February 26, 2018 Training Week 1

My companions name is Sister Rodrigues, she's 19 years old, and from São Paulo South (interlagos mission). She doesn't have a lot of missionary experience, but she's really good with people, and ready to learn. She has 5 brothers, most of whom are inactive, or semi-active, so she came on a mission to show them a good example--and then realized how amazingly miraculous it is. She's "corintiana" (most of you don't know what that is, don't worry about it) and doesn't like Açai or soda, but loves chocolate and ice cream and eating in general, so we get along great :P like I said, she doesn't have a lot of experience, but she's always up for trying her best!

It's been a great week! Difficult, since my comps feet are all swollen, and lots of our appointments fell through, and almost all of the people we contacted don't actually live in our area, and only one person came to church, but we've been focusing on the little miracles, and having fun where we can. For example, we were eating dinner at a little bakery one evening, and it started to rain all of a sudden. Of course, neither of us had an umbrella. Thinking it would be the usual rains-for-5-mins-and-stops, we put all of our stuff inside a plastic bag and were like 'alright lets go teach!' After 5 mins of walking it still hadn't stopped, which generally means it's going to rain the entire night, so I was kind of like 'ok I think we better head home, change, and grab an umbrella before heading to our meeting.' Yeah. Easier said than done! I sent pictures of myself when I got home, but I still don't think it does it justice. I don't think I've ever been so wet in my entire life! Super fun. But anyway, by the time we got home and changed, our meeting had already been cancelled (probably a good idea since the neighborhood around the chapel floods like crazy and we're not allowed to go swimming) so we were like 'ok! plan b: let's go to the park and do training!' Long story short, while we were doing training, underneath this little raised pavillion, with the raining pouring down on all sides, and practically no one in the streets, a man comes out of nowhere and starts asking us questions about our work. We ended up teaching him the first lesson, and inviting him to be baptized. Afterwords, my comp reminded me that right before we left the house, to go back out in the rain and the dark, I said in our prayer that we knew there were still more people to find, more work to be done, and I asked for help finding them. Seriously people, Heavenly Father answers prayers!

Sorry I didn't get to write very much! I spent pretty much the whole time helping my companion. But I have lots of pictures, so I'll send those out now!

Love from Sister Kirkham