Week 39💌

 Olá, olá! Tudo bem? Essa semana foi muito boa.

Segunda: Happy pday queridos! Apparently, it was Daylight Savings yesterday and I didn’t know. So I missed talking to my brother in the morning because I was peacefully sleeping. Stupid daylight savings!! I got to talk to my mom while drinking from the living water (Dr Pepper) and eating the bread of life (Cinnamon Life Cereal). After talking to my mom, I talked to my dad while cutting my hair. He was laughing at me. Listen, it's a process and I learned from a real life professional! So HA! (Shout out to the loml Taylor Hilton).

We all got lunch at Momê, it's a delicious açai place. As we were leaving, Sister Nogueira started talking about how minha filha has never had Subway, and how we should just look, how we should just pay a visit…etc. Subtle, né? So we got Subway too. On the way home, I called Steven to yap for a bit. I love getting to talk to him weekly. Then, I took a nap and talked to my parents before pday ended.

After pday ended, we had the weekly devotional. The internet was ruim demais, so we could barely hear or see anything. Mas tá tudo bem. At least we had good internet to talk to our families!

Terça: GUYS OH MY FREAKING GOSH. You are never going to believe what happened today. I, Sister Sarah Elizabeth Starley, received an OVEN. I gave Dr. Pepper to Presidente Tonini and received an oven the very next week. If I could give one piece of advice to all of you youngins, it would be to bribe everyone you can, as often as you can. Thank you for coming to my ted-talk. We also received yet another closet. This truly is the best house on the mission. 

Today was also the day of chuva. Gente, it was like the sky was falling down. We were trying to teach a lesson, and we couldn't even hear ourselves, let alone our pesquisadora due to the insane thunder. The water levels were up to my ankles, at least it was cold! 

We have been working this week on cleaning our Pregar. Our Pregar has a million bolinhas, and we found out that many of them don't live here anymore, or don’t have numbers and addresses. So we chose a bairro this week and set about visiting grey bolinhas to find out if the person really lived there. It's been tiring and a little boring, but it's definitely working. 

We visited Luiz, the RC who left the church. I am so grateful that he isn't antagonistic towards the church. After that, we stopped by seminary to see if there were any pesquisadores. 

Quarta: Today, I ate the lunch of champions: frosted flakes with chocolate milk and watermelon on the side. A gente visitou as meninas hoje and showed them a video about keeping the Sabbath Day Holy. We also visited some of the people I had found with Sister Sanabria, and some of them still had interest. We ended up cutting some of them as well. We also tried to find some people who just don't exist, so we deleted their bolinhas. 

Quinta: Today, we received our dinheiro!! Amen, hallelujah. We went to the grocery store to buy food. We then ate lunch at the padaria because none of us had a scheduled lunch. 

Today, we were able to find some novos. We were doing some door to door and found Marcia and Heloisa. We also visited the meninas again. One of them, Anna, really has interest. We showed them another video. I love the videos for children that the gospel library has. They had a video for every situation. Today, we talked about serving one another.

We then went to the church so that we could participate in seminary and the Noite de Integração. We gave the opening talk before the soccer match. We also ordered a pizza com borda de chocolate, to make sure it would arrive when we got home. Unfortunately, we had a noite familiar da Zona. Fortunately, I have no shame and I ate my pizza in front of everyone #sorrynotsorry

Sexta: Today ended up being a lot of fun. We had lunch with Irmã Tina at her restaurant. After lunch, we got açai and decided to do a little divisão. Sister Nogueira and I wanted Sister Barbosa to have practice leading an area in a divisão. So, I went with my Australian bestie in her area, and Sister Nogueira went with minha filha in my area.

It was a lot of fun doing the divisão. We taught a woman whose son is a RC. She has made many visits to the church, but hasn't wanted to commit yet. Her daughter died suddenly back in Outubro, and she is having a hard time battling depression. It was a wonderful experience watching her start to feel more peace at the end of the lesson and begin to smile and laugh.

We had a funny street contact with a group of kids. One of them asked if I was in Brazil because I was running away from the war in America. Another one of them told us that she thought it was super cool that we came all the way here to preach because some people come all the way here to kill little kids. Oh! Yeah no, that's not us. 

We ended the night with a pool party. Due to the water always faltando aqui, we have a GIANT bucket to store water. It's about the size of a hot tub. When the water falta, we fill up smaller buckets and take a shower by dumping buckets of water on ourselves. Fun times! Sister Nogueira and I decided to throw a pool party with our giant bucket, and it was a blast. This house is perfect! Air conditioning, an oven and a jacuzzi! A cold jacuzzi, but it was still fun!

Sabado: Today was another good day. It was a long day. We had lunch with Irmão Enoque. I got to hold a rooster! It was weirdly hot, like holding a space heater. After lunch, we got açai again (cut me some slack, it's been a long week). 

We visited a bunch of green bolinhas, including as meninas. They “styled” my hair, and “applied” lipgloss. I looked like a crazy person. The only one who was paying any attention was Anna. 

At the end of the day, we ordered sushi. It was Sister Nogueira's mês-versario, and ALL that she could talk about today was ordering sushi. Like only sushi. Every 5 minutes. “EU QUERO SUSHI”. She cracks me up. In the US, sushi is one of my favorite foods. Here? Not so much. It tasted like fish. And before anyone comes at me, I know that sushi is fish. But a vegas roll doesn't taste fishy. So…I will not be eating sushi for 9 more months. Que freaking triste.

Domingo: Feliz Domingooo! Unfortunately, we did not have a single person at church today. João broke his arm this week, and he rides a motorcycle. We also did not have a single RC at church, which is a first. Normally Felippe is at church. After church, we waited for Bispo to come pick us up. He talked about what it was like to serve her, back in the day. He is from São Paulo and was called to serve here. He came back a few years ago to raise his kids close to his wife's family. I can't imagine coming back here to raise a family, he honestly doesn't seem too happy about the decision either. Lunch was a fantastic stroganoff. 

After lunch, we all CRASHED. It was the first time I have really slept all week. I have been having really bad nightmares all week, so it was nice to really sleep. Then, we did our weekly planning and worked more on cleaning our Pregar. I WILL have a clean Pregar by the end of this transfer, mark my words.

Spiritual Thought: Today's spiritual thought is about our divine nature. Brother Brik V. Eyre said in the Out 2025 conference geral said “As we come to know ‘him who is mighty to save,’ we will come to understand that we, as children of God, are His joy—His most important focus—and we are indeed each worth saving.” 

I love this quote. We are God's joy. We are individually the most important thing to Him. GOD, The almighty creator of the Universe, finds joy in YOUR existence. He finds joy in MY existence. We have divine worth. The dictionary defines the word divine as:

1: emanating from God

2: having divine Providence (care)

3: being or having the nature of a God

All of these things describe us. We come from God, He is the literal Father of our spirits. He protects us and takes care of us. We all have the potential to become gods after this life when we become heirs and joint-heirs with Christ. Romans 8: 16-17 says:

16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:

17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.

We are so important and so beloved of our Father in Heaven, that he sent His Son to die for us. To die for you, and to die for me. I invite you all to focus on your divine nature. Instead of focusing on what you wish you could change about yourself, focus on who you really are. You are a beloved, valued, and wanted child of a King.

I love you all so much! I hope that you guys are all having such an amazing week. Please send me an email and let me know how you guys are! In exactly 9 months from today, I will be leaving Brazil. (I am going home a week before hitting 18 months). Tchau babes! Beijos!!

Pictures:

1. Bread of Life and Living Water (is that sacrilegious?)

2. Just a girl and her best friend (her new oven)

3. I love sunsets aqui

4. My mission twin

5. Eating pizza in front of the entire Zona

6. Divisão with my cute Australian amiga

7. Pool partyyyyy

8. I caught me a rooster

9. Sushi!

10. Sunday selfies with Clarice!!