Primeira Área - Montenegro!

Ola querida familia Gee!
Sorry for another long lapse between this email and the last one....I once again lost my P-day last week due to traaaaveling!

I left the São Paulo CTM on Tuesday morning at 5 am.....much too soon after just 1 short week in that wonderful place. I did get to go to the São Paulo Temple once...but we didn´t get a chance to go street contacting... I was very sad to be leaving all my friends so quickly...I guess that goodbyes are something I´ll be getting used to on my mission :) All the other new missionaries going to Pôrto Alegre arrived last week (August 9th) but I was a week behind them all because of the Provo MTC...so I was traveling alone. It was kind of nice actually, because once I got to the Porto Alegre airport I met President and Sister Pavan and realized that I would have them to myself for the entire day!

President and Sister Pavan are so great...they are from São Paulo and have been here for a year. Sister Pavan is so sweet and friendly and I can tell that President Pavan really cares about each one of the missionaries. I spent the day with them and one of the office missionaries: getting registered at the federal police, eating at another ammmmazing Brazilian buffet (the food here is so incredible!), getting interviewed and trained, and then driving out to Montenegro....a small town about an hour outside of Pôrto Alegre and my first area!!

I met Sisters França and Oliveira (another duple living in my apartment) and my trainer Sister Gibson...and could immediately tell that I was going to be very happy here! Sister Gibson is from Roseville California and is so sweet and outgoing and friendly. It makes it very very easy to become quick friends with all of the people we are teaching...they immediately love her!! It´s a great example to me that we don´t have to know someone super well to be able to genuinely and sincerely love them. We just need to open our hearts and our mouths and be a friend! :)

Montenegro is great! It´s sooo beautiful here....haha, Sister Gibson laughs at me because I keep commenting to her about how amazingly beautiful...but I can´t help it! It´s a small peaceful little town with lots of trees and plants and fields with cows are horses. There are Beautiful dark mountains covered with black trees (hence the name Montenegro). The houses are small, but nice and everyone owns chickens and dogs. Everyone is very friendly and loving and open to hear our messages....but it seems like they´re pretty slow to keep commitments... They love talking about God and about Jesus Christ, but when we talk about them coming to church on Sunday they have no interest at all! I must admit I was a little frustrated at first...this is much different than the picture I had in my mind when I was in the MTC about what missionary work would be like.. I really really love it though.

I love how the people here have so much love and goodness in them. Every one we met wants us to sit down with there family, drink chimarrão and mate, and talk about God. Oh, I must explain chimarrão!! It is sooooo great. I had already heard about mate from my friends who served their missions in Uruguay and Argentina...and chimarrão is basically the same thing, just without sugar. A whole group of family and friends sits in a circle and passes around a cuia (a hard cup made from some plant) with a metal "bomba" (straw) and filled to the top with chimarrão (a green herb that looks a lot like hay) and hot water. Haha, it´s so great...though I admit my first taste was kind of a shock...it´s very bitter! There is also a lot of Uruguayan gaucho (cowboy) influence here....we see them riding their horses down the streets every day. :)
The ward here is very small...but the members have strong testimonies and they love the missionaries. It´s been really fun to get to know them all.

Right now we have two investigators that are very close to baptism...but they both need to get married before that can happen. Valdemar and Iracema are an older couple that have been coming to church for 2 months now! But Valdemar needs to get divorced from his ex-wife before he can marry Iracema...and that hasn´t been happening very quickly. Our other investigator with a baptismal date, Rose, is so sweet. I already love her :) She really wants to get baptized with her 9 year old daughter, but her "husband", Marzo, really doesn´t like the church or the missionaries. He lets her go to church with the children, but always leaves whenever we come to visit....and he does not want to get married. I´m not sure what we can do to help, but it´s nice to be able to visit her and give her our support and love. And I know that Heavenly Father loves each one of His children and that He is leading us along....we just sometimes need to have patience and faith that He is in control.

I guess that´s what I have learned most this week....patience and trust in the Lord. My first few days in the mission field were very very hard.... I can´t understand what anyone is saying here (the country accent is MUCH faster and slurred and impossible to understand than anything I heard in the MTC :) and I was surprised at how different the work we are doing here is than what I had imagined in the CTM.... I wanted to be out finding and teaching and speaking and converting and baptizing.....but things seem to move sooo slowly here. But sometimes it is good to be discouraged I am realizing, because it helps us turn even more to God and to pray even harder. :) I know that He is with us during every moment of our life....He has a plan for us, and that plan includes leading us to perfection...but it will be in His own time and His own way. If we spend our life worrying about where we want to be and the things we want to be doing and accomplishing....we will miss the lessons that God is preparing for us to learn right now. We must have patience and trust that God is teaching us, step by step, the things we need to learn right now. :)

Well, I love you sooooo much! More than you know. Each one of you is always always in my thoughts and in my prayers!!