This weeks message is gonna have tons of exclamation points
because I just found out that I´m being transferred for the
interior!!!!!!! This has been my dream ever since I got here! The interior
of Brasil is way isolated and they don´t have all the big buildings like they
have here in the city! It's all trees and BEACH!!! I´m so excited! I´m sad to leave Jardim America,
but I really am excited for this new opportunity! The area I´m going to is
called Pecém. I´ll serve with Sister Cabana, she´s a new sister in the
mission!! I´ll be serving in a Branch, which will be way different!! Crazy!!
I thought that I would be staying in Jardim America for the rest of my
mission! But the Lord has different plans for me!
This week was really awesome!! It was so cool to see that
the 2 best weeks in this area were the weeks when I fasted the Sunday
before. It wasn´t anything super miraculous that happened, We just had faith to keep working hard and that made all the difference!
Monday was pretty crazy. Sister Machado had a really hard
time emailing home because she found out that her mom has just been at home alone because all of her siblings are either married and don´t
live at home anymore or work a lot and can´t be with her. She was feeling
really stressed out and like she needed to be at home to help her mom. I
gave her the best advice that I could and then she ended up calling
President and talking to him for a really long time about everything. After
the week we had she was feeling so much better and she knows that here is the
best place for her to be right now.
Tuesday we worked like crazy!!! We didn´t get to teach a lot
but we marked a ton of appointments for later in the week. It was so cool to
see how many prepared people there were in this area that we had never talked
with! We taught a girl, Vitoria who is returning to the church right now.
Everyone in her family is a member of the church, but none of them are
attending right now. We talked to her about personal progress and helped
her get started with setting some goals. We also taught our investigator
Lorena. We had to focus a lot and asked her questions, to make sure that she
understood what we are teaching and to see if she is really interested or
not.
Wednesday was amazing! We only had one appointment that fell
through! Our first appointment of the day was with Regina, a new lady that we
had met the day before. She said it was amazing to hear about
Joseph Smith and the Church that Jesus Christ had established when he lived on the earth. She has a lot of potential!
After that we went and taught Michelle. She had read the Book of Mormon and had
questions about what she read. It was an awesome lesson! After that we taught
Liduina. She´s very strong in her own
religion and so she had questions about everything that we said to
her. But she wanted us to come back and teach her so this next week the Sisters
who are still in the area will teach her.
Thursday was amazing, sad, weird, awesome, roller coaster
day! We had our misssion conference, the last one of my mission! It was amazing
because I got to see all my old companions and friends from the
mission! I was sooo happy to see Sister Egbert! She´s doing really great
and loving Brasil of course! Seeing everyone just made me so happy and grateful for everything
I´ve been blessed with as a missionary. My mission has been exactly what I
needed. I bore my departing testimony and that was the weirdest feeling!
It felt so good and made me so grateful for the choice I made to serve a
mission. There are so many people I´ve met, especially companions, who have
impacted my life and taught me so much. I can´t imagine my life without
all the experiences and friends and knowledge I´ve gained on the mission! I´m
so blessed! After the conference we taught Lorena and that night had a ward
activity. Activities here are difernet than the ones in the U.S.! The
activity is usually about 30 minutes long and then everyone just leaves, nobody
stays and talks!
Friday we spent the morning and the afternoon and basically
the whole day doing contacts! But it was great because we met some people who
were really receptive! We taught a lady whose 18 year old son passed away last
year from cancer. It was so powerful to teach her the plan of salvation! We
taught Vitoria again and got to know her mom. Her mom is awesome, but she can´t
come to church because she´s always working. It was good to see how
we can help Vitoria and her family and I hope that her mom will find a way
to come to church!
Saturday was another awesome day! We went back to teach a
guy, that we´d met the day before doing contacts. His brother and sister
in law were there and they ended up being really interested in our message!
Later we taught Michelle. Our lesson with her went really well! We talked about
the Plan of Salvation and where her son who passed away is right now. We also
talked about how little kids don´t need to be baptized because they aren´t
capable of sinning. This was really good for her to hear because she was afraid
since her son died before being baptized. We also taught the mom of a recently
baptized member! We helped them a few weeks ago when they were moving so the
mom invited us over and made some food for us. She's really happy with the
change she has seen in her daughter. I hope in the future she will want to learn more, too! Saturday on the
mission is always the day to get everyone ready for church on Sunday. So we
spent a lot of time making sure people had a way to get to church and that they
remembered the address and everything. Michelle and Lorena both said that they
would be there the next day,but sadly neither of them came!
Sunday morning we got a text from Lorena saying she wouldn't
go to church and then we called Michelle and she also said she wouldn´t go. it
was so sad!! I think one of the hardest parts of the mission is just
accepting the choices of other people! I want so badly for them to be
happier and have better lives, but they have to make the choice to do so.Tthe
good news is that Vitoria went to church and had a good time! Church was so
good for me yesterday! I was feeling so bummed out that Michelle and
Lorena weren´t at church, but at church I got a little note from one of
the young women that I love in the ward. She wrote how much she admires me
and how she wants to be a missionary like me someday. It was so sweet! Heavenly
Father always knows when we need to feel loved! Also, Leonardo blessed the
sacrament for the first time yesterday! He told us later that he was shaking
the whole time and had to say a prayer before that he would actually have a
voice to be able to bless the sacrament haha. I love these moments as a
missionary where you see someone you taught becoming stronger in the gospel.
There is nothing better!!
I felt so blessed by Heavenly Father this week! It was like
the minute that I decided to really trust him and put more faith in him,
he immediately blessed us with so many opporutnities to teach and do his work.
I´m glad my time here ended on such an amazing note!
I am excited to tell
you all about my new area and how gorgeous the beach is here next week ;)
Love,
Sister Pehrson
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