Hi!
Loooooove you!! Brazil's daylight savings time was 2 weeks ago so now we're 4 hours ahead of the United States when before that we were 3. And because we're going into summer and you're going into winter we have opposite daylight savings. Soon We'll be 5 hours apart :P
Tell Vasha I love her so much and good luck! The MTC can be frustrating because of the language or because you want to hurry and get out and start teaching, but it's also filled with great spiritual experiences :)
Mom we had a great lesson the other day by one of the Sisters of a Senior couple that serve in São Paulo. She served a mission in Denmark when she was younger and she talked about the decision to serve a mission. She talked about how all you need is a desire to serve and that qualifies you for the work D&C 4. You could share with your laurels that I didn't receive my biggest answer until I was set apart. You don't need a momentous-earthquake answer in order to serve. If you desire--SERVE! Just know that it'll be hard and it will stretch you :) (I wouldn't let someone be the one to talk to into it... but good thing we have our heavenly father to rely on for when we do need the strength to keep going)
We went proseltying on Monday! It was awesome! Before going out our teacher Irmao Israel told us that there would be 2 kinds of people: ones who will talk to you and others who won't. Because of this advice it was really fun/funny just saying hi to everyone and seeing their different responses. We could proselyte around the CTM boundaries, and because lots of missionaries do this every Monday... most people around here already have a Book of Mormon. So.. we ended up sharing lots of little thoughts and handing out lots of pamphlets because they are "mais curto"! The 1st lady we started talking to just burst into tears! She was older, and we found her sitting alone at the park. I could not understand her! But because she was talking so much, I could start to understand because I could pick up on parts of her story. I could only understand words like droga... filho... sozinho... She already had a Livro de Mormon but hadn't read anything, so I shared with her Mosiah 24: 14-15 and a pamphlet on the Plan of Salvation. I promised her that the Lord could strengthen her through her trials. Some other missionaries who passed by later told us that she was reading the pamphlet. :)
Towards the end, we ran into a man who looked about our age sitting at his work. People open up these garage doors and they work just inside. it was really hard to understand him, but he was new to the area so he didn't have a Book of Mormon yet! I shared with him our book and then he showed me his favorite scriptures out of my Bible. I was trying to tell him about prophets but he kept talking about pastors, so I don't think he could understand what I was trying to say. I told him that he could call the number inside the LM and other missionaries would come teach him, but he said he didn't want other missionaries. He wanted US to teach him. Umm... yeah I told him he wanted other missionaries because they could actually speak portuguese. hahaha
I love learning how the spirit speaks! God truly intertwines all of our lives so that he can reach all of his children! I could not be happier to be a missionary and share with others what I know about Jesus Christ! He truly loves each and every one of us and God has given us a way so that we can return to live with him again! :)
Our Brazilian roommate left on tuesday. :( I absolutely loved her! She is serving a mission in Lisbon, Portugal. She helped me SO MUCH the night before street contacts, in how to teach someone you approach. I practiced on her a lot before doing the real thing. If she could understand me, there was hope that the Brazilians outside could too. :) She's from Fortaleza, so it was really good to learn from someone who would have the same accent as those in my area!
I love you sooo much! You're the best mommma ever!!! Thank you for all you do and all your love and support! Thank you for the wonderful example you have set for me! I can't wait to hear about my first area in Joao Pessoa either. :P I'm having such a great time! I'm learning so much on how to love and how to realize that we all have different strengths and shortcomings. I'm learning how to just smile and go with the flow :) I think often back on the wonderful people we know in Alpine and I try to emulate different people in different situations.
One of our instructors gave us some good advice for the mission field. She said to learn the lesson that God wants you to learn from that situation. If you don't learn it from that situation, he will give you that situation again. Enjoy every opportunity to become more like Christ :)
I loooooooove you!!!!! Love, Sister Kim Johnson
