This
week was such a good week for all of us! Our new elders fit in SO well,
but they were also made us back up and realize that we'd gotten a little
out of control. But like I said, this week was so good! This email is
going to be all about progress, so sorry if I didn't ever mention how
things were to begin with haha!
We have two teachers, and both
of them pretend to be people that are interested in learning about the
church, who we call "pesquisadors" because they're searching for
understanding. One of them was really hard in the beginning, both as a
teacher and as a pesquisador, but we love her now! She told us the other
day that her husband, who was really unsure about her learning, had
been telling her how different, and how much better their home feels
since she's been talking to us. And the other one is sooo ready to
follow Jesus Christ's example and be baptized! He's absolutely awesome.
Just amazes us with his answers. He has such a desire to do what is
right, and to bring his whole family with him! He said his wife is a
little scared of making such a change in her life, but then he mimed
yanking her arm and was like "I'll take her with me, don't worry!"
Anyways, I so wish it was real! I mean, it is, in a way, because they
act out real stories of real people they taught in the past, and it
gives just a glimpse of the amazing power of the gospel to change
people's lives for the better, and I can't wait for it to be real! God
really does want His children to be happy, and He created a way! And I
get to be a part of bringing that happiness to people! I imagine it's a
lot like being the ice cream man, with all the kids lighting up when you
drive by. I think that would be such a self-confidence booster.
(Actually, though, I just really want ice cream. The food here is good,
but then we start talking about american restaurants and we get really
homesick... I think what I want most is in-n-out (or maybe Islands?),
but even burger king sounds so good right now!)
I've also been
thinking back a lot to our first week here. We couldn't even say a
prayer without using our little phrase book (pg. 105 in the small green
one!) and we had a panic attack when anything changed last minute, since
we couldn't teach without our preach my gospel books, phrase books, AND
a written out lesson! Now we bring our scriptures, maaaaybe an outline,
and our card with all the verb conjugations on it. We're getting so
much better at conjugating though!
Something that helps a ton
with the language is our daily "jejum de ingles" (English fast).
"Fasting" from English means that we're not allowed to say anything in
completely in English without asking (and you have to try to explain in
portuguese first), and if you can only use English words if you don't
know them in portuguese, and only 2 at a time. (We had to choose a
number, cause otherwise people would say things like "Como se diz..."
("how do you say") and then like 3 sentences haha). We used to do it
just once a week, and then just for a couple hours on weekdays, but now
it's everyday from breakfast to dinner (except longer and Mondays and
shorter on wednesdays so that it works with our schedule). Next week
it's going to be all day everday, and then we're gonna leave and it will
be for reals haha. I think I almost died our first English Fast, but we
all love them now. It's still mentally exhausting, but we learn so
much better, and we are so much better at all of our other goals when we
don't speak English! Cause we can't quote movies or songs in
Portuguese, and we can't point out all the weird things other people are
doing (we only do that within our district, and only because we love
each other) and we can almost kind of make jokes hahaha but yeah not
really. We'll get there some day :P
I think the only specific
thing I want to share about was Sunday. Everyone be grateful for
electricity! And always carry a flashlight with you, even to church!
Cause yeah, sunday was interesting haha. The lights first went out a
couple times during sacrament meeting, but it would come back on pretty
quick. And then we had power for all of our second meeting, and half of
our third (with a couple hiccups) and then it just kinda died haha. We
usually watch a movie sunday afternoon, but there wasn't any way to play
it, so we had a 2 hour district meeting instead (on top of our usual
morning and night meetings. Yeah. We're THAT district hahaha). It was so
good!! We all shared scriptures and quotes and conference talks we
liked, and then we got into personal experiences and testimonies and
what not. EVERYONE was crying by the end of it, and me the most. My
district is just so awesome! We all have our different quirks and our
weird habits, but we love God and we know how much He means to us, and
it's amazing. Anyway, dinner was totally dark, and there were a few
hopeful moments during choir practice, but we ended up dragging out the
old and questionably in tune upright (we usually play on fancy
electronic pianos) and singing christmas songs (cause everyone knows the
tunes) by the light of our flashlights. By some miracle, we were able
to get a crew to come out and fix the electricity in time for a very
very late devotional, and then we were back to normal by the next day.
It was totally chaotic, but really put into focus the things that are
important to us--like each other--and the things we can go without--like
air conditioning. You all should try it sometime!
Ok I gotta go now. Have a great week!
-Sister Kirkham
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