Saturday, September 29, 2012

Mcdonalds + Coca-cola + Sister Feistner + Skateboard = ????

WELL.
 
It has been a crazzzyyyy week!!
So, about my week I guess....
 
picking up from last pday....... After I wrote to you all last monday, Sister Feistner and I and the elders in our district, Elder Oliveira Souza and Elder Raleigh, all went to the chapel to have our district activity.... So we got Big macs from Mcdonalds and brought some goodies from the bakery and we all had lunch in the chapel. That was my FIRST McDonalds in Brasil!!! woooo!! ha. BUT really, McD´s is WAY expensive here....... people spend 16-18 reais on a meal! INSANE! One of the members was joking that if you are dating in Brasil and you like the girl, you take her to Mcdonalds, where as in the states, you take her to McDonalds if you want to break up. hahah. But that big mac was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO good!!!! mmmmmmmm. Still really miss IN-N-OUT though.... haha. Just a year left, just a year!
The plan for our activity was to play futbol (soccer!) on the nice little soccer feild that they have at the chapel... It has GRASS and everything!!!! But sadly, the elders didnt bring a ball...... So, after we had lunch, we started searching the chapel to see if there was a ball there...... We had brought a 2L bottle of coca-cola and we all drank coke out of our water bottles at lunch....  Only problem ---- Sister Feistner is HYPER sensitive to the caffeine in coca-cola and goes CRAZY after about two glasses...... Yep. If she drinks two cups of coke at a members house at dinner time, she wont sleep at night.... So after an entire water bottle of coke, she was WIRED.  She was doing cartwheels up and down the halls in the chapel as we were searching for a soccer ball.... We probably spent a good 40 minutes just looking through all of the cabinets and rooms in the chapel to try to find a ball, but... no such luck.  We were at the chapel to play soccer and we had NO BALL. Sweet.
I wasnt too worried about it.... We had the violin and Elder Oliveira brought a guitar, so we were just kind of jamming and chilling in the Relief Society room. BUT, as I said before, Sister F. was wired, and still pacing up and down... Elder Raleigh (we arrived from the CTM together and have been in the same district ever since...) is a pretty legit skateboarder and brought his skateboard to our activity. SO, Sister F. decided the best use of her time would be to learn how to skateboard.... She asked our district leader, Elder Oliveira if it was okay if she skated, and we were all like "do what you want" and kept playing violin and guitar.... There were also two sisters passing through our area on monday (one of the sisters is going home next transfer and so she asked to come back to Araras for the pday and say goodbye to members and her converts here) and they came to the chapel for a little bit before they left..... when Sister Feistner went to start skateboarding one of the sisters was like "You arent really gonna do that are you??? You´re gonna hurt yourself!".... The elders were just like "nooooo, dont worry about it! she knows what she´s doing!!" hahah. Just makes it so much BETTER what happened next.....
AND, so sister F. takes the skateboard and starts trying to figure out how to stand on it.... and then starts skating around a little bit there in the R.S. room (dont worry, its got tiled floors). About a MINUTE later, she pushed herself off of the wall, lost her balance and fell on her face. We all start to freak out, but she just gets back up and is like "I´m good, I´m good, dont worry!!" and goes to gab the board again.... Then, she realizes that her chin is bleeding and puts her hand up to cover it and yells for me to come with her to the bathroom...... We didnt even realize she was hurt until I was following her out to the bathroom.
We get to the bathroom and she stands over the sink and starts washing her chin off.... it is bleeding A LOT..... And because she was washing it, the blood and water made it look even worse. OHHHHHH gosh... So I started to get a little sick and had to sit on the floor in the bathroom as she washed it off. hahahahahah. AWESOME companion, right???
Finally, she washes it out and the bleeding slows down and we can see what happened. She had a giant HOLE in her chin!!! haha. Okay, maybe not giant, but definitely a hole. At this point, I am still feeling a little queesy, so I had to go sit on the floor in the hallway and play the violin to ignore it..... hahah. But the elders started looking at it, and figured that she probably needed to go get stitches...... So, we called up Irmã Fatima, and she and Natalia came to take us to the hospital, we broke up the party, and Sis. F and I went to go get stitches in her face.... hahah.
AND, I had to be with her for the whole thing.... EVEN though I was already a little queesy and dont, dont, DONT like needles...  So, I found the best solution for the situation and waited outside the open door. =] hahaha. Once again, best companion EVER award!! hahah.
She ended up justing getting two little stitches on her chin, and through the whole thing, she was more concerned about the giant bruise on her leg from where she fell on the cell phone that was in her pocket than the hole in her face!! hahah.
Anyways.... made for an interesting pday..... and the entire week afterwards as everyone we talked to would suddenly get distracted by the stitches in Sis. F´s chin... hahah.
It was also PERFECT timing, because the NEXT DAY, we had a multi-zone conference with President and Sister Perrotti as well as Elder Mezzagardi (an area seventy) and his wife..... hahah. And Sister Feistner had stitches in her face. Sweet. =]
 
Tuesday, we had the Multi-Zone with Elder Mezzagardi. That was INTENSE...... It started off fairly normal... you know, song,( and I had to lead the music!!!) prayer, announcements, Pres. and Sister Perrotti spoke real quick and then Sister Mezzagardi spoke.... but then Elder Mezzagardi spoke for the rest of the day. We got there at about 7 in the morning... the meeting started at 9/9:30?? and went until we had a break for lunch, then again until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. And he was INTENSE. Man. He burned us real good!!! hahah. oh gosh. But he is a really good speaker......he could just keep going, all day!! and everytime he thought we were all getting too sleepy, he would make us all standup and stretch. just to make sure he really had our attention. =] haha.
 
This week, we started teaching a woman named Luciana who moved here about a month ago from Rio Claro (a city close by...). The Elders in Rio Claro taught her and her family, and her three oldest sons were baptized several months ago.... She wanted to get baptized as well, but didnt end up getting baptized before she moved here. We werent able to get in touch with her until week before last.... But that sunday she and her sons all came to church and she told us that she is preparing to get baptized. The elders had taught her all the lessons and been working with her super hard to get baptized, but it never worked out... They had a lot of problems with her ex-husband who is a drug dealer and addict, and she had to move here out of emergency so that he wouldnt be able to find her or her five kids...  But she really wants to be baptized, and since she moved here, she stopped smoking all on her own with the intent of getting baptized by the end of the year! Wooohooo!! 
She is the sweetest lady and has had such a hard life..... Now, they are living in this little room in the back of a soccer training house where about 35 boys live and train to play soccer.... She is the cooking and cleaning person for this training house and works all day with her little 3 year old boy and her little 8 month?? old girl. They have absolutely NOTHING because her ex-husband took and sold everything that they had to buy drugs.....  Her kids have about one pair of clothes each, they dont have a stove to cook, and they didnt even have a fan in the one hot room where they all live together until some members got them one.  
We are working with her this week and planning to have her baptism this saturday!!!! It was so great talking with her and hearing her testimony and experiences with learning from the elders, the book of mormon and how the gospel has blessed her family already. Her oldest son is 16 and he is already excited about going on a mission in a couple years!! =]
I´m excited to help their family and excited to see the efforts of the ward to help them have the things they need and make them feel welcome here...
 
ANDDDDD most exciting news!!! IT RAINED THIS WEEK!!!!!!!!!!!
It has been ISANELY hot and dry here lately.... it hasnt rained for more than five minutes in the past two and a half months!! But thursday this week it started to cool off and got pretty windy, and that night the rain finally came! Friday it poured ALL day!! So great!!! Not so much for working in the rain.... but it all worked outfor the best....
 
I also got sick this week. yay. hahaha. Started feeling a little iffy on thursday.... we went to Izabel´s house that night to have a lesson... Turned out to be her BIRTHDAY, and so she started making up some food for us to eat... As we were sitting there eating salgados (little fried appetizer things?) I started to get super hot, and my face got all red. So then Sister F. and Izabel got all worried about me, although I was fine.... and it ruined the party and we had to go home early. Shoot. hahah.
But the next day, I felt worse, got up to study and ended up just sleeping on the couch.... Our neighbors knocked to say hi, and got all worried that I was sick (just with a super sore throat and I dont even know what else)... So when we went to leave for lunch, they offered to drive us since it was pouring rain and we would have had to walk about 40 minutes in the rain.... ahhhh. Such niceys. AND, they kept checking on me that day, and the next to make sure we were all okay... and went and got me halls and offered us food and everything.... Our neighbors are the best.
lunch didnt really help me to feel any better.... kind of the opposite.... So we ended up trying to teach a little, and then just walking back home, and I slept the rest of the afternoon/evening. hahah. Ohhhhhh gosh. Staying at home days are the worst!!
 
Saturday night we had a missionary activity with the ward..... Sadly, none of the people we invited came..... but it was still good! We gave a little lesson (super scary speaking in portuguese to a room full of people!), and we had hot dogs..... But the brazilian view of "hot dogs" is wayyyy different.... The ones we had were basically chunky tomato soup/not spicy chili, with peices of hot dogs in it, slapped inside a roll. Yep. hahaha. Costco hot dogs are SOOOOOO much better!!!
 
Last miracle of the week....
We have been fairly discouraged lately because we have been working hard without many results.... and looking back to a lot of the miracles we were having my first couple transfers, it was a bit depressing..... BUT sunday, we went out to teach a reference from the Temple.... We had tried to pass this family before, but the lady-- Debora, works a TON and was never home and they told us that the only day we would be able to find them was sundays...
Just before we went to their house, Sis. F and I went and said a prayer on the street behind a big truck... And in the prayer, I asked that we could have the spirit with us as we taught her, that we could find people prepared to hear our message and that we could have miracles in our work here..... Well. They were a MIRACLE family!!
It was just Debora there when we got there but she was SOOO excited to see us!! She had been straightening her hair before we got there, so Sister F. offered to do it for her... it was the perfect thing because she just got talking without it being weird at all.... She started telling us her whole life story.... she has had a pretty hard life... and about her uncontrolable desire to serve the Lord and find out about our church! She drove by the temple in Campinas and just wanted to go in SO BADLY. So she went and talked to the people at the little visitors center there, and they gave us her information.... Because of how she felt the spirit there, she told us that she wants to join our church and find out everything she needs to in order to be baptized!! She also wants her eleven year old daughter Gabrielle and her husband João Carlos to join her in finding out about the church and getting baptized. HOLY COW!!! She is sooooo prepared!!! We didnt even really teach a "lesson", because she was just asking so many questions.... we talked about temples, the book of mormon, missions, baptism and how she would like to serve a mission someday..... Wow.
As we started explaining about the book of mormon, she was sooo interested and would ask questions before Sister Feistner could even explain! haha. Then she was like "well, read me part of it!" So we read a little section of 2 Nephi 31 with her and her family, and then prayed with them. They felt the spirit and showed such real interest! ahhh. I´m so excited for them!!
Sadly, we can only teach them on sundays because of her super busy schedule...someone in the family smokes a lot..... and I´ll probably be transferred before they are able to be baptized.... ahhhhg.
But, in conclusion... it was such a strong answer to our prayers teaching their family..... As she started talking when  Sis. F was straightening her hair, we were just in shock. Amazing.
 
Anyways.
I´m out of time!!
 
love you all and hope you have the best week!!
 
hopefully some pictures to come next week!!!
 
love
 
Sister Ward

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