Monday, January 7, 2013

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...okay. so not really. (Dec. 17)

HEY EVERYONE!
 
Welp. Another week gone by.
And just for you all to celebrate with me.................... Friday I passed the 9 MONTH MARK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOOOOOO!!
Everyone says its just down hill from here on out.... but talking with my comp, Sister Paixão, I decided that there is no such thing as down hill........ Its just gonna keep going up, and up and up until a lovely, giant crash and burn at the end--- Sept. 2013. YIKES
The same day that I hit 9 months, my companion recieved "the death phone call".... in other words, the elders from the office calling to let her know what day and what time she will take a plane to go home.... February 12 at 7:15 am..... hahaha. Yep. hers is a lot closer than mine. It was a pretty trunky day. hahah. (trunky is missionary slang for anything that makes you miss home, think about home, etc.)
 
Hump day! NINE MONTHS!!!

and we took some traditional humpday pics.....

TO CELEBRATE my 9 months on the mission, we bought pizza and ate it on the floor.
 
This week was a good one. WELL, at least a WHOLE LOT BETTER than the week before.... =]
We spent last pday with Sister Feistner and her comp. Sister Aspitia in Jundiaí. Sister Feistner IS indeed going home for treatment and will be leaving tomorrow...... So it was both really good and a little sad to pass the day their with them..... may or may not have cried on the bus going back to Campinas, but I learned some important lessons that day.... so it was very worth it in the end.
 
Tuesday--- We spent our morning in our district meeting, and then had choir practice in the afternoon. Some WONDERFUL elders in our zone were able to find a violin for me to borrow, just to play with the missionary choir in our performance at the temple. YES! The poor violin was abandoned under a bed or in a closet for quite a while, so when I went to tune it up, the A string broke.... SWEET. But everyone wanted me to play so bad, that the elders in the office went and found a music store and bought new strings for me to put on it-- all within our lunch break of about an hour...
I dont think I realize how much I miss playing music until I get a violin in my hands and start playing again............. ahhhhhh. AND, to make it even better, the elder who was playing piano-- Elder Cox, plays reallllyyyyyyyyy well. Improvises and everything. AND, has backed people up playing celtic music before!! So we got to jam out a little bit while everyone was getting organized. AH. It was like heaven. Playing vioin WELL, isnt very common around here.... so all the missionaries were freaking out..... recording us on the mission cell phones and on their cameras and everything. hahaha. All our little renditions of hymns and celtic music. There better be violins in heaven.... or I´m gonna get pretty upset. hahah.
 
This week, we´ve been working with our two little families!
One especially, is SO GREAT! I love this family already!!
The parents--Carlos and Fabiana, are LEGALLY MARRIED (hallelujah!) and they have twin 8 year olds.... Carlos Alexandre and Rita. They are super receptive when we´ve taught them, and we marked a date for baptism with them.... unfortunately, they didnt come to church on sunday, so the date we marked will have to be re-marked.... But, they so are getting baptized!
 
Also, our "aula de inglês" (english class) this week WAS GREAT!!! For the first time since my first week here, the class WASNT a disaster! YAY! hahah. We were able to buy books for almost all the students, so now we are using a great english program to teach everyweek. The owner of this english school is a member of the church, so he lets the people in our english classes buy books super cheap..... Its awesome.
We also got to finally divide the class..... So I can teach just the more advanced students, and the member that is teaching can work with the kids and people that have never studied english before. It is interesting when the students ask me questions...... hard questions. Things you never think about...... agh. Way too confusing. Yep. Definitely gonna make a fool out of myself every week in this english class.
 
SATURDAY, was our magical day at the temple!!! WOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
The "Cantata" at the temple, was a performance of about 20 different groups.... ward choirs, groups of not very good violinists (sorry, I judge. yep.) and other small groups singing. It was WAY cool. It was outside on the temple grounds and a LOT of people came..... It was raining the ENTIRE day, so not as many people came as we would have liked.... and none of OUR investigators came....but it was still cool. Everyone was sitting or standing with umbrellas to watch.... so when you looked out from the stage, all you could see was a FLOOD of umbrellas. haha.
Our missionary choir was the last number, so we spent all the time leading up to our number walking the grounds and talking to people or manning booths with church materials for investigators. I got to see a few members from Araras and Jundiaí, so it was way cool!! Remember Mariana from Araras?? She always would go and work with us knocking doors and stuff.... She was there and turns out she did indeed decide to serve a mission! She´s going to Belém, the city that my companion is from!! Super cool!
It always is super fun to have a big get together with lots of other missionaries as well......... All the other missionaries that we´ve worked with that get transferred far away.... Got to see almost all the sisters in our mission... and Elder Gaines and Elder Raleigh from my group in the MTC and lots of other missionaries that I´ve worked with already. So great.

Me and Sister Paixão all ready to head to the temple on Saturday...... Since it was raining, I had to take the violin all wrapped up in a black, plastic garbage bag---- super classy.
 
Finally, we performed our number. Silent night and that one primary song that talks about when Christ will come back to earth..... YEP, dont remember the name in english anymore.... haha. THANKFULLY, they had a little tent set up for the sound equipment and the keyboard, so I still got to play the violin. WOO! And it was so good!! ah. The choir sang perfectly, Elder Cox rocked the piano, the elder conducting led the whole audience to join in on the last verse of silent night, and I only messed up TWICE in my solo parts (embarassing.... )... but Sister Feistner told me that nobody noticed..... just her of course. hahah. But to be honest, everyone freaked out over the violin, so I was hugely overly praised, which made me feel a lot better about how I am forgetting how to play EVERYTHING and how my poor fingers are losing all their calluses and just dont move fast enough anymore.... haha. Poor guys are getting out of shape!
 
Sunday morning was apparently a super important soccer game---- corintians (one of the brasil favorites) vs. some team from england that I cant remember the name of........... SO, NOBODY came to church............... And there were fireworks going off, cars honking non-stop and a bunch of drunk corintianos in the streets all day long. I take it that Corintians won. hahah. I might have to sue whoever plans these soccer games if they put another one on sunday during our meetings. haha. 
 
OH and one last note.................... remember how I´m really good at breaking showers and our shower here broke??? Yep. still broken. and it got super cold this week and rainy so it has been an adventure taking showers in the morning............ woo!!! I LOVE ICE SHOWERS!
 
love you guys!
have the best week!!
 
Love
Sister Ward
 
 

No comments:

Post a Comment