This last week or so has been craziness. We´ve just been working working working. We´ve been teaching and meeting so many special people . Although we´re a little sad today since it´s transfers. We got the call this morning that Sister Mota´s been transfered, so tomorrow she´ll be gone to some different area and I´ll recieve a new companion. We wanted so bad to stay together for another 6 weeks but the Lord has other plans for us. I´m mostly just nervous about knowing the area without Sister Mota. I hope I can navigate my way around to our investigators well enough. That and I´m going to miss Sister Mota a lot. It´s weird how you can be such good friends with someone without being able to communicate in the way you want. But she´s an amazing person and a good missionary. She´ll be missed for sure in Venâncio. So starting tomorrow we´re off to new adventures.
Anyway, the past week or so we´ve had some tender experiences. Always we´re praying to find people prepped and ready to accept the gospel, and last week we were walking down the street and passed a woman in her yard, and we turned and decided to talk to her. Her face instantly lit up and she let us in and we left a Book of Mormon with her and her husband to read. Specifically we gave them 3rd Nephi 11 to read. So when we returned a few days later, without even asking, Marciana tells us that she´s been reading the book we gave her and that she likes it a lot. Then she asked what does Hosana mean? And it led right into our next planned lesson and everything. It´s not as common as we´d hope for someone to actually read what we ask and then be so excited about it. She came to church yesterday and just soaked everything up.
Then the other day we were visiting with Dona Onilda and her daughter Joana. Onilda´s about 83 if I remember right, bedridden, and a lot weaker than when we met them a few weeks ago. She´s completely dependent in everything to her daughter Joana and is very very quiet. She only speaks a teensy bit, and it´s been less and less every time we visit. But she loves it when we sing hymns. So we were visiting them and Onilda asks for Chimarrão, not for herself but for us because that´s what good hostesses do, offer Chimarrão. So while Joana was in the kithchen making the chimarrão, Sister Mota and I sang a few hymns for her. During the first hymn, Sister Mota nudges me and gestures to Onilda, and she´s laying there crying, she was so touched by the music. And when we finished and Sister Mota asked how she liked it, she simply said "I cried." Then after Joana returned we told her what had happened and Joana started to cry. She wouldn´t tell us why exactly, but we think it touched her that her mother was so affected by the music. And Onilda being so weak we think Joana´s a little sensitive right now. But we love visiting them. There´s something special about their home.
Then yesterday Sister Mota and I gave talks in church and it was a powerful experience too. So we´ve known we were giving talks for a week or so, but we´re busy and haven´t had time really to figure out what we would say etc. And on top of it I had to give a training, kind of like a talk, in our district meeting on Thursday, so we didn´t have the preparation that we wanted. I would read stuff that I wanted to share, but everything was so scattered. So come Sunday morning neither I nor Sister Mota really had anything gelled to share in Sacrament meeting. But I had a few notes and got up and started talking, and ended up actually filling my allotted time. But I shared an experience I had had the night before, where I was talking with Sister Dangerfield on the phone and we were talking about how when we were in the MTC, all the time we´d have little A-Ha moments where we´d realize that we were missionaries. And I mentioned that I still have those moments where I kind of take a step back and realize what I´m doing. And Sister Dangerfield asked what the little experiences are like for me. And I told her about how when I´m in a lesson or giving that training, and the spirit´s giving me the words to say and I´m actually speaking portuguese, and I recognize that it´s for sure not me and that I´m recieving divine assistance. I take a step back and and think about how this work that I´m doing is so much bigger than me. If it wasn´t important than the Lord wouldn´t help me in such a profound way. And he has helped me. There´s no way I could learn portuguese in 2 months, not speak it for almost 3, and then be able to communicate with people after only a month or so in Brazil, without His help. It really is the Lord´s work. Anyway, so I shared in Sacrament Meeting what I had told Sister Dangerfield, and today our branch president said that when I was speaking about my struggles with the language and bearing testimony of the importance of missionary work, I was speaking fluently. I don´t really remember this, well, I don´t really remember much of what I said actually. But it was interesting, When Sister Mota finished her talk I leaned over and told her that she said everything that I couldn´t, and she responded that I had said everything she needed to start hers. Anyway, it was just a neat experience to see how the Lord guided us to say what the branch needed to hear.
This week has been a little doida (crazy) but good. Tuesday, because of transfers Sister Mota went to Porto Alegre, while I stayed in Santa Cruz with some other sisters to wait for my new companion. And we had a lot of fun being tourists. There´s this huge park with a cave, and monkeys and lots of pretty things to see and we had a lot of fun taking pictures and chatting. Then Tuesday evening, my new companion Sister Inhuma arrived and we returned to Venâncio Aires. Sister Inhuma is great. I´ve really been blessed with great companions on my mission. Every transfer is a little nerve-wracking since girls are crazy. But I´ve been super blessed. So Sister Inhuma is from Recife, way up in the Northeast, and has only 3 months left on the mission. She and Sister Mota were actually companions in the MTC. But we´re having a lot of fun already and working hard. We´ve already had some adventures in the apartment. Our Chuveira broke this week. It´s a little machine? tool? thing that heats the water in the shower, so we haven´t had any hot water for our showers all week. So we´ve been heating water on the stove and managing well enough. But then yesterday morning our gas for the stove ran out, but all was well since the Branch President was coming over later to fix our Chuveira. But when he came over he couldn´t quite manage it, so he took it home with him to fix there. But thankfully he arranged for someone to come deliver a new propane tank. Bah, adventures. So this morning we at least had hot water from the stove to use. But I think if I understood correctly President is bringing the chuveira tonight. So hopefully we´ll have hot showers again soon.
But we´ve had some good laughs over everything. Sister Inhuma loves to laugh and she´s super friendly, so all of the ward members love her already, as well as our investigators so the transition has been easy.
It´s crazy that we´re coming into June now. It for sure doesn´t feel like it. We´re moving steadily into fall, and we wake up every morning cold cold cold, but by the afternoon it´s hot again. So I never know what to wear in the morning. But it´s really not super cold yet. Everyone says in July and August it´s the worst. So we´ll see how it turns out.
No comments:
Post a Comment