Tag: Sister Porcote

Christmas is coming!

Sister FaulconerLeave a comment

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, Sister missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are holding a box of food and other things they put together for a family who needed help. In the background, the green, red and purple Christmas lights they strung up around their apartment are visible.
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.

Sister Faulconer and Sister Porcote, sister missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are pictured smiling and holding coconuts with a straw sticking out. They appear to be at some sort of a coconut juice vendor stand as there are several other people with coconuts.

Love you all!

Pictures!

Sister Faulconer1 Comment
Dried jackfruit cube in front of the cityscape of Palmares, Brazil
This is my attempt to take a picture of a piece of dried jackfruit. It tasted like dried fruit — not especially different but good. I was trying to come up with things to take pictures of! This is the view from our house.
A man working with a machine that has a large wheel. The machine makes caldo de cana, sugar cane juice.
This machine makes “caldo de cana.” You feed huge sugarcane stalks in the first hole and yellow juice comes out the second hole and goes through the strainer. It´s super cool! Unfortunately Sister Porcote [from Curitiba, Brazil] said the one we had wasn’t a good specimen of caldo de cana, but on the bright side, now I have an excuse to try it again!
A styrofoam cup filled with caldo de cana, sugarcane juice. In front of a display of bread, as at a bakery.
[Finished product?  Caldo de cana–or sugarcane juice]
Left to right: Sister Porcote, Sister Dolores, Sister Faulconer. Sister Porcote and Sister Faulconer are each holding a cup of a dark liquid that must be Cevada--some sort of substitute hot drink for coffee.
Sister Porcote and I with Sister Dolores, who got baptized my first week in Palmares. We see her a lot and she is awesome. She used to drink coffee all the time, but then she discovered Cevada, which she says is very similar (but you have to buy the right brand). It´s good.
Sister Porcote and I and people we know at "District Conference" which is like stake conference [a semi-annual meeting where several wards or church congregations meet together] but for branches [these are smaller church congregations for locales where there aren't as many church members].
Sister Porcote and I and people we know at “District Conference” which is like stake conference [a semi-annual meeting where several wards or church congregations meet together] but for branches [smaller church congregations for places where there aren’t as many members].

I know basically all the people in this photo. On my right are some boys who got baptized this year or a year and a little ago. We see them all the time because they´re doing an awesome job of teaching with us and they´re really good friends with each other. Two of them are ward missionaries! They are blessings and downsides of living in a big ward [church congregation] in Utah. I wish I had the chance to teach with the missionaries!

My companion did my hair.
Missionaries with Presidente Houseman at District Conference--November 2018
Missionaries with Presidente Houseman at District Conference–November 2018 [Photo courtesy of Sister Houseman]

Oi! Happy Thanksgiving!  Nobody celebrates Thanksgiving here, but they do celebrate Black Friday. All the shops had sales and the city center was a mad house. The gas station had a huge reduction in price and we could hear the loudspeaker from our house while we were trying to study. It’s a little sad to have Black Friday but not Thanksgiving, but on the bright side it means the Christmas decorations go up even earlier!  There are lots of fake evergreen garlands and red bows and lights: pisca-pisca [Portuguese for blink, blink]. We bought some lights for our house!  I will try to send a picture next week–I have more pics than I sent this week already and the internet is still super slow.  I am trying to make the camera work [for wifi downloads] but am having trouble.

Sister Porcote and I will be together until after Christmas. That is normal for training — you have the same companion both transfers.

In the CTM [Brazil’s missionary training center] several missionaries in my district knew someone who went to Japan and said they came back more quiet, reserved, etc.  I imagine that transition might have been a little easier for me. I am suspicious that Heavenly Father decided I needed to be more outgoing or more of a hugger or something and sent me here! But the transition hasn’t really been that hard. I’m really blessed not to be having health challenges or super hard things happening in Palmares.

You asked how often we get to eat with the members.  We have lunch planned every day but it is often money instead of actual food. Less exciting than it sounds because we keep eating at restaurants and from my perspective the restaurants all seem the same.  But the fruit is really good!  And the members make really good desserts sometimes, so I´m grateful.

This was a family home evening for a recent convert who had a birthday. He had never had a birthday celebration before and was very excited.
This was a family home evening for a recent convert who had a birthday. He had never had a birthday celebration before and was very excited.  

We have been trying to teach a young man, “Rafael” for a while, but kept having trouble actually finding him to teach because he is very busy.  He goes to seminary every day, but works before seminary and goes to school after seminary!  (School can be before lunch or after lunch or at night here).  He is awesome — super interested in religion, really wants to follow God.  The only problem is that he was reactivated in a different church a little while back and wasn’t sure if he wanted to change.  Yesterday he said he hadn’t received an answer with certainty yet.  He said he thought he wanted to get baptized but not yet because he wanted to keep participating in his other church´s youth program.  But during our lesson he started crying and said he would get baptized on the 8th!  It was wonderful to have the opportunity to see someone get an answer to prayer like that.  The promise is true — if you pray about the Book of Mormon with sincerity and a real desire to follow God’s will you will receive an answer!  Sometimes it takes time, but it comes.

Love you!

Palmares!!!

Sister FaulconerLeave a comment
Oi!
     I am having trouble with the computer today in several diferente (!) ways.  It is trying to fix my spelling so if you see a random Portuguese word — that´s why.  Also, Google Drive isn´t working and I have less time than I expected, so blame any oddities in this email on that!
     My first almost-a-week has been great.  There are so many things I want to tell you guys!  You actually can feel the humidity the second you step out of the airport.  It´s so diferente (I can´t fix it!)  If I make my hand a fist it will be covered in watery sweat after a few minutes. My first area is a small city called Palmares. It´s very hilly, like San Francisco, except that there aren´t any trolleys to take you up the hills, so we do a lot of walking!  There is lots of greenery and a big river. It is hot, but there are clouds and a nice breeze.  The flowers are beautiful, the weather is great, the fruit is awesome, and the bugs are not bad.  It would be paradise if I didn’t need so much sunscreen!
     First area Palmares2Speaking of which, so far a couple diferente Brazilians every single day have said something like “You are very white.  Use sunscreen!”  I got a very mild sunburn my first day from walking to the Palmares bus stop in Recife (we waited for the bus for 3.5 hours!  It’s two-ish hours from Recife to Palmares.) but I´m making a serious effort to keep the sunscreen manufacturers happy.

     I have a very clear memory of someone in the CTM [MTC] saying that their instructor was praying they would get trainers who didn´t speak English so their Portuguese would progress faster.  For some reason, I thought that seemed super unlikely, because how could you possibly function if your companion didn´t speak English?!  Guess what . . . my companion is Sister Porcote.

Sister Faulconer and Sister Porcote
Sister Faulconer and Sister Porcote

She´s super awesome, she´s from Curitiba, she´s been on a mission for six months, and . . . we only speak Portuguese.  She learned some English her first two months here but not enough that speaking English helps us communicate better.  I understand enough Portuguese that we can talk about everything we need to talk about.  Obviously I ask her to explain lots of words, but not so much that communicating feels super laborious.  So that´s cool!

     I can understand other missionaries pretty well too, but understanding and speaking to Palmares-ians here is a lot harder.  Church talks and lessons are super easy to understand.  Outside of that, sometimes I understand enough to participate in conversations, and sometimes I only kind of know what´s happening.  The accent is very diferente, so hopefully as I keep listening I´ll start to understand better.
     My favorite thing about the past two weeks was General Conference.  I think maybe one reason I started my mission so late was because I needed to be in the CTM [MTC] during conference.  We got to watch all the sessions in English, whereas lots of missionaries in the field didn´t get to see all the sessions.  I felt the spirit so strongly, and I felt very clearly that the announcements and talks were inspired.  At one point, [Elder] Rasband said something about how if we are faithful and diligente our questions will be answered or we will be able to put them aside for now.  That resonated with me.
     2-3 weeks ago we had a devotional broadcast from the MTC with Elder Cook (I think).  He started off by saying that he had given lots of talks to missionaries in his lifetime but he had never talked about his current topic before, but that he felt inspired to talk about it that day.  Then he started talking about the very thing I had been praying about for weeks.  I had been praying especially fervently that day, and I really believe that talk was an answer to my (and others) prayers.  It was a little miracle from God for me. He didn´t actually answer any of my factual questions about the subject (why is this like this, etc;) but he answered all of my spiritual ones (why do I feel like this, shouldn´t I feel differently, is this right, what can I do to find answers to my questions).  The same thing happened at General Conference.  Some questions were answered, but mostly I just felt a profound sense of peace — that I was doing the right thing, that what the apostles were saying was true.  If you haven´t watched it [yet] you definitely should!
Love,
Sister Faulconer