Week Twenty.

Hello there everybody!!

Wow what a week. A lot has happened in the last couple of days!! I mean A LOT! I am now a trainer. Can you believe that? I will back up a little. I finished my training with Sister Leite on Sunday. SIster Leite and the other Sister we live with kept joking around that I would train this transfer because a lot of missionaries will arrive. But honestly it is super early for someone to be training, especially for an American. The American sisters here usually train after a year, and that’s if they train, some of them don’t train another missionary at all. Being a trainer is a big responsibility and means that the president trusts a lot in you. And I don’t even know any other sisters, Brazilians here who trained right after their training. So when we got the call Sunday night saying that Sister Leite was transferred, and that I would stay and be training, it was a huge surprise. I was over whelmed. I at first was very scared, know that I still wasn’t confident in the language, and I still had a lot to learn. But then I knew that this would be the greatest learning experience for me. I would have to learn to truly trust in the lord with everything that I’ve got! And so I have. Guess who else is also training - SIster Harris, my Companion from the MTC. It was very sad to have to see SIster Leite leave, but at the same time, all of my feelings of nervousness turned into excitement. But I now have my new Companion, Sister Corrêa (I attached a photo of us), she is also from São Paulo. Taller than me, which is a first for here. Very new in the church 1 year and 7 months, but loves the gospel and missionary work. A bit shy and timid but has a big heart. I can tell that we are going to get along very well. I am so excited to work with and train her. I only met her yesterday afternoon, so I will have more to tell you next week.

WE have had quite the adventures this week. It has been Carnival, but luckily because I am not in the city Carnival is not that bad. (Yes, I am still in Gravata). WE have had to return to our house early every night to avoid the craziness. Friday night there was a parade where guys dressed up and women, we were in our house, but we ran into a few during the day. Sunday we had to stay in our house all day, because it was a day where they throw what at people with water guns and its crazy, if I want a missionary it actually looks like a lot of fun. Saturday (I know I’m jumping around in my days) there was a huge storm here all day. Heavy rain and thunder and lightning. It was pretty cool.

Monday we took a car to Recife to drop Sister Leite off, it was my first transfers, and everyone is so excited and nervous there. It is fun seeing where everyone will go. I, Sister Harris and another sister stayed in the apartment in Recife, just around the corner of the chapel, to wait for the new sisters arriving the next day. Yesterday, (Tuesday) we had to go to the chapel to do something in prep for the missionaries because 19 came yesterday (that’s a lot). The chapel is about 4 floors so it has an elevator. Well we took the elevator back down and guess what happened, the second door wouldn’t open. The door inside the elevator kept opening and closing, but the outside door wouldn’t open. We were stuck in the elevator for almost half an hour! This is always one of my fears, and well it happened. After prayer, where we able to get our way out. The President’s wife was outside the chapel and was so glad that we made it out. The Lord did help us in there. It was quite an adventure.

Well my week has been quite exciting. And I can already tell that the Lord is helping me. I already have more confidence, and am able to speak better Portuguese, and remember things easier. I know that this is the Lords work and he helps his missionaries and the areas that we need.

I hope all is well with everyone!

Love,
Sister Rebecca Nelson

Week Nineteen.

Note from Editors - A bit late due to other life events.

Hello there everyone,

This week sure did pass by very fast! This week we got to go into Recife again (if you can’t tell by now, it’s a pretty big deal when we get to go into the city for something). We have a Zone Conference on Thursday and left Saturday. The Conference was good as always and we got the opportunity to learn a lot. After the Conference was over we got to go to the temple. We left the stake center and started on our journey to the temple. Usually we take a bus, but it was in the middle of rush hour and something happened and none of the traffic or buses were moving. We came across some Elders and they helped us navigate a bit towards the direction of the temple and to other bus stops. But we decided we would just walk, but we didn’t know how to get over there, because the temple was on the other side of the city, like the way other side of the city (really long), but we wanted to make it to the last session. And then an Angel fell from the sky.
A girl about our age, who had just come home from her mission noticed us and the Elders and asked if we were headed for the temple. So she was then our personal guide to get to the temple. We walked about 1 1/2 hours with her and probably another hour before with the Elders. It was also in the hot muggy weather of Recife. As we were walking we were thinking of all this walking in the heat with heavy backpacks for a couple of hours that we had to do just to get to the temple, but then we realized, hey at least we can walk to the temple, imagine all the people that travel for days just to get to the temple, or the pioneers! So we realized we were very grateful. We arrived at the lodge next to the temple completely sweaty and exhausted, but realized that we not only made it in time but also had to go eat. So we grabbed a bite to eat and then went to the last session of the temple, what a great way to end your day.

That was the most exciting thing that happened this week. Other things that happened this week... I realized it’s really good I don’t know the names of the meat sometimes here. Last week I understood I was eating cow’s hand, but sometimes here they have a different name for the meat when you eat it. So now when we have strange meat, I now have to ask my companion what part of the animal is this. Well I found out I ate stomach intestines here, yeah that wasn’t so great either.

But this week we taught this guy from Nigeria, so he speaks English. So half the lesson is in English and half the lesson is in Portuguese, it’s pretty neat. All he really wants to do is test our knowledge on how much we know about Christ´s life and the Bible, and why our church doesn’t worship certain things. It is actually pretty interesting sometimes; it is never dull when we visit him.

This week I also finished the Book of Mormon for the first time on my mission, it was pretty exciting. This week has taught me a lot of things, patience, loving others, and trusting in the Lord. I hope all is well with everyone.
Love,
Sister Rebecca Nelson

Week Eighteen.

Hello there everyone,

This week has been pretty normal, but of course like every week some
exciting things happened too. First we had the baptism of Kionaria!
She is 17 years old and amazing, has such a sweek spirit about her.
Also we only taught her for about 3 weeks as well as our last baptism.
She is one of the people we taught when we taught all of the kids, but
she was the main reason we were teaching all them and she was the
oldest. Her two younger siblings are members, but she had just
recently moved into the area. But again before the baptism we had the
lucky chance of emptying the font out with buckets...again. But this
time i wasnt sore after words. But the baptism was amazing we did a
joint baptism with the other other sisters in the other word, so there
was a lot of people. But we know that she will be great.

So somthing interesting i got to eat this week, calfs hoof ( i think
thats what we call it in English) mão de vaca in Portuguese, whch is
cow´s hand. Yeah.... it was interesting. I also didnt know what it was
untill after lunch. They then put a huge pot of meat of the table and
said its intersting and its okay if we dont want to eat it. Sister
Leite and I then peered into the pot and i think both of our noses
turned up. It basically looked like a bunch of animal fat, but we were
able to find a few actually meaty peices, but i think i wont try that
meat again. We then went home after words and ate some other food.

Last P-day we were going to go visit some places here, but it started
to rain. When it rains here it rains buckets and its reallyt heavy,
and they dont really have drainage systems. But they problem was that
we were still in the center of town when the rain started and we had
to make it home some how. I was totally fine walking in the rain and
am used to it, and actually kind of like it. But people here when it
starts to rain they all take cover. We were ready to go and i turned
to Sister Leite and said are you ready. She looked at me like I was
crazy (because we didnt have anything to gard us from the rain and it
really was pouring buckets). I told her in Seattle the rain doesnt
stop anything. So we went for an adventure and walked home, it was
only about 10 mins walk home, but we were completely soaked from head
to foot. It was great I loved it!

This week we started to visit really old investigators(a long time
since they have been visited). it was good to see a bunch of new
faces. But I have started to bee more comfortable in speaking with new
people, I have been speaking more. they then ask how long i have been
here and then are very surprised that for two months I speak really
well. Sister Leite said that this week I have really made a leap in my
language. She has been great. Me and Sister Leite have really learned
work well together and build a friendship too. But sadly our training
is almost over. But she has been amazing in teaching me and helping me
with everything.

Hope everyone is doing well

Love,
Sister Rebecca Nelson

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

Week Sixteen.

Hello everybody!

This week was a good week. Sister Leite and I decided that we want to try and meet all of our goals this transfer, and work even harder. First with some of our investigators -  Our investigator George, who we have been teaching for about 2 (3 weeks now), who we invited to be baptized the second lesson, told us this week that he now is ready to be baptized, that will happen this week. We were so excited for him! He is almost the perfect investigator. Reads everything and always has a ton of questions for us, and he writes them down too. But this week he had a lot of questions for us about our mission, he is 17, and wants to serve a mission, already. It is great. We also started teaching a group of kids this week, about 4 of them. They are friends with some members in our ward, they range from about 11-17 in age. They are all surprisingly very interested in the church and during our lessons they pay close attention, which is surprising for kids their age. We really like teaching them. My first transfers were this last week, but almost none of us moved around, actually my whole zone is the same, except for my district leader, who is very good, and always calls us and makes sure we are doing good. But most of all he is inspiring during our district meetings. All the other sisters are excited to have him.

This week it rained for the first time, almost all day. Here they don’t really have drains in the street, so the water is everywhere. And a lot of the sidewalks are tiled (everything here is tiled it’s a bit weird), so it makes it very slippery. And as sister missionaries we don’t really have shoes for the rain. But since I love the rain and have missed it, I liked it! My companion on the other hand didn’t so much. But it was good.

This week I have convinced my companion to get up and go running more with me, the most I can convince her to do is three times a week, but ill take it. We go running at the chapel, they have a small cement soccer court in the back. One day when we were running we realized that we forgot to drain the water from our last baptism. In order to drain the baptismal font you literally have to get in it and pull a plug. Guess who was the lucky one to do that... ME. It was funny though.

So there are a ton of street dogs here, most of them are really dirty and you don’t want to get to close to them. But they are more on the small side. Well yesterday we were walking home from an investigators house and there was about 3 or 4 male dogs chasing a female dog (poor girl), well the males get really aggressive, and these dogs were bigger then normal ones here and scarier. Well they started getting really close to us. And one of the male dogs kept barking and growling at the female dog. Sister Leite stopped and we were going to just let them pass us. But them they stopped too. I tried moving slowly so we could just get pass them (we were against a wall at this point too), then the scary one turned around and started barking and growling at me and was getting closer. Sister Leite then hid behind me (because I’m bigger and usually not afraid of the dogs here). I didn’t know weather to hit it with my scripture case or kick it our what, but we were both scared, and I don’t know where it came from but I just barked back at the dog and then surprisingly it left. It was pretty funny. Sister Leite said I do truly have a gift of tongues.

But this week has been good. We have truly seen how the Lord blesses us and answers our prayers. I hope all is well with everyone.

Love,
Sister Rebecca Nelson

Week Fifteen.

Hello family!

This week has had a few crazy things happen. But most importantly we had a baptism this week, it was my first. Sister Leite has been working with him for awhile, we committed him to baptism my second week here, but things kept coming up and he didn’t get baptized on the other dates, but finally this week he did.

He’s 13 years old and has a great spirit about him, we had a few near misses this week with the baptism, such as we couldn’t find him in his house to teach him the last lesson before getting baptized, and his older brother (who was also scheduled to be baptized) telling us he didn’t want to any more. And about an hour before the baptism he called us crying saying that his mom wasn’t going to come because they got in a fight over shoes ( I didn’t quite understand the whole problem)...but never the less we, well Sister Leite, fixed everything and made everything right, and the baptism went perfect! Some of the people we teach I don’t quite understand the stories they tell us, so I always have to recheck what I understand after our visits with my companion. It depends on the people, on who I can understand.  The members and all the Brazilian missionaries I can understand, but some of the people that we teach who are older or have less of an education, I can’t understand very well.

The funny thing is that the people here do have a different accent than what my companion is used to. So the old people with really heavy accents, who I can’t really understand anything they say, well... neither can my Brazilian companion, haha. Sometimes I feel like she has to be a counselor for the people here. Some of our investigators have a lot of health or family problems, and they always ask us what they should do.

I feel completely comfortable speaking with my companion and the other missionaries, all the youth around here (for some reason they think my accent is cool), and most of the members. But some of the older people here don’t understand me when I speak. Everyday I feel a bit more comfortable, but I still have a lot to learn. I understand most of what everyone is saying, there are always words that I don’t know here and there, but for the most part I understand. Speaking though is a different thing, but that is always my goal during the week -  to be more comfortable.

This week was pretty hot, hotter then normal, and some days it was so hard to work, because our heads hurt and we were hot and tired, but we still tried our best. I had my first transfer cycle yesterday, but we stayed the same.  We already knew that, because the training program that we are doing is 12 weeks, 2 transfers, long. The sisters that we live with also stayed the same. So nothing really changed for us this transfer.

Oh Brazil... well a small town in Brazil. We almost got ran over by a heard of cows! Sister Leite and I were walking and this old lady stopped us and wanted us to look over at some of these horses that were stuck in some mud.  This little boy got them out (I don’t know how), and then we heard a cow bell behind us and these cows are right behind us, so we quickly moved out of the way. Afterwards we couldn’t stop laughing, because my companion is from São Paulo, and also used to a big city. It was funny.

There are always a lot of animals everywhere here. Mainly dogs, tons of them and they are all really dirty and just stray dogs. There are cats, and chickens (and a roster that wakes us up almost every morning at 5:30am), and sometimes we see goats and pigs in the street too. The horses, I feel so bad for the horses here because a lot of the time they have super bad skin and scabs on them, and are super skinny and you can see their bones, not like the horses in America.

Oh they have a fruit market here! I love it. All the fruit is super cheap too. The first time I just asked my companion which fruits were good and bought them. I didn’t really know what fruits I was buying. Mainly because I didn’t know the names of them, like a papaya. You can always buy bananas, pineapple, and mangos for really cheap here too.

So we have this investigator that we started teaching the lessons to this week, and we asked him to be baptized the second time we met with him, or the first time we actually taught him a lesson. Sister Leite was too scared, so she said, well now Sister Nelson has something to ask you, right after I was done speaking, ha-ha. We know he is ready, he is only 17, but he is great, he didn’t agree to be baptized yet, but will soon. We know it. Well this was my week in Brazil. I am still learning so much and am grateful for all the things I have and have been blessed with.

Love,
Sister Nelson

Week Fourteen.

Hello Everyone!!

It is a new year already, can you believe it! I will be spending all of 2012 in Brazil, that is a crazy thought! My companion and I made a bunch of new years resolutions for this year, most pertaining to mission rules such as we won’t swim this year, or watch movies, or other stuff like that, it was pretty funny. Then we made actual goals like completing the Book of Mormon (for me in English and Portuguese) by a certain time and reading the other books that we have. And goals for our numbers and how we really want to help people. This week Sister Leite and I have truly grown closer, we were able to understand each other better I thought. She helped me boost my confidence in my language speaking ability that I am actually good, and I shouldn’t be discouraged. She talked to me a lot about that yesterday. So now in the New Year, my spirits are raised and I am ready to serve my Lord.

I would have a bunch of crazy stories for you about the crazy Brazil parties... but we stayed inside most the day the last two days, which meant a lot of studying, which I actually really enjoyed. New Years Eve we woke up probably around 5or 5:30am to really loud fireworks going off, we tried to sleep for the next hour. That evening (not very late, so we avoided the drunk people) we went around our little downtown area and took pictures of the Christmas lights before they shut them off. Some houses here were sooo pretty with the lights, but only a few.

We four Sisters then for dinner made mini pizzas and no-bake cookies, but since they don’t have peanut butter here it was a bit different, still pretty good though. I was then soo tired I fell asleep about 10:30 pm (when I normally do), but then Sister Leite woke me up for the fireworks. They were pretty little, but super loud. I liked seeing them, but then went right back to bed after the 5 or 10 minutes. I realize in America we really go all out for our holidays with 45min firework shows, it was a funny thought.

Yesterday for New Year’s Day everyone in town basically was sleeping from partying the night before or had gone out of town. We tried to visit people but only found one that was home and awake. So we studied a lot. We visited a member though, and she introduced me to the way they eat avocados. WAY different, but really good. They thought it was weird that we eat it with salt. They eat theirs like a smoothie. With milk and sugar, and blend it all up and drink it, it was super good. They kept saying “Oh the American likes it, give her more.”  It was funny.

This week with teaching people, another one of our baptisms literally fell, (the same family, other brother) this one fell off his bike and was scrapped up all over and really bad on his face. We came in to his house and were like - Oh no! The first thing he said to us was “Can I still get baptized?”  It made us laugh a little, he is 13 years old. So finally this up coming week we plan on baptizing him and his brother. We had been visiting this really old lady for a little while but not in the past week. We visited her this week and she forgot who we were. But she took hold of my hand for a hand shake but then hung onto in the whole time we were talking to her and my arm too. For a little old lady she had a lot of strength. My hand hurt afterwards. She kept saying - Oh you are sooo pretty, you need to get married, find a boy here. Oh you’re so pretty. It was weird, but really funny at the same time.

We started teaching this young man this week who already attends church and for our first lesson he asked for the baptismal interview questions. Me and Sister Leite were a little thrown off guard and didn’t know what to do.

I love my mission here and the people. I am so grateful for the blessings that God gives me in my life. I hope that all of you have a good new year!

Love,
Sister Rebecca Nelson