I can bear my testimony in Portuguese!

Eu sei que o evangelho é restaurado e verdadeiro. Eu sei que o Livro de Mórmon é verdadeiro e foi traduzido por Joseph Smith. Eu sei que o Filho de Deus vive. Ele é amoroso e poderoso. Eu sei que o Espírito Santo nos guia. Eu sei que igreja é restaurada. Eu sei que os profetas são verdadeiros e importantes. Eu sei que as escrituras são verdadeiras. Deus e Jesus Cristo são amorosos. Eu sou grata por minha familia e meus amigos. Eu sou grata por o Salvador e seu amor. Eu sou grata por a oportunidade de estar juntos com Sister Lee e Sister Rose. Eu sou grata por O Livro de Mórmon e as escrituras. Eu sou grata por os profetas. Eu sou grata por o evangelho. Em nome de Jesus Cristo, Amém.

  

This is my testimony in Portuguese :) enjoy

E-mail 9/23/13

It has been a fantastic morning! Grandpa made me pancakes and hot chocolate, he makes this a lot. It is the breakfast of champions. I am sooo spoiled. I don't know what I am going to do when they leave. :( This is our last week with them. So sad.  But at least we got to spend the time we had with them. I think we are going to the zoo today. I cant wait to see the two elephants they have. :D For District Meeting Lunch we went and sat in the park and watched them. I think it was the best lunch I have ever had. :) 

This was the first week that I could see my breath on the walk to the gym. EEEKKKK!!!!! It is already winter here!! I am not sure what I am supposed to so in the actual winter time. Blah. We are going to go to Savers to see if we can find some gloves. I have never been so grateful for thrift stores in my life!!!!! Will you put some money into my account? The leaves are starting to change color!!!!! They are sooo pretty! I saw this tree the other day that was cherry red. It was the coolest thing ever. I am enjoying parts of fall. I like the leaves and stuff. But I am not liking the cold. It rains here all the time too!! It was super rainy yesterday.

The Investigators are doing well. They are progressing. We have one that wont answer her phone or her door...

I got asked the other day, in target of all places, if I was Nun. Yeah it was pretty funny. I also got the door closed in my face for the first time this week. It has been interesting...

So I know that it is ridiculous but I have been dying to get a Russian hat. You know the kinds with the fur around the edges. the sister I told you about has one, and I want one sooooo bad. But in all reality, anything that keeps my ears from falling off will do nicely. Any color of skirt. I will just be happy that I have another skirt!! Mom, I have learned a very valuable lesson. You don't take anything for granted on  your mission. everything is important, and it matters. Every little thing counts. You stop worrying about little things like color and stuff and are just grateful that you have more than 3 outfits to wear. :)

New email and pictures 9/16

Sister Lee and I have moved in with the senior couple because the family that we were living with has a foreign exchange student living with them and we can’t live in the same house as a male of that age. So our new address is 215 Dartmouth Woods Dr. Dartmouth 02747. I love living here. We are getting spoiled sooo much. It is like living with grandparents. They are super sweet and funny. They cook for us and take us places so we don't take up miles on our car. I love it here. They are unfortunately leaving at the end of the month. :.(

Yeah the game was way fun. YES, we have four investigators! One of which got baptized yesterday! My first baptism!!!! I was sooo excited. Sister Lee and I couldn't go because I have been really sick for the past 3 weeks. I finally got an antibiotic and I threw it up yesterday morning so we didn't go to church. I was soooo sad not to be able to see her get baptized. We have been teaching a lot. I have no time anymore. I am pretty sure that I had way more time to do things like write letters and such in my last area, and here when we get home, all I want to do is go to bed. Yeah it is starting to get a bit chilly. It seems like it has been raining every night, which I am sure doesn't help at all. The members say that this winter is supposed to be a really bad one. I am sooo not looking forward to it.

I am, as the natives of this area say, all set. Thank you though. Because we have been living with the Simpsons, this month has been easy money wise. We finally have our own washer and dryer so I won’t need to pay 2 dollars for every load of wash and 2 dollars for every load of dryer. I am super excited. They also buy food, so we don't really need to buy that either. They take us out to lunch too!!!!! They took us to this place called Davies Locker the other day. Oh my gosh!  It is right on the water, and it is the best seafood I have ever had in my life!!! I got fish and chips and I was in heaven. 

New e-mail 9/9

it is starting to cool off here, which is nice, but it makes me scared for winter. The people in the ward are the BEST!!! this is what a ward should be!! One of the members in the ward council set up a meeting and gave everyone who showed up, which was sadly only the missionaries, a list of less actives that we needed to track down. It is fantastic!! These people really care for others. We have an investigator that the elders have been working with forever, and she just passed her baptismal interview yesterday! I am sooo excited. We are going to help her set up the program for her baptism this Sunday. It is so great to see how different the people here are. They love having us. There is a lady in the ward who's daughter is serving in El Salvador, and the daughter sent her mom an email telling her to help us in any way and to feed us. So I asked that sister if she would come with me to the Spanish gospel principles with our investigator, that way she feels welcomed. it is great to sit in a class and not understand a word the teacher is saying, its like my high school nightmares all over again...

So I will tell you like that daughter told her mom, help the missionaries. GO and tell them that you are willing to help. I will testify to you right now that when you help bring people unto Christ everything in your lives will work out. Helping the missionaries and doing missionary work is the best way to help yourself and your family. I have seen this happen. The Lord takes care of those who take care of others. So go and let them know that you are WILLING to help them, ask them what you can do, and then do it. Trust me, they will follow up. feed them. it is hard to live off of the budget that we are given. And for some missionaries, they are not blessed with parents like mine who can afford to send me money when I need it. Please make sure that they are not eating beans and rice every night for dinner, because that does happen.  Take care of them and treat them as if they were me.

 I know that this is where I am needed the most right now, and I am so glad that I have come on a mission. I have learned, and am still learning how to truly care for people, and how to receive personal revelation from God. Study the scriptures with the family. 

Understanding 

Insight

Revelation 

Conversion

This is how I study my scriptures. I will read a couple of verses, and then go through this list. 

Understanding: what do I understand about what I just read.

Insight: From what I understand, what insights do i get out of this. 

Revelation: From those insights, what is it that God is trying to tell me? What is it that He wants me to learn from this?

Conversion: If that is what God is trying to tell me, what am I going to do about it?

You guys can do this as a family, and/or on your own. I have gotten more out of the scriptures than I ever have. I have also come closer to Christ. Try this for a week as a family and then tell me how it goes. 

9/3 e-mail

Sorry that I didn't write yesterday, but Sister Lee and I went to the temple with the other missionaries and then we went to a red sox game!!!!!! It was the best pday of my life. I have so many stories for you.

First off we are living with a member family, on a farm. It it awesome. They have two little girls and a little boy. Dorthy, Lucy, and Ezra. They are all super blonde and adorable. Ezra is about 1.5 years old, and he will run/waddle down the hall screaming. It is sooo cute. We have our own bedroom and bathroom. It is the Master bed/bath. Which means that we also have a walk in closet. It is sooo humid here!! it is so bad. it actually got foggy last night. I couldn't believe it. So we share the land we live on with a bunch of chickens, a goat named buttercup, a sheep named Lydia, and a pony named Sunset. It is super cool.

Second, guess who is driving!!!! That's right me! So we get here on Thursday and we share the area with our zone leaders. elders with power, hahahaha. anyway, so we get here on Thursday, and on Friday night we go to help someone move and then eat dinner at their house. They live in New Bedford. So we drive over there and Sister Vieira, the mom that we live with, told us that when we park we have to park across the street from their apartment. So there were two parking lots. I pulled into the first one, which was deserted, and there is a sign saying city parking only, or something like that. So we look over and there is another one. However, the barbed wire fence around it didn't cross my mind at the time. So we decide to park in the second one. We park in a slot that is labeled visitors. So we go and help the family and eat at  their house, and when it is all done the dad goes to walk us to our car. They had locked the gate. The opening we had driven through was now padlocked shut. wunderbar. So it also just happens to be labor day weekend, which means that there wasn't a chance to retrieve it until Tuesday. Thankfully we got it back and everything was OK. Our elders had to take us everywhere because everything here is so spread apart. It was crazy!!!!!

August 19, 2013

In the movie Evan Almighty, the female actress says to God (Morgan Freeman) something along the lines of she has asked for patience and hasn't gotten any. And he replies, "Let me ask you something. If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If he prayed for courage, does God give him courage, or does he give him opportunities to be courageous? If someone prayed for the family to be closer, do you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings, or does he give them opportunities to love each other?" She had wanted her family to get closer, but it doesn't just magically happen. Heavenly Father doesn't just give us what we want, but he gives us the chance to earn it. I keep this in mind when I am praying. I have opportunities to practice things such as patience, but if I don't actually practice patience when Heavenly Father gives me the opportunity, I don't think that He will give me as many opportunities.

New Post!

August 12, 2013

Sister Palmer asked this be posted to her blog:

"Go trusting in God, and continue to trust in Him, and He will open your way and multiply blessings upon you, and your souls will be satisfied with His goodness. I cannot promise you and good in taking an unrighteous course; your lives must be examples of good works." - Brigham Young

This has really stuck out to me this week. I have really needed to trust in the Lord and know that there are actually people here that need the gospel. Even though I am covering two areas it has been really slow. On Thursday we tracked down less actives in Framingham. Two people answered the door. One was active, but had just come back from vacation and her husband is a ward auxiliary, so we wanted to introduce ourselves. The second, started off by telling us that it wasn't a good time and to set another time, but then she decided that she didn't want us to come back at all. She hadn't been active for a long time and she had no desire to become active again. She didn't want visitors either. It was very disappointing. We realized that one day she will stand before God and He will ask her why she never came back. He sent us to her. She had the chance. I wonder how it will all play out in the end. All I know is that I must trust in the Lord and be obedient to the commandments. Hopefully the people around me will be able to see the light within me and want to have a light of their own.