Many have asked about the flag in the video’s initial picture. This is the flag of the state of Pernambuco, the state in Brazil where I served.
Clique aqui para assistir a mesma coisa em Português:
Category: Going Home
Coming home
Leaving Recife 
São Paulo, The biggest city in the Western hemisphere
A long journey 
Parking garage reunion
Home 
Dad, fire, blanket–it’s good to be home!
On Monday morning we found out the Americans would be going home very soon. I packed everything I could that I didn’t need to use and started cleaning the house. I felt ready . . . then I got a phone call from President Houseman. Emergency transfer to Recife — leave as soon as possible. It was stressful. I felt a lot less ready all of a sudden!
Sister Ribeiro II (a native Brazilian) was sent to Igarassu to meet her new companion. Sadly, we had to throw out a lot of fruits and vegetables we had bought to get us through a possible month of using food storage (i.e., only non-perishables which means very little fruits and vegetables and nothing fresh). Sister Ribeiro was sick and had to take a taxi. I took a bus to Recife with Elder Eccles from Goiana 2.
Recife seemed to be the scene of a post-apocalyptic movie. You couldn’t see anyone on the street. When we got on the bus we didn’t initially know where we were going except towards Recife — the office? another missionary apartment? the airport? But President Houseman called us on the bus and told us to go to the mission office. We waited at a taxi stop but a few kids showed up asking for money . . . and then suddenly there were ten kids asking for money and trying to play with the suitcases. Unfortunately we don’t have anything to help with that kind of thing. We started to feel nervous and crossed the street . . . and a few guys walked past separately and also asked for money. People frequently ask for money but not thirteen people in five minutes on an empty street! We were starting to feel like targets (two very obviously American people with suitcases in a deserted city) and ended up asking the mission to call us an Uber. It was difficult to explain where we were. Traveling without a smartphone makes everything harder. But usually missionaries in my area travel with no phone at all so I was very grateful to have a dumbphone!
When we got the phone call I thought we might be going to the airport that night or the next morning . . . nope. The Americans living in farther-out areas (e.g., me as well as others) stayed at a bed and breakfast for a few days. Staying at a bed and breakfast is definitely worse in terms of having things to do during quarantine, but I finished the Book of Mormon, wrote a lot of the missionaries who were staying, and talked to people there. We thought we would leave Thursday night at 6 pm. At 5 pm, Sister Houseman arrived and said our flights had been cancelled! Recife was sealing off. But the church figured out some charter flights, so we left Friday morning.
Recife airport–empty except for the departing missionaries 
Final group pic before leaving Recife
It was sad to say goodbye to President and Sister Houseman. It felt like when I said goodbye to my parents in the SLC airport. I couldn’t believe I wouldn’t see them again soon! Our flight got delayed, so we waited for a few hours at the airport and flew to São Paulo. São Paulo was nuts. Everyone leaving went to São Paulo. So it’s this enormous international airport . . . full of missionaries as far as the eye could see. We thought we would leave at five. Church volunteers there told us to be ready to leave at any second. We left around midnight!
It was a lot of hauling suitcases up one escalator, down another, bus to one terminal, then back to the first terminal again. We were very grateful to finally get to security to catch our flight. I went through security and felt lost — I was in an empty part of the airport and couldn’t see any missionaries from my mission coming behind me. Eventually I saw a few and found out that the others got held up at security! Some of them apparently weren’t booked on the flight. There were several problems. We thought we were all on the same flight and then found out that several people held up at security were supposed to be on a plane that was leaving in five minutes! Talk about stressful! There were groups of missionaries sprinting down the terminal with suitcases. Most of them made it . . . but then 12 elders who would go on the other flight got held back because somehow it was overbooked?! They had to sleep at the CTM [Brazilian Missionary Training Center] that night instead of flying to the U.S. That must have been difficult.
We were worried about getting through security at Los Angeles–LAX (health scans? customs?) but nothing happened at all. It was super easy. We got there at noon, waited for about an hour and a half at the baggage claim and then found ourselves on the flight lists and went to check our baggage again. I finally got to the check baggage counter . . . and they said my flight didn’t exist. Six of us found ourselves without flights to Utah. We called Church Travel and after much waiting got a flight at 8 pm. Shout out to the church travel workers and volunteers helping out — it must be so much work! I amused myself eating hummus, Starbucks hot chocolate with soy milk (it was sooo cold), crinkle fries, and two brands of vegan cookies I found at the airport. It had been a long time without that stuff . . . but now I’m sure I’ll get homesick for Recife and açaí. We finally got to SLC, waited another eternity at the baggage claim and to haul everyone up to the garage and I found my parents! It was very strange to feel 40 degree temperatures again.
It was a very long journey but I was happy to get here safely! I was released on Saturday night, my 1 year and 7 month anniversary on the mission.
19 months
~20 umbrellas broken
8-ish pairs of shoes destroyed
1 language–Portuguese–learned
25 pounds lost
15% more tan
5 areas served in
12 companions
1 great mission
It’s funny — I was already planning to come home on Wednesday, but the things I planned to do when I got home (work and school) won’t work out well in quarantine! Life is crazy for everyone right now. I am so grateful to have been able to serve a mission. I love Brasil, I love Pernambuco, I love Pernambucanos, and most of all I love the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Quarantine
[This blog is dated March 23rd because of when it took place, but Sister Faulconer wasn’t able to write down all the details until she returned home].
The Monday I wrote the last blog post we left to buy two more weeks of food storage. It was seriously difficult! The hard part is taking bags of heavy things home — you underestimate transportation to the grocery store until you don’t have any! The bags ripped several times, we stopped to take a rest a couple times, and I bruised my shins with bagged cans. But it worked out! I am very grateful to be able to do food storage and not have to worry about going hungry. I’m sure many here don’t have that luxury — there are a lot of street vendors (popsicles, corn, tapioca) and farmer’s market sellers here. I can’t imagine Covid-19 is helping them out. We went on splits with the sisters from Olinda. Olinda is more than two hours from Goiana. We asked the bus driver three times to tell us where to get off. He said he would but didn’t! I stayed with Sister Ascanta in Goiana. She was trained by Sister Barros! I really want to see Sister Barros — it’s been a while already!
We switched back Wednesday morning. Wednesday afternoon we got new rules — no more splits, no talking to senior citizens or pregnant people. Sad that we couldn’t follow up with our investigators that are senior citizens at all, but we would also hate to get them sick. When the phone rang we were afraid we would have to stay in quarantine. But since there were new rules we figured it would take at least several more days to get to full-on quarantine. Nope. Thursday the district leader [missionary leader of a group of 6 missionaries] called us with rule clarifications. He started out by joking that we would be in quarantine. We believed him but it was a lie. Literally five minutes after that the zone leader [missionary leader of the larger group–about 30 missionaries] called us to say that we really were in quarantine. We didn’t believe it!
Quarantine is crazy. We did studies like normal in the morning but just studied for as long as we wanted (and could stand it). We learned a lot together — I love doing companionship study with Sister Ribeiro II. We spent more time studying, cooking, more studying, talking . . . repeat times infinity. That is all there is to do! I decided to read the Book of Mormon in quarantine. If you read 100 pages per day you can finish in just over five days! Also we called Giovanna,* who was marked for baptism that Saturday. She is awesome and really wanted to get baptized. But a few minutes before the zone leader called us about quarantine, she called to say she couldn’t leave the house. That was too bad — baptisms were still allowed that Saturday, albeit with a ton of health precautions (us, her, the person who would baptize her, the branch president — six feet apart, face masks, hand sanitizer). But unfortunately her dad didn’t feel good about that. But she is amazing and I am sure she will get baptized when Coronavirus blows over (hopefully it will blow over enough for her to get baptized soonish!).
It was a blessing to be quarantined with Sister Ribeiro II. 
We fixed our own lunches during quarantine, but were able to go out briefly and grabbed the fries while we were out. 
Lunch Paulista style, because Sis. Ribeiro II is from São Paulo. The sriracha sauce is Sis. Faulconer’s!
It was strange to go into quarantine already knowing I would leave the mission. I had thought I would do contacts and lessons Sunday night knowing they would be my last — and then leave Monday. But all of a sudden I had taught my last lesson and done street contacts for the last time without knowing it! We had been teaching Pedro.* We had stopped teaching him, but during the division (splits) he stopped on the street to talk to us so we went back. I hope he reads the Book of Mormon — he has promised to many times but never gotten around to it. You can’t say God won’t show you the truth if you never experiment just reading the Book of Mormon and praying about it! It’s not that hard, but you do have to do it.
On Sunday at 10:30 pm we got a text that said all the foreign missionaries were going to leave the country. It was sad. I am so grateful to have been able to serve a little over a year and a half as a full-time missionary. But sad to miss even a little bit of it! And my heart hurt to think of all the other missionaries going home. It was hard to sleep! I know it must be hard for people who are going home early, and it’s hard to see so many missionaries going home and not feel that God’s work is stopping. But I remembered this scripture from the Doctrine and Covenants, and then President Houseman sent a text with the same verse!
49 Verily, verily, I say unto you, that when I give a commandment to any of the sons of men to do a work unto my name, and those sons of men go with all their might and with all they have to perform that work, and cease not their diligence, and their enemies come upon them and hinder them from performing that work, behold, it behooveth me to require that work no more at the hands of those sons of men, but to accept of their offerings.
D&C 124:49
God just asks that we do what he says. Sometimes he will call us to a mission for 1.5 or 2 years and then ask us to do change our plans or do something else. We just have to work diligently, be obedient, and he will accept our best efforts.
The works, and the designs, and the purposes of God cannot be frustrated, neither can they come to naught.
D&C 3:1
Covid-19 isn’t more powerful than our omnipotent Heavenly Father. His work doesn’t stop, even when thousands of missionaries go home.
*Investigators’ names are changed to protect their privacy.
Headed to Recife 