Monday, August 22, 2011

Fun times in Brazil








So I hope you all love the pictures I sent to ya! I´ll try to send pictures home more often so you know that I´m not just messing around here in Brazil!
SO first of before I forget. Mom could you e-mail me the lion house recipe for rolls, cinnamon rolls, and orange rolls? I´m pretty sure I have the recipe for cinnamon rolls and orangle rolls in my recipe book. Oh also a great recipe for pancakes? thanks so much! I keep telling Sister Daniele about cinnamon rolls and so now I´ve really got to make them and let her try them! oh also if you feel up to it I´ve been cravind dried mangos from costco... Just when you feel up to it and it doesn´t cost a fortune send some my way... sorry i ask for so much...
ok onto the mission life! SO guess what! Dara was baptized this past friday! can you believe it? Everyone thought she would never have permission to get baptised and after an amazing spiritual lesson with Dara, her mom, the young womens president, and some young women from the ward her mom was super open minded and said... YES!! bah you have no idea how excited we were. everyone was in tears. Bah it was truely a miracle. Sister Daniele along with our district have been fasting every sunday for miracles and for our investigators to progress and to just find the elect here in pelotas and guess what? the lord is truely answering our prayers daily. Bah it blows my mind daily! I serously just laugh like crazy when we find a golden investigator or experience another experience where the lord's hand is truely in our lives. man we are definantley blessed here in fragata. i thought Agronomia was the best area but nope. its here in fragata! haha no really I´ve learned that obedience is really the key to all the blesssings we´ve recieved this transfer. SIster Daniele and I have a goal to be exactly obedient and boy have we been blessed. i really truely blows my mind. Just this week alone we found two families. two super golden families. one is getting baptized sep 3 and the other is getting baptized sep. 8. bah I just love being a missionary and how the Lord really truely answers every prayer. so about the language question yall asked. So my language is improving a lot but I still get fustrated. but hey my testimony of why I´m here in brazil and why I´m learning a new language grew ten folds this week. this past friday I was a bit frustrated with the language and really just wasn´t loving the freezing cold breeze and the rain and well everyone telling me that i don´t talk or how they don´t understand one word coming out of my mouth. Well I caught myself in all this sadness and said a prayer and just asked for things could turn around so I could make it to the baptizm that night with a smile on my face. Well guess what? soon after this prayer of mine we taught Henrrique and his parents. They are such an amazing family! so Henrrique is 13 and just loves the church and all the activities. one of his friends intruduced us to this family. well when we were teachign them a thought came into my head that I never thought about. Well i have but it wasn´t as clearly as this time was. THe thought was `I am here in brazil learning portuguese so this family. can hear about the gospel.so they can be sealed for time and all eternity in the house of the lord. so they can have happiness in this life and the life to come` bah this has never hit me so hard on the mission but I couldn´t be more happy to be a missionary learning portuguese! I feel so blessed to be able to continue my mission here in brazil. the language will come soon!
well good luck with school! ANd kristina goodluck with moving out! you´ll love the social life there in provo! just don´t get married anytime soon ok? Love ya!! Mckenna have a blast this year in school ok and really if you're lonely just send me a e-mail!
HAPPY ANIVERSARY MOM and DAD!! Love you all!
have a wonderful amazing week!
love ya´ll
sister gregory

Monday, August 8, 2011

Great Area & New Comp, Tornado in Brazil - well almost!!

OI Familia!!
OI tudo bem? como foi sua semana e coises la Utah? ok so you all asked about my new area and comp and well just questions about what happened this past week. So here I go! I´ll explain everything! So guess what! I´m in the Zone Pelotas. Its a pretty big city here in Rio Grande de Sul. And i am currently serving in Fragata North. And you know whats even cooler? I´m opening the area for sisters with Sister Daniele! Cool huh? Crazy and alot of pressure but so far this week has been great! I was super sad about leaving Agronomia but you know what? I just might like this new area just as much or better than Agronomia. So a little bit about my companion! She is from Manus. SO way northern brazil. When people think of brazil ( dirt roads, trees, Amazon river, etc.) Manus is where all of this is! haha but yeah she says she doesn´t live in a tree or anything like that but her house is above the water. Google Manus, Brazil and you´ll get a better picture.But yeah she is super cool! Super happy and just ready to work like crazy! her and I have the same amount of time in the mission. So yeah just about 8 months. Crazy huh? if I went straight to the Sao Paulo MTC I would have totally seen her. But yeah she is a super great missionary and reminds me a lot of Sister Bee so yeah I´m thinking this transfer will be a great one! She is also helping alot with the language. One of her goals in life is to learn english so I am learning how to teach english! With sister Modesto we didn´t have the time for language study because here in the mission your first two transfers in the mission are training so you have two hours for comp study which leaves no time for language. So yeah we now have time for language! haha ok any who Sister Daniele is amazing and we are already witnessing miracles daily together. Really blows me away! So yeah about my area. Sister Daniele & I are opening the area of Fragata North for sisters. There hasn´t been sisters in this area for quite awhile. So yeah its kinda cool to think about but quite the work trying to find new people. The Elders that were here before us left a few great investigators for us but between study, making 15 contacts each day, hour or two lunches and going back to the apartment before the sun goes down is a little tricky. Soon enough we´ll get this schedule down! oh you want to know something quite interesting or should I say disgusting? So since the area was for elders before we came we now have the elders' apartment. SO that only means one thing. Our apartment looked like a tornado hit it! And I am not kidding when I say a tornado hit it! It was disguting! When the Elders helped us with our luggage and brought us to our apartment to show us everything I was in shock. I couldn´t say anything. For about the first 10 min I thought it was a joke! There was garbage everywhere! The bathroom was horrible. clothes everywhere and well everything was scattered everywhere! haha man it was a mess! the only thing clean was the dishes. One of the elders living there would clean the dishes each day but thats about it! haha but I guess what can you expect with four 19 year old elders living in one apartment? SO yeah we spent the night cleaning so we could go to bed and then in the morning study. We didn´t get to bed till about 2 in morning. Yeah I know we broke a rule but there was no way I was going to bed in a tornado. haha SO yeah now things are just lovely in our apartment! We spent any time we could the first three days here cleaning. I´ll have to send a video sister Daniele made on her camera to you guys next week. haha oh man it was gross! but like I said things are just lovely now! SO yeah the ward here is amazing! The members help a lot with the mission work and the bishop is such a great help as well! I really am going to like this area! oh also we share the ward with elders also. So in this ward we have me and my comp and elder Nacimento and Elder Wood. Elder Nacimento is from the Bahia or something like that. When people think of brazilians of super laid back and just want to sleep and chill at the beach your thinking of the Bahia. Everyone here makes Bahia jokes left and right with Elder Nacimento. But he is a really get missionary. He is currently training Elder Wood from Brigham Utah or something like that. This is Elder Wood's second transfer here in brazil and speaks really great portuguese! So yeah this week we really witnessed some great miracles here in Fragata. I am really loving this area. We´ve been trying to contact the people that the elders in the past made contacts on the street. IN our Area book we have a lot of people that need to be visited so yeah we´ve been doing that this week and found so many great people! Just yesterday we met Mayara. She is 19 years old and was being taught by the missionaries awhile back but the missonaries stopped teaching her for some reason. Well when we were teaching the first lesson to her randomly her younger brother Pablo walked over to us. Sister Daniele and I thought he would just say hi and leave but nope he stayed for th entire lesson. It was pretty cool because the second he entered and stopped to listen to the lesson the spirit was pretty strong. It was like we were meant to teach Mayara so we could teach pablo. He is super cool. he is 18 years old and seems really interested! the elders have a baptism this friday that Pablo said he would go to and along with church on sunday! cool huh? SO yeah things are turing around! I have a pretty great feeling that here in Fragata the sisters will show the Elders how its done! haha but no really daily we are finding such prepared people here for the gospel. It is such an amazing thing to witness! I know with out a doubt that I am in the right place!
Well thats about it for my e-mail. Thanks so much for all your e-mails! loved them all!
ok so I took my violin to get fixed and well I´m not really sure people here know much about the violin. I got my bridge put back in place but the post inside my violin is still rolling around inside the violin. The person here said that he has never seen anything like this before but he is pretty positive that it should be alright. my pegs are super stiff and the same person said that is was no problem but if I want I could pay for him to put some fine toners on for all the strings. and well my bow he said was perfectly fine. yup I´m just a little worried. Mom could you ask around about my violin again? I try to explain in my broken portuguese about what you told me but everyone just looks at me funny and says that my bow and everything is just fine. So yeah just ask if how my violin is right now will effect my violin and the sound if I don´t get it fixed. Sorry to keep bothering you with the violin but thanks so so much!
next week I´ll try better with sharing more mission experieces I promise! Love you all! Boa Semana!
-Sister Gregory!