Monday, January 23, 2012

Week Seventeen.


Hello everyone,

This week has been a bit of a hard one, just because I have felt under the weather. I think the effects of the food and the heat are starting to get to me this last week. It hasn’t been that bad, I mainly feel sick in the morning, and sometimes at night. But it could be a lot worse. The day I felt the worst, whole body ached, was the day of our baptism, which was great. We woke up and headed over to the chapel for the interview and the room that the baptism was going to beheld in, with the font, was flooded. This week it has been raining quite a bit (at least for here, maybe not Seattle rain), but the ceiling was leaking. So we had to mop it all up.

Then after the interview was over us and the Elder looked in the baptismal font to fill it up and the water had never drained, from last week when I got in the font. There was some stuff in the drain, we tried shoving a big long rod down it, and nothing happened. We realized that the water had been sitting there for the last two baptisms, almost a month, and the water was a bit dirty. So we had to get the water out. So what did we do, use buckets! Us four formed an assembly line and were filling up buckets of water and dumping it in the sinks and the toilets of the bathroom that was right next to it. It took us about an hour to fill up the whole baptismal font with buckets and dump it out. Too bad I didn’t have my camera with me. It was definitely something to remember.

Well after that I felt a lot worse, but the day had just begun, our lunch was about 40 mins away and we journeyed there in the rain. I arrived and the members said I didn’t look very good. That was true. But then after lunch we had to go to the store to buy stuff to make a cake for the baptism, which happened to be on the other side of town. I wanted to collapse in the street, and I have no idea what was making my legs work, but they were still moving. We finally made it home to make the cake, and Sister Leite made me get into bed right away. I was able to take a nap, and after a bit of time I started to feel a lot better, and we had a good baptism.

The boy who we baptized, George, really has been a miracle. We only taught him for about 3 weeks before he was baptized. We invited him to be baptized our second lesson with him, in the second week he said he was ready for baptism and the third week he was baptized. For a boy of 17 years old, he shows so much faith, and will be a strong amazing member, and talks about wanting to serve a mission. We felt so great after his baptism.

On Sunday I gave my second talk in the ward, but they asked me last week to give it, and to be the second and final speaker, instead of the first. So as I was sick on Saturday I wrote my talk on D&C 4, I guess missionaries always get given this to talk on. So I gave my talk, and went over my time, I think almost 5 minutes over, my talk was about 15mins long, and I even cut parts out of it. Sister Leite said I did a really good job, and my talk was good. Some people said they couldn’t really understand me, but that is sometimes a given, and then they said I talked really fast (that’s because I was nervous), but once people realized I had only been in Brazil for 1 ½ months they were really surprised and then complimented me. So the only way I can go from here is up, and improve even more. But it was good.

This week we had family home evening with a family that is pretty inactive but really fun. There are a lot of girls who are in Young Women’s in the family and they also invited some friends and were super excited. (But again it was a night I didn’t feel very well). We gave them a lesson and they made popcorn and we played games, but the problem was they were all in Portuguese and they were games of memory and thinking of more words. Well I don’t know that many every day words in Portuguese, like all the fruits, so I had a hard time with the game, but they basically gave me a free turn.  I said what I remembered, which wasn’t everything, and they didn’t eliminate me! :) But it was really fun having a family home evening with them.

Last night we received calls for a mini transfer for today in our mission, and it was not really a mini. Almost everyone got moved around. I stayed because we are still in training, but the two sisters we lived with left this morning. We spent the whole morning cleaning the house, because two new sisters were going to come this afternoon. We got a call and Sister Leite (my trainer), her trainer will be coming here, but they are training a new sister who will come tomorrow from Argentina. So we will have two people in training in our house, an American, an Argentinean, and two Brazilians. We found out our District Leader will also be training. A lot of new things happening in our mission -  We also get to go to Recife this week to hear from Elder Jensen, I think from the Presidency of the Seventy. So, I will have lots to tell everyone next week.

Hope everything is well

Love,
Sister Rebecca Nelson









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