Hello again family and friends!
Once again I need to apologize. Time to email here is super short and I get more emails than I ever expected to and don´t have time to reply to many. I LOVE YOU ALL THOUGH!!! :) Don´t forget that! And Please don't stop!
This week was super crazy!
First best thing that happened: we went Proselyting. Sister Child and I gave out 7 Books of Mormon in 25 minutes. As a district we gave out 24 in 25 minutes. Miracles happen guys.
We didn´t really know how to start at first, so we just kind of sat there for a second and there was a Bolivia festival going on next to us, and this guy came up to us and said "Is that a Book of Mormon? Can I have one?" And we were both like YES!!!!!!! :) So we chatted with him for a bit and gave him a Book of Mormon and showed him the phone number he could call and I bore my testimony to him about it.
The next lady we talked to, like a minute later asked if she could have one too and then just kept walking!!! And then I decided we needed to talk to these guys, just kind of standing off to the side, so we went over there and I started talking to him and he points me to the guy next to him and he was a member! AND THEY SPOKE ENGLISH!!! He let me talk to him in English!!! And I got him to take a Book of Mormon!!! It was awesome!!!
It was such an amazing experience. I don´t think I have ever been so happy in my life. And it was amazing to see how many people on this small block we couldn´t leave were thumbing through the Book of Mormon or carrying it with them!!! I love this!!!!!!! There´s nowhere else I´d rather be right now.
Our teacher, one of them, is kind of crazy. She is a no-nonsense kind of gal and has a strange sense of humor, but I´ve been told that´s what Brazil is like. I like her well enough, I just don´t totally agree with some of the things she does. For example, in class one day she asked us all to tell her how much of what she said we understood, on average. It was rough.
Our other teacher just hurt some ligaments in his leg and we don´t know what happened (this was two days ago) but he won´t be teaching us any more, which is sad because we all really liked him. He was an awesome teacher.
Now we have a new teacher, who is also pretty good, but we´ve only had two classes with him so far and one of them he was acting as a sub, so I´m not totally sure what he´s like yet.
So I realized that I have had 7 investigators and I´ve been on my mission FOR A MONTH!!! CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?!?! I sure can´t!!! It seems so much longer and so much shorter all at the same time.
One of our investigator´s names is Bruna. We got her to commit to baptism in the second or third lesson. She´s a good investigator. I also recited the First Vision to her in Portuguese the last lesson!!!! LOOKING HER IN THE EYE!!! I was so so so excited!!! It was awesome! And she came back to class and told me that I had recited it with power and heart and I didn´t miss a word. It was super awesome!
Our old investigator was José. We didn´t get very far with him (Because of the ligament thing). But he was interested and learning a lot.
We have another new investigator, Vinicius. He´s awesome. We only had one lesson with him. ?We asked him to follow the example of the Savior and get baptized and he said he didn´t want to say yes, but as he continued to learn he would think about it.
Monday night when we were having class, I was having a rough day and Irmã nearly had me in tears. We were learning por and para (By, through, in way of, etc....) and I had no idea what was going on and I couldn´t get anything right and my eyes were filling with tears. The Elders kept trying to encourage me and help me, because they could tell I was about to cry, and although it didn´t help a whole lot, I appreciated the effort. Then we had a lady come in and tell us that we were doing companionship study wrong, so I was still about to cry. It was a rough night. But it´s ok. With the Savior, all is possible.
Today we got to go to the Campinas temple and it was absolutely gorgeous!!!! I LOVE IT!!!
The session was in English again. Blessings!
We are getting another new Elder from Provo in our district today. 36 Americans arrived here today! The Lord´s work is progressing in Brasil! I know it is!
WE GOT TO WATCH ELDER NELSON FOR DEVOTIONAL LAST NIGHT!!!! He spoke in Provo on Aug. 4. We missed him by 6 days!!! AGGHHHHH!!! :´( But it´s fine. It was really cool. He spoke about the Lord´s goals and he talked about how we are like the Stripling warriors, and at one point every single one of them was wounded. We are all too, in some way. We all have faults and challenges and none of us is perfect, but it´s ok. We are trying our best.
I broke the toilet in our room. Haha. Figured that would be a fun story for you. Monday night, it´s like 11, we are supposed to be in bed at 10:30. It´s our last night with our roommates. I´m washing my hands and the toilet flooded over. Super fun adventure. We just kept laughing about how I broke the toilet. It was entertaining and no idea how it happened, but it´s cool haha. Now I can tell everyone I broke an CTM toilet.
Elder Banz and Elder King are our zone leaders. Sister Child and Elder King gave talks on Sunday (we are the oldest district) and they did SO GOOD!!! I´m pretty sure Elder Banz and I are going to be giving talks this week. HAHA
The food here is awesome! We´ve had pancakes and doritos this week. So that´s cool! We also had hot dogs. But hot dogs here are different. They put mashed potatoes and little shoe-string potatoes on them. It´s weird. I put the shoe-strings on mine and it was surprisingly really good, but I´m not adventurous enough to do the mashed potatoes haha. I´m still trying lots of new food. I feel like I´ve become a new person in that way. Most of the time I just don´t even think about it and just do it, and most the time it´s good. But occasionally dessert tastes like Grape Nyquil and we all laugh at the faces everyone else is making while they try it.
I had a Brazilian guy tell me my eyes look like the sea the other day at lunch. I swear I turned bright red. He thought it was so cool though.
The language is going so well. Alma 29 we read as a class yesterday (in Portuguese of course) and I realized that, verse 15, nothing I learn in this language is my own success. It is all God´s. This is all his work. And because of Him and His help I can learn this language.
I finished reading the BOM on Thursday. It is so true. I love it. I love telling people about it. It is the most correct book on the earth. It was translated by Joseph Smith and IT IS TRUE! :)
I love you all.
Good luck with school starting!
Also happy Father´s day to all you dads! Especially mine!!! LOVE YOU DADEO!! (Sunday was Father´s day here in Brasil).
Praying for you always.
All my love,
Sister Wilkins
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| Across the street from the CTM is Mr. Cheney's Cookies, the only place in Brazil that makes American style cookies. It is a popular place for the missionaries to visit on P-Day. They take pictures of the new missionaries and post them on facebook, which allows us a picture of our missionary while they are in the CTM since they can't send any. This was from today. |
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