February 22, 2016 - Already Ran Out Of Creative Titles...

                                              "Companionship Love" with Sister Barbosa

Hey everyone! How was your week? Can anyone believe this is the last week of February?? Sups weird.

So this week was pretty hectic, just because of traveling different places. We had another big Mission Tour with all the missionaries on Thursday. Well, all the missionaries here in Sergipe. And Elder Mervyn Arnold, a general authority from the Missionary Department who has face to face contact with the 12 apostles (everyone got really nervous when he said that) came to talk to us and teach us and inspire us. He is from good ole Idaho and speaks Spanish and English and tries hard to speak Portuguese haha. He is a very tall white man who stuck out like a sore thumb at our conference. I almost giggled too when I heard his accent and then I realized the irony....

But he taught us lots of great techniques and how to work better with the members by serving them first and gaining their trust before you can expect references. Its true! We talked a lot about 3 Nephi 11 which is one of the most wonderful chapters in the Book of Mormon, and how Christ was so direct in his purpose to visit those people. He came to them, and almost immediately started teaching, gave Nephi the power to baptize, and got right to work. He didn’t beat around the bush, he wasn’t shy, he didn’t waste time chatting, he knew what was important and didn’t put it off. That’s what I’ve been trying to do here too!

The most amazing part was that afterwards he asked to interview a few missionaries, and he picked me and Sister Barbosa!! We were freaking out! Mostly I didn’t know it was a real interview at the time, but the experience I had with him is one I’ll never forget. He talked to me about things that I only have been talking with heavenly father in my prayers, and I felt the same feeling I got when Grandpa gave me my patriarchal blessing. I felt like he was looking at me and without knowing me, cared for me and knew just what to say to help me. He wanted to do the interview in English but my mouth wouldn’t work right  so he switched back to Portuguese. (Which I now wish I hadn’t done). But he asked me if my family is active in the church and I said yes and he said I should be really grateful for that. That I needed to write home to my parents and tell them that Elder Arnold thanks them for their service in the church, their faithfulness, and their sacrifices to raise a worthy daughter to be here serving a mission. So that is straight from the lord people! I have amazing parents!

As for people we´re teaching, most of our people we had to drop because they wouldn’t come to church. They love to visit with us and want us to come back, but don’t want to progress or change anything in their lives to be happier. It’s like we have to break up with them lots of the time and say ´´it’s not me, it’s you..´´ Sad but true. But we met a really great couple last week named Kelle and Zakoel. They are really great and interested in the message of the restoration. They even were getting upset, not understanding why they hadn’t had this wonderful message for more time in their lives. They have lots of doubts, which is good, because it means they’re actually interested and not just nodding their heads with everything we say. It’s amazing to see how this light goes on inside their eyes when we teach them a principle of the gospel, it feels like finally their spirit is recognizing what we´re teaching, something just clicks in their head. The gospel is so true guys!! And getting to teach about it every day is even better!!

I hope you all have a wonderful week full of hugs and love and service and everything else good in the world! Love you so much!

Sister Walker 

February 15, 2016 - Dia De Amor

Hey guys!

This week the work got rollin... rollin... rollin in the river... anyone else feeling jazzy today? I’m starting to feel a strain on my English so sorry when my letters start to not make sense. 

This week I got to read the letter mom sent with me when I left entitled ´´when your investigator drops you´´ haha sad but fundamental moment in your mission. We were teaching Rafael, a 17 yr old theology wannabe who I thought really had a desire to change his life. Turns out he doesn’t believe in god. That complicated things. But we are determined to meet the people waiting for us in this area!

To honor Valentines Day back home in the states, I made heart shaped pancakes for everyone (which is surprisingly harder than previously imagined). I also told people at church it was ´´love day´´ so they started going up to everyone and saying I love you and hugging them haha. That is what it’s all about people!!

This week we had an interesting lesson with a grown woman with a bird on her head. I am not joking. She went the entire lesson, a grown woman, sitting on the concrete floor with a small green parrot nestling in her hair. I wish I could have taken a picture without being sups obvious but to no avail. Brazilians sure do whatever the heck they want haha. 

I’ve also had a funny cough stuffy nose for a few weeks, and I have learned that it is basically the worst thing you could ever do in Brasil is go into a members house and cough in front of the woman in the ward, because everyone and their dog has a medicine that ´cures it all´. One day I came home with my bag full of weird leaves from various plants, roots and pills to take. Let’s just say I like to stick to the natural route from now on.

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about humility, and how it’s the starting base for all of our other decisions and our character. How if we´re humble, we understand and recognize our limits, how we are so weak and fragile as mortals and need as much help from the lord as possible. With this, we become teachable and we listen to guidance and direction. At home sometimes I thought that having faith meant just following blindly. But I’m learning a lot about how having real faith means you trust enough in the lord to know he knows better than us, he has a better plan for us, and we just need to take the first step because after that he will lead and guide our path!

Also special shoutout to P-DADDY for his bday today woohooo! I’ll be eating good tonight!! Rice and beans-ask me if I’m surprised.... but happy birthday dad! I love dad because he’s nice and inclusive to everyone around him, knows lots about the scriptures and teaches us the importance of them. 

I love you all. Hope this week is great!!

Sister Walker

February 8, 2016 - 7 Meses People!

                                               Transfer Day - No More Dual Americans!

Hey guys what a crazy week! 

Most of my week was traveling, with transfers and then we had a leaders meeting in Maceio the next day and then they didn’t have buses for us to go home when we needed to because of Carnaval so we had to sleep at another sisters apartment in Maceio for the night and leave super early the next day to come back to Estancia. The annoying thing was that it was all up to the elders to plan (who thought that was a good idea?) so no one knew what was going on or what time we had to be at the bus station or anything so I called so many people trying to figure it out for myself and someone gave me a wrong number and I ended up calling some man named Paulo 2 times on accident.... sorry Paulo. 

 But finally we made it back and started to work again. Its super great to be with Sister Barbosa again, it kinda feels like she never left and we just picked up where we left off. It’s even better now because I can actually contribute to our companionship and she can lean on me more now. It was interesting what we learned in our training was really to make the difference in our own areas, and if things aren’t working, we have to stop what we’re doing and change our methods! Like duh, it’s so obvious but I never even thought of that before. We talked a lot about working with the members more effectively. I realized you have to care about the members and get to know them before they’ll give you references. I was thinking about all of the missionaries that have already served in our ward, or had dinner with us at our house, and how few of them I actually remember. But the ones I do, are the ones that actually cared about our family, asked about us, served us, wanted to get to know us. So that’s the kind of missionary I want to be here too. I need to be more creative with activities here in the branch and all that- any ideas??

I feel like I don’t have anything else to say, we barely had time to work this week!! But I love you guys and hope you have a great week! Don’t forget to help the sisters!

Sister Walker

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