My child's name is Sister Jarrett and she is from New Hampshire! (oh yeah, if you train you are a mom so congrats mom, you are a grandma). She studied at BYU, philosophy and anthropology. We only speak in Portuguese, so I'm glad she's up for that challenge. We've only had 5 days together but I like her, she's willing to work hard which rocks. We are living with two sister trainers, Sister Souza from Sao Paulo who will go home this transfer, and Sister Ribeiro who has a year on the mission and she's from Porto Alegre. We spend about 70% of our time with them, everything except for working.
One day I tried to speak in English with Sister Jarrett to explain something and I couldn't figure out how to say anything in English, so that was kinda interesting. I honestly don't think I've been teaching or speaking better than in this transfer so I 100% have so much help from the Lord, which ROCKS.
Our new ward ROCKS, the members are so nice, and I've heard super good things about the Bishop so that is a nice change. It's kinda small but about normal, probably 60? people, idk I'm super bad at guestimating. I am the pianist again, I think I've come to the conclusion that I need to hold a piano class in every area hahaha
For investigators, it's super hard because the sisters didn't write down anything really about the old investigators so we are kinda starting new. We had a cool experience this week, we met a man on the street named Roswaldo and we invited him to be baptized in the first minute. The day we were going to visit him I felt super inspired to study the Bible for personal study. And for some reason, I decided to study how it applied to the the lesson of the Restoration. So I marked a bunch of scriptures in my Bible that related. We went and taught him the Restoration of the church that day. He went into his room and brought out his Bible and told us that the Bible is super important to him. He asked for the pamphlet so he could read it and then cross reference it with the Bible. I was so grateful I had studied that morning because I was able to mark scriptures in the pamhplet that supported our message, and we gave him a Book of Mormon. I was sooo happy on Sunday because he came to church, with his pamhplet and everything! It was so cute
I like this area for the most part because there's cool stuff here, but it's a lot richer than Sao Sebastiao so we get rejected a lot more which is a little disheartening but it's part of the life. People here are still obsessed with my hair and how pale I am, and I cannot count how many people ask if sister Jarrett and I are twins....One lady even emailed as I prayed and talked on the phone haha it was kinda funny
I was so nervous to train, especially cause I know that Americans literally know like nothing when they arrive (aka I literally was like a lost sheep for my first transfer) and I still feel like I don't have enough time on the mission to train. But now I'm super grateful for this opportunity. I think that I'm learning way way more right now, which is awesome, and I'm grateful I'm able to help Sister Jarrett.
Just wanted to send a thank you to everyone for all the sweet Christmas messages! Definitely made me smile!
FELIZ NATAL, our house be decked out with fake snow (thanks Kim!) and christmas trees!
Sister Cecil
me and sister barrios in a car with our millions of suitcases
