Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Week 4-that time we were real missionaries for an hour

 wed: we met the newest member of our district, Elder Fonicello. He's
from belguim. None of the instructors know what to do with his name. I
mean neither do any of the americans, so the poor kid has to respond
to literally any thing that vaugly sounds like his name. THURSDAY:
District english fast all day long! (so no speaking english) we did
surprisingly well! But by the end of the day I was so exhausted Irmão
Tavares had to repeat everything he said 3x before I understood it. So
basically I learned my lesson and take a break at dinner or something
now. AND TO THINK 2 WEEKS FROM NOW EVERY DAY WILL BE AN ENGLISH FAST
BECAUSE NO ONE SPEAKS ENGLISH. Thatll be rough. We also that day
learned that "Valmir" has cancer, and wow none of us were prepared
during that lesson! Thankfully Sister Dewey and I had a sort of backup
lesson on the enabling power of the atonement (except we only
kiiiindof had that planned) so it went ok. (Valmir is a character,
don't worry my instructor is fine!) FRIDAY: WE WENT PROCELYTING. Like
for real. Oliveira took us out of the building and gave each of us 3
Books of Mormon and basically said "good luck" and that was it. Within
45 minutes every one of us had placed 3 Book of Mormons. It was
literally that easy. And everyone that took one seemed genuinely
excited. Someone in our branch had the coolest experience with this.
He has a speech impediment, and when he speaks portuguese and when he
gets nervous it gets way worse. So he's on the bus out of the ctm
trying to talk to the person next to him but hes soooooo nervous all
he managed to say was "hot. outside. no like. you?" and the man next
to him reached out to take a BoM, started reading it right there on
the bus and kept it. It didnt even matter that he couldnt speak
portuguese well! He could tell the kid was trying sooooo hard and
apparently that was enough. SATURDAY: today I was reminded that we
teach people not lessons, so we taught "Rosmer" a lesson that wasnt
specifically in the 5 lessons. It was on how to increase your faith
and recieve answers to prayers using Nephi 17-18 as examples and I led
the ENTIRE lesson for the first time, and it went super well! I think
it was exactly the kind of lesson Irmão Tavares was digging
for/thought Rosmer needed. Irmão Tavares told me after wards that it
was a really good lesson (for which I was relieved because I can never
tell, because my portuguese was so choppy but its ok he understood
what I was trying to say). SUNDAY: so plot twist, our new elder is our
new district leader. Cant say I was surprised. He already has had some
suggestions that I think will help our district a lot. The change is
weird, but he's definitely up to the task. MONDAY: my poor companion
had to drag around me as dead weight because I had the worst sinus
headache and as a result she took charge in all 3 of our lessons
(soooo sorry about that) because wow when anything distracting happens
I cannot speak or think portuguese, I need all my brain power for
that. So wash your hands kids, the ctm is a breeding ground for
colds/flu with the dorm style housing and up to 80 new people coming
in every week. TUESDAY: For 2 days straight we spoke NO english and I
learned that one of the gifts God gives his missionaries is the
ability to laugh at the stupidest of jokes because our vocabulary isnt
good enough to tell quality jokes and yet we were laughing SO MUCH all
day long. ALRIGHT I'm about out of time so I guess that's it. AGAIN
sorry its so all over the place and that the enter key doesn't work!
Oh how I miss my quality internet connection. <3 LOVE YOU ALL. ~Sister
Steele

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