Week 20 - Cannibal squirrel

 Olá tudo mundo!

I hope you are doing well! 

We're officially on Instagram!!! It feels super illegal to be on there as a missionary.. But it's awesome! People are a lot more active, and a lot more responsive than on Facebook! And there are a lot more people on there. On Facebook, we've had a really hard time finding Portuguese speakers to teach, (basically 0) but after only 15 mins of tracting on Instagram, we found a lady who is from Brazil, and she is in our area!

Instagram is also more professional and higher quality, (and sometimes people are more judgmental) so it's a lot scarier to post things and message people, while on Facebook I don't really care. It's just a bunch of old people. So using instagram has helped me be more genuine! But yeah, we're excited. If you want to follow my account, it's @melodiewride (and I promise I won't post 6 things a day like I did a few days ago. I just dumped lots of pictures in so I would have a decent amount of stuff to start out with.) And we're planning on making our Indiana mission page this next week, and we're hype! I'll let you know... Haha missionary work is a lot different than I expected. 

We also had a super good zone conference this week, and I've recommitted myself to give it my all, and make the most of every moment. I've only got like 13 months left! 🤯 

I've also been a little frustrated that we can only do so much. We're out here to find and teach, but most of our time isn't spent doing that. I did the math: We have 112 hours a week where we're awake and working, minus time for meals, personal and companion study and language study, then page meetings, social media meetings, mission devotionals, district council, average time for zone conference, weekly planning, social media planning, service and P-day, and we're left with about 25 hours a week. That's only 3.6 hours a day of teaching and finding! (also not including time to make videos and posts for the page). It's just crazy because I thought that finding people to teach and teaching lessons would be at least 80% of our day. Nope! How did people ever have time to knock doors all day? Idk. I'm still new at this, I don't know how missionary work is done. But also I feel like 3.6 hours a day is plenty of time since we're not teaching very many people, and there's only so many friend requests you can send in a day. If any of you RMs or missionaries serving right now are reading this, let me know what your schedule looked/looks like, I'm curious to see how they compare. Or if you have any advice on what we should do to find people, let me know! 

Also happy national squirrel appreciation day 4 days ago! There are lots of squirrels here and they're kinda cute. Except for that one I saw who was eating another dead squirrel. That was weird. 

But I think that's all that happened this week. I hope you all are doing well, and if you need anything let me know! 

Pictures!

1-2. So apparently Peter went skiing?? From what I remember he can barely walk. He's so stinkin cute 🤧

3. My Instagram page thing 

4. Meme

5. I made pão de queijo! I'll admit, it doesn't look right. I think I messed up. But it tastes good 🤷‍♀️

6. Someone please tell me that this wingspan board is false because there's no way that bald eagles are 8 feet wide

7. Service! It was so nice to talk to people in person.

Week 19 - Instagram

 Olá!! 

I hope you're all doing well, and I love hearing what you are up to! 

I'm doing well. It's been weird adjusting to being in a companionship with just me and Sister Steele. It's so quiet. But it's still a party! 

But yeah this week was good! Although being stuck inside all day, with only one other person to talk to, is taking a mental toll on me. I haven't seen the sun in at least 3 days. The only place we can go (other than the church building for meetings) is outside in the snow, so we're mostly in our apartment on the couch, on our phones. Not quite how I expected missionary work to be. So yeah if it seems like I'm going crazy, it's probably because I am.

But missionary work is going great! We've seen lots of little miracles this week! Lots of people have been responding to our messages, we've had some great lessons, our Facebook page has been improving a lot, and we met a lady from a Free Bible post, which I made way back in October! There's also one lady named Carolyn who was taught before, but has been super hard to contact, and suddenly she wants to do Bible studies every day!! She is so sweet. There's also this one lady named Lydia who has been on date for baptism several times, then she moved to the Ivory coast, and we've hardly heard from her at all. Well now she's back in Indiana, and we finally had a lesson with her, and she is so solid! She'll probably get baptized in the next month or so :) We were going to have both Carolyn and Lydia at church this week (which is a new record!) But we went them the wrong zoom link, so that was a big oof. But yeah, missionary work is great. I love the people here!

We're also getting Instagram! Sister Steele and I are the "Social Media Leaders" for the zone, so we pitched the idea to President Page, and he's all for it! We just have to be extra careful because it's a lot easier to get distracted on there and run into inappropriate content, but it'll be good! (It's kinda funny though how scared the missionaries are about Instagram.) We've been asking missionaries from other missions who are using it, and they it's super successful! There are more people using it, they are more willing to talk, it targets more young adults, etc.!! So the plan is that we just all of us Social Media specialists will get it to try it out, make some bomb content, start up one page and build it up, and once we get a solid idea of what we're doing and how to run it, we'll have more missionaries join in. It's exciting! It's so fun to be "pioneers" for social media work. Even with Facebook, we're just figuring it out, meeting and getting tips on how to improve and how to best find people, and it's so fun! It's so cool that we have these tools to find people now. 

Well I guess that's all for this week! Tem um boa semana! tchau! 

- Sister Wride

Week 18 - Get pranked

 Oláaaa! 

Somehow this week went by even faster than the last one! Not much happened though. But also this email is super long... So I don't blame you if you don't want to read it, I mostly write these for myself to look back on. 

But this week was good! We've been talking to lots of people on Facebook, we started to do Bible study calls with a lady named Carolyn, we had another lesson with Glenn, and we've started to introduce the gospel to our friend Laura! She is super sweet, I'll have to tell you about her another time. We also did some service at a Baptist church, sorting through lots of baby toys. Good times.

I'm not doing very good on my new years resolutions so far. On Friday I had s'mores cereal for breakfast, a cinnamon bagel and cake bites for lunch, and a boba smoothie for dinner. I think I'm gonna have to change my life motto from "can't get fat in a day" to "Can't get obese in a month!" 

Jk. Other than that one day, I've been healthier. We've started this new thing in companion study where if it's not our turn to read, we're holding a plank. It really kills after a while because we're reading the handbooks in Portuguese, and Sister Steele and I have a hard time pronouncing words correctly. Usually Sister Junot corrects me, but lately she yells "No time to explain, just go!!"

Get pranked

So there's this number I have saved in my phone that when you call, it plays the song "Never gonna give you up", and it's pretty awesome. I have this on hand in case some creepy dude asks for my number, then I can just say "Sure, it's 2484345508". (try calling it, it's kinda funny.)

So we thought it would be hilarious if we gave this number as a referral to the Spanish Elders in our district. We were like "Hey, there's someone we met who is really interested in hearing about the gospel, but he only speaks Spanish. And he's in your area! Can you call him?" And they were super excited, as if they haven't had anyone to teach in months. They were like "Sure!!!!!!!! We'll call him right now! 10 mins later they were just like "Um.. It just went to some weird voicemail. Where did you find him?" Then we had to explain to them that is was just a prank, and it was awkward. They probably cried themselves to sleep. 

Visa stuff

This Wednesday I got an email saying that I can start my visa application! This doesn't mean I'm going anywhere soon, but it's exciting!!! It'll be interesting to try and fill it out with no access to printers/copying machines, or the internet...
Anyways then that same day I got a similar email, saying the same things, same title, by the same person (but a gmail.com address this time). But then instead of the document of visa information, it was a doc that said "GET PRANKED" all over it. (pic attatched). What??? I was so confused. Was the other email a fake? A weird typo? Was this meant for someone else? Did someone hack into the Missionary department system?? I didn't know what was going on, and kinda freaking out, so I replied to it like "I am so confused. Was that last email not real? Should I not be filling out my visa?" I even asked some other reassigned missionaries like "Did you get this??" And I was about to forward the "get pranked" email to the original churchofjesuschrist.org email, when I got a reply:

"Yeah so like the first presidency has decided to not let you go back cuz you like to prank other Elders making them think that they had a golden investigator that spoke spanish, sorry Bro! Much love - the first presidency"
It was the Spanish Elders!!! 

They got me good. They actually made a fake email under the same name! Pretty clever. If anyone knows how I can get him back, let me know

Near-death experience

I almost died the other day. I was driving to a park, and I think my brain wasn't working, because for some reason I turned left on a red light! Sister Junot started freaking out, but the intersection was clear, so I continued anyway, but then my comps started panicking, shouting "What are doing?? It's a one-way road!!" Once I saw 3 cars coming at us I realized what I was doing and I started freaking out, which made the situation worse! Luckily the cars stopped for me and I did a real awkward 3-point turn in the middle of the road. The guy in the other car was laughing pretty hard. I'm glad be wasn't angry 

Transfers

Sister Junot is getting transferred!  We're so sad. She has been such a fun companion and she has a great laugh! There have been many times (sometimes in meetings) where she starts laughing at something, which makes me laugh, then she laughs even harder because I'm laughing, and it gets bad. But yeah she's awesome. She's going to South Bend, and then probably to Brazil in a few weeks!! Sister Steele and I are staying, so that means we really need to figure out how to run the whole social-media-specialist thing, and learn how to talk to our Portuguese members.

Anyways but I think that's all for this week. I hope you all are healthy and safe, and remember to study your scriptures!! The world is in chaos right now, and we can't survive spiritually unless we have a strong testimony to hold us through. It's so important!! But know that God loves you even if you forget 

Eu amo vocês! Tenha uma ótima semana!

- Sister Wride

1. The Social Media Squad 

2. This is Glenn

3. Our district

4. Brother Ortmans cat named "butthead". We couldn't go inside so we had a nice visit through the screen door 

5. Visa email

6-9. Cool wall art

Week 17 - Happy New Year!

 I hope you all had a happy new year! We didn't do anything. But I'm excited for 2021! This will be my one full year as a missionary. It's been a good year so far:

1. Hoosiers

2. Flirt to convert

3. He's not dead!

4. Facebook work

5. Social media pioneers

1. I'm not sure if I talked about this already, but there's a term we use here in Indiana called "Hoosiers". The literal definition is just anyone living in Indiana, but basically means someone who talks a lot, and will go on for hours if you let them. As missionaries, we meet a lot of Hoosiers, and often get trapped in lessons where people tell us their entire life story and more, rarely giving us the chance to say anything back. 

This has happened often with our friends Kishitij and Glenn, and some members. I love listening to them talk, but it does make the lessons pretty long. Last week we got Hoosiered in Walmart by a lady in another ward. Once she saw our missionary tags, she suddenly started talking about her life, her husband and kids, her conversion story, etc. We stood in the baking aisle for about 30 mins. It was sweet.

Then on Friday we got big-time Hoosiered by one of our members. He called us and he didn't even take a second to say "Hello". He just jumped right in, telling us about his turtle, his cat named "butthead", his jobs as a photographer and musician, how he found the church, and a bunch of other stories. He had a lot to say! I don't think he even stopped to breathe. About 30 mins in, he asks "So how are you guys?" We said we're good, then he went off rambling again. The call finally ended after 57 minutes!

I love listening to people though! I like that people here are so open and willing to talk about anything. But yeah it does fill up a lot of time.

2. This week Glenn messaged us, and he said he wants to hear missionary lessons again!

Just kidding he didn't do that. But he did message Sister Junot, and said "I love you Suelen." We were all like "What the heck?!?" and responded "thanks, we're always here to help you." Then he got all upset because she didn't say "I love you" back... So that was nice. It's super fun being a Sister missionary 

3. But we did get back in contact with Ricky!! We were super confused because he basically fell off the face of the earth. He was genuinely interested, then suddenly stopped answering any calls/texts. This lasted for like 2 weeks. At our last resort, we had the Elders in the ward try and call him, and he answered! He said he's still been reading the Book of Mormon, and he was super glad to hear from us! He lost his phone and lost all of his contacts, and just assumed he would never hear from us again. He even tried guessing our phone number a couple of times to try and reach us. So that was a big miracle this week! I'm excited to keep teaching him. 

4. We've also been contacting lots more people from Facebook. We try to find people in Indiana, but we've also been talking to lots of people from other places in the U.S. and sometimes other countries. 

There's one guy from Australia who I found on Facebook, and he is super awesome. We've been talking to him about every week, we introduced the Book of Mormon, and he said he wants to learn more about our church.

We connected him to the missionaries in his area, and now he's going to church, which just so happens to be a 5 min walk from his house! 

There's also a guy from Angola who I came across, and felt like I should message. I've been talking to him a bit, and this week he started lessons with the missionaries in his area!

We're also talking to a lady in South Africa, a Brazilian lady, and a bunch of other people over Facebook. 

It's super cool how wide our reach is with technology. It's so fun to be part of this worldwide effort to gather scattered Israel!

5. It's also super cool to see how God has used this pandemic to strengthen the work. If we were still out knocking doors, we wouldn't have even thought to use social media to find people! It's super fun to be "pioneers" in social media work. We're assigned to be "social media specialists", so a lot of what we do is figuring out what we're doing, how to improve our FB page, how to best find people, how to make better content, etc. 

We're also thinking about getting instagram for the mission. We've been asking other missionaries about how it works and how do it, and apparently it's been super successful! Hopefully we can get enough good info to pitch the idea to President Page. So in the future, if you see Instagram pages for missionaries in Indiana, know that Sister Steele, Sister Junot and I were the ones who started it!

Anyways sorry that was kinda long, but I love being a missionary! I see and learn so much every day, I'm learning more and more about the gospel, and it's just the best. 

Love you all, and have a good week! Email me if you can, I'd love to hear about what you are up to. Also remember to read your scriptures everyday!!!

- Sister Wride