The Week of Birthday is Arriving...

 Hooray hooray hooray!  Thank you so much for all of the birthday wishes guys!  I am so dang lucky to have family and friends that make me feel super special!  Mom, I cannot believe that Celia´s husband did that with my package...holy cow!  I think I need to bake them a cake or something.  That is so nice and I owe them big time!  My Zone Leaders told me that I have a package waiting that I will receive on Tuesday, so I am super stoked for tomorrow!  Yay!!!  Also, we will see if the Christmas stuff lasts until Christmas, ok?

Is it Thanksgiving this week?  What the heck, time is a flyin´.  I miss Thanksgiving a lot right now!  It is pretty weird here, because everything is exactly the same as it was in June when I arrived.  But that is ok:)  Just have a really good Thanksgiving this year, ok?  And give a hug to all of the famdamily:)  Is it the Flake year?  If so, please take some pictures of the stick horse rodeo!

So you wanted to know how things are down here.  We are super isolated, to be honest.  Our mission has some pretty tight restrictions because of some reallyyyyy bad stuff that happened in the past, so we only see the other missionaries once a week at district meeting.  I have not seen Sister Butler since I left the US, but I know that she has been here for a while.  Presidente came to our zone meeting this week, but that is pretty rare.  He cares for the Sisters really well though, so don´t worry.  Mom, fear not, I clean like a boss now and our apartment is beautiful.  We have mission conferences about every 2 or 3 months, but they are super fast and we don´t really get much time to socialize, you know?  President is super careful about making sure that NOTHING goes on between the elders and sisters, so...yeah.

Also, the nice man at the internet shop here fixed my SD card.  Hooray!

This week was super super good!  Sister Patino and I BOTH have birthdays coming up, because hers is the 21st!  So we  were way happy to start it off on a good note with the baptism of MESSIAS yesterday!!!!  YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY!!!!!  Oh my goodness I was so so happy!  He showed up to church yesterday again, which was a blessing in and of itself, and he goes, "Hey, is anyone else getting baptized today?  No?  Ok, I´ll get baptized tonight then!"  And he did!  And it was so so so great!  A ton of the members of the ward showed up because we really made sure to involve everyone in teaching him.  That is the very best way to make sure he stays active, you know?  So they all bore really great testimonies and then his buddy in our ward, Ricardo, baptized him!  After that, Sister Patino and I sang "I Know that My Redeemer Lives" in Spanish, English, and Portuguese.  Look who is tri-lingual now....whaaaat!  Haha jk, but it was really cool!  After the baptism, he came up to us and thanked us for helping him find this gospel and changing his life.  Best birthday present ever, right there.

Sister Dana, Messias, Sister Patino

Our investigators are progressing super well right now.  It seems like we are finally finding the elect, the people that are really prepared to hear and accept the gospel.  I think that in the next few weeks, we will be having things move forward a lot faster!  Hooray!  That is way good because it is so dang hot right now, and people are seeming to be drinking more, so conditions have been getting a bit difficult.  The Lord always compensates for these things though!

I´m glad that things are going so well at home.  Thank you so much for all of the letters and birthday wishes!  All I really want is just a baptism.  That´s like, the best thing in the whole world.  Have a great week and I love you all so very much!

Yasmin Baptism

Sister Gomes, Sister Dana and Sister Patino

Happy Birthday Sister Rocha

My Package

Sister Lisa Tanner took some stuff with her when she went to Brazil to pick up her son from his mission.  She was kind enough to mail the package from inside the country so it had a better chance of reaching her.

Yay! Swedish Fish and Skittles!

Another Week In Recife!

Ok not really, I´m in Jaboatao.  But that is ok.  It´s like, the same thing.  Hey, Congratulations to Cooper for being such a baller and making the basketball team!  Oh I´m so proud....because you know, I totally played basketball too in highschool....nope, but that´s ok.  But hooray!  Sounds like things are just peachy there, and they are here too!

Oh family...it is so very very hot.  Like, extremely.  But you know, that is ok because this is the Lord´s work and so sometimes we just have to make sacrifices!  So now I am Sister Sempre Suada.  Yeah, ask Dad and Norma what that means.  It´s really true.  But yeah, we are in that in-between stage right now where we have a lot of people super close to baptism!  Like, Alexandra.  All we have to do is convince her bf that marriage is the way to go and that alcohol really isn´t all there is to life.  Maybe we have our work cut out for us....but I am so happy for her because she told us that no matter what, one day she will be baptized.  She quit partying, drinking, smoking(!) and all of this stuff, and she said that there is no way that she is going back to this life.  She has made some serious sacrifices and will be receiving some major blessings, I just know it!  Also, Messias came to church this week!  For the very very first time ever, and he loved it!  It was a huge sacrifice for him too though, so I was way impressed.  He ditched work yesterday in the morning to come, and he didn´t know if he would have a job to come back to.  Whoa...talk about faithfulness.

I am amazed every single week by these people here.  They are willing to give so much for the Lord, for this faith that they have only known for a teensyyyy weensy time....and yet they change everything about their lives for it.  It´s the best job in the world to be a missionary, that is for sure.

Hmm, let´s see if we have any good stories from this week...well, we were at lunch at a member´s house this week that has a little dog that drives me crazy.  She is INSANE, but Sister Patino loves her.  She loves all dogs, poor thing.  Anyway, we were waiting for lunch, and I was giving that pooch a pretty wide berth because she smelled like death, and Sister Patino was just happily playing with the little beasty.  I knew it was a bad idea...and it really was.  Lo and behold, when lunch was ready,  Sister Patino had a nice round yellow spot chillin on her dress.  And we had an appointment right after, so guess who and cachorro chichi on her person the whole day?  Ducky, that´s who.  Gross.  

Also, the gift of tongues is SUPER real.  Sister Patino decided that she wanted to make the most of our time here together and try speaking English, and so we have been doing that a lot more often now.  Um, all of a sudden, she is speaking perfectly.  On Thursday, she went the whole day speaking English to me, something that she has NEVER done before.  In our prayers together at night, she speaks English now and she started crying when she was thanking Heavenly Father for the gift of tongues.  I have no idea how this stuff happens, but it is crazy and the Church is true!

 I can´t believe that Hayden is going to be a missionary this week!  Oh that is so dang exciting.  I´m pretty sad that it will be a long time before I see that kid again...we are kind of pretty good pals now, you know?  Even though he never wrote me or anything, but whatever.  And Reggie too, and soon Jake and Hunter...aw, all my little cousins are going to be gone for a long time, dadgumit!  But this is the best thing that we can all be doing, so we will just have to wait about 4 years to all party together in Snowflake again.

I will definitely pray for my pals there in the Philippines, that is super scary!  Also way scary that I had no idea any of this was even happning!  But I KNOW that the Lord takes care of his missionaries, and they will have angels around them for sure, if that helps at all.

Life is good here!  I have a feeling that I´ll be transferred soon, but I don´t know...it´s not like I´ve got 5 months in this area or anything;)  Have a great week and remember that I love you!  And also please help the missionaries.  They need it.

Love,

Sister Dana

Oi Gente:)

Hey Famdamily, guess what! I got a package in the mail and there was a great rejoicing heard over all of Brazil when the missionaries in our house had their first tastes of Swedish Fish and Skittles!  Thank you thank you thank you!  I have eaten a ton of them...but I don´t even care. Honestly, I think about how healthy I ate at home and all the junk that I don´t really have a choice to eat now...because missionaries are poor, you know?  And junkfood is cheap:)  So really, I am just saving the Lord´s money.  Anyway, thank you so much for the shoes!  They are giving some blisters right now because the crocs (which are surprisingly chic) are too big, but I´ll figure out some way to deal with those.  Thank you!  And also, I need more of the cleanser, argan oil, and moisturizer, por favor. But yeah, that was basically the most exciting thing that happened that week.

Lies, this week was awesome.  We had a baptism!  Yay!  Yasmin was baptized last night, and she is 13 and beautiful.  When we got to her house half an hour before the baptism, she goes "Sisters, do you think we can move the baptism to next week?  I feel really sick!"  Um.  No.  So we said, "Yasmin.  Right now we are going to have a miracle, ok? You are going to say a prayer that this sickness can be taken away, and then we are going to get on the bus and you are going to get baptized tonight!  Do you have faith that this can happen?"  "...sim."  "Ok!  Pray"  So she did!  And then she got up and goes, "It´s gone, let´s go!"  And we did!  Of course, right when we got to the bus stop, a motorcycle sped by ridiculously fast through a puddle of disgusting water on the street and drenched the three of us.  I really hope that wasn´t some perverse baptism joke.  But oh well, it was a great night!

We also had a super funny story happen this Saturday.  So the weekends in our area are hilarious, because everyone gets wayyyyy drunk.  We don´t teach a ton on Saturday and Sunday, but we always have the best stories!  So anyways, we knocked on this lady´s door and she let us share a message with her on her front porch.  So I am saying the opening prayer, when this guy comes up to us and starts asking for water.  He and his buddy were PLASTERED.  So the lady goes to get them water, and they plop down in front of us and start to eat lunch.  I have to give it to the Brazilians, they are the most charitable people that I know.  These guys had bread from the bakery, spaghetti from the diner, and vegetables from the fruit stand that people just give out of the goodness of their hearts.  But anyway, they started eating, and it was DISGUSTING.  Imagine two humans eating lettuce like horses.  Nasty business.  And then the spaghetti....oh dear.  But all the while, they were talking and saying literally the funniest stuff I have ever heard, all the while smearing the food all over their faces.  One of them tried to show off for us, and acted out a fight that he had had the night before...oh my gosh.  And so this went on for about 45 minutes.  Finally, they finished up and cleaned up this poor lady´s porch by using a plastic bag and smearing the food all over the place.  Then, they did a ballet-samba dance for us to say thank you, and danced down the road back to the bar.  Needless to say, this lesson never really happened, because all of us just sat there crying because it was so funny!  I love Brasil...

But yeah, other than that, everything is normal here!  It was weird to have Halloween pass by without doing anything, and Leslie´s bday, and today is Kristen´s, so birthday shout out to Belgium!  I hope that you guys had a great week, and I love you all lots.  Thank you for your prayers, and I seriously can feel them all the time!  Have a good week!  

Love,

Sister Dana

Do You Know I Love Being a Missionary?

I really, really do!  Aw famdamily, it is so good to know that you guys are doing well!  I am sure that your song was awesome, Mom, don´t stress!  Oh and the other day, I heard that "Savior Redeemer of my Soul" song that you and Emily Depaula did for Jona´s farewell, and I remembered playing with you and I just got all trunky!  But not really, don´t worry!  Also, it sounds like Cooper had a great birthday.  I missed him that day, and everyone in my house definitely knew that it was his 15th!  I sang "Happy Birthday"  to him all day, even if he couldn´t hear it.  Maybe the Spirit carried it into his heart or something, who knows?  

I am really sorry to hear about Bro Sezate and Sister Beck.  That is super hard for the ward...they will definitely be missed.  You guys are in my prayers and I know that the Lord will help you out!  It is such a comfort to know about the Plan of Salvation, right?  

Something really interesting....this week, Sister Patino and I decided that we were sick of not teaching very much.  So we started teaching a full lesson to everyone that we meet on the street.  And it is really kind of amazing the things that happen.  We didn´t get a hundred contacts a day, but we got 20 new investigators this week, which puts our teaching pool at about 40 people now.  So we are very, very busy!  But the thing that was the most successful was starting out promising blessings.  The very first thing we started doing when we met someone was ask them what they think will happen after death to their family.  A little shocking...yeah, a lot shocking...and then we explained exactly what will happen because of that perfect plan that Heavenly Father created.  And you know what?  They got all sorts of relieved and wanted to know more !  So we got new investigators!  Hooray!  

I have been so amazed this week as we have taught the Plan of Salvation over and over, just how perfect it really is.  It is all completely logical, completely backed up by the scriptures, and just an amazing thing!  We talk to all of these people who have so many questions that their religions just don´t answer...they just sing and praise and "Gloria Hallelujah"  all the day long.  What a blessing it is to have a plan that is perfect, and a gospel that encourages lifelong learning!  Gah, I just think that is so dang cool.

In other news, Sister Patino and I went exploring in our area a lot this week and found a jungle-y place that is really cool, so we took some legit pictures of that that will be included...other than that I really don´t know if much more has happened!  We are happy and working hard and life is good!

 

Me in our area - Twas an Adventure

Also,  a giant birthday shout-out to my BFF Syster Clouse out there in Sweden!  I hope that the next 20 years are as great as the last!  Because we basically had all the same experiences the last 20 years...but yeah, HAPPY BIRTHDAY LESIL!  I LOVE YOU! 

Well fam, I love ya to pieces.  Sorry if this letter is boring...I will plan some more adventures for the following week to liven things up.  Have a great one!

Love,

Sister Dana

ps

Also in those pictures of Coop he looks like a manboy and this is WEIRD. 

Check out this bad boy that we found in the Road!

I love Brazil...pretty sure I have found his cousin in our lunch before!

T-t-t-tasty tasty

Oh Minha Familia

Como eu amo voces!  Seriously, I really do love you guys.  Thank you so very much for the emails, they make my day!  I just love Mondays!  Also, this week I got a few letters from Mom, Brandon and Jen, and a few other peeps that I will definitely write back to today!  Aw Mom, Cooper is so cute in his uniform!  Awwwww I want to be there and seee himmmm....dadgumit!  Tell him Happy Birthday this week!  I am sending a letter, but it is probably going to take about a million years to get there.  And as soon as I get to an area that has cool stuff, I´ll send good presents!  I promise!    And this week Leslie hits her halfway mark! What.  Wow...missions really fly, don´t they?  But Congratulations to her!!!  I love my best friend.

It is so good to here that you guys are doing well. Congrats on the baptisms in the ward!  Way to be!  I am super proud:) Mom, EVMCO sounds like it is incredible!  I miss playing so badly.  Really, I was surprised at how much I want to.  The other day I was listening to Lamb of God and it smacked me in the face.  But I am glad that you are still keeping up with that and doing well!

Today is transfers!  I am still here in Jaboatao Litoral...more than 4 months now, but that´s ok!  I´ll go where you want me to go, dear Lord!  More like I´ll stay where you want me to stay, actually....but oh well.  I am happy that I get to finish training Sister Ducky!  Can´t believe that she is already halfway done!  Sister Clarke, my American amiga, was transferred, so that was sad, but I like change up in here:)

Our House! Sister Rocha, Gomes, Patino and Dana

This week was pretty boring, but we did have one cool experience that I´ll tell you guys about!  We have an investigator, Alexandra, who I didn´t think would be progressing too much, to be honest.  She has a few things to work out, ya know?  But we challenged her to pray and talk to God about what she should do in her life, and she did.  And he answered!  She told us that she had a dream twice where the Lord told her 3 numbers: 31, 20, and 90.  She woke up and called her daughter, who is a member, and her daughter told her to look in the Livro de Mormon for the answers.  So she opened it, and lo and behold, I had marked 2 Nefi 31 for her to read, and I had written the word "batismo" right next to it! Aha!  She didn´t understand the other numbers, so her daughter told her to wait until we got there for her lesson.

When we got there, I immediately had the feeling to go to page 90 of the Livro de Mormon, which talks about all of Israel coming to the mountain of the Lord, which is the temple!  So we explained this to her and she freaked out!  Then on to page 20....which describes the Savior´s example of being baptized!  We marked the baptism that night for November 3rd:)   I was so happy!  She lives with a guy and they aren´t married, but she said "I am going to walk this path.  If he won´t walk with me, I will walk alone.'  What the faith!  That miracle carried me through for a couple of days, that´s for sure!

Other than that...this week really wasn´t super exciting.  Sister Patino and I are knocking a lotttttt of doors.  And it is very, very hot.  Every one in our ward is commenting on how we must be working so hard because I am super brown.  Yeah, they are right!  But we will work harder until we have the miracles that we want! I think I will try Dad´s goal of making 100 contacts every...week...because that is a freaking lot of contacting, Dad.  But we will try!  

I love you all so much!  Thank you thank you thank you for everything!  Have a lovely week!

Love,

Sister Dana

Look! I'm Blonde

To my Darling Family

Hey Mom!  Before I forget, yes I want to be included in the Christmas list stuff!  And I need Celia´s address pronto!  I want to send you guys stuff before it is ridiculously late!  But first I have to go shopping because there is absolutely NOTHING cool here to buy.  Believe me, I have looked.  I will have to go into Recife soon and do a shopping run there on a Pday or something, because I don´t want to send ya´ll crippitycrap, you know?  But what on earth, Cooper´s birthday is coming up!  Aw you know, I really miss him a lot!  I don´t have a cool present yet, but I´ll definitely send the best letter ever!  And on his birthday...is Leslie´s 9 month mark!  She could have a baby by now.  It is her fault that I think in terms of pregnancy, btw.  But I can´t believe that is has been almost 9 months since I have seen that woman...Wow, it goes by super fast.

Um, the Randall story....yeah, I am not even going to comment on that.  Just...oh goodness...he def hasn´t changed at all.

So this week!  Very, very crazy.  But so cool!  I´ll be honest, at the beginning of the week, I was trunky.  To the max. Because it is so dang hot, and we were just knocking doors all day with little or no success. And I don´t like to be trunky, so I was just all peeved all the time and that is so not me!  But then I was reading in Ether this week about how the brother of Jared had enough faith to see the hand of God, and I was thinking about how I need to have enough faith to see the hand of God in my work here.  So I prayed to be able to see it better and then that day we marked 2 baptisms for this weekend.  Hooray!!!!!!  Finally!  But then something even cooler happened.

We needed to get authorization for both of the baptisms, and it would really be a miracle if we could.  I was worrying and worrying about it, because I was so tired of having all of my baptisms fall through!  So then I thought some more about the brother of Jared, and how he had a problem, came up with a solution, and asked the Lord to touch his work and sanctify it.  So I did that too!  Sister Patino and I came up with a plan of how we would like the day to go.  We would go to Ingrid´s house with the elders, do her interview there, and get the authorization of her aunt.  Then we would go to Irlavan´s house (and he is NEVER at home) and by some miracle he would be there.  Then he would take us to his cousin´s house (who can sign for him to be baptized) and his cousin would sign the documents, the elders would do the interview, and we would have 2 baptisms this week. Then we prayed and asked the Lord to touch our work and really help us out.

Well, the elders came with us to Ingrid´s house, and she was at the beach.  But we didn´t know that, so we traipsed around the favelas for about an hour looking for her.  Then her neighbor told us where she was, and I was about to get discouraged, but then I thought, "No!  The Lord is helpíng us!"  So we went to Irlavan´s house, and he was there!  Elder Sá did the interview, and he was perfectly set for batismo!  And better yet, he was on his way to his cousin´s house!  So when he was there....he got the authorization!  Oh the look on his face was pretty much the best thing ever.  He was so ready for baptism...I was so happy!!  So the elder´s left for another appointment, and then we went to teach someone else.  Sister Patino had the feeling that we should go over to Ingrid´s house again...and she was there!  So we called the elders lickety split, and played dressup and makeup with her while we waited.  She is 9, by the way.  Interview and authorization...check yes!  

Yesterday we had two beautiful baptisms:)  It was so so good and really lifted my spirits!  I have such a testimony of the way that the Lord touches our lives here if we come up with solutions on our own and ask him to help us out.  He will!  Isn´t that dang cool?  Um. Yes.  

Ingrid

Sister Dana Ingrid and Sister Patino

Also, a few extra things:

Saturday was Dia das Crianças.  Basically it is like another Christmas.  Everyone parties aned they have all this musica and games in the streets for all the little kids, and I really liked it!  Dad.  You served in Brasil.  You knew that this holiday exists!  Why did we never have Dia das Crianças?!

Also, our buddy Filipe baptized Irlavan too.  Only problem is that Filipe is EXTREMELY huge, and the only jumpsuit that fit him had a broken zipper.  So I gave him some safety pins to use to fix it, thinking that he would be smart about it...yeah, a picture will be included.  

Filipe and Irlavan

Sisters with Filipe and Irlavan

Safety Pin job

I will definitely be praying for him, Mom, don´t worry.  I have actually been thinking about him a lot this week...weird.

I love love love you family!  And just fyi...it has almost been a full transfer since I got a letter from ya´ll.  Ouch...that was the sound of my heart breaking.... ;)  Have a great week and do good things!  Help the Elders!  

Love,

Sister Dana

Oh, PS.

My bispo wants to talk to dad about opening up a thing like Prolean here.  What the weird...so be looking for that friend request or something on my FB.

We may have accidentally broken the window

Hooray for Conference!

Ok, can I just say that I absolutely adore General Conference now?!  It was soooooo great this week!  Gah...definitely needed that.  I got super trunky thinking about last year at this time.  I definitely remember being with Leslie and my pal Heidi in the car on the way to the Conference Center when we heard the announcement about the age change on the radio.  We cried and cried and Les and I both knew that it was time to go and now... here we are!  One year later, I was watching Conference in a stake center in Brazil!  That is so dang cool.

So family!  Are ya´ll ready to help the missionaries??  Pretty sure that was definitely a focus this time!  Especially Elder Ballard´s talk... That was the best, and exactly right!  Please please please help the missionaries!  We need it!

This week was kind of rough. It is hot as Hades here, seriously.  Like, all the water that was in the streets is drying, and the fishies and froggies that were living in the water are dying, so that smells real nice!  I don´t really know what has happened lately, but we are having a pretty hard time getting lessons, and an even harder time getting baptisms.  Guess we had a time of feast, and now is the time of famine!  So we are knocking a lot of doors and walking a LOT.  But it is character-building stuff:)  Sister Patino is such a champ.  She never complains, ever!  And she just loves the mission and is always happy and ready to do whatever we need to....I love her!!  She was really made to be a missionary and she is learning super fast.  I reallly like to do training, because we both learn a  lot and improve our teaching and everything!

So we have this investigator, Messias.  Dad, I really think that this one is my Julieta!  He is incredible.  He loves everything about the gospel and always talks about how it will be after he is baptized and all of the stuff that he wants to do! But his only problem is that he works a ton, and still has not been able to make it to church.  We are praying really hard about that one and I know that the Lord will prepare a way for him to get there. He is so ready...after every lesson I just want to say a prayer of gratitude!

Oh, funny story.  So in between the sessions of conference, our zone had 4 baptisms!  And that was really cool!  None of them were ours, but that´s ok.  Our building is the stake center, so it was Candelária´s (us) to fill the font and get everything ready.  Welp, I did!  But then one of the bonehead elders decided that the font wasn´t full enough, so he turned the water on again...and forgot.  So during the baptism, another elder calls me over and when we get to the girl´s bathroom, which is connected to the font, it is completely full of water!  Sisters to the rescue!  All of us started cleaning up like mad and the rest of the baptism went on like normal.  We got most of it cleaned up before the actual ordinance, but then every time someone got the dop, a huge wave of water rushed in under the door and we had to clean it up all over again! Ah well, no baptism is perfect.

Baptisms from this week

Also, this week I decided that I wanted to be a true Brazilian woman and use a toca when I sleep.  It is this hideous thing that you put on your head at night and it keeps your hair straight for the next day.  Pretty sure I don´t need it, but you only get to be Brazilian once, right?  I am embracing this culture.  It´s really ugly.  Oh well.

The Toca

Welp, famdamily, it sounds like you are doing well.  My prayers are with Sue and Mundy.  That is some really hard stuff, guys!  But I know that everything will be exactly ok, because Heavenly Father knows his children!  Send me lots of pictures of Maddie´s reception...what the heck, that is so weird that she´s gonna be hitched.  But it´s cool!  I love you guys so much and I am so happy that everyone was safe from the car accident!  Have a good week and remember that you have a responsibility to share this gospel!

Love,

Sister Dana