it was
a beautiful experience.
We started the week off well, I was a
little nervous in my ability to remember the area and basically doing
everything but it wasn´t as bad as I thought. Sister Gallo really knows what
she´s doing, and has zero fear with street contacting so that´s been great! We
started the 12 week training program for missionaries as well, which has been
awesome because not only does it help her learn, but it reinforces what I know
and helps me improve my teaching techniques and be a better missionary as
well!
This week I studied in Preach My
Gospel a lot in the chapter "Finding People" because our teaching
group needs some remodeling and we were having issues finding new investigators
with quality, and I learned three things: 1- talk to EVERYONE, 2- share the
restored gospel with every single person you contact, our unique message that
no other church has to offer, and 3, share how the gospel blesses our families.
We applied these principles and saw HUGE success this week - the quality and
size of our group augmented and I am excited for the future!
As for some of our investigators -
This week we have spent trying to
figure out what is impeding Moalisson from beimg baptized. We had an awesome
"lição de fé" again with him, and decided that absolutely nothing is
getting in the way, just himself. So our district leader interviewed him again,
and somehow marked his baptism for October 11th! So I´m super excited and hope
that all goes well - pray that he will be baptized then!
Saturday we were street contacting
and stopped a man on the street named Elho. We invited him to church, and he
agreed to come with us. We marked to pick him up on sunday, and when we walked
the half hour to his house he was waiting for us! He came to church (although
he tried to sneak out and leave several times) and really liked it, and we
visited him sunday afternoon and marked his baptism. He has a few addictions
but nothing is impossible with the Lord, and I think like 75% of my baptisms on
the mission had addictions so no worries haha. Also as we were working on
sunday we needed to mark one more baptism to close our weekly pattern, and I
said a prayer that the Lord would help us find someone to invite to be
baptized. Not 5 minutes later a man called us from the street, and as we talked
he had already been taught by the sisters a few years ago and wanted some
direction in his life. We taught him about baptism and he has a baptismal date
for the 11th as well! And on top of it he´s going to come to conference with us
next week (speaking of I am SO excited and also means just one more conference
until I get home WHAT).
So someone told us about the
"blood moon" lunar eclipse that was going to happen so we decided to
stay up and watch it - turned into the coolest night EVER, two hours of
watching the eclipse and us 4 just laughing our heads off and having a great
time. We pulled out one of our mattresses outside (within the confines of our
apartment don´t worry) and it was so cool! It made me really homesick though
because I miss studying the sciences, I miss learning about natural
phenomenons, and most of all I just miss observing nature! I definitely took
that for granted at home...
Funny story for this week -
So there´s a fruit here in Northern
Brasil called Maracuja, which has a side effect to make you really sleepy.
Which is basically poison for missionaries because people will give us maracuja
juice for lunch and then we´re like falling asleep in our lessons.. this week I
think we had 3 or 4 days where we drank maracuja for lunch and I just dieddddd
trying so hard to stay awake!
Anyway, that´s about it for this
week. I am SUPER excited to be training right now and am doing all that I can
to help her have an awesome experience on the mission! It´s interesting, being
on the mission is like serving on the front lines of an army at battle with the
enemy - you take the heaviest hits from the enemy side and really can feel the
force that they have. You are the first people to interact and bring the light
and truth to a world of darkness. It´s sort of a scary feeling and I feel like
every passing week is progressively harder on the mission, but I know with more
certainty that I am fighting for the Lord´s side!
I love you all, and will talk to you
soon!
Sister Brown
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