Welp.
Me and Sister Menden finally just arrived in the lan house.......
Today, we decided to do something AWESOME with some of the missionaries
from our zone and we went on this INSANE hike up a big mountain-thing
with a giant rock at the top. Ironically, this place is called "pedra
grande" AKA "big rock". haha.
The hike itself is pretty intense, but we made it a little more
intense leaving from our chapel, heading to the trailhead on foot,
hiking/crawling/slipping-and-sliding all the way to the top and then
heading back down and returning to our neighborhood. AH.
We left our house at 5:45
this morning, got to the top of pedra grande at about 10, and then headed
back down, went and ate açai (mmmmmmm!) and JUST NOW (aka 4:15pm) got back to where we live.... yikes.
But, dead tired and all, it was great fun and a SUPER cool place to go.
Anddddd..... what else...
We had a family night with an ADORABLE little family---Brian and
Cintia. Cintia just got baptized, and Brian has been a member for a few
years.... They have two little boys and we have been talking a lot with
them about the temple and making a goal to go and be sealed in the
temple.
It was awesome. They are all excited to plan to be sealed a year
from now, and we made a bunch of goals with them to help them get
there..... ex. doing family night every week, praying as a family
everyday, reading scriptures as a family, and working out a way to start
coming to church every week (because they work 3 out of 4 Sundays every
month.... =[)
But, it is cool to see their excitement and desire to prepare their lives and apply these habits in their lives everyday.
We had a little bit of a bummer with our couple that we are
teaching..... Cleonice and Juracì..... He had a relapse and started
drinking again this week.... and fighting with his family and
everything.... They also didn't come to church because they went to visit
family for mother´s day (who does that??? come on... hahaha) But
anyways, we´re still hoping for the best with them.......
We started teaching a 14 year old girl named Luana this week. She
came to church Sunday before last with a friend and liked it a lot.
We taught her and her family the first lesson and she accepted the
invitation to be baptized on may 19th!
She is very cool, and very curious and interested.... but also very
shy... the only thing that would keep her from wanting to be baptized
is if she is able to make friends with the other young women in the ward
easily or not..... hmm. but we´re gonna help her out with that one this
week!
ALSO, after we left the Book of Mormon with her, the next time we
went back, she unfortunately, hadn't read.......... Agh. SO, we decided
to read with her.... We were reading in 2 Nephi 31, and as we started
talking about the Holy Ghost (in the first few verses...) we somehow
started talking about prayers and answers.... I asked her if she prayed
to ask if the Book of Mormon was true. She said no.... BUT, then she
said "but I had a dream about it...." WHAT??!
Yep, so she started telling us about this dream she had.... in her
dream, she was inside of a church, dressed in white and holding a white
book (which she thought was the Book of Mormon) in her hands. She said
there were two other people dressed in white on either side of her....
She didn't say too much more, but she said that she felt "the presence of
God" and felt that the Book of Mormon is true. She also said she heard a
voice at the end of the dream telling her to NEVER GIVE UP.
WOW.
Who can ask for a better answer than that???!
So we talked about her answer and how it related to what we were reading as well---about baptism.
Since she is really shy, she still is little hesitant about baptism
and was VERY nervous to go to church yesterday (since her friend is
from a different ward and couldn't come to go with her this time...).
But, we went and picked her up to walk to church with us, and it
worked out great. We also are going to bring some young women from the
ward to make friends with her this week, and HOPEFULLY, everything will
go well for her baptism on the 19th!! =]
Now that that is said............ there is really nothing worth saying left to say. =] =] =]
Yepppp.
One more story...
So, this week we FINALLY were able to find a service project to
actually help someone out. (usually, nobody wants to let us do ANYTHING
to help them!!) But yeah, Renata´s family (the awesome family with 11
kids that live close by and always help us out and threw me a birthday
party.....) are repainting their house. So, when we stopped by one day,
Irmã Leticia was covered in paint and told us how she had been painting
all afternoon. Since I really like painting walls and stuff, (AND have
been trying to find someone who would let us paint for them for SO
LONG!!) I got very excited and we planned to come back the next morning
and paint for them.
Little did I know the fun we were getting into.... hahah.
When we came back the next morning Irmã Leticia was like "well,
since you are tall and are so excited to paint, let´s have you paint the
BIG wall..."
SIDENOTE--- this wall is about 5 meters high (approx. 16 feet).......... Yep. Like, an entire two story wall..... AH!
OTHER SIDENOTE--- the ground is VERY sloped where this wall is at, and so they didn't have any way for us to use a ladder....
With that said, try to imagine how we worked this out......
Irmã Leticia (in the super brazilian "lets figure out some way to
do this even if its crazy" manner) went and grabbed two BIG bamboo poles
and a broom stick. Then we rigged a way to tie them all together, and
put the paint roller on top of the broomstick.
PERFECT. Now I had a GIANT paint roller that could reach ALLLLLL the way to the roof!!
Every time I had to put paint on the roller, we had to go through
an interesting process of me swinging the entire giant bamboo
contraption towards the ground, having Irmã Leticia or Sister Menden
catch the top end of the contraption and then having them dip the paint
roller in the paint basin and get it all full of paint. Once it was
ready, Sister Menden would help me push the contraption off to get it up
in the air again, and I would try to get it up as quickly as possible
to avoid spraying paint on everyone and everything..... hahahaha.
It was great fun guys. Very entertaining.
Only took us two mornings to get the job finished..... haha. And my triceps are still a little sore..... ahhh.
 |
| Us painting the giant wall!!! Check out my paint roller contraption!!! hahaha. Painting brasilian style! |
love you all!!
have the best week!!
love you guys.
Sister ward
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