Missionary Broadcast

June 24, 2013

Dear wonderful and loving Family,

Yes I saw the broadcast yesterday. Unfortunately it was in Portuguese. Sundays are the hardest days for understanding Portuguese. I think it is because I don´t do much talking but just sit and don´t teach and people talk to me for hours. My brain usually hurts by the end of Sunday. Thank goodness for Mondays! The broadcast sounds like it was amazing. I have no idea how my mission will change though. 

I understand a whole lot more now but there are still a lot I don´t understand. That will change with time. One step at a time! This week was a little hard for teaching. Wednesday we had diviçao com the sister training leaders. Sister Zamboni (who leaves today for home) and I stayed in Pajuçara and Sister Moraes was in Benidito. Travel time was hard. And this Saturday was Sao Joao (I don´t know where the a squiggle is) and Sao Paulo played against Italy so no one was home. The lessons we did teach were great. Since we are both new to the area we pretty much started with no investigators. Right now we are teaching some really promising and amazing people. Edvania and Liliane are great. The hardest part is just getting people to go to church. Retention is still hard. We work a lot with our recent converts and quite a few actually go to seminary and integreçao.

Sao Joao is a really interesting holiday. People dress up as hillbillies and eat corn, corn bread, and other corn related foods. The decorations are all cowboy-esque and it is really funnny. This Saturday we had a party at the church and the whole ward was there and it was great to see everyone dressed up. 

Saturday morning we got a call from the Elders in Ala Canada (the ward that shares our building) and they had a baptism but didn´t think many people were going to go and asked us to go. We show up and there are the elders one other preisthood holder and three nine year old kids. They are outside the church filling buckets with water from the hose. The water in the chapel was not on. We started helping right away but pretty soon it became obvious that this was not going to work because that baptismal font was just too big and we couldn´t get enough water. Then the beach became an option and I got really excited but then they just ended up going to a different ward. It was a pretty exciting morning and it was amazing to see the three kids working hard to get enough water to be baptized. The Elders however were pretty stressed.

This week is transfers. First transfer no campo! Our house is the closest sister lodging to the mission office so we have sisters staying in our casa fairly regularly. Tuesday to Wednesday we had two sisters and tonight we will have 3 (because of transfers). It is weird because my district will change and I forgot that things change a lot and won´t always be working with the same people. 

I love you all very much and I am glad to hear about the blessing of Mary Claire. Remember. Member missionaries can do more than full time missionaries can!

Love,

Sister Martin