Tag: Bananas

Sister Anaya’s Last Week

Sister FaulconerLeave a comment
Refrigerator picture–Eddy Mulyono–Flickr

Update on the bananas: It turns out that bananas fresh from the bananeira (banana tree) get ripe very slowly.  We left one bunch on the counter.  After many days they finally turned yellow and we ate them all very quickly before the next bunches that we took out of the fridge had a chance!

This week three people went to church for the first time!  We have been having a lot of difficulty with getting people to church.  One of them was Renata, Davi’s daughter. Unfortunately we stopped by Davi’s house to make sure he was going to church (he doesn’t live with his daughter) and he wasn’t there.  Then we heard that a member had seen him in the street drunk the other day . . . So that was pretty sad.  Hopefully we manage to find him at home this week. 

Image from Needpix.com

We also went on splits with the sisters from Escada.  We called them when we got there because they hadn’t shown up yet.  We explained where we were so they could meet us, but they said they didn’t know which place we were describing.  That seemed weird because we were right in front of their house, but we told them we would meet them at the bridge instead.  We waited and they still didn’t show up, and their phone had no signal so we couldn’t talk to them. Finally they called us — and we found out they were on the bus in a different city an hour away.  ???  Apparently they thought they were supposed to go to our city!  I was very grateful this happened with the sisters from Escada and not with the ones from Palmares (twice the distance!)  

Sister Anaya taught me how to make refried beans.  We took refried beans, ruffles, and guacamole to the District meeting (now renamed district council with the new handbook!)  It turns out that making refried beans is super simple and tasty.  I started missing Mexican food so much!  I think something like refried beans seemed very everyday normal, tasty, but not exciting in the land of ubiquitous Mexican food.  Now, after a year and a few months without eating Mexican food, eating refried beans gave me huge Mexican food cravings!

Krista–Flickr


This week we are going to zone conference on Wednesday.  The talk topics are joy and discipleship.  Here is a great talk about joy. It is Sister Anaya’s last week in the mission!!! I can’t believe how fast this transfer flew by.  I don’t know where I will be next Monday — I will drop Sister Anaya off and then probably stay two days with another missionary.  Maybe Sister Pereira.  Not sure if I will stay in my area or a different area.  It will be an adventure.  We are also going to go on splits with the sisters from Tamandare this week; I will stay here in Candeias so pray for my directional abilities!  

This week in Candeias

Sister FaulconerLeave a comment
Candeias has vegan sushi!

Grandma Deleyne sent me an email today with a summary of an MTC devotional from President Uchtdorf. He said his missionary grandson is serving in a difficult area in Europe. Apparently he is grateful for lots of things — including the almosts. They almost marked a visit, they taught a great lesson and almost took a couple to church. I can relate to that! This week we almost took a lot of people to church! Unfortunately the fact that they did not go to church means we need to stop visiting several of them, but we also met a few great new people that I’m excited to teach this week. We are trying to teach Renata,* Davi’s daughter. We hope we can take her to youth activities this week and to church.

Cityscape

We also met a great young woman from a Spanish-speaking country (Colombia), Taynara. We taught her the Plan of Salvation and it went really well. She understood everything and accepted an invitation to baptism. I think she has a lot of potential. It was sad because we somehow forgot to mark her for baptism. I left the lesson thinking that we had marked her for baptism but then realized we actually said the day but hadn’t actually invited her because we got sidetracked inviting her to church. But I have high hopes for next week!

Sister missionaries! Sister Faulconer and her companion Sister Anaya are on the left.

“It is the responsibility of members to provide the . . . missionaries with the names of individuals and families to teach.” –Pres. Spencer W. Kimball

We had an activity about motivation to be a member missionary — and let´s just say that it did not have a lot of attendance. We ended up not doing the activity and just giving them the handout. We asked the people to write the names of their friends who weren’t members and then respond to a couple of questions about them. Would you like this friend to know about the gospel? Do they already have church materials — Book of Mormon, videos, family proclamation, etc. Then you can pray about those names and ask God which person needs an invite to a church activity, a Book of Mormon, your testimony, a verse from the Book of Mormon, etc. We also shared some counsel from President Kimball:

It is the responsibility of the members to provide the stake and full-time missionaries with the names of individuals and families to teach. Sometimes we forget that it is better to risk a little ruffling in the relationship of a friend than it is to deprive him of eternal life by keeping silent.

and a different quote about how the best-case scenario is that the members find the investigators and the missionaries teach them. There weren’t many people at the activity, but I shared a scripture about the sons of Mosiah. They were few as well, but they ended up bringing thousands of souls to Christ. You should feel free to try this activity as well! Writing down names and then praying about them with real intent is a great way to get revelation about how to do missionary work. Also see Sister Franco’s recent conference talk about missionary work — it is awesome! Lots of good suggestions.

Stock photo from peakpx.com

Funny story: we were teaching Leonardo the other day. Suddenly he asked “Do you want bananas?” We said thanks, but you don’t need to give us bananas. “No no, a bunch of bananas for each of you!” “Oh, you really don’t have to, but thank you.” “No, no!” He left and started cutting bananas from his banana tree. He put two bunches of bananas in a sack and we said “thanks so much, we will have to work to eat all those bananas!” Then he got another sack of bananas. “Um, just the one grocery bag is fine. We live alone. We only manage to eat so many bananas!” He said “If you don’t take the bananas I will be sad!” Um . . . he said this several times and we ended up walking around with four huge palms of bananas!!! We wanted to give some of them to a different investigator but didn’t remember to take them to church. They were very green, so we tried cooking the green bananas like fried plantains the other day. Sister Anaya said she had done it before but they were too green for it to work out. So now we have a ton of very, very green bananas! Anyone have simple banana recipes that use lots of bananas? We are in need!

Preparation day visiting a historic synagogue and a museum

*Names of investigators are always changed to protect their privacy.