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