August 11, 2014

This week was awesome!! A little intense and crazy, but awesome nonetheless!! 

On monday after we finished emailing we went and taught Neto! We taught him about the word of wisdom and we thought it would be a piece of cake!But he had a hard time accepting the whole no coffee thing. In the end he decided he could give it up! It was so funny that day when we taught him he was thanking us for our visits and he said he really likes our visits, and not just because we´re pretty. haha! He is awesome! Our night was really awesome too! We had a family home evening with a lady who works on Sunday's so she doesn't come to church much. We taught about temples. It's a little hard to motivate people here to be worthy of a temple recommend. The closest temple is in Recife.  Not everybody has the means to go there and the temple here probably won't be finished for another 5 years. So it's a little hard, but we are working on helping people reallly have a vision and desire to get to the temple! I remember before my mission when I heard they were building a temple here. I was super excited and thought it was really cool! But now i am so, so, SOOOO excited to have a temple here. These people need it!!! I hope I can come back for the dedication! After that lesson our other appointment fell through so we worked on setting up our appointments for the next day. Lots of our appts here fall through because people just forget, so it was good to be able to stop by and remind them that we´d be coming the next day!

 

Tuesday was super good! The family we ate lunch with has a son who is always visiting people with us and helping us out. On Monday he told us he had a surprise for us at our lunch. We were thinking it would be some sort of food, but when we got to their house for lunch we found Neto sitting there!! The son had invited Neto for lunch!! It was seriously the greatest thing ever!!! I'm definitely going to do stuff like that for the missionaries when I get home! After lunch we taught Neto. We decided we would give something up to help him with his decision! I chose soda! It's super hard because EVERYONE and their mother here gives us soda, but I´m 6 days without soda now and stayin strong :) And now I will really know how it is to quit something you really, really, really like!! It will definitely be good for me! After teaching Neto we taught Tiago. Lessons with him are so interesting. We literally dont teach! We read a few verses with him and he understands everything! He can never come to church because of his work. But he will visit some day! After that we taught this man and his wife who we met last week. they turned out to be pretty solid! They had really good questions and have a lot of interest in the gospel, so we will see what happens! After that we helped some people who were recently baptized learn about family history! It was really fun!

 

Wednesday was awesome! In the morning we taught Neto about fasting and tithing. Not only did he accept fasting as a commandment, but he's super excited to try it out! haha being a missionary makes me realize that I should be way more excited to do things like fasting! After lunch we taught Luiziane! She's super sweet. She was baptized recently and doing her best to stay strong in the gospel, and we are helping her out! Later that night we had the coolest lesson with a girl named Brenda. She was baptized when she was 8 but stopped going to church for awhile. The sisters here have been working with her to help her come back and right now she's doing super well! She's studying the scriptures and going to church and praying! She's so awesome! She's also preparing to receive her patriarchal blessing!! So we talked with her about that and it was really special. It was one of those lessons where youre teaching but you're also learning! 

 

Thursday was soo amazing! First we had our zone conference which was great! The assistant's shared a really inspiring message about developing Christ like attributes. They challenged us to choose one we want to work on and I felt like I should work on charity! I'm nice to people to their face a lot but sometimes I dont have the nicest thoughts about them and I don't go out of my way to serve others like the Savior did, so I'm going to work on developing this attribute and really following Christs example. I also started studying the new testament so I can see how the Savior showed his love for others so I can follow his example! After that President Bonini spoke and man was it powerful! I have no doubt that he is called of God! It was really cool! He talked about good families, better families, and the best families to teach and how if we want to teach the best families we have to be the best missionaires. The qualifications for the best missionary weren't what I thought they'd be. It was all about doing good and then inspiring others to do the same. I'm really excited to work on becoming the best missionary I can be and really implementing the things he talked about into my service! After the conference we taught Neto. We spent an hour talking to him about repentance and about God's love for him. The spirit was so strong!!

 

On Friday we spent all morning studying and trying to figure out what we could do to help our investigators. We went to our lesson and found the person very sad. We shared a few scriptures. I never saw that person more sad than I saw him that day. He gave us all the alochol he had in his house and we threw it out. He also told us that day he had lost his job, so he didn't have that to distract him anymore! That entire day I was so worried about him. It's interesting how as a missionary we don't just have our own lives to worry about but were constantly worried about what the people we are teaching are doing and their sadnesses become our sadnesses too! It's a weird feeling. The rest of our day was great! We were able to teach some awesome people who are really prepared to hear our message! The adventure of the day was that on Thursday night we didn't have water again. It's normal to not have it at night sometimes but we woke up on Friday and still didn't have it! We came home that night and expected to have it, but we still didn't have it!!! We finally got to shower on Saturday morning and it was the best feeling of my life!! I probably looked and smelled a lot like Mom and Dad did on trek :) 

 

Saturday was so awesome! We had english class and Neto came!! I was so, so, so happy! The bad part was that he was not feeling well at all. He was super dizzy and could hardly sit still. He looked soo miserable! But I'm happy we get to help him! In the afternoon we taught some awesome people! One is Maria, who is in her 50s. She has a church but she said she's never really felt anything there and that she's never had an answer to a prayer. I'm excited to teach her more! Also we taught Francisca, who has the fattest, cutest baby ever! His name is Mateus. One of the hardest rules as a missionary is that we can't hold little kids :(That night we had a really cool experience! We were standing near a bus stop and this lady asked us if we were waiting for the bus. We told her no and she looked disappointed and said she didn't want to wait there alone because it's dangerous there at night. We told her we would wait with her! We waited and waited and waited and her bus never came! But it was awesome because we got to teach her and she basically told us her whole life story. She's definitely prepared to hear the gospel! She doesn't live in our area, but the elders will teach her! It's cool to see how God works and places us in the paths of people we need to talk to! Nothing is ever coincidence! 

 

Sunday was good! Like most sunday mornings it started out a little stressful. We were doing our Sunday morning church round up and NO ONE was answering their doors!! We were a little bummed out and when we got to church Neto wasn't there. We quickly ran to his house and had to wake him up. We waited a bit and he got ready and came to church. And church definitely helped him out. After church we had lunch and it was our 3rd time in a row eating lasagna. the lasagna here is good, but super heavy! I couldnt eat it all so I had to hide some of it in my napkin. In the afternoon we were teaching a family who had a bunch of pet birds. Their cages were on the ceiling and I got pooped on during the lesson. Sacrifice brings blessings, right? :) That night we taught Manuele who was baptized a while ago. She has a boyfriend who isn't the greatest guy and she was asking us what she should do so we talked to her about personal revelation and it was a really good lesson. She was a little upset with us because we asked her what she would do if the Lord told her to leave her boyfriend, but in the end she said that she would do whatever god asked her to do! So we will see what happens! 

 

I love my companion! She's teaching me a ton and I love serving with her!

Keep Neto in your prayers this week!

I hope you all have an amaaazing week! Love you all so much and am so grateful to have a family like you!

amo voces!!! 

Sister Pehrson