Yes, I am officially a ‘mom’ in the mission and my new companion, ‘filha’, is Sister Galdino! I love her already and these next 12 weeks are going to be so good. She is from a state in Brazil called Espirito Santo, which has a bunch of touristy places so I will definitely be visiting her after the mission. She is 22, and was baptized at 17 years old. She is the only member of her family so I think it shows a lot that she chose to serve.
Spent the first half of this week in Maceio for training and to meet my new companion. We left Aracaju at 1am Monday morning, arrived there at about 7am, and had training all morning with the other trainers. It was SO fun to see my CTM friends(2 of which are training too), and friends from my first transfer here in the mission as well! After training, we had a few hours to get lunch and wander the city before coming back to wait for the new missionaries to arrive. There are 19 that arrived so they came later than expected and we waited in the church for what seemed like an eternity-bless the heart of whoever brought face cards. It was fun to play with everyone and get to know some more people here in the mission. When the newbies finally arrived President spoke to us and then called the missionaries up one by one to assign them to trainers. I felt like I was gonna puke but as soon as he called my name and I went to give Sister Galdino a hug, all my anxiety left. I still feel nervous and very inadequate, but I have got some help for sure. We stayed in Maceio with some other sisters that night and came back to Aracaju Wednesday. Sister Galdino is awesome and even though I can tell she is exhausted, she is trying so hard to help in our lessons, connect with the members, and put in her full effort.
Taught Max again this week and his family had something come up Saturday so we are working on finding another Saturday for his baptism. He is the cutest.
Visited Joiro this week and it was the first time we have met with his whole family together- miracle! He is already more than 100 pages into the Book of Mormon and is determined to find a way to come to church with his family. We had a really awesome discussion about the Holy Spirit, how it testifies of truth, and that it is what he feels when he reads. His wife and daughter had questions and insights and the whole visit was so good. They are trying to come to church this upcoming Sunday!!
Joice committed to read the Book of Mormon but when we went back to follow up she still hadn’t read it. We are hoping she does…Jailton hasn’t been home all week which is frustrating but we are still working on finding a time to meet with him.
Funniest part of the week was our visit with Marcos. We taught him twice and the second time, left a Book of Mormon for him to read. When we went back to visit this week, we were in for quite the surprise. He explained to us that as an honorable man, it was his duty to tell us what we don’t know because we are being brainwashed by the church. According to him, that is why we are on missions: to be brainwashed in the prime years of our brain development. That’s why we don’t have internet, and also why we are sent so far from home- So that we don’t discover that we are actually here to be brainwashed and follow the devil. After about 30 min of nonstop rambling, I intervened and kindly but firmly explained that I chose to be here, I am very happy here, we are very well taken care of, and that brainwashing does not exist in our church. Me and my companion bore testimony and quickly left. That night, when we got home, our phone had 40 new messages, ALL from Marcos. More rambling and mostly scriptures from the Bible about who knows what. I kept deleting them to clear storage in our phone and they just kept coming. All in all I think we received over 70 messages. He isn’t a fan of the church but loves us and invited us to study the Bible with him every weekend. Don’t think we will be returning but makes for a good story. We are still receiving Bible verses from him every day.
2 more people asked me to teach English this week… still trying to figure out the details since I was gone earlier this week. I am excited to start teaching!
Training is hard and I am very tired but it has been a great start to this transfer. Sometimes I feel bad because I still don’t speak amazing Portuguese but my companion is the best and seeing as that can really make it or break it, I am very grateful. We have a lot of people to visit with a lot of potential and I have learned that as long as we do our part, God has got the rest covered. Just in the last week, I have able to speak and understand significantly more than before and I know it is because He is helping me- because I need to be able to do more now. The Lord qualifies who He calls! So grateful for my mission and for what I am learning. I love Brasil.
Sister Lauren Mather
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