Wednesday, July 27, 2016

In Chapeco

Well oi família e amigos. 

I arrived in Chapecó at 6:15 tuesday morning and it was FREEZING!!! It is a lot colder here than any other area I have been in. I traveled alone, but it was totally uneventful. 
Saying goodbye at the bus station

Famous Florianopolis bridge from the bus



Chapecó is huge and has a TON of hills. Which is exactly the opposite of what people told me. The weather here is super wacky. It´s so cold and foggy in the morning that you can barely see anything and then after lunch we are sweating like crazy because it is so hot. And then 5 o´clock comes around and it already starts getting cold again. 

Me and Sister Costa
Well, I have a new comp, Sister E. Costa. She is from Manaus! She says it´s a city there...not just boats and rivers and forests like I thought....she is really excited about the work, so that´s awesome. And she loves to do contacts, which is great! 

Well, here there are a lot of orange trees. I swear there are orange trees in everyone´s backyard. So we drink fresh orange juice at a lot of the lunches and members and investigators send us home with cuties! (aka clementines!) It is super awesome! 

Here, the church is in the Elder´s area. There is a reallly big main road that splits our area with theirs, We have one side, and we can´t cross the road or it is their side. But the church is in their area and we have to take a bus and then walk 20 minutes to get there. 

They have started a "open house" with the wards here. Every Thursday us sisters and at least one of the three companionships of Elders in our district goes to the church and we wait outside and invite everyone who passes by to come inside for a tour of the church. And we invite them to church on Sunday! It is pretty cool. A different idea. Just started last transfer, so they haven´t seen too many results yet, but we are hoping that it helps. 

Our district is 10 people again. 2 new elders from the CTM. And two other American elders. It´s pretty chill. 
Our District in Chapeco


Well, we have a couple investigators here with some good potential, but I want to tell you about just one of them. 
Her name is Maristela. She has a 2 year old boy who is extremely intelligent and sometimes makes it difficult to have a lesson. And she visited the church once 7 years ago with a member. Well, the other sisters found her and started teaching her. This week in the first visit we taught her about prophets and it went really well. At the end of the visit she started asking about baptism! It was awesome. The second visit we taught the rest of the Restoration of the Gospel to her, and left a Book of Mormon. We invited her to be baptized and she said yes!!! :) We still have to set a date, and she still has to come to church because for some reason or another she didn´t come yesterday. But she is really excited about it all! Please pray for her and that she will make it to church. Something always happens that makes it so she can´t go. 

Well, hope you are all doing good! 
I love you! 

Sister Wilkins

Monday, July 18, 2016

TRANSFERS AND 1 YEAR!

Oi família e amigos!!! 

Well, I have got a feeling that I probably will not be able to include everything that I want to in this email because this week was slightly crazy. But...I will do my best. 

Well, first of all we got transfer calls this week. I am being transferred...to Chapecó. Which is literally on the other side of the mission. so I will be getting on a bus tonight and riding for 11-12 hours to get there! wahoo! haha. I will have a Brazilian companion who just got here last transfer. It should be pretty fun! 

Well, we were doing contacts on the street one day here...well, like every other day. But this day was different. WE got close to giving up because it was getting cold and dark and no one was on the street. So, we decided to walk one more street...and what happened?! TWO police officers stopped us asking if we were American. I stopped and said yes, asked them where they were from...and there began the conversation. One of them knew a little about the church and started asking about the Book of Mormon...so what did we do? We had a lesson on the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith´s vision right there on the street with two policemen whose boss kept telling them they needed to leave, but they kept talking. It was AWESOME! 

I don´t know if you guys remember the couple that I told you about last week? The returned missionary and her husband? Well, we got to teach them a couple times this week and they are AMAZING!!! Bruno doesn´t have a lot of religious background, but Naira has taught him a little and he already recognizes the Spirit in his home when we talk about the gospel!!! IT is wonderful!!! He really gets it, and I love watching him and seeing how happy he is learning and talking about it! Families like this one really make missionary work worth it.

I celebrated one year on the mission this week! 
Add caption
Cut up shirt for one year!

We celebrated by going to Floripa to pick up my bus ticket for transfers and then ordering a wonderful Brazilian pizza. Best in the world. 
It was pretty great. Thank you all for all your support and helping me get to this point.


Well, 7 and a half months with my little trainee...have to say that these months have not been easy. Sister Ogle and I have been through a lot together. We have struggled, had crazy roommates, and worked like crazy. We´ve cried together and laughed together and seen people change their lives over and over again. We have met some of the most wonderful people and we have had numerous doors slammed in our faces and hung up on over the phone. We have been through a lot together and I love her more than I can explain. She has shown me how to be a better missionary. She has taught me how to more fully love other people and to serve. She has shown me more of what it means to be a Christlike example and to really help these people that we are teaching...Sister Ogle probably won´t read this...but if she gets the chance, I hope that you know that I LOVE YOU! :) 

Well, I love you all. Thank you again for all your love and support. Let me know what I can do to help you! 

Matthew 26 and Hebrews 13:5-6
This was the majority of my study this week. It was pretty great. Maybe you´d like it too. 
Love you! 
Sister Wilkins


Wednesday, July 13, 2016

WE MOVED!!!

Oi familia e amigos! 

well, as you can tell from the title, this week we moved apartments. That was the majority of our week. It was some pretty crazy stuff. We got everything in our apartment packed in about 4 hours. That was a miracle. And the next morning all the furniture was taken apart, everything loaded into the moving truck and everything moved and put back together in about 5 hours. It was some pretty crazy stuff. The guys that moved us were carrying like four boxes on their backs up 3 flights of stairs, a washing machine on their head...it was crazy stuff. 

Well, this week has been rough still. Work is still hard but we are doing what we can to get it going here. 

We had a fireside with President in our ward yesterday and he talked about scripture study and missionary work...and marriage...that was pretty random. But it was super good. I think that the ward is going to help us a bunch! 

Subway in the new apartment
Yesterday at church we had a less active returned missionary show up at church with her husband and ask us to come and start teaching him so he can be baptized. JAW DROP. That was a miracle if I ever knew one. No one that we invited or that said they would come to church was actually there. But things are going. 

This week we get transfer calls. We know that something is going to happen, but not sure what. Let you know next week. 

Hope you are all doing well. Sorry this is kinda short. Not much happened. I love you! 

My district



Sister Wilkins

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Happy Fourth of July


Oi família e amigos! 

This week has been pretty rough. No one we are teaching is progressing, and everyone else wants nothing to do with the church. It´s been a week of rejection. Sometimes missionary work is really frustrating. 

But this week we had zone conference with President. 



It was super good. The APs talked about weekly planning and how to conduct an effective weekly planning. And then they talked about how the standards of excellency are possible and what we have to reach those goals. 


We have been having trouble getting people to come to church in our area and I guess we are the only ones who are consistently having this problem with the São José and Floripa zones. So everyone was giving us suggestions on how to get people there. A majority we had already tried, but it was interesting. It was cool to get some advice. 

President talked about "Saltar do Barco" (I am not sure what the English translation for saltar is...I think it is get off or leave, something like that...leave the boat). He talked about getting out of the comfort zone and doing better. It was based off a talk/fireside from Elder Bednar. It was pretty good. 

Then he showed us the "Atonement and Missionary Work" video with parts of Elder Holland and President Eyring´s talks. It was super good. Of course all us sisters were practically in tears if they weren´t rolling down our cheeks already. But it was super good. It was in that moment watching that video  that something really struck me about the Atonement. I´ve been trying to get better about how tired I am on the mission...leave the sleepiness at home and just go out and work. And then it hit me. The following was my thought process: "Did Christ get tired during the Atonement? Probably. But did He stop? Did He give up on us? NO (add Elder Holland´s voice in on that last no) Thus, we as missionaries, we as members of the church cannot give up on the children of God. He never gave up on us. We are standing shoulder to shoulder with Him in this work." 
It is possible! We cannot accept to tire out in this work because it is His. He didn´t tire out doing His work for us, we can´t doing His. 
I don´t have time to type the courage study from two weeks ago that I wanted to share with you , but I will take pics and send them. 

I love you all! 
Have a good week! 

Sister Wilkins