Ma chere famille!
This week has been great! The best so far. It started with a devotional that changed my life last week. Shayne M. Bowen of the seventy spoke. (I may have made up that middle initial...) Anyway, he spoke at GC too. But he spoke about pretty much every mission related thing under the sun, it was great. But the one thing he said that spiritually punched me in the face was this. He challenged us to have out own Moses experience. From Moses 1. When Moses finds out that man is nothing. "Which thing [he] never had supposed. He challenged us to have one of those. And he challenged us to say something to the effect of, "Heavenly Father, I know I'm not much, but I'm obedient, and I'm teachable." I'm working on it. I've been trying to find more humility and more charity in general this week. So yah, I'd invite each of you to do this same thing and have a Moses experience! Heavenly Father WILL respond! And through His strength and the power of the Atonement, we can be greater than we could ever be alone.
Smooz, I needed a Portuguese speaker this week. Slash Travis/Lori and everyone else. We had a new sister move into our room, Sister Campbell. She's going to Lori's mish! Sao Paulo North, and she's just here waiting for her visa. But yah, I wanted to make her a welcome sign, but I could only think of how to say welcome in French and Spanish, so I had to ask one of my portuguese volleyball buds. And he told me. Also, I wanna learn Portuguese when I get home. I can actually understand a bit of it. Soeur Campbell, prayed in Portuguese the other night, it's beautiful!! Almost as pretty as French.
This week, me and my comps rubbed shoulders with President Brown, the MTC prez a couple times and it was great. He's super nice! We got to eat lunch with him one day and we were asking him questions about the future MTC with the explosion of missionaries coming and all that. He's super stoked. And they're still figuring out how to deal with it. But the funniest part of all this was that this was the second time he's sat with our district, and Elder Ellis, who just left for Montreal was super jel about this, so he sat right in front of me a table away and was making faces at me the entire time. And then Elder Pilling and Elder Grant joined in. (more frenchies.) So, I was laughing like a fool right in front of President Brown for no apparent reason. Awk. hah. But there wasn't much I could do about it. We're still friends though, cause on Thursday, Soeur Cuthbert, Soeur Olson, and I auditioned to do a musical number here, and he came in and listened to part of it. The audition was good. For some reason, Soeur Olson's piano pages were outta order, so the first run through wasn't fantastic, but we gotta play half of it again for President Brown, and then the whole thing once more cause we explained why it wasn't so good the first time, and there was no one in line. So yah! We got a yes, and they're gonna contact us when they know where they want us. I'm pretty stoked. I love playing cello! I gotta play 3 times this week.
We're still waiting on news for Soeur Cuthbert. She's going in today to talk to the doctor, so pray for her, please! She's the best. She is one of the kindest, most Christ like people I know, and she's already taught me so much. I know that the Lord knows what's best though, and even if she does go home, she has helped bring me closer to Christ, and helped me be better.
This week we learned soooo much. I LOVE LEARNING. It's the best. And I love this kind of learning. It's the mind and heart kind. We learn how to teach, contact, plan, and speak with our mind, but we learn the spiritual things, we learn how to love, how to care, how to become with our heart. I love it. It's the best! My favorite activity of the week was definitely when we practiced contacting with some of our teachers and another zone. It was the best. I LOVE talking to people about this gospel. I know it doesn't feel natural at first, but it really is. When something is that big apart of your life, why would you not talk about it? Cello came up and comes up in every single discussion I have in my life, especially when I'm meeting new people. My goal when I get home is to add the gospel to that "About me" list.
Sand volleyball this week. I've officially converted my entire district to it!! It's the best. And the quote in the subject line is actually from volleyball. It's what Elder Pilling and I shout whenever we dive. Literally translated, it means "In the sand!!" hah. And it's the best. I love volleyball. But I'm sad cause basically our entire district just left. 48 Missionaries! It's crazy. The missionaries going to France and Africa left yesterday and all the Canadians left early this morning. Now it's just our district, two other french districts, a couple creoles, and the Tahitians. We're pretty little. The missionaries that left sang for us in sacrament. They sang "Souviens-Toi" a french hymn that's to the tune of the second movement of Dvorak's new world symphony. It's the best! And I may or may not have cried. Oh. Also, all the Portuguese elders left today or yesterday too, so I don't have very many friends right now, but I'll make more!
Right now, my district's actually super tight. We've been speaking lots of french together, which has been fun. And! This week, we've been doing nice things (warm fuzzies) every night, and it's the best!! Usually I'm not a huge warm fuzzies fan, but it's been great! I love all 5 of the other sisters and elders in my district. We're bffs.
And I've needed that support lately, cause on Saturday. hah. No one laugh. I had my first slightly big meltdown of the mtc. In class. It was dumb. I don't even have an explanation for my explosion of tears, except for the fact that that's my one spiritual gift. The gift of weeping :] It was fine though. I think I was just super overwhelmed. Cause in class we were talking about teaching to the investigators needs but also teaching the doctrine. And my teacher and a zone teacher did a demonstration on how to do this, and they made it look sooo easy, and I just didn't know how I could ever do it. But! I now know that I can, with the Lord's help. It was funny though, Frere Blosil like didn't know how to deal with my tears. I started crying and he was like, "Are you feeling sick?" Nope. I just have the gift of weeping. (He's from a family of all boys. Surprise!) But he gave me a priesthood blessing. And it was great. He even said my whole name! The priesthood is amazing. I calmed right down. Oh. And that afternoon, our district got put on a bon bon ban. NO CANDY. hah. This made me laugh. I think it had something to do with the fact that we've been eating candy like everyday and the three of us Soeurs had consecutive meltdowns. Thursday night, Friday night, and Saturday morning. So yah. Candy is banned, until the end of the mtc. Except Halloween of course.
We've been teaching our amis de l'eglise about the Plan of Salvaton this week. And I love teaching it! It honestly applies directly to everyone. Cause everyone has and loves their family. And one of our investigators, Claude, had a sister that passed away when she was younger. So I got to bear testimony of Kawehi! And explain with joy that we WILL see them one day and we WILL be able to live with them again, for eternity! It was the best.
Ok family, well I'm outta time, but I love you! You are the best! I hope that you have a fantastic week! Read the Book of Mormon everyday! It is the word of God and it makes life easier when you have that eternal perspective in mind!
Je vous aime tous!
L'evangile est vrai!
Soeur Santos
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