April 15, 2009
Hello!
I love my new area. The members are great! They help so much! And me and Elder Newby are doing great! We have three baptisms marked for this Sunday! YAY! Well actually, I am with Elder Newby and Elder Sant´anna. Elder Sant´anna is waiting for his companion to get to the mission field again. He went home for surgery and will come back in about 2 weeks. He went home like 8 months ago . . . I think it was a knee surgery. So we are a trio! We call him our zone leader C. My area is very . . . BRAZIL! The load culture that I love so much! The streets have radio speakers blasting 24 hours a day. And it just plays that Latin music that makes me want wiggle my hips! There is a ton of mud! And it has been raining a lot. The church is just a small house, and we have about 90 members. Its a branch. A girl from our stake is serving at Temple Square . . . Sister Dos Santos. The bus ride was fun. I sat with Elder Jackson, from South Jordan. It was fun to talk to him again. Sometimes you get transfered and you never see someone again because the mission is so big. Before I got transfered I talked with Elder Winegar and I told him bye because he will go home next transfer so I don't know if I will see him again. He is in acre!!!! We found two 11 yr. old boys (twins) who want to baptized this Sunday. One doesn't want to get baptized because he is dating. Can you believe that? 11 yrs old and dating. I asked him what the purpose is of dating and he said . .. "to get married" and then I said, "that right! When do you plan on getting married? Right now?" He laughed and said no. Then I sad if you don't date until you're 16, Heavenly Father will bless you with a beautiful wife! One of the twins said he would never date because he wants to marry someone beautiful! Funny huh? We also have another women who is preparing for baptism. She went to church and told us she wanted to be baptised next year!!! Elder Newby went and taught and she doesn't have any probelms with the commandments. He taught her and asked her to prepare to be baptized this Sunday. She was a little unsure. Elder Newby was there with some members teaching, and one of the women there started saying "oh no, baptism needs to take some time. I waited 8 months." So it wasn't going as planned. Luckily, we had another member there. She said to the other sister "8 months! What! If you know the church is true and you are not breaking the commandments, why wait to receive the blessings of baptism? I met the missionaries and I was baptized the next week." So, of course, Lais (the women going to be baptized) accepted baptism! Isnt that great?!
So I have some funny stories, but I only remember one of them. So ... it's a long story! So when I got to the MTC in São Paulo I went to the store and bought me some lotion. It was rather difficult. . . because I could not read or speak Portuguese. So I found the body products and started looking. And everything was so different. But then I saw something familiar . . . "DOVE." I knew dove made lotion. So I tried to read a little bit about what I was buying. It said in English something like... nourishing care . . . or something. However, everything else was in Portuguese. So I bought it and started using it. It smelled good and was white. So everytime I put the stuff on it took forever to rub it in!!! So I just thought it was like . . . really good lotion! Sometimes I would even give some to other missionaries. And it would take them forever to rub it in as well. Like, I would put this stuff on my arms and it would turn my arms like white, and I would have to rub my arm for 5 min. to get it to soak in. So last week, after a yr. and 4 months of using this lotion. . . during my personal study . . . I looked at my large bottle of dove lotion and saw a word that I know now. And I thought. . . "Could it be that this isn't lotion?" Sure enough . . . for a yr. and 4 months I have been rubbing hair conditioner on my body. ISo funny. Well i have been putting it in my hair now. . . and my hair seems to be doing better than my body. Only me!