Tag: Joy

Sister Anaya’s Last Week

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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!  

I can do all things through Christ–Goodbye to Casa Forte

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Sister Barros and Sister Faulconer at the mission office, Courtesy Sister Lori Houseman

Good news: Willian* still wants to get baptized. He is reading the scriptures and praying every day! We managed to follow up with a couple more of our contacts than usual this week, which was good. Some of them seem to have potential. We also got a cool reference from the elders today — someone stopped them on the street and asked how to visit the church!

We really thought Willian would get baptized this week but it did not work out. We saw him several times, we finally managed to take a member there, and he said he was excited! He has been saying he wanted to be baptized for a while! We have been teaching him for more than three months. On Friday we got a baptismal jumpsuit and carried it around only to get a call from him. I immediately knew this was a bad sign but hoped he was just calling to double check his interview time. Nope. His mom is going through some difficulties and asked him not to get baptized. He was going to get baptized anyway, but decided to wait in order to help her out. So anyone who can offer prayers on behalf of Willian’s mom and Willian would be greatly appreciated.

We have an investigator, Erick, who went to church two weeks ago. He is from the religion “Spiritualism” or “Kardecismo” which is related to the teachings of Allan Kardec. Everyone thinks I ought to know who this is because he is American but I had never heard of him. Anyway, one thing to admire about spiritualism is that it is very focused on charity. Erick was very focused on getting answers through dreams. We tried a lot to help him understand that you could get an answer in a dream but it could also come in a variety of other ways. We thought we hadn’t had any success, but the other day he said he got an answer reading the Book of Mormon that it is true! Unfortunately he hasn’t gone to church these past two weeks because he likes to stay up late reading and then doesn’t feel like going to church until nighttime. He reads and studies a lot and is very excited about sharing his finds with us. We are working on having a balance between us sharing about the gospel and hearing about his opinions as well. Hopefully he goes to church this Sunday.

Newsy news:
I am going to be a sister training leader in Candeias. It is a bairro (neighborhood) in the city of Jaboatão. I will go there this Wednesday. It is 2-3 hours from here. Apparently you can see the sea in Candeias! I am very excited. I always thought it would be super cool to see the sea! That means my companion and I will be in charge of doing divisions with a couple of companionships of sisters in the Litoral zone. Also we will present something at the zone conferences. My companion will either be Sister Anaya (Mexico) or sister Vargas (Sao Paulo). Sister Vargas trained sister Barros, so that would be funny. Probably it will be Sister Anaya because she is newer in the area, but I won’t know until Wednesday! I am sure both of them are great. Next week I will go to new leader training and afterwards the mission leadership council. I am nervous but I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me!

Today I said goodbye to Casa Forte at Pura Vida, the vegan shop I went to a while ago. I am going to have to figure out how to make jackfruit coxinhas at home. Tasty tasty.

Aline, the investigator I talked about the other week, has disappeared. We keep calling her and going to her house but only manage to talk to her mother! Sad, but hopefully she is just busy and it works out in the future. Also, the only person who went to church was Viviane. That was sad, but it is great that she always goes to church.

One scripture that really helped me out this week was Alma 8. Alma goes from a city where he baptizes tons of people to a city where no one is interested in the gospel. He pours out his soul praying for and caring about the people but they spit on him and cast him out of the city.

14 And it came to pass that while he was journeying thither, being weighed down with sorrow, wading through much tribulation and anguish of soul, because of the wickedness of the people who were in the city of Ammonihah, it came to pass while Alma was thus weighed down with sorrow, behold an angel of the Lord appeared unto him, saying:
15 Blessed art thou, Alma; therefore, lift up thy head and rejoice, for thou hast great cause to rejoice; for thou hast been faithful in keeping the commandments of God from the time which thou receivedst thy first message from him. Behold, I am he that delivered it unto you.

Alma 8:14-15

A good reminder of the importance of caring about people, praying fervently, and being obedient. Also the importance of joy — I hope I can always be joyful for the same reasons as Alma — because I have been faithful in keeping the commandments of God. Reminds me of Elder Eyring’s talk: Holiness and the Plan of Happiness. It is great! Also the Come, Follow-Me this week is wonderful and talks a lot about joy in trials as well.

*Names of investigators are always changed

Every Day is a Good Day

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It’s hard to have a better week than general conference week!  I can’t believe it´s October general conference already. I remember watching last October’s conference in the CTM, and then watching in April with Sister M. Ribeiro.  April doesn’t seem six months ago!  Conference was great. I am excited to study the talks again! 

I was extremely excited to find out about the change to the policy on witnesses.  A tender mercy to hear about the change from my Mom in my birthday call to her (not to mention the tender mercy of being able to use webcams and call with more frequency!!).  I always hope people will progress to baptism, because it is an essential saving ordinance.  Being able to possibly witness such a baptism only adds to that hope!

There were many wonderful talks.  I especially loved the talks about the importance of joy as well as missionary work.  As a long-time fan of The Hobbit, I was also a fan of President Uchtdorf’s talk. On the subject of joy, today I read part of the book about President Hinckley as a prophet. There was a quote about how every day in missionary work is a good day. Apparently he shook his companion´s hand and said “Today will be a good day” when they left and “Today was a good day” every day when they got home.  I guess that’s true in life too — every day is a good day.

President Nelson’s talk reminded me of how many blessings we have.  What a blessing not to go hungry — and a huge responsibility to help those who are!  I thought it was interesting that he didn’t invite us to do anything as part of the talk.  But I think there was an inherent invitation to act.  Those statistics about hunger are an invitation to act!

Although we had more people than normal who said they would go to conference, we did not have a lot of actual success.  But Ana Luiza went to church!  Ana Luiza is a 12-year-old who I met a while ago with Sister Sousa.  A different missionary later saw her in his area and contacted  her.  She told him she was already being taught!  Because I ended up working in two areas and she doesn’t spend much time at home, we didn’t manage to see her for a while.  But now we are teaching her again and she went to conference!  Also, she became ecstatic upon receiving a Book of Mormon after having read part of the pamphlet of excerpts on the Book of Mormon: “I’m not managing to believe you are giving me a Book of Mormon!”

Aline did turn out to be a great investigator.  She is interested and kept all of her invitations. She didn’t go to conference and we aren’t sure why, but hopefully everything goes well this week!

We are also teaching Ana Carolina and her family.  Ana Carolina became excited about the Book of Mormon in our contact with her.  She said it would be her birthday present because we promised to give her one on our visit the day after her birthday.  We are also teaching her brother and mother.  She almost went to conference but was sick the day of.  She had some questions about how Joseph Smith could have seen God.  There is  lot of confusion about this here–people think that no one could see God.  That kind of makes sense, except that the Bible also says that Moses spoke to God face to face and that John saw God and Christ in a vision, just like Joseph Smith did. That helped her with those concerns, although she still has doubts about prophets.  But she hadn’t read the Book of Mormon yet, so I think it will help a lot.  Also we invited her to watch conference online so I hope that works out!

This week we are going to do a service project and help Monique (the missionary’s mom) paint and clean her house.

This week it has been getting hotter every day.  It is not winter anymore; not even close!  People keep telling us it will just get hotter!  Next week is transfers — I will find out if I will be in Recife in January (i.e., hot hot hot hot hot) or somewhere else!  It is inspiring to hear President Houseman talk about how he receives revelation to transfer missionaries.  I´ll go where He wants me to go —- o´er hill or beach!

Church

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This week was a little crazy!  We had to go to Caruaru twice this week instead of just once because we had interviews with President Houseman.  We also spent a lot of time with Mirelle.  It turned out that she actually was smoking when she said she wasn´t  . . . which was sad.  But then she had to go to the hospital because of blood pressure issues and decided to never smoke again!  Which was wonderful.  So we spent a lot of time trying to help her learn the lessons this week.  She is learning!  But her baptism this week fell through — we will see if maybe she can be baptized on the thirtieth.

So we had less time with our other investigators this week.  But we saw the most important people and on Sunday we had a miracle — ten investigators who made it to church!  We always have an expectation of 15-23 people at church more or less, but usually less than five people actually show up.  So it was exciting because of the number of people, but really we were excited because we pray and hope and think about each one of them, and we know that going to church is really important.  So every time someone walks in the door we get super excited! 

A picture with some of our investigators

We spent an hour with a young woman last week before church.  She didn’t end up going, which was very sad, but this week she showed up!  We were trying to be reverent because sacrament meeting already started but we were very happy. 
I remembered this scripture which is about when the sons of Mosiah return from their missions and find one another:

17 Now the joy of Ammon was so great even that he was full; yea, he was swallowed up in the joy of his God, even to the exhausting of his strength; and he fell again to the earth.

18 Now was not this exceeding joy? Behold, this is joy which none receiveth save it be the truly penitent and humble seeker of happiness.

19 Now the joy of Alma in meeting his brethren was truly great, and also the joy of Aaron, of Omner, and Himni; but behold their joy was not that to exceed their strength.

Alma 27: 17-19

I have a long ways to improve in order to be a  truly penitent and humble seeker of happiness but I can relate to the joy they felt here.  (I didn´t faint twice like Ammon, but still . . .) Every soul that is at church on Sunday, or reading the scriptures or praying or serving others during the week deserves a little celebration.  

I know doing little things like reading the scriptures, praying, serving others, and going to church really does make a difference — out of simple efforts, great things come to pass.  I have seen it in my life and I am seeing it in the lives of our investigators! 

Love you all!