Week 63 - short email

Olá! 

I don't have much to write about. But here are some highlights from this week:

• We had some great lessons
• I almost got hit by a motorcycle
• We ate avocado ice cream
• We made brazilian coxinha (pic attached) . It took way too long, but vale a pena.
• The guy from the hot dog stand outside of our apartment keeps randomly stopping by our house to talk about his yoga classes or to give us hot dogs, and this week he came by with a little head scratcher thing and stepped inside to massage our heads. It was kinda weird. 
• We walked 1.5 hours to bring a less active member to church, and he came!
• Dinho the banana man finally came to church!! He was 20 mins late and fell asleep during the sacrament meeting, but it was still great :) 
• I went on exchanges with Sister Williams and we talked in English all day!
  
• We taught this one kid who had a bunch of giant rods sticking in his leg from a motorcycle accident, it was sad. We taught him about the Book of Mormon and he was super excited to read it! 

One thing I've learned this week is that being reserved is being prideful! If you know me, I'm more of a quiet person, because often times I'm a perfectionist. I worry about what others think of me and I don't want to say something dumb, so I stay quiet. But then this week I decided to not care about messing up, and I openly talked to people, and it made life so much more enjoyable! I'll have to try that more often. 

Love you all! Happy Thanksgiving!

- Sister Wride 

Week 62 - Joaquim vs Jesus

Oi! 

I'm kinda mind blown on how fast this week went by. I'm going to be home before I know it 

Muitas palavras

Ok I don't know how Sister Lima does it, but somehow she uses a completely new vocabulary every day. Like, how many different words does one need to express yourself? A lot of our conversations go like this: 

Sister Lima: "Ugh, this is indignante."

Sister Wride: "Hm?"

SL: "This person is being indignante."

SW: "Huh? I don't understand what you're saying."

*pulls out google translate

SW: "What the? I don't even understand this word in English!"

SL: "You don't know the word indignante? How is that?"

SW: "Idk, I've never heard it before."

SL: "Here we are enrolando again."

SW: "Enrolando? I don't know that word either."

*pulls out google translate again

SW: "That doesn't make sense."

SL: "Well in Portuguese it makes sense! I don't know how to explain. It's just part of my culta."

SW: "Culta? What does that mean?"

Poor Sister Lima. She has to repeat herself like 200 times a day, I feel kinda bad. She has so much patience with me haha. 

Martha

Martha is super awesome! We found her a few weeks ago when her son Fabio sent in an online referral, and after we had a lesson with him, he agreed that we drop off a Book of Mormon. When we dropped it off, he wasn't home, but his mom Martha let us in, and although we were strangers, she totally opened up to us about all the things she's going through, how she just moved here and she doesn't have any good friends, how she's worried about her son hanging with the wrong kinds of friends, etc. She was crying and letting everything out, and we just sat and listened. When Fabio showed up, we gave him the Book of Mormon and shared a scripture with them. When explained a little more about what the Book of Mormon is, and Martha's countenance totally changed and her face lit up. She seemed super interested, so we gave her a copy too, and right away she marked the verse we shared with her and started flipping through it! 

She said she really wanted to learn more and come visit our church, but since then we haven't been able to set anything up. We've invited her to come to church the last couple of Sundays, but she hasn't been able to make it :/ 

Until this Sunday, she showed up at church! She came all by herself and didn't even let us know beforehand that she was coming. I was so happy!! There were only like 20 people in the church building and they didn't even have a pianist, but Martha loved it! She totally clicked with the other members and in Relief Society she fully participated and asked great questions, it was just perfect. Afterwards, she asked us "So how long does it usually take for someone to get baptized into this church?" 

Anyways, so Martha is pretty elect, we have a lesson set up for this week, so more on her to come :)

Joaquim

Another person we're teaching is a guy named Joaquim, who requested a Book of Mormon online. Joaquim loves learning, he has lots of questions, and he's cruising through the Book of Mormon, it's great! I thought he was pretty elect, but when Sister Lima got here, right away she wanted to stop teaching him. I was like "What? Why would we want to stop teaching someone who is keeping commitments?!" 

Sister Lima has felt that he's not someone who is worth our time to teach because he sometimes doesn't listen, and he still believes in the law of Moses. He's a very letter-of-the-law kind of guy. So we need to see where his real intentions are, if he's meeting with us just to learn, or if he really is humble and wants to follow Christ. So we decided that this next lesson we would either drop him, or put him on date for baptism. I was kinda anxious. 

We taught him the gospel of Jesus Christ, and things were going well, until we asked him "Do you believe in Jesus Christ?" And he straight up said 

"No."

I was just kind of shook. Like - what?!? How can you not believe in Jesus, especially someone who knows so much about the scriptures?? So apparently Joaquim thinks Jesus was just a cool prophet, but other than that, He has little or no significance to our lives. 

I've never felt defensive for the Savior like that before. Not in an upset way, I was just kind of shook. Like duh of course he's important! Haven't you read in the scriptures how he's mentioned like every other verse? (maybe he just reads the old testament, that might be why idk.) 

I asked him "So God gave us all laws and commandments, right?"

"Yeah!"

"Do you believe that they're easy to follow?" 

"Pretty much"

"Do you believe we're perfect at keeping them?"

"Well of course not!"

I then went on to explain how because of Adam and Eve we all sin, and because we sin we can't live with God, because nothing imperfect or unclean can dwell in his presence. Everything has a consequence, and every sin has a penalty. And so, in order to return to live with God, someone needs to pay the price for our sins. Jesus Christ suffered and died for each of us, and because he did so, we have the opportunity to repent. I bore my testimony to him about how much I need the Savior in my life, and how it's only through him that I can change. There are some things that I just can't do on my own. It is only through Christ that change is possible. I could feel the spirit buzzing inside me at that moment, I hope he felt something too. 

So Idk, we'll see what happens with him. He is really curious to know about our beliefs regarding life after death, so we're going to keep meeting with him for now. Joaquim may not be ready to accept the fullness of the gospel now, but I do know that us meeting with him has been a good thing. 

Sorry for the long email. Please let me know if you don't want to be on my email list anymore, because I would feel bad if I'm spamming you!!

Love you all!

- Sister Wride

Pics include:

- A nice man passed by us on the street and gave us lollipops

- lots of flowers we picked

- a sneek peek of our never ending ant problem

Week 61 - Return of the banana man

Oi todo mundo! 

This week was pretty good! We've been doing a good mix of being outside knocking doors, as well as finding people online. Except for yesterday, we stayed inside all day and I spent like 12 hours in front of a screen and my brain was so fried. Never want to do that again 

Muito quieto

The language is getting better, but for some reason I still find myself super quiet. Especially when we're not giving lessons, I just can't think of anything to say. Maybe it's because I'm a perfectionist, and I feel like I can't talk unless I plan out everything beforehand so I don't mess up. Or maybe it's because I'm in a foreign country and I don't know what's going on half the time. The mystery continues. 

Brazilian hot dog

There's this guy in our apartment complex who has a little hot dog stand and every day he's been asking us to buy some of his hot dogs. After like 2 months of avoiding it, we finally bought some hot dogs this week. Usually brazilian hot dogs are super fancy, topped with ground beef, mashed potatoes and batata pilha, but I think my expectations were too high. I don't know if it was the peas or the excessive amount of ketchup that got to me, but I couldn't finish it. (Picture attached)

Fátima

I mentioned Fátima a few weeks ago, but she was the lady who sent in an online referral, and on our first phone call we got talking about the gift of the holy ghost and invited her to be baptized. She said yes, but I think we kind of scared her after that because she stopped responding. We decided to call her one last time this week, and she answered! Then the next day she came to church with us, which was so amazing! She told us how she's visited a lot of churches in the past, but when she walked through those doors, she felt something different. We took a little tour of the church beforehand and although our buildings are very simple, the Spirit really touched her. She was telling us "This was not what I expected at all." She told us how she sent in her referral thinking it was for something else, but she knows now that God placed us in her path. It was cool. She even wanted to take a picture afterwards :) More on her to come! 

Dinho da banana

I don't know if you remember Dinho, but he was our friend who we started teaching from our sweet member friend Irmã Pêra who buys fruit from him. He was super receptive and gave us a ton of bananas, and then he confessed his feelings to Sister Leal and said he wanted to marry her, and since being rejected he kinda backed off and so we stopped teaching him. Well Irmã Pêra hasn't given up, so she invited him over for dinner and she invited us over at the same time, and we had a lesson with him! At first when Sister Lima heard about Dinho and was like "No way we're gonna teach him, he was just interested in Sister Leal" but now we've seen where his real desires are.

He has a ton of questions and is really concerned about the salvation of his soul and stuff, which is great! We invited him to come to church, and although he's super busy with his banana business, he said he would come!! 

Spiritual thought

This week I've been thinking a lot about the people we're teaching, and feeling sad for them when they don't want to hear about the gospel. Sometimes I wonder if they would see it for what it is if they grew up in the church like I did. I feel like I'm at an unfair advantage here. Does everyone really have an equal chance to accept Christs gospel?

Then I was reading in Moroni 7 - 

"16 For behold, the ^aSpirit of Christ is given to every ^bman, that he may ^cknow good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God.

17 But whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do ^aevil, and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil; for after this manner doth the devil work, for he persuadeth no man to do good, no, not one; neither do his angels; neither do they who subject themselves unto him."

Everything that comes from God is good, so when we choose to do good, we are choosing Christ! It isn't a one time event, but it's a choice we make every day. When we choose to be happy, when we choose to love each other, and when we choose to be better, we are choosing heaven! 

I love you all! If you made it this far, send me pictures of the fall trees, because I'm kinda bummed to be missing out. 

Remember to read your scriptures today!

- Sister Wride

Week 60 - Another weekly

Olá! Tudo bem?

This week was good! Sorry if in my other emails I sound like I'm depressed. I've gotten a few concerned emails from people asking if I'm doing ok, and I promise I am! (Thanks for the emails by the way <3) I honestly love it here! I've found that the most joy comes from little things, like the flowers that I collect from off the streets, homemade Brazilian food that I get to eat every day, insights I get from personal study, and sometimes I even like cold showers! I just don't write much about those little things. But yeah, I'll try to sound more positive, even when I think it's funny. 

Sister Lima is my new comp, and she's super sweet! It's always kinda weird getting used to a new companion and figuring out how their mind works. But things are good! I've mostly figured out her Rio accent. And my Portuguese is getting a lot better too! I've started reading the Book of Mormon in Portuguese and I even have had a few dreams in Portuguese!

We're teaching some good people too! There's this one guy we're teaching named Joaquim who loves learning. We gave him a Book of Mormon and right away he made a goal to read it for 30 mins a day! In our lesson with him, before we even said anything he started talking about family history and the scattered tribes of israel and stuff, which was pretty cool! Sister Lima wants to stop teaching him though because he doesn't believe in Adam and Eve. I have faith though! 

Also happy halloween the other day! To celebrate we made pumpkin cookies and did scary things like eating food out of a kitchen infested with ants. 

Remember to read your scriptures today!

Love you all!! Tchau!

- Sister Wride