February 1, 2016 - It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Carnival

                                                                Irma Helena's Baptism
                                               With Sister Chagas, Courtney & Sister Helm

Hey fam-

The title of this email is true, it is definitely beginning. Carnival, or the big sin fest as I like to call it, is starting up. It feels like Halloween here because everyone uses costumes and masks and wigs and all that crazy stuff. So far there is no Brazilian who can actually explain to me why they celebrate carnival, just that they do and everyone drinks or goes to the beach and it lasts about a week, so that will be a great week of proselitismo on the street for the missionaries.

So transfers. Turns out transfers are hard and very sad if you suddenly get your best friend/companion ripped away from you. Sister Helm is transferred to São Miguel in Alagoas to finish her mission. My other companion Sister Chagas will stay here with the other American sister here, and my new companion will be the wonderful Sister Barbosa once again. I feel like I should be a lot more happy to have Sister Barbosa, but for now I am just sad that Sister Helm will be leaving. It’s hard when you don’t prepare yourself emotionally and just expect things to be the same. It really feels like I’m having to say goodbye to one of my sisters again, but she says she’ll be waiting for me at the airport in December haha. So looks like I’ll get to head up the work here in Estancia for a  little while longer. I was kinda secretly hoping for a change because branches can feel like a lot of work sometimes, but now I know I have more work to do here now. 

Basically the greatest thing that has happened this whole transfer was this Saturday, we had the baptism of Irma Helena!! She is one of our pearls. She is amazing. After a lot of prayer and studying we received a miracle with her. She was nervous to get baptized so soon, even after explaining that she was far beyond prepared, that God had been preparing her life for years and years. We brought a woman in the ward that lives near her, we taught about the importance of baptism in John 3, we testified of the spirit that was there with us, told her to trust in the answers she had received from her studying and prayers, and for some strange reason she just agreed to be baptized!!! It was amazing. I can’t even describe how amazing it was to see her grow in the gospel, to see everything in her mind just click when we taught her. She has become so much more sure of herself and her knowledge. She wants to participate in lessons and in church, when we started she would barely say one word! I can’t help imagine how amazing it will be when she gets to go to the temple. She raves about how amazing the spirit is at church and how she feels so wonderful there, I just think ´´just wait til the temple!!´´. When you go on a mission, you think that everyone you teach and baptize will be like Irma Helena. But I’m learning that most people aren’t that spiritually in tune or faithful, (she literally prays 24/7) when we meet them, and they have a lot of growing to do. Irma Helena was a perfect package already made just waiting for us. Now I know that she was the reason I came to Estancia, that we needed to find her and bring her to Christ. We have some hard days here where no one wants to talk to us, but I had the confirmation that she is the reason I’m here, and that makes all the other stuff worth it.

My inspirational thought for the week is something I read in a talk by Pres Uchtdorf. He said ´´tell a man that there’s trillions of stars in the universe and he´ll believe you. But tell him that the paint on the wall is still wet and he´ll touch it just to make sure.´´ I like this quote a lot because it represents our faith and level of conversion. The gospel is so simple and inviting that sometimes we want to question it-but we don’t need to! It’s not twisted and complicated, all you need to do is evaluate your actions, and ask ´´am I being a representative of my savior right now?´´ and there’s your answer. 

I hope you guys have a great week; I’ll talk to you soon! Love you so much!

Sister Walker

January 25, 2016 - "Are You From The Africa?"

Another real question I received this week from the lovely and internationally aware, area of interior Sergipe, Brasil.

Hey guys!

This week was kinda crazy trying to get people ready for baptisms, trying to get them to understand you don’t have to understand the whole Book of Mormon or go to church for months to be qualified for baptism. Our efforts are not as effective this week as others. Helenha and Elisiane say they don’t feel prepared enough to make the covenant of baptism. We try and tell them ´´hey buster, all you need to be baptized is 1. Have a desire and 2. Be living the commandments´´ and they literally have both those things! We´ll see how it goes this week.

We had a really great family night in the house of a family in the branch, Irma Kelly and Irmao Joison, who are like my adoptive family here. I always tell Irma Kelly how much she reminds me of mom because they are literally so similar, always taking care of everyone and wanting to give you hugs and everything. Also their family has 5 kids, boys on the ends and 3 girls in the middle, so they’re basically the Walkers in Brasil. But we took the familia of Felipe over there and we watched the dvd of the restoration with them and played charades and had popcorn. I seriously love that dvd, could someone maybe send the disc to me in a letter or something?? And meet the Mormons!! Anyways, since we don’t have branch activities, we have to make our own, so its usually family nights with members to integrate investigators. It was so great to see that just after an hour that this whole family of investigators was so comfortable and happy and ready to go to church. Except the dad... but that’s another story. At church at least he dropped the mom and her daughter Bruna off. He’s a tougher nut to crack. 

We also had a big broadcast for all the missionaries in the whole world this week! It was sweet to watch. It was a big training session, but it was held in Utah and had general authorities speaking, or giving tips on how to better our work, how to teach repentance to get baptisms. It’s funny because when they were all speaking, all of the missionaries are so focused, so intrigued by the pure inspiration coming from their mouths, and then when we look back at our notes, everyone was like ´´hey wait a sec, this is literally all in preach my gospel...´´ and just cuhs a general authority said it, like Elder Bednar, it made it real haha. It’s interesting to study about repentance on the mission. I never really stopped to think about it, I always just thought repentance was confessing your sins to god and then it’s all good (more or less). But repentance actually just means a change of heart, and sincerely changing your actions to be in harmony with the gospel. Yes its having a conversation with Heavenly Father, but its more just stopping doing what’s wrong and start doing what’s right. How lucky are we that we have a loving father in heaven who will forgive us the exact moment we decide to change our ways and do what’s right!

This week I got called a mermaid by a sad drunk woman in one of our lessons. But apparently a mermaid isn’t exactly a compliment here... she got nervous that I was trying to enchant her with my blue eyes and started to sing/chant a strange melody which I readily joined in on. I keep the life in this trio. Word. 

Well that’s all for now folks, I’ll talk to you in February! Love you guys!!

Sister Walker

January 18, 2016 - A Trip Down Memory Lane

                                                                Courtney in Estancia!

Oí familia Walker! (aka: Allhh-care here)

This week was my first week of real splits with other sisters in an area other than my own! I got to go back to my stomping ground in Itabaiana and it was seriously so great. It was great to see some of the branch members, and see how the area is growing little by little. It’s funny because apparently Itabaiana and Estancia are the sad areas that no one wants to go to because you don’t have baptisms, but hey I like a challenge :) It was funny when I saw the ward members and they were all excited to see me and some got mad at me because i didn’t tell anyone I was leaving, but I couldn’t help but think ´´you guys didn’t act like you liked me that much when I actually worked here....´´ haha. Two of the young women in the ward started crying when they saw me so that was sure a turn of events. 

Also. this week we FINALLY got Cleonancio aka that guy who went fishing on Sunday last week to church HALLELUJAH *cue Mr. Bean singing* !!! He was all ready and excited and turns out he knows a ton of members that he used to play soccer with. He is also a semi famous soccer player here in Brasil so there’s that. One day I jokingly said he has the aura of being a celebrity and he said all serious ´´yeah actually that’s right´´; lol surprise! But other sad news is that our other investigator with a baptism for this week we found out has been receiving the Jehovah witnesses in her house and all that jazz for a while... they are our secret enemies here in Estancia. Their church is on the same road as ours and they are the only other people in the state who wear skirts down to their knees. They don’t like the Mormons haha. So we make sure to always say hi to them really loud in the streets just to keep things interesting.

But other than the testemunhos de jehovahs stealing all our investigators, we have 2 amaaazing investigators now that are just sent from heaven above. It was a reference from a young woman in the branch, so we´re teaching a 22 yr old girl. Elisiane, and her mom, Elenha. They are so smart and spiritual and are basically Mormon but didn’t know it before. It was the greatest thing, the first time Elenha went to church. We were worried she didn’t like it because she doesn’t talk so much. But when we went to visit her she started talking and talking about how she had never felt so wonderful before, how she just forgot all about the world when she entered the church. She was trying so hard to explain but finally just said ´´I don’t have the words to explain how good I felt there. I wish I could go back everyday´´. And my heart just melted! I felt the spirit so strong in that lesson, and was so happy to testify that after all their searching for churches; they had finally found the one God has truly prepared for them, that will bring them the happiness they were looking for. It was like after all our wading through the murky water, sifting through wishy washy people, we finally found our pearls!! They’ll be baptized the 30th of this month. 

So this week I also realized that the Book of Mormon is literally an instruction guide, not just for our lives, but for missionaries. It teaches you everything you need to know on how to be a successful missionary!! Right now I’m studying Alma the younger and Amuleque (i forgot how to spell it in English, sorry) and their example. Sometimes you have success in your callings, sometimes you don’t. But all the while you can be positive and have peace knowing you’re doing all you can and you’re doing the lords work. So that goes for you guys too! I love you guys so much. Hope you have a wonderful semana!

Sister Walker

January 11, 2016 - B2B (Back To Bucket)

                                    Sister Chagas, Courtney, Sister Helm and a local ostrich

Hey guys!

6 months on the mish aka I’m singing sunrise sunset like dad always played and mom always cried. jk. People always say it passes fast but I’m still kinda waiting for that to kick in... haha. The sisters here made me a surprise cake and sang the happy birthday song in Portuguese and even had these crazy sparking candles on it that I think are illegal in America. So it was great!

This week was full of new stuff for me. For one thing, I had my first splits with one of the sisters I live with. Turns out splits aren’t so bad. You just kinda teach like normal, pray for what the sister is needing to hear right then, then you just let the spirit guide you and turns out you say everything that she was needing to hear as a new American missionary in Brasil so it all turned out okay. This week I’ll get to go to Itabaiana to do splits with the sisters there yaaay!! I’m excited to get to go back there for a bit. 

Oh yeah we are officially B2B here in Estancia, well technically we have been since I got here because our washing machine is broken here too. I heart buckets people! Still hoping somehow my clothes are actually getting clean and not just sitting in stinky dirty water... oh well.

Also this week we got a new companion, Sister Chagas! She got transferred from Maceio and now she’s here with us until the end of the transfer. She’s from Rio and pretty cool. But now I am officially the big weenie on campus because she has a year on the mission too and actually knows Portuguese like Sister Helm and likes to take charge so I’m working on making myself stand up and be heard. These people will listen to me and they will like it!

The problem we´re having with our investigators isn’t that we have no one to teach, we´ve moved on from that, but it’s that no one really wants to progress with our lessons. This is our problem: all of our investigators want to be baptized, already accepted it, but don’t want to go to church.... so something is missing here. I feel like it should be the opposite problem haha. 

It’s funny how you get to learn a lot about the saviors life here on the mission, not just because you study a lot about it, but because you’re kinda living a small part of it. We´ve been working with a man named Cleonancio for a few weeks who has a really hard time with going to church, but again wants to be baptized and be a part of the church of christ. so all this week every day we saw him and he said ´´I’m going to church with you guys!´´ and then we went to pick him up and walk with him Sunday morning and he was getting ready to go fishing with his buddies... I could have been filled with a lot of anger at him but instead it was more of a deep hurt and disappointment. After all we´d done for him, all the paths we’d prepared for him, all he had to do was walk to church, and he deliberately chose to do something else. It’s a sad day when I have to tell a grown man on the street that he is telling god that fishing is more important to him than our heavenly father is. I was thinking of all the times the lord reaches out to us, gives us commandments to help and guide us and warn of danger, who often times ´´comes to our house´´, tired, weary, sweaty and frustrated, metaphorically and invites us to come with him, and we just tell him we don’t have time, or don’t need him, and how sad that is for our savior. Sometimes it’s really sad seeing the people here negate their potential or not understand the one true plan that is available to them, but I am learning a great love for my savior here. And I’m grateful I can be here to show him that I am trying to do all I can to heed to his counsel when he invites us ´´come follow me´´. So that is my thought for the week! I know our savior lives and loves each one of us and knows how to help us during our trials, because he already passed through them!

I love you guys. Have a great week!

Sister Walker

January 4, 2016 - Felipe's Parents Are Married!!

                                            Courtney and Sister Helm climbed a jaka tree!

Yes you read that title right, Felipe’s parents are lawfully legally married people it’s a miracle!!! But I’ll get to that soon.

Hey party people, happy New Year!

For new years here we pretty much just wandered the streets looking for anyone, and I mean ANYONE that we could talk to or teach haha. It was a tough 2 days because everyone goes to the beach or just sits outside their house totally drunk dancing samba or something like that. Then on New Years Eve we got a fireworks show because surprise, some guy was lighting off legit huge fireworks right in front of our house on the street haha. Not exactly sure how safe that is but it happened. It was cool to see! We woke up at 11:45 and said happy new year and Sister Helm tried to kiss me but I wouldn’t let her (kidding) and we went back to sleep. And now its 2016 how weird is that! Oh and everyone in Brasil wears white on new years eve to represent purity or new beginnings or something inspirational like that so I did too. Note to self: never do that again. 

Funniest thing ever, Sister Helm is from Idaho and lives on a farm so I like to tease her about that. And she told me that in Idaho on new years eve, instead of having a big ball drop like in New York, they have a giant POTATO that drops at midnight and I started dying laughing. 

But okay back to the family of Felipe who is just great. We just gotta get them to church! The problem is that the dad works in the feira on the street everyday selling stuff. So if he doesn’t sell that day, they don't have money for food or anything. So we´re trying to work around that and get him to church. We had such a great lesson with them this week about the restoration. The spirit was so strong and it was amazing to see that it was connecting inside their heads even if they didn't understand 100% of everything. The dad said that everything we were talking about just somehow made sense to him, he didn't doubt any of it. And the mom said that when we talk and come to their house that she can just feel in how we talk that what we´re saying is true, that she feels something different than when other churches come to try and teach them. And this whole time I was just beaming thinking ´´yes yes yes!!! This is what we´ve been looking for!!´´. I just love the restoration; it makes so much sense in my head. And maybe it sounds weird the first time you hear it about Joseph Smith and a vision, but you just have to pray to know. Don't ask us, go ahead and ask god and he´ll respond to you. Its as easy as that! ahh missions are great.

This week was hard to find people but finally all the holidays are over so we´re back in business! And this week I get to start doing exchanges with the other sisters! Wish me luck... oh and I’ll have to do emails to president and the zone leaders of the other sisters next week and the week after so we won’t have lots of time to email you guys so sorry in advance :( but I love you all!! Start of 2016 with a bang, hoot, holler and more Christlike!

Sister Walker

P.S. Also: I shared a message after lunch one day at the branch presidents house with his family. The message was that Pres George Albert Smith once said that our own personal salvation is dependent on how well we shared the gospel with others on this earth. 

Then when I was done his wife said ´´Wow. Sister Walker just burned all of us hard core.´´ hahaha whoops! But its true people! Get to steppin!!

December 28, 2015 - Feliz Ano Novo!!

                                      Sister Helm and Courtney skyping on Christmas day

Hey people!!

Can we just talk about how great it was to see you guys?!? Seriously best Christmas present I could get. besides the melty reisans and new skirts (thanks mummer!). Too bad the aftermath was a little bit hard but we´re back in business as of now. It was great to see your real life faces and it was cool because I felt like I really was back at home with you guys. Now just 6 more months til mothers day!

But what can I say since I just talked to you guys, haha, uhhm. Christmas eve was really good, when we all got back to our apartment we gave out the little secret sisters gifts we´d bought and even made hot chocolate and sat in front of the fan drinking it and pretty much sweating into our cups but #worthit. 

And as far as our area, we´re having a little bit more success here now. We´re finally meeting people who will let us come in to their houses and teach them. This of course was after several days of meeting only people who said no, that they’re ´´super catholic´´ whatever that means..., grown men who send their moms out to tell us they dont want to go to church, etc. it was almost comical all the excuses we heard haha but hey you gotta do the work to find the diamonds in the rough! (cue scary aladdin man voice)

We are teaching one family way over in Cidade Nova that is really great. We first met the youngest son Felipe playing soccer and he is a scrawny little kid who looks 8 but is 12. Then he has 3 siblings and parents who are really interested in our lessons. We sit in this tiny tiny living room with a chair and a couch and all the kids sit on the floor just listening in awe to us talk haha. Felipe really wanted to answer all our questions so whenever we asked one he would just yell out ´´jesus cristo!!´´ and hey half the time he was right! We´re trying to set a baptism date for all them but the dad works every Sunday selling stuff in the feira so we´re working on it. But the funny part was at the end of one lesson they somehow found out I can wiggle my ears and raise my eyebrows and yep you guessed it, it turned into freak Courtney and her strange tricks. They were fascinated that I can wiggle my ears and I felt like a circus monkey with them telling me to do it over and over. This is what I will put on my resume folks.

But other than that, things are going good here! We´re trying hard to get people to church which is the hardest trial as of now, because sometimes people here need a little kick in the hiney to understand you need to sacrifice for the things that are important like going to church! But I’m good at that ;)

Love you guys so much! Thanks for making my Brazilian Christmas so great!! 

Sister Walker

Public service announcement: I will never ever get used to the fact that the women here breastfeed in public. Come on, during relief society? Really??

December 21, 2015 - Can I Be The Donkey? No, Bretts Always The Donkey...

MERRY CHRISTMAS YOU FILTHY ANIMALS!!

first things first please tell me the sisters in our ward and every ward in the stake have some place to go for christmas eve AND christmas day!!! that is your job plz my loving family!! it is sad to wait for someone to invite you to their house... lol we´re still waiting on christmas eve but hopefully something will pull through. its hard when 3 of us are new in this area so we dont know any of the members or anything. It’d be different if i was back in itabaiana with families i love, but here its just Christmas with a bunch of strangers... but it’ll be good! its good to serve others when you’re feeling down!

what a week people lemme tell you. opening an area sure is tough work. we pretty much walked the entire city all day long every day and my shoes have the smell to prove it. too far...? but estancia is pretty cute, its basically the same as itabaiana with the colorful houses all crammed together and the cobblestone streets. but here there are so many people with cars they all must be rich... its just funny to follow addresses here because alot of places don’t really have street signs, so the directions in the area book will be ´´go down the street of the crazy man, take a left at the pink house with an orange door, and around to the big pile of bricks in the road. if you’ve hit the man with the pink shirt selling chickens you’ve gone too far´´ but we make it work. 

but i live here with sister ruiz from dallas and sister oliveira from manaus. sooo hilarious having 3 Americans together, because it has pretty much never happened in the history of the world here. sometimes we sing christmas carols to each other late at night to make it feel more like christmas. they include i saw mommy kissing santa claus, rudolph and the classic 12 days of christmas. 

its the greatest thing working with sister helm, the only annoying thing is that we stand out SO MUCH together, two white girls in long skirts walking down the street. i have never felt so out of place in my life holy cow. people stare at us evvverywhere we go, they all think we´re sisters, and that we´re from germany. i kinda wanna flick em all in the head sometimes but i hold it together. but the funny part is we barely have to do contacting because other people will stop us on the street to ask us where we´re from and what we´re doing here and we just say ´well let me tell you a little something about the church of jesus christ...´´ boom. 

okay and skype this week im thinking its gonna be about 4pm here or 3pm which makes that exactly im not sure what time back home but im sure you guys can figure it out. ahhh im so excited to see you guys!!! plz get the scary doll ready. 

since its christmas i just wanna leave you guys with a little quick testimony of this special time! i am so happy to get to spend Christmas in brasil, even if its sweaty and hot and they don’t have real milk to make hot chocolate and only have palm trees not pine trees. because all that really matters is that i get to remember that my savior was born many years ago and because he was born he gave us the greatest gift of all, the opportunity to live with him again! i am grateful that with his plan i hope we can all remember what gift we´re gonna give to the savior this year, what we´re gonna change and do better to show more gratitude for all he has done for us. after all, it is his birthday! i know my savior lives, i know this church is true and i am so grateful to be here sharing this gift of lasting happiness with the people here! 

love you guys & see you soon!!

sister walker