Bathing in the rain, cockroaches, new companions, and the key to EVERYTHING.

 

My new comp´s name is Sister Cruz. She´s from the North part of Brasil.  She has 4 months on the mission (First time I´ve been the senior comp....AH! I just got here! I can´t actually be older than anyone!) She´s really sweet and she teaches really well, but it´s always a little awkward at the beginning, so I´m feeling a little lonely after Sister McP. I´ve NEVER been so myself  than I was with the McP. That´ll take a little adjusting, but I´m expecting this transfer to be AWESOME! It´s good to have newer blood around. Gives you more excitement and crazy, go-for-it faith. I´m excited for this transfer!

 

 Words of wisdom for this week - Humility is the key to EVERYTHING! If you can develop humility, you can make any relationship work, you can love anyone, you can grow from any mistake or weakness, you can have the strength through Christ to do anything He needs you to do. I have a quote on the front of my planner this transfer that says "A humildade é o solo fértil onde a espiritualidade crese e produz os frutos da inspiração para sabermos o que fazer." ["Humility is a fertile soil where spirituality grows and produces the fruit of inspiration to know what to do."] It´s true, true, true, true! 

Also, do the little things that are good. That´s how you become better. Don´t worry so much about expectations and numbers and judgments of others, just do the little good things, and like my mommy reminded me, never suppress a generous impulse!

  

 

 I about killed my comp coming up a hill. She told me this week that she´s never been so sore on her mission.... maybe I shouldn´t be senior comp yet..........BUT WE´RE HAPPY!

 

 

We had a few "You know you're serving in Brazil when..." moments!

 

 

Tomando banho na chuva! De VERDADE! So... we didn't have water in our house for a few days.  One day while we were home, it started raining REALLY HARD.  Since we hadn't showered in a few days, we went outside and got cleaned up - shampoo, soap, and all!

  

Yes, that is enormous tape and an enormous barata [cockroach]....We left him there until transfers.....

 

 

 My little angel! This is Giovanna, the daughter of Arlete! She is the best hug giver EVER and THE smartest, most thoughtful little 10 year old girl I know! Love her guts!

 

 

Carina got married and baptized on Saturday! BEST DAY EVER!!! The Sisters have been visiting her for almost a year now. She is so ready now, and it was amazing to see her take this step. Love her TONS and I´m super excited to see all she´ll do in the future! 

 Heading out now! Love you tons!

 

Sister Little

Everything is fantastic now!

 

 

I´m on email later today. S. McP got transferred, so we´ve been packing and cleaning. I´m sure gonna miss that girl!

 

 

 We ate a megafry one day...ONCE is enough, but it was a very American experience here in Brasil...there is a story...but yeah....

SOAKED in the rain and wearing clothes of an investigator´s husband. Haha! I got a New York shirt!

 

 

This bug looks like a Pokemon! 

That grater could grate a small CHILD! It´s HUGE!

Them setting up BLEACHERS for some Carnival something in centro that we NEVER walked by at night, so I don´t actually know what it was, just that it kept us awake at night...

ACAÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AMO DEMAIS! [I love it too much!]

 

WE FOUND THE CRISTO!!!!! The little one in bairro Santo Antônio. ;D

 

 

 I found a bean that looks like a fish! :]

Temple with Neide, Whingleston, and Stefanny!

This was me last Monday. After the awful day of the medical disaster and no sleep, a member (my favorite member!) gave me a blessing and drops to help me sleep. They worked....I got up at 6:30 like I was supposed to, and then in the time my comp went to the bathroom, I was out cold again on the floor with my pillow....so she made me go back to bed....and I SLEPT like a log or a rock...just SLEPT! But I felt GREAT after, and it ended up being THE biggest blessing ever! I´m convinced that Irmão Davi and Irmã Arlete know EVERYTHING! I love them so much, and they take such good care of us. I would honestly trust them with my life, so you can be sure that we are being well watched over here by our Brazilian parents!

 

 

BATISMO DA ELISÂNGELA!!!! SO much love! 

We ran a MAX of 12 seconds outside and got SOAKED!!!!! Brasil has rain like Texas!

 

 

I´m doing great. Everything is fantastic now! Even my thumb! The nail color isn´t pretty, but it looks like I shouldn´t lose it! Woohoo!  Love you to the moon and back and forever and always! Thank you for all you do for me! I talk to Heavenly Father about all you do for me, and I really can´t express how grateful I am!

Love you! Boa semana!

Your Little

 

 

 

 

"He always takes care of us. Trust that!"

These last 48 hours have changed me pretty much forever.  Passed through the scariest experience yet of my life, but I´ve also learned more from it than I have in my life.

It all started Saturday afternoon when I got my thumb SHUT in the hinge of a car door. Hurt like mad, and after 5 or so hours it was acting very, very broken, so our leaders had us go to the  hospital to get it checked out. We went, (Sister McPherson came in with me) they looked at it, X-rayed it, and it actually came back fine! Woohoo! Not broken after all! They told me how to take care of it for the next little while, and then asked me if I had taken any medicine for it yet. I said I had not, so they sent me over to medicamento to get something for the pain and swelling (it was HUGE! I had a man thumb!!!)

We went over to wait for me to be called, and a security guard walked by and asked why S.McP was with me. We said that she was my acompanier (I don´t even know if that´s English.....the person who accompanies me), and for some dumb reason at this hospital, she couldn´t stay with me, so he sent her to wait outside.

 

We continued waiting separately, and finally they called me in. They sat me down, and here in Brazil, instead of giving you pill, they just give you an IV for medicine so it can start working faster. There was only one other guy in the room who had finished his IV, and they said that he could just rest until he wanted to get up (he had gotten dehydrated, so they pumped him full of fluids, and then just let him rest), so he was sleeping, and then there was me. The doctor put in the IV and then walked out.

 

All of a sudden, I started to feel nauseated. I was going to throw up, but there were no doctors around for me to ask for a trashcan. But then my head started buzzing, and my ears were ringing. I was feeling all this pressure on my head and body. All of my fingers and then my body started tingling and going numb. I got freezing cold and started sweating like crazy, and when I tried to move my legs, I couldn´t. They felt like lead, and NOTHING would respond. I could barely think, and I just wanted to cry out for help, but I couldn´t open my mouth or make noise. The only little noise I made was a wimpy little moan/whimper. NOBODY was passing by the window I was next to, and then all of a sudden, my lungs stopped responding. I couldn´t breathe, and then I started blacking out and coming back a bit and blacking out again. I was trying to pray, but I couldn´t even think words-I just kind of reached out with my whole heart. 

 

Finally the IV ended right as the doctor finally passed by. I managed to tell him that I couldn't breathe, and he ran to get another doctor. They came and checked my heart rate, blood pressure, and everything and I started to be able to get little gasps of air again. I just CRIED!!!! Cried and cried!!! Tears just streaming down my face and neck! Finally, after they checked everything and  was starting to come back to "normal" they left me alone again to calm down. After a bit the doctor came back and explained that I must have an allergy to one of the three medicines that was in the IV. He said that the rest of the symptoms would go away as the medicine filtered from my body, gave me a bloodstop bandaid for the IV poke and sent me on my way (but I did ask him to write down for me the names of the medicines!)

 

When the member who was giving us a ride arrived, they came back and got me in a wheelchair and took me BACK into the hospital. They tested EVERYTHING again and had another doctor come talk to me. He said that what happened wasn´t an allergy, but just an adverse reaction that happens to very few people, but I happened to be one of them.  He said he was sorry that there were no doctors around to watch me. They checked everything again, and let me go.

 

 I couldn´t sleep well that night.  It didn´t scare me that I couldn´t breathe or all that, but I was SO DISTURBED by the AWFUL HORRIBLE feeling of having completely lost my agency.

After church Sunday, we went to Davi and Arlete´s house for lunch - the SAFEST most COMFORTING place there is!  [Davi and Arlete have a daughter out serving a mission as well, and have "adopted" Ashley and her companion.  They look out for them, and I am SO grateful she has them!]  After we went to Elizangela´s baptism. Wonderful again!

Davi gave me a blessing that night, and I have never slept so well in my life. I feel fantastic today after the blessing and the sleep, and I have a very different perspective on a lot of things. I´ll write everything I learned and send it to you.

 

In short, know that our agency is priceless, life is priceless, God sends us angels in our life, our relationships with those we love are what we need to focus on most, and put the Lord first - He knows everything!!! Also, don´t trust Brazilian medicine!!! (We showed Daví and Arlete what thy put in me and they were flabbergasted bc apparently two of the three you CANNOT put together!!! Even just by pills hours apart you can´t, and they gave it to me in an IV.)

 

The priesthood is real, and so is God´s timing.  Daví talked to S. McP and I about the work we were doing here, and he said the reason we have been experiencing SO MUCH ADVERSITY this last little while is because of the tremendous good we are doing. (THAT hit me!) We must be doing something right because Satan tried to totally take me out!!! But I also learned that no matter what the Adversary does, nobody goes before their time, and Heavenly Father has everything under control. He wouldn´t have let my comp get sent out if I actually would have died, but He let it happen, and let me be okay, to teach us even more. He always takes care of us. Trust that! And if you ever need help, get a priesthood blessing! It´s all true and real, and we´re gonna WIN this battle!!!!

Love you all and go conquer EVERYTHING this week!

Sister Little

Sweet Davi and Arlete celebrated with Sister Little by making her a cake. 

Elizangela's baptism the next day!!

Being the Miracle People are Looking For

My computer won't upload pictures today.  I'll keep trying, but no promises.  [They never came through.]

We found some good people who are on their way to baptism! We will have a baptism this Sunday for _________, so just pray that we can catch her at a good time to teach her the rest of the stuff (she works a lot). Carnival stinks as a missionary - everyone goes out of town, and there is a ton of noise at night, and everyone is drunk, so we´ll see how work is these next two days (I´m just grateful that I don´t live in Rio or the Bahia!!!!!)

My biggest joy this week is having the chance to be the miracle that people are looking for. I had a couple of experiences this week where we´ve met and taught people who were either talking the night before about how they needed to change their lives or go to church, or another who prayed to see angels because he was really down, and then the bus dropped us off at the wrong place and we went and talked to him, or someone that wants to stop smoking but doesn´t know how, or people who have fallen away from the church, but one of the children has been asking to come back, and then we show up. Moments like that make EVERYTHING worth it! It´s neat. Heavenly Father is aware of each one of us at each moment, so if you feel like you are in need of something, ask Him for it - specifically, and then open your eyes and heart to see the surprise that comes. It may not come how you expect, but He always gives EXACTLY what we need RIGHT when we need it. Promise!

"The most unselfish birthday I've had"

I´m good with the package. [We sent her birthday package mid-December, and it has been sitting in customs for 6 weeks, and hasn't arrived.] It was actually a really neat birthday. The most unselfish birthday I've had.   I was very deeply happy, deeply content at the end of the day. Only a handful of people even knew it was my birthday, I didn´t receive any presents, I even was fasting for the second half (we fast from lunch to lunch here), and I had sacrificed sweets (outside of what the irmãs give us at lunch), so no cake, ice cream, nothing.   Even our baptism fell through, and the sun about killed us, and we worked like crazy and everything all day.  When I got home, I took a shower, wrote in my journal and read my patriarchal blessing and have never felt so peaceful and so happy on my birthday. Super cool! It did kind of scare me though to realize that I had opened my mission call a year ago, and then I thought of how RÁPIDO that year passed, and then thought, "What will I be doing in....NOPE!!!!! NOT GOING THERE!!!!!!" Haha! It was funny! I still miss you guys, but it doesn´t normally hurt so bad anymore-it´s a happy kind of miss......and to be honest.....I´m scared to death to come home, soooooo...........yeah....AH!

This week was kind of difficult (cutting EVERYONE, and things that aren´t normal EVERYDAY, and we didn´t have a p-day last week because we spent our day marking a wedding in the cartório with an investigator), so I am wiped, and will probably have to sleep all day today, but I am super happy because I just found out that Madalena and Dani and Tereza from Paulínia will be baptized (three VERY SPECIAL people that I taught over there)!  President also just told us that we CAN baptize ____ and _____, so we have to work everything out again, but it looks like it´ll all turn out okay!

Slurping noodles bc we don´t have parents to tell us no!

Mission in Brasil. Explained....

And dirt. There´s just a lot of dirt here.....everywhere......even on our food.....

She tasted the salsa without salt. EKA! 

Beautiful sunset! These just make me happy!

I drew a frowny face in my scriptures, but really he just looks like a grumpy cowboy-hermit with a grande handlebar mustache!

WE had a NED initiation ceremony for my comp. This is our audience. And this is Ned.  [Haha!  And that's all we know of that story! The rest did not come through.  And Ned... how to explain?  This is a family word that goes WAY back to describe a certain quality of random spontaneity that you can only recognize if you have Ned too.  It's a high compliment!]

MY cuscuz failed......it fell INTO the water.......super fail......it was NASTY!

We made Tshirts for my birthday!!!!!!! (Ignore the minacura I have on my face...we were about to go to bed.........sunscreen everyday is a little hard on the skin...) The front says "MILAGRE: Aaplicação correta de princípios verdadeiros e eternos" The back says "2 Néfi 27:23 - Missão Brasil Campinas"

I love you all a bunch! Thank you for being the most wonderful family ever! I am so proud to carry our name at my front everyday. I wouldn´t want to be anyone other than Sister Little!!!

Love you all, and make it the most awesome week EVER!!!!

Sister Little!