Sergipe!

Dear Family,

I arrived in  Sergipe! It was a little odd to leave Maceio as it has been my home. My place for over a year. So transfers happen Tuesday morning and I found out that I would be heading out to Sergipe to be companions with Sister Sierras (First Brazilian companion in over 7 months! woohoo!) who got here in the field the same time as me. And the big shock is that we are sister traning leaders. Which means we take care of the sisters in our area. We get there numbers and we go on splits with them and work with their leaders to help them out.  

After finding out about transfers, all those going to Sergipe got on a private tour bus to travel for about 6 hours to show up in Aracaju, the captial of Sergipe. The drive was beautiful. And so relaxing and nothing like the buses that we take to get anywhere within the city. We passed some beautiful mountains and valleys and basically it was amazing. eventually we got to a chapel in Aracaju and all of our companions were waiting there for us. Sister Sierras is from São Paulo, 20 years old, and is one of 8. Thankfully she already has one transfer in our area (yes! for time on the mission some one already knows the area!) And our area is called Eduardo Gomes. It is very big but I am liking it a lot so far. 

This week we got to teach some amazing people. One of them is Andréa. Whose life has not been an easy one. Due to a variety of circumstance she takes alot of meds and spends most of the time sleeping. She also lives in rather complicated circumstances but through it all she is so open. She has a lot of desire to learn more about Christ and understand about the Bible and go to church but she as never felt good at any of the churches she had visited. We talked about about prayer and how she is a child of God and very special. It is amazing to see how she is happier after such a short time and how she is working so hard even though she has memory problems and sleeping problems due to the meds. She even went to church with us and did her best to stay awake. It was great.

Easter Sunday was a normal Sunday. Here they normally celebrate by eating a big lunch with family and eating chocolate eggs. They didn´t even really talk about Easter in church. But it was very cool to go out teaching because talking about Christ on Easter Sunday was something even more special.

I love you all. I am so proud of you Garrett! My goodness already blessing the sacrament. I must be old. I remember when you turned 12 and passed the sacrament for the first time. 

Com amor e carinho

Sister Martin