Another
week come and gone holy cow!
This week I learned
alot of things that i am grateful for. Hence the title of this email. Im
starting to not think of everything in Brasil in comparison to things in the
States, but the things here just being normal. its helping me adjust better.
But what really made me realize im adjusting is when a ward member gave us a
ride to pick up an investigator for church (which is rare in itself-there’s 4
families in the branch that own a car-no one here has a car they’re sups
expensive), and i got in and it had carpet and the windows worked and the seats
werent torn or anything and i thought ´´whoa this is a really nice car´´, and then
realized that everyone and their mom has a car like this or nicer back home.
the things im grateful for i didnt realize i was grateful for until now. cliche
but true. here are some of those things:
Public bathrooms,
libraries, no littering laws, lightbulbs in every room, free schooling, health
care plans, mutual and youth activities. Its funny the little things that you
dont realize you love until you dont have them anymore. and the things you
realize you dont really need! but i really feel so grateful and humbled to get
to meet these people and find out about their lives. sometimes when we´re
teaching in a cement house with people who have 1 couch and 2 beds for
furniture and 1 lightbulb in their house and have more faith than i could ever
dream of, i feel almost embarrassed that back home i know i have a closet full
of clothes, a fridge always full of food, 3 tvs, who knows how many cars now (i
cant keep track). it just goes to show what’s really important in life. wow the
people here are teaching me so much.
anyways this week we
got big news from the sister training leaders when we had splits with them.
this transfer, nov 10, we´re gonna get 10 new sisters!! that is so crazy
and never has happened before! and 2 are americans. the only downside is that
its almost guaranteed that sister barbosa will be transferred out of this area,
if not all 4 of us. and also there is a high possibility i will be training one
of the new missionaries which makes my stomach feel sad everytime i think of
it. how could i ever train a brand new missionary when im basically a small
child who barely speaks portuguese/?? ok no i will do whatever the lord calls
me to do. we´ll see.
for one of the family
home evenings we went to this week with our investigators was at the branch
presidents house. we were all enjoying waiting for him to start the message
he´d prepared and he said ´´we´re gonna watch a mormon meessages video. but it
happens to be in english so sister walker is going to translate what they’re
saying for us´´ i was like are you kidding me hahah. so im there watching the
mormon message Climbing Mountains and listening so intently to what elder
eyring i think is saying and trying to translate super fast into words that
will have some particle of the same emphasis and spirit as the video. gee whiz
that was hard. but i think i did okay. also we watched parts of this really
cool movie called Rescuing Ephraim if you guys wanna watch it.
this week i dunno what
happened but we had 7 investigators at church!! oh the joy of missionaries. the
great thing is that the people are so welcoming that if youre new, you’ll have
a friend no matter what because whoevers next to you will just talk to
you like you’ve been friends your whole life. one of them who came is Marcio
who has told us the past 4 weeks he´d go to church but hadn’t. one week he even
told us he was on his way so we waited outside for him and he said he was
´´almost there´´ but we waited and waited and he never showed up... lol people
are funny. but he’s preparing to be baptized and just loves hearing our
messages. his baptismal date is nov 7! we´re also working with a woman
named Aparecida whos kids are members but not active. i met her on accident
when i went to visit her kids with a woman in the ward last sunday, and she is
so so interested in the gospel. she said when the elders used to try and teach
her years ago, she´d shut the door and tell them not to come back, that she
didnt want to hear it, but now she is ready and open and wants to be baptized!
it just goes to show how the lord has a certain time for everything, and how
all of the paths in our lives are prepared and organized.
well thats about all
folks, im still learning the ropes and how to do things the ´´brazilian´´ way,
but i sure do love being able to represent my savior and my family on my
missionary plaque every single day. thanks for all your love and support, i
love my family!!
sister walker
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