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...