Week 30~Crazy Christmas & Resurrected Flies

Howdy friends and family!

This week was QUITE the whirlwind. 

For one, turns out there was a miscommunication in the Secretary Office and that I won´t actually be permanantly transferred in Ibiúna afterall :( It´s sad because I already fell in love with the people here. But it really gives a whole new meaning to the hymn ´´I´ll go where you want me to go´´, because instead of going back to Caucaia I´m going to be transferred to Perdizes! And my new companion will be (drumroll please........) Sister Haggard! Whoooooooo! I find this hilarious because in just 4 months in Brazil I´ve been in: Taboão, Perdizes (1 week), Caucaia, Ibiúna (2 weeks). And actually, I haven´t stayed in one área for a whole 2 transfers yet. I don´t know if the President is preparing me to be a Traveling Sister (I don´t know if they have those in all missions, but they have them here) or what. Just kidding, maybe this time is a charm.

As for Christmas....let´s just say it was quite the adventure. 3:00 we went to the house of the member who bought internet just so we could Skype for Christmas, but when we got there we found out that the power went out at his place. So we went to his mom´s house in the middle of the woods and spent 2 hours there trying to get the internet to work, but that didn´t work. So we went to a friend´s house of the lady who was driving us around and spent about half an hour there tring to get it to work, but it didn´t. After, we went to the church house to use the wifi there, but it was too weak and we couldn´t get the Skype call to work. So finally we went to another member´s house on the other side of the world and ater about an hour there, we finally got it to work. Kind of. My companion and another Elder were able to Skype, but me and another Elder didn´t get the full oportunity because by the time we left it was 10:00 at night. But no worries, because our good Mission President gave us permission to Skype on New Years. It is honestly a Christmas I will never forget.

As for the ressurrected flies, I learned that if you drown a fly and after put salt on it , itcomes back to life!!!! Hahaha I also watched a spider eat a fly this week. No big deal. 

But that´s about it for this week. I´m hoping things will finally calm down and go back to normal, but who knows? It´s the mission! Love you all and thank you for your prayers and support! Até!

Love,

Sister Lockhart

Week 29~Merry Christmas

Link to the Mission Christmas Party

 https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=cs-o4-wS3n4

Week 29~Ibiúna

​...We had a christmas party

 for the whole mission this week which was pretty fun

 I got to ride a mechanical bull. Sorry I can´t send the video of that one.

Well people,

This week was quite the adventure.

So many new things it´s a little overwhelming. Where to begin?

So Sister Granados went home this past week and I got the news that I would be staying in Ibiúna with Sister Sanchez until the end of the transfer because her companion was going home too. Just that when I arrived at the Mission Office I was told that I would be permanantly transferred to Ibiúna and that I would be training Sister Sanchez who is from Argentina. I arrived here on thursday night and it turns out that Sister Sanchez and Sister Freitas baptized really their only investigator. So we´re starting from ground zero practically. Good thing I opened my first two areas.

Let me just tell you a little bit about Ibiúna. It´s literally the midddle of nowhere. Ok that´s a bit of an exaggeration, but it´s huge. If I´m not mistaken, I think it´s the area furthest away from the mission office and it borders some other mission, but I can´t remember which. Every morning I wake up to Betsy the cow mooing across the street. Our district consists of our companionship and two companionship of Elders. It´s strange though because we don´t actually have boundries of where we work, we just kind of share the whole city of Ibiúna.

There´s just a small branch here of about 50 members and the President  of the Branch and the first counselor live in São Paulo and are only here for the weekends. Oh and the meetinghouse is actually a house which is quite different, but kind of cool. The members here are so loving and caring, I love them already. There´s a different spirit here in Ibiúna. I like it, even though it´s going to be harder. Just know that the church is true. It´s true.

So that´s about it for this week. All of this in just 3 or 4 days! Oh and family, I don´t even know if I get to skype you know because no one here has a video camera and internet! Soooooooo......we´ll see! Love you all!

Love Sister Lockhart!

Ibiúna

I'm a chicken

Week 28~Fátima

This is what Brasil does to your hair

Dear everyone,

This week was a relatively normal week with lots of lessons, but few people progressing. We did find out this week that Francisca, the young woman who was going to be spending Summer break (it's strange to say that in December) in São Paulo with her cousins, will not be going after all! It's truly a miracle! Just that now she doesn't want to be baptized and she won't tell us why. She is set on waiting until next year. You can imagine our disappointment with that one. 

This coming week Sister Granados will be going home :( Sister Granados was my Sister Training Leader in my first area and I had the wonderful opportunity to live with her for the past two transfers. She's taught me and helped me so much so it's sad to see her go home back to Colombia. We will be staying in a trio until the real transfer day which is the 29th of this month. The Mission President is letting everyone who would go home that day go home on the 18th so they can spend Christmas with their families. Awwww. It'll be sad to see him go in July when we get a new Mission President. 

We visited Fátima this week which in itself is normal because we have to visit her every week or else she calls the Bishop. I don't know if I've told you about Fátima, but she's a bipolar inactive member here with a reputation. Every single missionary talks about her. But anyway, this week was a miracle because she told us she loves us! Whoohoo! It's an accomplishment, really. She calls me her boneca which means doll. Actually everyone here calls me that because I'm white. 

Oh, also, my companion got kicked by a horse this week. She wanted to take a picture with this horse on the side of the road (you'd be surprised by how many people ride horses instead of drive cars) and after I took the picture the horse turned around and kicked her in the knee. Thankfully, it didn't break, it's just swollen. She is very blessed I'll just say that.

This week my companion and I have been pondering a lot about the Atonement. I read a talk this week by Elder Oaks about how the Savior is able to succor us. And because he descended below all things he knows what we feel and he also knows how to help us. One thing I've learned is that he knows who to put in our paths so that we can be helped and can be able to feel his love. I've also learned that in this life we can be those people that the Lord puts in other people's path to succor. And we should prepared to do so. 

That's all for this week! Até mais!

Love, Sister Lockhart

Caucaia do Alto

​It wouldn't be the South American experience without some Chimarrão and Tereré 

Week 27~Multi-Zona

Oi peoples, (as my companion would say), what's uppy!?

Haha, my companion is trying to learn English because after she finishes her mission she's going to get married and finish school in Fortaleza and head to BYU. She knows how to gitter done. Lol.

Anyway, this week we had fabulous Multi-Zone conference, which is when missionaries from different areas of the mission gather and receive training from the Mission President and his wife and other experienced missionaries. The training was very good and I'll try to summarize it briefly.

Sister Del Guerso based her training off a talk by President Russell M. Nelson that he gave during the New Mission President Conferance Meeting Thing while I was at the MTC. President Nelson talked about how we are letters sent from the Lord to the people we are serving, except that our letters aren't written in ink, but they are engraven on our hearts. Afterwards we wrote letters to ourselves about how much we've grown on the mission. Chique, né?

 Presidente Del Guerso based his training off another talk given at that seminar that talks about repentance. Elder Oaks and Elder Anderson talk about the importance of getting our investigators to understand the importance of repentance. Because many times as missionaries we just focus on baptism, but once our investigators understand the importance of repentance, they'll understand why they need to be baptized. Overall, very good training. And for the first time during a meeting, Presidente Del Guerso didn't ask me to do some kind of role play! I have a true testimony of miracles. 

As for our investigators, we don't have anybody progessing now, which is kind of discouraging. But my companion told me that President Del Guerso told her that if your only convert on the mission is yourself, then your mission was successful. And that's true. But I'm not content with that, we will have miracles!

I love you all! THank you for all of your support and have a fantastic week!

Love,

Sister Lockhart

A new sister from Charlotte, North Carolina~Sister Bido

Nativity at the temple

Week 26~Happy Thanksgiving

Dear family and friends,

Another week has passed and we're that much closer to Christmas! Hooray! Time flies on the mission.

We were able to find Marcelly this week. Turns out Saturday night she decided to skip town for a few days because she was feeling really stressed. She also said she doesn't feel prepared for her baptism which is weird because literally the night before she told us she was excited for her baptism and felt really prepared. Oi pregnant women. We still love her though. I'm not sure how or when her baptism will work out though because she's supposed to be having her baby around the end of this month. So we'll see. 

We're also teaching a young women who is totally prepared for the gospel and was going to be baptized this month, but found out she's going to São Paulo this week and won't return until February....That was a bummer to find out. Thankfully though, we found a family this week! And the parents said they would be more than happy for us to teach their kids. So that was a great miracle. We also got a reference from a member in the ward to go teach her daughter, Sandra. Sandra is very inteligent and knows the Bible very well, so this week I've been really studying the Bible, which is good, because I need to study the Bible more. And I've learned a lot! Truly the Bible and the Book of Mormon complete each other. 

This week we got a call from the Mission President and he told us that on Saturday we would clean the church! That was a fun experience. Cleaning in Brasil is a lot different because everything is tile. So I guess it's easier to clean, but also it gets dirtier faster. But yeah, to clean it, you basically just fill the whole church with water and scrub. It's pretty interesting. Cleaning there reminded me of all the times I told my dad I wasn't going to clean the church hahaha It was fun.

That's really all for this week. This coming week we will have a multi-zone conference so I'll probably have more inspirational stuff to say next week lol Thank you for all your prayers! Love you all!

Love,

Sister Lockhart

Week 25~Don't Worry, Be Happy...

                  Never get tired of this view

Oi gente,

This week was pretty much a rollercoaster. Marcelly had her baptismal interview on Friday and after the interview, Marcelly and our District leader decided to play a joke on us by saying she wasn't prepared and would have to postpone the baptism until December. I thought my companion was going to have a cow! But, thankfully that wasn't the case. Unfortunately however, Marcelly stayed the night at her Dad's house the night before her baptism and told us he was going to give her a ride on Sunday instead of haveing us pick her up. Então, she didn't come yesterday. And she's not answering her phone and wasn't in her house yesterday, so we're hoping everything is okay. I don't know if I mentioned that she's 8 months pregnant, so I don't know if that has anything to do with what happend, but everything will be okay and will work out. If this mission has taught me anything so far it is how to be more calm. Haha just kidding, I've learned a lot more than that. But Brasilians love Bob Marley so it makes sense.

Other than that, there was a soccer game yesterday between São Paulo and Corinthians and Corinthians destroyed São Paulo 6-1 just in case you wanted to know. It's kind of hard not to know here because people go crazy over soccer and throw big parties in the streets. Hahaha

We also had a meeting just for Sister's this week in São Paulo which is very tiring. The bad thing about living in the boonies is that youŕe far away from everything and have to wake up at 5 in the morning to go to the capital. But other than that it's pretty much awesome.

Nothing else to report this week. Just that, missions are hard, but worth it! I've already experienced so many miracles and seen the Lord's hand in this work. Thank you for your prayers!

Love,

Sister Lockhart

Resolving companionship issues...

Just kidding...We love each other!

Week 24~Rain, Rain, Go Away...

Dear family and friends,

This week I had my last newbie training! Yay! And this time we didn't get lost! As of today I am officially no longer a ´´newbie´´. Almost 6 months on the mission and I'm finally done with the training program for new missionaries (you start over the training once you get to Brasil), so that's nice. We played jeopardy for the training and all I can say is thank you BYU for your religion classes. Also I've gone from being called Taylor Swift to being called Nerd, which makes more sense to me.

This week we had some major thunderstorms and the power went out 3 times this week, which is fun because we get to light candles, but also not fun because cold showers just aren't that fun. The weather in Caucaia is bipolar because one minute it's hot as hades and the next minute fog rolls in and it's cold and rainy. Ok, done talking about the weather.

This week we marked Marcelly for baptism. Let me tell you about Marcelly. She's awesome. The sisters found her by accident during an exchange. They were trying to find another person who lived nearby and asked her if she knew where the person lived. She didn't but the sisters asked if they could share a message and she said yes. Turns out her husband is a less active member and is excited to come back to church. They're great. And God truly showed his hand in leading us to them.

That's really all for this week. Here's some pictures finally. Thank you for all your prayers, they truly help!

Love,

Sister Lockhart

                          "I spy with my little eye two gringos..."

Week 23~People at Church:)

(Jess couldn't share a picture this week, so this is from a mission conference~Beth)

Oi gente! 

I've gotten lazy with my titles so I hope you'll forgive me, but this week we had a huge miracle! We had people come to church! And some came without us having to pick them up! I'm still in shock.

Yesterday we picked up Marcelly and Nilda. This ward is great because the members drive us on Sunday to pick up our investigators instead of making us walk to pick up everyone. It's great! Anyway, that was a miracle in itself because the husband of Marcelly was working when we called her and she didn't want to come without him, but she ended comng with us anyway. Miracle. And Nilda was sleeping when we went to pick her up, but she decided to come with us anyway. Miracle. But the greatest thing is that two of our investigators who said they weren´t going to come, came anyway! Without our help! And they loved it! WHich is great because it´s been a while since we´ve had people at church!

I can´t send photos again this week because the place we usually go to is closed and this internet place is dumb and doesn´t let us send photos. SO until next week yet again,

Sister Lockhart

Week 22~Week of Miracles...

Dear family and friends,

This week truly has been a week of miracles. We went on exchanges this week with the sisters who live with us and I went with Sister Cellularle to her area for the day. Here´s just a few of the miracles:

1) We got 2 rides in one day from members!! (rides rarely happen)

2) We found an investigator who has been really hard to find, but is solid on wanting an eternal family

3) We visited an investigator who wants to get baptized, but his ´´wife´´ doesn´t want to get married. And we talked about some stuff and he got up and got down on one knee and asked her to marry him right in front of us what!?? She said she´d think about it....

Aside from the miracles in the other area, we´ve had miracles in our area as well. We´ve found two families that are married in cartório!! You see, the problem here in Brazil isn´t always finding people who want to be baptized, it´s finding people who are married legally. Because for some reason Brazil makes it really hard to get married. But these two families are incredible! We have been very blessed here. 

That´s all for this week. This week we will be going on exchanges with the Sister Training Leaders and I will be staying in the area to take over. This is going to be very interesting.....

Until next week,

Sister Lockhart

Week 21~The Holy Ghost Carries the Message

"Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.´´

Good morning everyone!

The beginning of this week started off really good with lots of lessons and contacts, but then died down at the end of the week due to the weather. It's been rainy and cold for the past few days, so no one goes outside and the people we want to see say that they are sick. All well. Today is finally sunny, so that's good.

This week we had a very good lesson with one of our new investigators, Erix. His daughter, Keila, is a recent convert and is awesome. We taught about the Plan of Salvation and Jesus Christ and the spirit was strong. And he said he would come to church with us, but his family went out of town, but he is really awesome. 

We also met a woman on the street one night while we were contacting this week and she started crying when we started talking to her because she said God sent us to her. It really amazes me sometimes how spiritual these people are. Anyway, this week we are going to see her, which is good, because all of our investigators have been flakey up until this point.

Last night we had family home evening with a recent convert family and the dad talked about having the spirit when we teach. Because, you can teach a lesson perfectly, but the spirit is what testifies that something is true. And I know that to be true, because I don't teach lessons perfectly, but the Holy Ghost is what carries the message.

Until next week,

Sister Lockhart

                                             My Friend

​A Site of the Church (James E. Faust)

Week 20~First Baptism...

Hello all!

This week was sweet! We had the baptism of Nataly this week and everything went smoothly. It was a great experience for everyone there. She was really, really nervous for her interview and was probably overprepared haha but she is awesome.

We also painted a house this week for a service project!!! Unfortunately, my camera died that day so the pictures are on other peopleś cameras, so Iĺl have to see if I can get those next week. It was really cool though because the Elder's area is beautiful.

We have had a lot of miracles this week marking people for baptism. Unfortunately, no one wants to come to church with us. So that's kind of a problem. But it'll be better next week.

Don't have a lot of time to write this week, but thank you all for your prayers and emails! Love you!

Love,

Sister Lockhart

Family Home Evening Nite

No Coment...

Week 19~Sião...

Bom dia everyone!

This week I transferred to Caucaia which hasn´t had Sister missionaries in over twenty years! There´s a less active here who has lived here for over 50 years and she has photos to prove it! It´s pretty crazy. So naturally, everyone is stoked that we are here.

This area is basically Zion. Ok, that´s a bit of an exaggeration, but I´ve taught more lessons here in just one week than I did six weeks in my last area! And we already have someone who will be baptized this week! Her name is Natali and she´s thirteen years old and is awesome. Her uncle is a recent convert and he´s the bomb too. But yeah, there´s a running joke here that we´re going to baptize the monkeys haha There are a lot of horses and forests here which reminds me of the good ol´ Carolina and I love it. Oh and the accent here is different. I think it´s the equivalent of a southern accent in the United States. It´s really tranquil here and the people are a lot friendlier. Anyway, I had a lot more to say about this week, but I forgot already...

Week 18~Four Months...

Taboao Zone

Bom dia everyone

I hope you all had a week full of great things. As of Saturday, I´ve hit my  4 month mark, woah!

I´ll start off with the big news first: I´m getting transferred! What? Apparently our area here is closing again because the numbers are low and probably because I still haven´t taught any of the 5 lessons, but hey, I still learned a lot here. My new area will be Caucaia, which is very far away from where I am now and very different apparently. It´s called the interior, which just means not the city I think. I´m not sure. But there´s lots of forests and cows and chickens and it´s more calm and tranquil with less people, so that´ll be both fun and interesting. I´m really excited. Also I´ll be getting a new companion because Sister de Oliveira was called as a Sister Training leader for this area. My new companion will be Sister Oliveira. No joke. Hahaha.And we will be pinkwashing the area, which means we will be replacing the Elders in that area. And Caucaia hasn´t had Sisters before. This´ll be a fun experience.

This week we also had training for the new missionaries. Here´s a story: we (sister Hall, sister Valdera, and I) were on the bus going to the church and we got off at the wrong stop halfway there and had to walk about thirty minutes to get to the place because we were lost. But, we made it! Late of course, but we made it in time for the food haha

And of course we had General Conference this week which was sweet! I was able to watch half of it in Portuguese and half in English. Sister Hall´s uncle (Elder Haynie) spoke and also Elder Costa who I´ve met a couple times here. I don´t know who´s talk was my favorite, but enjoy Elder Bednar´s talk about sustaining the Apostles and the Prophet. I have a grand testimony that God has called a living prophet today because He loves his children yesterday, today, and forever. 

Now I´m going to bombard you with pictures. To be honest, I´m going to miss Jardim Celeste, it was charming. But that´s mission life. Thank you all for everything!

Until next week,

Sister Lockhart

The Only American Sisters in the Whole Mission

Goodbye Mr. Magoo Pizza (aka Diabetes)

​Pitanga: a weird fruit we pick off the trees that is really interesting but good

at the São Paulo Temple

Week 17~"Com Esperanca Vamos Batizar"

"Hey... Look who I found :)"

Dear Friends and Family,

This week I returned to my area and things have been going pretty swell. This transfer is almost coming to a close which is nice because that means I´m halfway done with training which very redunant at the moment since it´s the same training I had in Utah. All well, only 7 more weeks of it...

This week we received a reference from a member in the ward about a boy who wants to be baptized. His mom is a less active member and gave permission for him to be baptized! He turns 8 the 1st of october and he will be baptized sometime this month! Yay!

We´ve also been working with a brother and a sister who both have been baptized, but the brother is a less active member. They are probably my favorite people here because they actually talk to me and I can talk to them easier than anyone else for some reason. But that´s usually how it goes. The children are the best people to talk to and it´s fun.

A little miracle that happened this week: my companion and I had finished contacting one day and we were about to turn around and go home for some reason, but I said let´s just do 5 more. And by the third contact we talked to this college student who asked if we were Mormons and what we believed and she wanted a Book of Mormon to read so we gave her one and I don´t think I´ve ever met anyone so excited during contacting. It turns out she lives in the Elder´s area so they´ll be the ones teaching her, but it´s the small things that count right? 

Don´t really have anything else to report on this week. I still haven´t taught the Restoration or actually any of the lessons for that matter, which can get discouraging, but I am definitely learning a lot of patience here, which I need. Thank you for all your support and prayers, they are appreciated!

Love, 

Sister Lockhart

Week 16~Making it BIG in Brazil...

Oi gente!

Where do I even begin? This week has been crazy, but it has been my best week in Brasil! I´ve been in a new area, Perdizes, for a week with a different Sister because her companion went home, but I will be going back to my area today. This area is very different because it´s where all the rich people live so it´s hard to find new investigators because everyone lives in apartments an won´t let us in. But it´s very chique. 

First of all, we had a baptism here! Her name is Ana Laura and even though I didn´t teach her, it was still a special experience, since I still haven´t had a baptism, let alone a new investigator to teach. Anyway, she stayed in Salt Lake for a month to learn English and she met somene in her group that was LDS and they are dating now and that´s how she found the church. Now their next stop is to be married in the temple! Yay! We also interviewed another Sister for baptism and she will be baptized on Saturday! Hurrah for Israel!

Also this week we had a Multi-Zone conference which was fun. Let me tell you, Brasilians are loud and crazy and I love it. But it´s also weird because these people feel the Spirit differently and so you have to teach them differently. I am still getting used to it. 

Yesterday a few zones, including the one I´m staying in now, got to go sing for some political event for São Paulo. We sang some primary songs and the Americans sang the American National Anthem and then everyone sang the Hymn of Brasil. It was pretty big. Also I got to be on TV, again. (The other time was when we went to the CTM devotional and they asked a few Elders and Sisters to preten to walk into the room. So basically you got to see my back). Anyway, I guess you could say I´m famous in Brasil haha But really, at least every other day I get told ´´Você parece Taylor Swift!!!´´(You look like Taylor Swift). I also get told that I´m white and need to wear sunscreen.

I also forgot to mention a spiritual experience that happened a few weeks ago when I was on exchanges with the Sister Training Leader. We went and visisted a less active member and I was sitting on the other side of the room because there was nowhere to sit and I couldn´t hear (or understand) anything that they were saying so I just kind of sat there trying to figure outh what they were talking about. Anyway, Sister Granados asked me to share a scripture and I chose one and we prayed, but I kept getting the impression to change it so I turned to a different scripture and shared Moroni 7:41 in the Book of Mormon which talks about hope in Jesus Christ and the Ressurrection. Then they both just stared at me and Bruna said something and later I found out that her friend had passed away and she asked Sister Granados how I knew that scripture was exactly what she needed to hear. And she said it was the Spirit. This experience just testifies to me the power of the Holy Ghost in this work, especially when trying to learn a new language.

Thank you again, as always for your prayers. Love you all!

Love,

Sister Lockhart

Ana Laura´s baptism

At some political thingy

Week 15~"Oh My Darling Clementine..."

Hello all, 

I don´t have a lot of time to email today because I will be changing areas in about an hour for the week! 

This week was very rainy and very cold! We got to go to the devotional at the Brasil MTC and it was great! We have both the MTC and the São Paulo temple in our mission so we are very lucky. That also means we have a lot of general authorities come here! Sweet.

Alright, time for some funny stories. This week I got to work at the temple which means we just stand outside the temple and contact as many people as possible and try to get addresses for people in the mission. Anyway, I´m not very good at contacts. Or at the time I wasn´t, I still don´t understand everything people tell me. So I gave this guy one of the Because He Lives cards and he told me something like he had already found Jesus or something and I didn´t know how to respond so we just kind of stared at each other awkwardly until he started asking me if I was okay and I told him I don´t speak Portuguese very well and he kept talking and I was just nodding my head because what else am I supposed to do, my companion is not even helping me. So finally he leaves and then he comes back about 10 minutes later and hands me his cellphone to talk to his son in english and he is asking me if I need any money or whatever and I´m just like..No, no I´m a missionary blah blah and afterwards the guy just tells me that he is concerned for me and the moral of this story is it is very different here hahah but at least I got an adress out of it so that´s something right?

Ok another story about contacting, we were contacting last night (which by the way isn´t very fun on Sunday night because everyone is going to church and is mean) and this really really old guy comes up to us and starts talking about how Sister Tesser (another Sister in this mission who was in this area) came to his house today and invited him to church, which didn´t actually happen because Sister Tesser was transferred 3 weeks ago. So we get his address and he leaves. Then he comes back about 15 minutes later and comes up to me and starts singing ´´Oh my Darling Clementine´´ in english and goes on this long rant about how he can read in English or something. It was pretty funny.

So those are the highlights of this week. Today we had a P-day with the president because our zone and a couple of others won some contest for something. I don´t really know all that goes on here yet. But I will eventually. Hopefully. We had 2 investigators come to church this week! And that´s about it for this week. 

Love you all!

Love,

Sister Lockhart

Week 14~The Week I Biffed It...

Oi gente!

All I can say about this week is that I hope things get better! Last Sunday we were walking home from eating lunch at a member´s home and I stepped in a pothole or something and rolled my foot which hurt a lot. So I wobbled home and wasn´t able to walk until Tuesday when it started to finally feel better. But Sister del Guerso, the mission president´s wife, wanted to take me to the hospital anyway and they x-rayed my foot to make sure it wasn´t broken. Thankfully it wasn´t broken, but for some reason they wanted to put a cast on it anyway, and I had to wear the cast until yesterday. As if I didn´t already feel useless enough. All in all, I can´t exactly say I´ve had a very productive week.

So instead I guess I can tell you a little bit about Brazil.

For one, we are serving in the interior which I think is like the outskirts of the central city. I´m not sure. Anyway, everybody lives in a gated garage? I don´t really know how to explain it. And everyone and their dog has a dog. hah. Lots of dogs. I´m pretty sure I´ve stepped in some dog crap at night, but don´t really know because it´s too dark to tell. Oh, and when you use the bathroom, you don´t flush the toilet paper, you throw it away in the trash can. I guess you could say we´re not in Utah anymore. Hahaha.

Thankfully the ward here is very awesome. There are lots of returned sister missionaries who are just so awesome. And the bishop is great too. But it is hard being the little white girl who doesn´t understand anything. Actually, I can understand a lot, I just can´t speak it, which is frustrating. But everyone keeps saying it will come. I hope so!

While I was bed-ridden this week I read a talk by Elder Holland called ´´Cast Away Not Therefore Your Confidence´´ which talks about how right beore we make a big decision in our lives or encounter miracles we are more often than not faced with adversity. Like what happened to Joseph Smith right before he saw God the Father and Jesus Christ.. But it´s good to remember that we are never alone where ever we are and when bad things happen, we are still loved.

Thank you for all your prayers. Love you all!

Love,

Sister Lockhart

Outside My Bedroom

My Companion Sister De Oliviera

Week 13~Brasil!!!

Oi,
I do'nt even know where to begin with this email. So I will just start from the beginning. Also I am using a portuguese keyboard so please bear with me.

Last Monday we got on a plan headed for Brasil! And a cool experience happened while we were in the Atlanta airport. We met this other missionary who just came from the MTC and was going to the São Paulo Norte Mission. Anyway, he goes over and starts talking to these Brazilians in Portuguese. Turns out they were members of the church and so we just started talking to him. (The only advice he gave us was to never go back to Brazil and marry someone you baptized lol) Anyway, I saw this other Brazilian who was listening to our conversation so I went over there to talk to him. Apparently he was doing an exchange student program in Canada and was just coming home after being there a year. So we talked and he asked a few questions about what we do as missionaries. We asked him if he went to church and he said not really because there are many churches in Brasil and it is very confusing. He said he wants to feel that something is true. Well whatya know. So we gave him a Book of Mormon and I bore my testimony of when I felt it was true and he said he might want to have missionaries over. But get this. It turns out he lives in this very mission! So we are going to try and send the Elders over to that area. Pretty cool.

So yeah, Brasil is very different to say the least. When you greet someone you kiss them on the cheek, except as missionaries we can~t do that to someone of the opposite gender which can be pretty awkward sometimes when you think they are leaning in to tell you something and then your companion freaks out because they know what is up. Hahaha yeah that happened. It´s pretty fun though. My companion is Sister de Oliveira and she is very sweet. We just opened up a new area. That is hard. We haven´t taught very many lessons. And no one really wants to talk to us. Also no one can pronounce my name so I am officially going by Sister Loki because that is how they say my name. Haha.

The members here are so awesome. They are crazy, but fun. It is kind of hard because everybody thinks I am just stupid and so they try to speak english to me, but I have never met a more loud people. I can´t wait for they olympics hahah we work with the bishop a lot and the seminary kids who are just insane, but cool. I was able to convince one of them that I was from Brasil hehe but all in all, great people, hard life.

I will try to write more next week! I forgot to bring my camera so no pictures :( we aren´t supposed to carry it around because we would get jumped, no joke. 

Thank you for everything! Love you all.

Love,

Sister Lockhart