I Need to Learn to Cook.

I knew that that was a fact, but it didn´t hit quite so hard until this week.  We had a lesson with Yoná and Claudio where we watched the movie about President Monson to get her all pumped for Conference next week.  (BTW, I am so dang stoked for that!)  Anyway, we made popcorn and everyone was all like, "Sister Dana!  Make carmel for the popcorn! "  And I was like  "Ok!"  and then I melted a spoon in the pan and was stupid enough to pour the hot carmel in the plastic bowl and it melted that too.  So maybe it isn´t the actual cooking that I need to improve, but just the logistics.  Who knows.  All I know is that I will need to improve my time here in Brazil!  Alma 34:32, yo.

Movie night with Yoná and Claudio!

Yoná is amazing.  She is really learning to turn to the Lord and she opened up to us in a major way this week.  Gosh, I am gaining a testimony about the reality of the enemy, because every time that she tried to read her scriptures of pray or something, he gave her this monster headache.  She goes, "I know that it is because I am doing what´s right, and I am learning more about God...he doesn´t like that, does he, Sister?"  Nope.  But she will get past this.  I have never seen anyone work harder to overcome personal demons.  Maybe my pal over in PA....but yeah, it is some serious stuff.  Please just keep Yoná in your prayers this week, ok?

In other news, I went on a division with Sister Butler this week!  My MTC companion!  Reunited and it feels so goooood...no, Gentile music.  Sorry.  Anyway, she is awesome and it was super fun to be able to actually teach with her! I thought of all of our lessons together in the MTC and how they were total train wrecks, and it just made me happy to be together again, one year later!  I love her and we had a blast.  She has grown a ton this year and is a really powerful missionary.  This is one of those friendships that I know will last after the mish!

Our Zone!

My one year mark was also this Thursday!  Weirrrrrd.  It was almost a mental breakdown day, because I was stressing if I met all the goalst that I made when I started out and such, but Sister Rodrigues, Sister Hicken, and Sister Fortes made it a super fun day!  I woke up and the house was all decorated with balloons and streamers and a sign that said happy one year and everything.  They also made a boyfriend for me out of a broomstick and a balloon so I wouldn´t be lonely...he´s pretty cute you know.  But they are just the best.  I did in fact burn a skirt, but not for a ceremony or anything, mostly because Leslie sent me these really cool matches and I like burning stuff and it was an ugly skirt.  Super fun though!  We finished up the day with milkshakes  and had a lot of great lessons and it just made me so happy to be a missionary!

Cheiro...it´s a Pernambuco thing.

I got to dance with my boyfriend on my mission birthday!

We are adorable.  He needs to gain some weight.

I love my sisters!!!!

1 Year!!!

One year kills me...

Another funny story.  So there is this lady that lives next door to us that is 86 and was baptized in December.  She is HILARIOUS and has the mind of a 30 year old.  We visited her on Saturday night and laughedddddd at all her stories!  Anyway, when we were leaving, we had to help her walk out to the door to lock up with us.  She had me on one arm and Sister Rodrigues on the others, and was shuffling along when all of a sudden, her pants hit the floor.  She just busted up laughing and I couldn´t hold it in--we did too!  She goes, "Ah, again!  Sister, could you grab those for me?"  with a lot of super funny stuff in Portuguese that I don´t know how to translate.  Ohhhh my life.  She is the best.

Anyway, so good to hear that Cooper is doing well in volleyball and that he has friends.  That was always a worry for me.  Jokes.  It ticks me off thought that he is tall.  Ah well.  Tell him to write me a dang letter!  Mom, be thankful for your callings.  They are the most important thing that you can ever do here on the earth.  So...idk.  When I go home, I am definitely going to be looking at church responsability a lot differently because now I know how absolutely necessary it is, and the difference that it makes in peoples´ lives.  Dad, I know that you are doing a great job as bispo.  Send my love to Brother Shumway.  It makes me really sad to hear that-- he was an AWESOME home teacher when I was growing up!

I love you all lots and thank you so much for your letters and prayers!  Have a good week!

Love,

Sister Dana

Making lunch at homeeee...

Out to lunch!

Some of the members!  Sister Dana=Pillar of light...

"I Can´t Come to the Door, My Leg is Broken!"

This was one of the excuses we got the other day knocking doors.  It was pretty funny, actually, because we got a few good ones all on the same street.  The first went like this:

"Hey, we are representatives of Jesus Christ!  Can we say a prayer with you?"

"No!  I mean, my dog is loose, and he is huge and really mean and I am too afraid to come to the door!  Sorry!"

.....

"Hey, we are representatives of Jesus Christ! Can we say a prayer with you?"

"Who is it?  Missionaries?  Oh, nobody´s home!  Oh wait, actually I can´t come to the door, my leg is broken!"

"Wow, that is sad.  Can we help you?"

"No!  Nobody´s home!"

.....

*we see a woman standing behind a gate through the cracks*

"Hey, we are representatives of Jesus Christ! Can we say a prayer with you?"

"Oh, sorry, I am locked in here without a key!  I would let you in, but I can´t!"

*man working on the roof comes down, knocks on the gate, and asks for water.  woman sheepishly opens the gate.  Caught ya, liarpants.*

 

Needless to say, we did a lot of finding this week.  It was pretty hard, because our area is really small and has passed through a lot of missionaries, so everyone knows who we are and what we want: their souls.  Thus, we have been doing sooooo much door-knocking.  This is lame, because it has never been hard for me to get people to teach before, but I guess there is a time when we have to learn all the lessons of missionary work!

 

This week we also went to the temple!!!  It was WONDERFUL!  I love how as soon as you enter, you can just forget all the stress in your area and concentrate on how the Lord loves his children and the beautiful plan that he has for us.  It was sooooo cool to be in the Celestial room with all of my old companions too!  Sister Seidmann said something cool to me there.  She said that this is how it will be like after this life too.  We will not all get there at the same time, but imagine the joy we will have as each of our old friends walks into the presence of God and we are there to greet them.  I am so glad that I met her here. We have a bond that is super special--it is easy to tell that we were good pals before this life too.

 

We stayed the night with Sister Remy in Recife, then had Mission Conference the next day.  That was so cool!  Almost all of my MTC district was there!  It was really fun to talk to them and think about all that has happened since we showed up at the MTC almost a year ago!  The Conference was great.  The Sisters in our zone sang, and it was really bad.  It got better, but I am still pretty embarrassed over that one.  After the conference, Sister Rodrigues and I had an adventure.  She forgot the cell phone at the other sisters´ house where we stayed, so we had to go allllll the way back there and take an extra bus ride to get it!  So we were traveling about 5-6 hours on 4 different buses and the metro....I know Recife really well now.  At least by the nasty bus system.

 

We also had an amazing lesson with Yoná and her husband, Claudio on Friday.  We want to baptize Claudio soooo badly, because he just looks like a bishop!  So I was praying a lot for them in the temple, then I got a really cool idea of what we could do that would touch him.  He is a total softy for the fam, so we did the thing that my mom always did when Cooper and I were ticked at each other.  "Say 10 nice things about your brother or you can´t leave the house!"  So...this is what we did with Yoná and Claudio.  We went around the room, and each of us said 3 things we love about each member of our family, then 2 reasons why we want to stay with them for eternity, then what we would do to achieve that.  It was really, really special.  It was putting in practice the reality of eternal families and reminding them why this is something that is so desirable.  Yoná said that she had never done anything like that before and she loved it.  Claudio loved it too and was really touched.  We are prayin that this will be a turning point for him.

 

It sounds like you guys are seriously living it up over there!  Tell Cooper that he is blessed.  My childhood was not this fun.  But what the heck, he is so cute!  When did that happen!?  I think that the Lord is sending all the awkwardness of 15-year-olds over here to me, because he is definitely not receiving his fair share.  And Amy has a BEAUTIFUL baby!  Oh my gosh, I love that she named her Sally Ann.  That just warms my heart right up.  You know that Grandpa Flake probably already named her that up in heaven before he sent her off. 

 

Anyway, I love you all and thank you so much for writing me!  Mom, I got your Valentine this week!  Loved it!  Also the Brazilian mail service has been on strike for like a month, so this could explain why I haven´t been getting letters.  Or...no one loves me.  But I prefer the former option.

 

Have a lovely week and help the missionaries!

 

Love,

Sister Dana

Graváta Means Tie....but Gravida Means Pregnant.

Is your portuguese any better yet?  I hope that the Rosetta Stone stuff is helping!  Hey, I just want to send out a formal letter of complaint and tell you all that Crystal has an IPad, Leslie has an IPhone, and Sister Dana has a Nao-Pode.  Ask Tiago what that means.  I think it is kind of ridiculous how behind we are back here, but whatever.  We get our 90 minutes to use the phone every month and that is great:) Also maybe the Church was not fully restored in Brazil yet.

Anyway, this week was cool!  We did a division with some of the sisters in the zone.  Sister Rodrigues stayed with Sister Seidmann in Caruarú, and I brought Sister Penailillo back here to Gravatá.  She is Chilean and super cool!  Poor thing...if people have a hard time saying MY name, she has got it pretty bad! (Pen-ya-i-lee-jo).  It´s a rough life. But anyway, she only has 3 weeks out in the field and is a real champ.  She speaks really good portuguese, and so we got a long well!  We had a really cool lesson with this one family, Severino e Doralice, that we found in this little alley in the middle of basically a labyrinth of houses.  We left a blessing on their house, and it was really one of the most spiritual lessons that I have ever had.  Like, after I said the prayer asking for the Lord to bless their family individually, we all got up from our knees and sat on the couch and you could literally almost see the Spirit there.  No one wanted to even breathe.  Doralice started crying and everything...it was way cool.  I am so excited to see where it goes with this family.  I think that they are really special.

We had to stay home a few days because Sister Rodrigues got sick.  I think she picked up a bug in Caruarú.  Pretty much everything that she ate came right back up.  She hates barfing so much and was pretty sad, so I made light of things by stealing the other sisters´ cameras from their desks and taking secret videos of Sister Rodrigues throwing up...then leaving them for the other sisters to find.  Anyway, she is way better now, thanks for asking!  I have been really blessed by having a super strong immune system this whole mission, thank heavens.  As I told Sister Hicken the other day, "I have the immune system of a whale."  And the tiny brain of one too, apparently.  

We are working really hard on renovating our teaching pool right now, because after all of our efforts with Paula and Yoná, it is looking pretty sad.  But, we had an amazing lesson with Yoná this week.  I have never in my whole life seen someone so changed by the gospel.  She is full of light!  And she is laughing and happy all the time! The best part of the lesson was when she goes,  "Sister, I could blame this change on a million human things, like medicine or the weather or the kids.  But I KNOW that I am different because I made the right choice and God is happy with me.  I am happy!"  I cried.  It was so so cool guys!  Gosh...I never want to come home. Sorry mom.

We also have seen a huge change in Tarcisio.  Before his baptism, he was nervous and didn´t like to talk to people and really just didn´t have a direction in life.  But in this short month, he has become an example.  He calls all his friends to go to church, shows up in a suit, and is preparing for a mission following the examples of his brothers.  He went to the youth camp for carnaval too, and said it was the most fun that he ever had....all thanks to us.  I know that isn´t true, because he was prepared from the beginning, but still.  It was nice to hear:)

I love my mission.  Really.  The more time that I have here, the more I just want to thank Heavenly Father for pulling me out of my own life and sending me to help others.  Someone asked us this week what is the most important thing that we will take with us from our missions;.  I had to think a while, but I know that it will be the memory of watching the people I love leave the baptismal font.  That is the very best part of it all.

I love you lots, and thanks for the videos and pictures!  They are so fun!  Have a great week, and I love that the Lord is taking care of ya´ll for me!

Love,

Sister Dana

Today...Caruaru!

Just another day...ya know....

I hate the area book

We went running!  Miracles.

Hey famdamily!  Today I am in a cute little giant city called Caruarú.  Sister Rodrigues and I are here going shopping...so yes Mom, it is a wayyyy better idea to just put money on my card than send a package. One of my friends told me that he sent me a Christmas package...I still haven´t seen it.  But we went to this GIANT fair that they have here and I got a lot of clothes...so that is very happy!  Some things NEVER change:)

This week was possibly the most stressful of my life.  We had very little teaching time because of Carnavál, so every minute was spent chasing after our 3 ladies marked for baptism,  Yona, Paula, and Lourdinha.  We had some really cool lessons with them, and especially with Yona.  She was soooooo nervous!!!  She called us like, 3 times during the week and told us that she didn´t want to do this whole baptism thing anymore....trust me.  If you ever want to make a missionary freak out do that.  They will love it, promise.  I think that I put new callouses on my knees from so many prayers!  But we had a super cool lesson at her house with her family where she bore her testimony to her friend, and her husband Claudio, who is always pretty closed off from us, taught another friend of their´s how to pray.  It was great.

Yona's Baptism :)

Paula also was kind of apprehensive, but we ended up having a wonderful lesson with her, and she decided that the time really was right too!  So she was all happy and perfect. 

Paula with her mom and son!  She is Pocahontas

Lourdinha on the other hand...she was not so easy.  We went over to her house and she was crying and crying, just wanting to change so badly!  So, we marked the interview for Friday and assured her that baptism would definitely be the way to make this change.  She agreed, but then on Friday when the elders came, she ran away.  She picked up extra hours at work so that she wouldn´t be available and we haven´t been able to get in contact with her since.  When her family went to pick her up for church yesterday, there was a sign on the door that said "I will NOT go to church today."  So....we aren´t really sure what to do yet.  But that is ok, the Lord loves her more than we do, and He will take care of her.

The baptism on Saturday was perfect.  Of course everyone was an hour late and nobody had anything planned very well, but it´s like...this is life.  I will never forget how happy Yoná and Paula were after they came out of the water.  All of the stress, all of the prayers, all of the fasts...totally, totally worth it.  Just for the look on their faces.  

Paula and Yana at their baptism

We also did a division with the sisters of Boa Vista this week!  One of the perks/responsabilities of being a STL I guess.  I went out to her area with Sister Camille Hicken, who lives with us and is from Michigan.  Mom.  You should be friends with her mom.  I have a feeling that you guys would get along very well!  Anyways, she is an awesome missionary and we had a good time together.  Gosh, I just learn so much every time that we go out with them!  Poor thing, her area is ALLLL MOUNTAINS!  I have no idea how her tiny little legs can handle it.
Hats off to Sister Chicken.

Anyway, I am so happy to know that you are doing well!  Well, not really that well.    Because Mom is sick.  Oh well.  But eat some chicken soup and read your scriptures!  D&C 101:37-38.  Cooper is pretty much the coolest volleyballer that I know.  Props to him.  Have a lovely week, and know that I adore you, ok??   

Love,

Sister Dana

Carnavál.... (letter from March 3rd)

I hate Carnavál.  It is not the party that everyone says it is.  No, that is a lie, it really is the party that everyone says it is.  Just not for missionaries.  Which stinks!  So we have been confined to our houses at 5pm, but that is ok because I have written a million letters and we have a great time making videos!  But other than that...yeah, not much has happened.

Well, except for the amazing 3 women that we have marked for baptism this week!  Yoná is a mom that the sisters have been teaching since November, and we had a killer lesson with her and the bishop this week where we marked her baptism for the 8th.  I was so so happy!  She was crying and said that she just knew that this was the answer to her prayers!  Unfortunately, she broke our hearts the next day by sending a text message saying that she wasn´t sure she was ready to make a big decision and wanted to cancel.  We got our booties over there asap to calm all of her fears, and by the time we left, she was happy as a clam again.  Sister Rodrigues is amazing at making people feel good.  She was able to show Yoná how this was such a happy thing!  I really admire my companion!

Paula is also marked for baptism on Saturday!  We had a lesson with her on Wednesday, and she didn´t say a thing about the baptism and neither did we, which had me worried.  But then we came back on Friday and she said that she was feeling a lot calmer about it and that she was ready!  She still has to talk to her husband about it though, so we will see if he messes with the Lord´s plans or not.  She is super ready though, not to mention beautiful.  Honestly, this woman looks like Pocahontas.  I feel super ugly every time she walks into the room...ah well.  It is all for the kingdom.

Lourdinha is the last one that we have marked.  She will really be a miracle.  She likes her café and is hard to find at home, so we will try to teach her as much as we can, given our time limits of the week.  She was at church though yesterday and loved it, so that was a really good sign!  Please pray that we can find her at home this week and help her feel comfortable with baptism!

Yesterday was an amazing sacrament meeting!  Really, it was one of the best of my mission.  Very few people were there because all the youth go to a camp during Carnavál, but the few that were there bore AWESOME testimonies...and every single one was about baptism and how they were so grateful for making that decision!  And all three of our ladies were there!!! After, Yoná came up to us and said that she was so grateful because Heavenly Father answered a ton of her prayers in that meeting.

Sister Rodrigues and I have been using our time at home to prepare for the STL stuff.  We have a schedule and everything of when we will do divisions to help the other sisters, and I am super excited!  I think that I am really going to like doing this.  It has been hard, because now there is a lot of pressure to be EXACTLY obedient.  The 10:30 bedtime rule has always been reallyyyyy hard for me.  But now we are keeping ALL the rules to the letter, and we are really seeing the blessings.  Hmm, Preach my Gospel is true...go figure.

Oh, one more thing.  So on Thursday night, they had a parade out here called "Noite das Trinchas"  which means that all the wives help their husbands dress up as women (SCANDALOUS women) and then they go out and dance around the street all night.  Then they drink and play soccer and drink some more.  We had the pleasure of watching the parade pass by our house.  Love you, Carnavál.

But anyway, the dedication sounds like it was awesome!  Oh I am so excited to go see that temple!  And calm down Mom, the Lord will bless the violins.  Stranger things have happened.  Congratulations to all of my pals going out on missions!  Seriously...it is the best thing in the world.  I was writing about that in my journal last night, just how blessed I really am to be doing this work, and I wouldn´t trade it for anything in the whole world!  During our zone meeting this week, Elder Woodland reminded us that this is the ONLY time in our lives that we will be able to say that we represent Jesus Christ.  That put a different spin on things in my mind.

Welp, love you lots.  Good luck to Cooper and his games!  Have a fabulous week!

Love,

Sister Dana