Oi!
I have tons to tell y'all about! (and sorry but there's
gonna be typos, i'm not used to these Brazilian keyboards yet...)
São Paulo is huge and crazy!! I slept for maybe two hours of
that ten hour flight, but right when we got here it's work work work! The city
is beautiful in the way that chaos and personality is beautiful. I honestly am
in love with all the graffiti on the walls of EVERYTHING. It's art. Sister
Knapp is my companheira and we both came from Provo together. She was a week
ahead of me so she's going to be leaving this week for Teresina, and I'll be
back with my old companheira and homies. It's seriously so much fun here! We
are working so hard to learn the language and I've definitely learned twice as
much being here in a week than I did in Provo! Learning language by immersion
is a real thing, but even more real is the gift of tongues! It blows my mind
every day. So yeah, most days sis Knapp and I are somente falando em Portuguese
and it's awesome. We've made a ton of brasileiro friends and I'm actually
really glad I learned how to sing Let It Go in Portuguese before I came because
now I have a friend who's from Rio de Janeiro and yeah we sing frozen together
in the cafeteria. Speaking of the cafeteria.... the food here is straight from
heaven. There's always feijoada (rice and beans) with every lunch and dinner,
pão de queijo, super good bananas, pinapple, papaya, and watermelon, and
reeeally good meat and stuff. And in the morning we can always count on this
like cream of wheat mystery goodness. muito bom. Anyway, enough about food,
last Friday we had the opportunidade for PROSELITISMO. Yeah so on like our
3rd day here our district hopped on the onibus and we rode it to the middle of
São Paulo to teach real people who have never heard of the gospel. We each had
2 copies of the Book of Mormon and we went and taught. I'm so lucky to have
sister Knapp as my companion, she's learned a ton of Portuguese already and she
already knew Spanish before. Anyway, as we taught I have never felt the Spirit
like that before! We went up to people and at first some of them didn't want to
hear our message, but we explained a little more what it was about and asked
them to just read and invited them to pray about it and it was AMAZING how
their countenances changed! Particularly one woman who was sitting on the
corner texting and we walked over to her with some other elders to help them
give out their last book. She just kept looking down as sis Knapp was talking
to her and she seemed a little annoyed at us being there, so I said a quick
prayer in my heart that her heart would be softened and as soon as I finished
she looked up and started to talk with us. I literally have never felt the
spirit so strongly as when we were teaching this woman. That feeling left
as soon as it came though because some homeless druggie came up to us and
stared putting his arm around me and saying a bunch of things I didn’t understand!!
Ahh! Thankfully the elders got him to get away from me, but as i found our
later, as this guy was giving elder pitcher a hug he lifted his yellow
laminated verb card out of his front pocket thinking it was money. Well that
guy could have the gospel and really great Portuguese one day! When I finally
did turn around after the commotion was over, the woman was smiling and
thanking US for giving her the book and talking to her. That's basically how
every one of our mini lessons ended and I have such a strong testimony now of
the spirit teaching people. Ahh man missionary work is so cool and I am
seriously having the time of my life. Once again, its hard, but it's already
the best thing I've ever done in my 19 years of life here on earth.
I also want to just include some other fun things that have
happened this week:
-I was talking to a sister about star trek and she was
saying that she liked Spock more than.... and she couldn't think of the other
character's name so I was like "oh Elder Kirk?" and that's when you
realize that you've been in the MTC for a while...
-We have a brasileira roommate who is the cutest thing since
puppies. She doesn’t know any English so she helps us with our Portuguese and
we basically play charades every night. and she gave us earrings and chocolate.
She's from Bahia:)
-We went to the Sao Paulo temple today and I was gorgeous. I
listened to have the session in Portuguese:)
-I play volei now. What? I'm still pretty bad though haha
-Our teachers here are absolutely hilarious! Irmao Mello has
a song about the lei de castidade so that's fun…
I love you all so much have and otimo semana!
Vida Longa e Prospera.
