My skype call [with my family] was wonderful. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that you enjoy New Years. This transfer, starting Wednesday I will stay in Palmares but I will get a new companion! I don´t know who it will be yet because they don’t tell us in order to reduce problems with gossip. I am super excited to get to know a new missionary and work in Palmares together! I am also super nervous about showing the area to a new missionary. I have been trying really hard to learn all the directions but it’s a struggle. I do not have much time today but will send more pictures next week! Love you all!
Sis. Faulconer’s family waiting for 2018’s most anticipated call
I’m very excited for Christmas! It’s great to be a missionary at Christmastime — we get to spend all day inviting people to be more Christmassy by coming unto Christ. It’s also fun to share the church’s Christmas program with people (Illumine o Mundo — Light the World. I remember watching videos from the church’s program other years with the missionaries and now I’m the one presenting the videos!
We had some wonderful little miracles this week with finding people. When we had a division [when you switch companions with another sister temporarily] my sister training leader and I marked a man named “Daniel” for baptism. He didn’t give us his address because he didn’t spend any time there and apparently it’s hard to describe, but he was really special and I wanted to teach him again. He said he would visit the church but wasn’t able to go on Sunday. Two weeks later our investigators (reference of a recent convert) gave us a reference of a neighbor, “Douglas.” On Sunday we took “Douglas” to church and I asked him about his family. He started talking about his siblings — and I recognized the description of one of them. “Daniel” is his brother!
I asked a different member, “Rodrigo” for a reference this week while my companion was calling someone. He thought about it and suggested we visit a less-active member of the church, “Júlia”, who I had never heard of before. He started to explain where she lived “in front of the postal office, on the side of road xxx” and at the same time my companion [on the phone] said “Ok, so your house is in front of the postal office on the side of road xxx.” She had finished her first call when she randomly had the thought to call “Júlia.” I’ve asked “Rodrigo” for references many times, and only this time he suggested “Júlia.” Clearly she needs a visit!
This is the son of a member in our ward. He is great. He is showing off his cool clothes here. It is too hot outside for that jacket! He is getting surgery right now so he can use some prayers. We are at the grocery store.
[For regular readers of this blog: it turns out there was a letter from Sister Faulconer last week that somehow didn’t get sent. I added the text to the pictures in last week’s post.]
Feliz Natal! I am very excited for Christmas. This week we had our Christmas zone conference in Recife! There are six zones, and each has a different day over two weeks, so we weren’t sure when we would get a conference. Usually I would probably want a Christmas-y thing like this as close to Christmas as possible, but I was kind of hoping that it would be a bit earlier to break up the week. But then our District leader was giving out assignments for our district meeting, and my companion was convinced this meant we would’t have it this week, because we don’t have district meetings when we have zone conferences and she figured he would know if we would have a zone conference. But then we got a text message on Tuesday during lunch saying that our zone conference would be Thursday! It was exciting.
Zone conference was awesome. I got to go to the Recife temple for the first time and loved it. It’s very beautiful, and any chance to go to the temple is special. I got to meet lots of other missionaries, which was fun.
Posing in front of the temple with the state of Pernambuco flag
We live several hours from Recife, and the last bus for Palmares leaves Recife at 5:30 pm, so we stayed overnight with some sisters in Imbiribeira. It was fun to get to know them. This is Sister Lima’s first transfer so she is newer in the mission than I am!
A sister training leader and Sister Faulconer on the long bus ride to Guarahuns
I hope you all are great. We had a division this week. In divisions, one companion stays in the area with a sister training leader, and the other companion works in the sister training leaders’ area. Our sister training leaders work in Guaranhuns — four hours away by bus! Divisions last 24 hours and missionaries have to have a companion the whole time so it can get pretty crazy. I stayed in Palmares this time, but I had to travel four hours to Guaranhuns to get Sister Porcote and drop off our sister training leader, then we waited an hour and a half and got back on the bus for another four hour bus ride. The busses shake and bump a lot, so after eight hours of driving I felt a bit sick. The first time we had a division, last transfer, I remember being grateful I knew the word “shake” in Portuguese. I memorized it in a list of vocab words in the [missionary training center] even though I thought it seemed like a less important word to memorize — and it turned out to be useful! Anyway, I sympathize with easily-carsick people who have to go to Guaranhuns.
Sister Porcote, future missionary Rafael, and Sister Faulconer
“Rafael” got baptized this week! [Click here to read Sister Faulconer’s earlier post about him]. He insisted on coming to our weekly ward missionaries and full-time missionaries meeting because he said he wants to be a member missionary and get ready to serve a mission. He is awesome!
A piece of cocada (coconut sweet) and the evidence of fries eaten the Brazilian way.
The above photo is what you get when you can’t take your camera very many places (robbery=serious problem) and you don’t do a lot of photogenic things. The brown thing is cocada, a popular sweet made from coconut. It is crumbly and pretty good. It is on top of the remains of some fries that I bought. On display is a toothpick you get with all fry orders here. This is so that your fingers do not have to touch the fries. Then they usually squirt mayonnaise and ketchup on top of all the fries. There are things people eat with their hands here, but actually touching the food with your hands is less common — usually you get lots of napkins or a paper package or a toothpick.
Oi! I have no time this week but hope you are all great! Here is a picture of us with a Christmas box we made. We collected food from ward members [people in the local church congregation] for a family of a recent convert that really needed help. The mother of the family has been working for the city for three months without pay — apparently this is not uncommon here.
Sister Faulconer and Sister Porcote–Lovers of Christmas!
That was a great experience because I know we were really helping them. It was a little miracle because members answered the phone and found things to donate really quickly — we made the box and gathered the donations, and did some things to help at their house house in just a few hours! Service is the true spirit of Christmas! We always have a goal of doing planned and unplanned acts of service but we have a lot of people to visit so we’ve been having a little trouble following through. One unplanned act of service this week was carrying some heavy bags for some member missionaries from a different church. That was a great experience. They were doing a service project as well and I could feel the spirit strongly talking to them — I know they are following Christ´s example through the work they are doing.
Also on display: some Christmas lights we got for our house! We are both people who really like Christmas and of course we’re very excited to talk to our families too!
It is getting closer to Christmas and there are more and more Christmas decorations up. It’s weird that it’s still so warm but I’m getting more used to the idea that Christmas is coming now. As missionaries, we’re especially excited for the church Christmas program this year! [Some have already seen it. Watch it here.]
This week had several difficult parts but I have high hopes for next week. We spent several hours one day looking for a man who was supposed to be at the church for an interview. We waited and waited and waited at the church–we walked all the way to his house with the district leader [the missionary responsible for interviewing him to see if he’s ready for baptism] and his companion, but the man wasn’t there and a family member said he had left hours before–then we walked around the streets looking for him. We finally heard several hours later that he had had some questions on the way to the church and apparently decided to take a verrry long walk instead of being interviewed! Then he didn’t show up to church. 😦 Hopefully we can figure out how to best help him next week.
Headed to Recife 