"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