Monday, December 2, 2013

Porto Alegre Temple

Oi Familia!!

This week was so good! It has been a lot cooler here the last few days, so that has been such sweet relief! (Did you ever think you´d hear me say such a sentence?) haha seriously tho, it´s been so nice to have a few nights cool down. (:


We went to the temple!!!! Ahh I love the temple. It was such a wonderful experience. I just felt at home. It was cool to be so far from home and be able to still feel at home there. And there were some temple workers from the States who spoke to me in English, so that probably helped! haha I´m so glad we got to go. It´s such a pretty temple! 



Thanksgiving was fun. We didn´t have lunch with a member, but one of our members gave us some money to buy lunch. So, we went to an all you can eat buffet and stuffed ourselves! One thing weird about having a lunch break instead of a dinner break is that you stuff yourself mid day and then all you want for the rest of the day is to sleep. But you have to stuff yourself because you have to make the food last till 9:30 when you get home. So... it´s kind of strange to my body still. But... it´s good. I just have to learn to not be a zombie after lunch every day. haha

At the temple

My only funny Portuguese mess ups this week were because I can´t keep straight "Posso" vs. "Pode" which is "Can I" and "Can you." I can totally keep them straight, but for some reason when I go to talk, I always say the wrong one. This week I asked someone "Can you use the bathroom?" hahahah oooh awkward.

A butterfly I found today. She climbed on my hand!! I HELD A
BUTTERFLY! haha I was so excited. I´m still kind of giddy.

This week has been better with Portuguese. I´m starting to teach more and I even spoke up during a lesson to say something we hadn´t practiced! haha it´s embarrassing it´s taken me so long to do so... but it´s still scary. I´ve given a bunch of Portuguese spiritual thoughts at member´s houses for lunch, so that´s been good. The members are always so patient! haha one of our investigators told me a few days ago that my Portuguese has gotten a lot better! I was so stoked! We started working with her my first week here, so she´s seen my Portuguese process from the beginning. I was pretty happy to hear something other than the "uhh... I can´t understand her. She doesn´t speak Portuguese very well." haha Though, I will say I have to laugh every time because they always go on to say stuff about how well Sister Furtado speaks Portuguese. They´re like "Your portuguese is perfect! How long have you been in Brazil?" And she has to explain that they speak Portuguese in Portugal as well. One lady asked her yesterday "Can you read Portuguese?" and I had to stifle a laugh. It´s like asking someone from England if they know how to read English!! haha OY.


Okay, remember my cockroach story? Did I tell you the part where I freaked out and ran to hide from her because SHE CAN FLY and she flew straight into my hair?!?!?! I had a cockroach IN MY HAIR. And then she got lost. BUT - we found her this week and I freaked out again cuz she was crawling on our "clean" dishes. You could definitely tell who the Brazillians were in the house cuz Sister Furtado and I were hiding in the bedroom with the door closed, and Sister Loss picked up the cockroach with her BARE HANDS and killed it. Then brought it into the bedroom and said "WAS a Barata!" bahaha I laughed. Poor cockroach. But seriously, on my dishes?! IN MY HAIR?! Yuck.


Speaking of freaking out - the dogs here. OH my goodness, the dogs. They´re fine during the day. They are loud and there are millions of them, but I can handle it. But I think they´re going to give me a heart attack one of these nights because their favorite past time at night is to scare the living daylights out of the sister missionaries. EVERY night I scream a few times because something jumps out at me. The city is dead silent at night - it is so nice! But we get in this zone as we´re walking home and then when the dogs jump out and start barking, we start screaming and grabbing onto each other. Then we remember it´s just a dog and we always have a moment of awkwardness after a freak out while we´re having to ... un hug and keep walking. haha UGH. 

This is when I stepped in dog poo and I was sad

Sister Furtado and I are still having SO much fun. We laugh every single day. Seriously, she is so great. I love getting to be her companion! It´s her birthday today, so we had chocolate cake this morning (for breakfast. ehem) and we´re going to find some ice cream later. It´ll be a good day. ALSO - our zone met our monthly goals, so we get a full Pday today!!! WOOOOT!! That means we don´t end Pday at 6 PM like usual, but get to go till 10:30! We might have appointments we have to go to later anyway... but it´s a nice thought. haha 


Anyway, sorry for this ridiculously random email. I forgot my planner at home so I can´t really remember anything specific that happened. It´s been a good week though and I´m happy. :) I love you all so much!! I hope all is well!
Drea
 

 

PS.  I had a cool experience this week. I had a pretty tough day on Friday. It was District Meeting which was all in Portuguese and I couldn´t understand a word. Which I´m used to by now. But suddenly I was in the middle of a role play and it was my turn to talk and I didn´t even know what we were role playing. I just sat there with huge eyes and a "how did I even get over here?" look, and we moved on. I was so frustrated. I was embarrassed and kind of annoyed they´d ask me to be in a role play and I locked myself in a bathroom stall and let myself cry. I cried and begged the Lord to help me make it thru the day. We had so many lessons to teach and I wanted to do anything but speak Portuguese. I cried and prayed and then had to move on with the day.
 
Not even 5 minutes later, Sister Wright pulled me aside and just hugged me. She then got really quiet and told me that she felt I had angels helping me. She said she doesn´t usually say that but that she feels it. She specifically mentioned a Grandmother and Grandfather, which I thought was interesting. I bawled. haha but over the next few hours - it was the weirdest thing. EVERY person we talked to - on the street, during lessons, members... everyone... Everyone we talked to seemed to go out of their way that day to compliment my Portuguese. One member told me that the spiritual thought I gave on Sunday strengthened her and her family´s testimony of the gift of tongues cuz they could tell I was nervous in the beginning, but when I started testifying she said I spoke with fluency. Another person asked me how many years I´ve been living in Brazil. HAH!! Somehow, I had angels that day telling people to be extra kind. To not make the typical "Ela nao fala bem Portugues" phrase I´ve come to know so well. Because I couldn´t handle it that day.
 
I´m not as good at Portuguese as they were telling me I was that day, but it meant so much to me that the Lord would answer my prayer in that way, because it was exactly what I needed. He answered a little girl´s prayer from a bathroom stall because that´s the merciful, loving, detail-oriented God we have. I´m so grateful. Someone else we stopped on the street that day told me the only reason he stopped to hear what we had to say was because I had light in my eyes and he wanted to know why. He said "Eyes of a Lynx" (which is not the first time people have told me I look like a cat here.) haha it was kind of cool. I don´t know what happened that day, but I´m so grateful for it. I´m so grateful for prayer and for the miracles the Lord is willing to give if we make the effort to reach out to him. I feel a little silly admitting to my bawling in a bathroom stall, but I´m just grateful and wanted to share. :)

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