I hope you all are having an absolutely fantastic day! I am feeling just peachy! I don’t have too much time, so I’ll write some highlights from the week!
Today was THE BEST! Instead of going to the temple in São Paulo, we went to the Campinas temple! It was a little sad that the Saõ Paulo temple was under construction, but wow my experience in Campinas was amazing! The temple itself is gorgeous, the structure is beautiful and the windows are stained purple! I don’t think I’ve been so in love with temples since the temple in Hartford opened! The reason why it was so amazing was because I did the entire session in Portuguese! All of the sisters in my district really wanted to speak Portuguese, but I was really scared to not have the English translation. I prayed really hard for the gift of tongues, and I received! It was a blessing that I attended the temple many times before I left on my mission because when I was lost with the Portuguese, my memory kicked in and translated what was happening! One of my instructors here said that the gift of tongues was anything spoken in a different language, whether it be read or poorly said! That gave me great comfort because no matter how bad my Portuguese is, it is still a gift and a blessing in my life!
It is still difficult to speak a lot of Portuguese at a time, but I’m able to form sentences on my own now! The thing that has helped me the most is my district! For this past week, we’ve had an English Fast all day, excluding meals and questions in grammar class. If week speak English 3 times when we’re not supposed to, no lanche! Lanche is a nighttime snack we receive every night and is very important because we eat dinner really early. This fast has been my saving grace! It’s been forcing me to really think in Portuguese and rely on my two best friends: The Holy Ghost and the Dictionary. When I don´t know a word or a phrase, instead of cracking and just saying it in English, I either look it up or ask a teacher "Como se diz ____?" I hope that all of this practice will help me in the field!
Earlier this week, I had a special experience with the sisters in my district. My companion is Sister Kearsley, and the other two sisters are Sister Bearden and Sister Dailey. We all really like to sing, so we decided it would be nice to sing a song for the Elders in our district. We chose "Careço de Jesus", or "I Need Thee Every Hour". We sang the first verse in English all together (we remember our roots), the second verse in Portuguese with harmony, and for the third verse I was able to sing a first soprano line that I made up. We sang it for the girls in our hallway, and the spirit was definitely there, but it was truly special when we sang for our Elders. I didn’t realize it until afterwards, but I had been singing with the Carlson Quartet! I could hear each of my sisters in each of my friends here. How sweet and tender are the mercies of Heavenly Father!
Sister Kearsley and I finally got new roommates! They are both so nice, and just laugh when I can’t understand or say something (which is often). Also they’re both gorgeous, and people over here are calling me cute! Just look at my roommates please!
Anyway, this week has been good. I love both of my instructors, Irmão Santos and Irmão Merderios. They are both a riot! They both tell the funniest stories from the missions, and they’re really good about making sure that everyone in the class understands (usually I´m the last to understand an idea). Also, both of my instructors are also my investigators! Irmão Santos is Leonardo and Irmão Merderios is Nilton. With both investigators, we have been taking about the word of wisdom. They both like to drink coffee. So Sister Kearsley and I made a compromise: If they would stop drinking coffee, we would stop eating bread. And it has been so hard! Bread is at every meal! And I love bread! But I am willing to make that sacrifice for them so they can see how much the missionaries love them and want them to have eternal happiness in the gospel. No amount of bread could make me as happy as that.
It’s been raining a lot here. I just learned that it rains most of the time in São Paulo, and that’s bad because I think about none of my shoes are water proof. Speaking of which, I thought my camera broke today! We were taking pictures after the temple session, and I asked Elder Moffitt to take a picture of us sisters. Right before I gave it to him, I said "Please don’t judge my camera." because it’s very zoomed in and there’s no way to zoom it out, so if you want a good picture you need to be standing far away. But three seconds after I say that he drops the camera and two of the batteries pop out! I just popped them back in and tried to turn it on, but it didn’t. He felt really bad, but I didn’t mind too much because the SM card was alright. When we were on the bus ride back, I took out the batteries again to dry them off because it had been rained when they fell out, and Elder Moffitt found out that I put the batteries in the wrong way! So it still works, but it was a funny experience!
My time is up! I love you all so much and wish you the best! Tchau!
Sister Carlson
No comments:
Post a Comment