Week 52... ONE YEAR!!!!
Oi Familia!!!!!
I am so happy to hear that you are all feeling so much better and that you got to have so much fun celebrating New Years with lots of family and friends! Haha but I do have to say... smoked tofu sounds a little sketchy!
Things are good over here in Brava! I don't think I ever wrote this... but it is exciting news!!! There are missionaries on every island now!!! This transfer the last island opened and the gospel is being spread everywhere!! :) And one interesting thing about Brava- there are only sisters here! No elders! It makes district meetings a little strange (They are just in our own house, led by the sister leader!), but it is good!
Yes that family that we surprised for Christmas pretty much knows it was us... haha oh well. But it was so sweet!! When we went back a few days later, all the toys and goodies and little Christmas tree were sitting out in their house for everyone to see. We had given the little boy this box of 12 little race cars. We had decided on that because that way he could have a bunch of little toy cars to play with! But when we went back, we only saw about 4 cars still there. We said "Rubim! What happened to all your cars??" His dad said "He gave them to the other little boys so they could have Christmas presents too" How sweet is that?!? He is such a good kid :)
And yes I am teaching piano! There are lots of members here who want me to teach them, but right now I am mostly just teaching a man named Valter and a boy named Leandro. They are both so excited to learn piano just so that they can be the branch pianists!
But no!!! I have not taught any spiders. But if all the spiders here got converted, there´d be enough members here to make several more stakes and probably they´d announce a temple! ;)
Haha also, remember how I learned Portuguese and now I am teaching the gospel in a country where they don't really even speak Portuguese?? Sometimes that makes for quite the adventure! For example, this week we started teaching this woman and her son. Both of them hardly speak Portuguese... Well. We taught them the first lesson which talks about how God is our loving Heavenly Father, how He blesses us with prophets and sent His own son to be a prophet. And then when Christ was on the Earth, He established His own church. At this point in the lesson- we usually will explain how Christ did this using 3 "pillars" - a prophet, twelve apostles, and the priesthood. Then we will finish talking about the apostasy and Joseph Smith. Long story short. Well. We taught all that and invited them to pray about Joseph Smith. They said of course they would, so we left and came back a couple days later. Oh man. We asked if they had prayed. They said yes! We asked if they prayed specifically about Joseph Smith- if he was a prophet. They said "huh...?" We summed up the story a little bit for them, and they were still confused. So we started at the beginning of the first lesson, and reviewed it all. When we got to the part about Christ establishing His church, we asked if they remembered the 3 pillars of His church. They said "Yeah!! Yeah!! Ummm... Catholic, Nazerene, And Jehovah´s Witness!" ..... Haha not quite......
This week all the leaders had a meeting with President to plan for the year. Well... usually it would be to plan for the whole year, but President Oliveira is going home in July (Same as meeee!) So they only made goals until he leaves, which basically means they planned and made goals for the rest of my mission!! WOAH!!! That is crazy to think about!!! But I am excited for these next few months because the mission focus changed a little- Now we are focusing on not just baptizing new members, but rescuing less actives too! Every week, we will make specific goals not just for our investigators, but also for our less actives. And we will basically treat them as if they were investigators- teaching them all the lessons and what not. It will be goooood! And I sure hope that this helps our little branch here!
Well I love you all!!! And I love being a missionary!!! I love this gospel!! And I love our Savior Jesus Christ!!
Have a fantastic week and Happy 2014!!!
Love,
Sister Turley :)
(we sent her a "build-your-own-Christmas-Tree with photo ornaments)
(how big those spiders are.... SICK!!!)
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