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 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