Monday, November 24, 2014

November 24, 2014




I´m soooooooo excited to tell you about my new area. Seriously, I´m in HEAVEN!!!! Pecém is the most beautiful place. The people here are so amazing and my companion, Sister Cabana is the best and i´m just so happy! :) I feel very blessed to be serving here in Pecém.

 

Last Monday we spent all day running around getting our bags all packed and everything arranged for the transfer. Sister Machado and I were both transferred we had to figure out how to get to our new areas. They were too far to ask sonmeone to drive us. Pecém is about 1 hour from our last area. We got all that figured out and then worked our last night in JD América. We went and saw our investigator Lorena. We wanted to say bye and give her the option of continuing to learn from the other sister missionaries. She was super sad to see us go, but she said that she has a friend that she is going to bring to church next week and she is moving to a house near the chapel! How cool is that?! I know that the other sisters in jd america will take really good care of her and I´m excited to see what´ll happen with her! That night we had pizza with the sisters in our house as a little farewell party! 

 

Tuesday was nuts....seriously. Since pecém is so far away, I needed to go on a bus. A sister in the ward dropped me off at the bus station and I found the bus, but it wasn´t leaving until 1:20pm. It was 8 o'clock in the morning and I needed to be in my new area at 11am! I didn´t have a cell phone but I asked a lady and she let me use hers. I tried calling the assistants but they didn´t answer! The lady told me there was a bus leaving from another station, but she didn´t know exactly when. I finally decided the best option was to just get a taxi, and 100 reais (about $45 US) later I got to Pecém!! After being in the taxi about twenty minutes outside of Fortaleza, I realized how different it would be here in Pecém. There were tons of palm trees and cows and horses and beaches and some jungle. I knew I would love this place, but I didn´t realize I´d love it this much! My companion, Sister Cabana, is amazing! She´s from Argentina and has been out about 7 months on the mission. She is so sweet and fun to be with! I feel really blessed to have a companion like her! Our area is right next to the beach. The roads we walk on here are all sand and rock. Our house is really nice and clean and we have hot water to shower with! The first night, I didn´t want to leave the shower! The people here are amazing! They are all so loving and laid back. I love all the investigators here! There is one family we are teaching right now that has 4 kids. The mom's name is Marquilene, and she´s so sweet. We´re also teaching a really cool couple, Roberto and Elizabeth.

 

On wednesday the sisters in our house made me breakfast. It was tapioca and cevada..it´s different but it´s very good! Our district meeting was in our house and it was just us sisters because it´s too far to travel to meet with any other missionaries. That day we taught a new couple, Samara and Faviano. we taught them about the restoration and Faviano said the closing prayer. It was SO powerful! Every Wednesday night we go to the casapela (chapel that´s actually a house) and have Leitura, where we read the book of mormon with members and investigators. One of our investigators, Junior, was there. It was cool to see the casapela! It´s tiny and there is a swimming pool where we do baptisms. It´s so awesome here! 

 

Thursday we did our weekly planning and I figured out who is who in our area, so that was really good! After that we got to work! First we taught a lady, Claudia. This week we´ll go back to meet her husband and teach her whole family. This is what I love about Pecém, there are tons of families here! After that I got to meet Nathalia. She´s really sweet too! After that we taught Marquileien and her nephew who lives with her. We taught about the book of mormon and invited them to read it. then we taught Roberto and Elizabeth! We talked to them about the blessings of marriage. We said ´´Roberto, do you love Elizabeth?´´ and he was like ´´yeah, but I don´t know if she loves me.´´! She said she loved him and they said they want to get married! They´re going to choose a date soon. I´m so excited for them! My first wedding on the mission! Afterwards we taught our investigator, Junior. He is so awesome! He´s from Rio Grande do Norte, so his accent is different. He´s 19 but looks about 30...! But he´s a really really cool guy.
 

Friday I went on exchanges! I went to Plan Alto which is Sister Machados new area and worked with her companion! It was so good to see Sister Machado again. Sister Machado doesn´t like the interior as much because you have to do a lot of walking. It was good to be able to talk to her and remind her that shés going to be okay! I loved working with her. Her companion, Sister Alcocer, was super fun to work with! We got caught in a huge rainstorm and for the first time since I came to Brasil I felt cold! It was marvelous! I got to know the senior couple that serves in their area. They are so sweet! It was a really fun day

 

Saturday was seriously CRAZY! I loved it! I came back to my area and we had lunch with the Branch President and Sister Walker, the sister whose place I took here. She's going home and her whole family came to pick her up so they ate with us too! I was so nervous to see an american family haha! But it was sooo awesome! It was so nice to speak in english, but I kept speaking in portguese instead of english. Sister Cabana would want to say something to Sister Walker's mom and so I´d start translating but in the middle of my sentence I realized I was speaking in Portuguese again, haha. It was so good for me to see some normal americans and realize that I am going to be okay when I get home! I was feeling a little stressed about going back to the U.S. and adapting to speaking in english and being ´´normal´´ but I know it´ll be awesome now! Sister Walkers family brought us a HUGE bottle of syrup and gave us all a little bag of american candies like sour patch kids and sweidsh fish. I know I´ll survive these last 3 weeks ;) When we said goodbye, Sister Walker's dad tried to hug me. I was backing away from him and he was like ´´it´s okay!! I´m a dad! We can hug missionaries´´ haha. It was good to have a dad hug, I won´t lie! The rest of our day we spent preachin! We taught Marquilene and read the Book of Mormon with her and helped her understand better. That night I met Clalber and Dafne. Clalber was baptized 2 weeks ago. They are a really sweet couple and I´m excited to get to work with them.

 


My first sunday in Pecém was awesome! Since we don´t have church until 4 here, we did our studies in the morning. We also taught Junior and it was an awesome lesson. he told us he wanted to stop drinking coffee so we helped him figure out what he could do to quit. In the middle of our lesson he pulled out some candies and gave them to us and they were coffee flavored, haha! We told him he couldn´t eat those if he wanted to give up coffee. He didn´t believe us intil we showed him the ingredients and that they had coffee in it. so funny! We talked to him about baptism and how he´s feeling. He has been taking the lessons for awhile but he has this feeling that he wants to know more before he´s baptized. It´s so cool being Sister Cabanas companion because she has this perspective of being a member for just 4 years. She shared a lot of experiences with Junior that helped him out and now he is praying to know what day to be baptized! After lunch I got to see the beach here for the first time up close! I was seriously one step away from the sand! It is SO beautiful! Sunday afternoon here is the time to get everyone ready for church! We stopped by almost all of our investigators houses and reinvited them to church. I love the Pecém branch! We had  a total of 24 people in church yesterday, including us sisters and our investigators. Without the investigators and us there would have only been only 18 people. crazy right?! Sacrament meeting starts a little before 6pm. It is just about the same time as when the sun is seting this time of year. We have sacrament meeting in the front of the casapela so we just have a roof over our heads but there aren´t walls or anything. It is so pretty and spiritual! It was alike testimony meeting at girls camp. I loved it! 

 
I feel so blessed to get to end my mission in this area. Of course there are challenges, but I feel like I´m really in heaven! 

 

I hope you have a wonderful thanksgiving! I think I will try to make some mashed potatos on Thursday. That´s when Thanksgiving is right? Love you tons!

Sister Pehrson (or sister Percy Jackson. That´s my nick name here...haha) 

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