"Um Series Das Desgraças"

I've decided to title my mission "a series of unfortunate events" ou, "um series das desgraças" due to my many hospital and health fiascos here.

So this week was a little boring in terms of work because I spent the majority of it in the hospital. I was bit a couple times by a doggo last week and went to the hospital, and then this week went to get the rabies shot. I had to go to the public hospital because everything is free (and that is all I will say about that), and so we waited probably 8 hours so that day was already gone. Then they finally gave me the vaccine, and were going to do some IV drip and so they also gave me some sleeping medicine. I didn't not entirely understand the purpose of that so I called Sister Cooper who ended up coming to resolve it all and since I was all drugged up we got to sleep in the mission home, with AIR CONDITIONING! 

Then the next day was the conference and I'm sure it was great, but since they gave me a lot of random shots the night before I still felt a little weird; so I think I slept through it all? It's kinda hazy. I do not react well to medicine, so ended up spending the rest of the week home, until saturday when we went to get the last rabies shot and ended up waiting 8 hours again.

butttt Saturday was fun because it was Sister Jarrett's Birthday! Since we had to go to the center of Brasilia for the hospital we went out to lunch and literally had the best food I have ever eaten. It was like this health food store and they actually had a salmon wrap, it's nearly impossible to find salmon here. We had smoothies and then this whole grain dark chocolate crepe. I'm sure tha'ts not interesting to anyone, but I was so shook for the rest of the day about how good our lunch was. 

We also taught English that night, and were supposed to have a ward activity but the only people who came were there for the English class so that fell through, haha...

Turns out Joao Francisco has a head injury from his time as a spy (he still cant talk about it) and doesn't really remember the majority of what we taught him lolz. Soooo, we are going to reteach him this week and he said he's going to try to remember haha poor guy

Oh and the funniest thing that happened this week: 

Saturday night we had a day of English, as one of my presents for Sister Jarrett's B'day. Since we have never spoken English we were up until about 2 am just talking talking talking, and as we were about to go to sleep we saw a cockroach. Not a huge deal, but yeah we were tired and it was a really big boy so we started screaming and spent about 2 hours trying to kill it. I have a video that i'll send but idk if it'll end up showing. We slept 3 hours that night cause we kept losing him then finding him and finally Sister Souza got so annoyed with us screaming that she just walked into our room, killed it in about 20 seconds and then went back to sleep. I need to learn how to kill them...they're just so fast!! I cant figure it out! 

One more week left of this transfer, but I'm 99% sure I'm gonna stay to finish training Sister Jarrett.

Amo vocês!

Sister Cecil

Rejected Rejected, You Just Got Rejected!

Had a kinda sad week for the most part. Our baptism fell through on Saturday.  We were trying super hard to baptize Oswaldo but the one thing he was struggling with was respecting the day of the Lord, or Sunday. In Portuguese Sabado means Sabbath, as well as Saturday, so in the Bible it says we need to respect the day of sabado and people get confused. We explain why it's Sunday and show scriptures etc., but he was just not having it. He told us that he thinks the church is true and the Book of Mormon is true, but because we don't follow the "dia do Sabado" he doesn't want to be baptized... and he is obsessed with the creation for some reason. We brought a RM (returned missionary) and the Sister Leader Trainers to help us and they all ended up saying the same thing, that his heart is closed for now. So that was sad.

Then...this morning we got a phone call from Fabiana. She's been a great investigator, gone to church lots, always has lots of questions. She's probably about 45. We were preparing to baptize her this saturday and she was so excited because we told her she could be baptized in a river cause it's always been her dream. She's been searching for the true church for the past couple years and found peace in ours. The only problem is that she isn't married, but she said she would talk to her husband (their relationship is super complicated but basically she's been hiding the fact that she wants a church because he's kinda not super great) but anyways she said she would talk to him about marriage. We were fasting for her and this morning we got a phone call from her saying she doesn't want to talk to us anymore because her husband told her no. So we cried a bit today.

but

We are preparing the cutest old man for this Saturday.  He always makes us herbal tea or pao de queijo when we come over. He also used to be a spy, but can't talk about it.

I also found out that a family I taught for 3 transfers in Sao Sebastiao just got married and they are being baptized this Saturday! I am super happy for them. 

Everyone in my district has started calling me Luna because they think I look like Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter. I just think I am blonde and pale and that's it.

Pants were authorized last week in our mission by Sister Cooper. We lasted about 1 hour in them (photos attached) before returning home because it was too hot. I feel bad for the elders. It is quite quite quite hot here

Our English Class is a hit so far, and now the Bishop is bringing treats, so that is even better. 

So like usual there were ups and downs to this week. Today we went to the main part of Brasilia which was fun! My companion is super cute and I love her. Hopefully next week I will be sending photos of a baptism!

Amo voces,

Sister Cecil

-We bought pringles and tried to take a cute pic but i guess i was really hungry and bit down too hard

-pants

-Brasilia!

My Birthday

Thank You everyone for the Birthday Wishes! I honestly didn't do anything for my birthday cause no one knew about it haha, so we just worked. But my companion is so cute, she made signs for me and bought me a whole bunch of food. We were blessed for our service that day though because we really were exhausted but persevered and ended up encountering some really awesome families to teach and ended the day happy.  

That night we went to teach this older investigator couple, who are super ready to be baptized, but just need to get married. They are so sweet and we love them, and in the middle of talking I got a phone call so I stepped outside. It was an Elder wishing me Happy Birthday and when I went back in they had blown up balloons and gotten out cake for me and everything. They're the greatest!

This week I went to the doctor and then they told me I had to have a little surgery to remove a nevus off my scalp or something so on Friday we had to go to that and I couldn't leave for the rest of the week, but now everything is all good and I can work.

We have been so blessed with our apartment in this area.  It is super nice and I've seen like 0 bugs, until this week. There was a cockroach in the bathroom and I was like okay, no big deal, I'll get a Brasilian to kill it because yuck. I kid you not, we spent about 3 hours battling that thing because apparently everyone in our apartment was scared of it (Sister Jarrett was literally sitting on the countertop screaming at one point) and he kept on hiding in our clothes or our closet. Finally,  Sister Souza got done with her shower, walked into our room, shut our door, and we just heard like a bunch of smacking and then it was all good; but we ended up sleeping in the Sister Trainer's room because our room was full of bug spray (not sure why Sister Ribeiro thought that bug repellant would kill a cockroach). 

We decided to start teaching English here! We were a little nervous for our first class because we don't know what to teach and if anyone would even show up but we actually had a decent amount of people, and half were investigators so that was cool. Unfortunately, they didn't go to church lol so that was not so cool

Have a good week!

amo voces

sister cecil

One of these photos is my tan line so far...imagine in one more year how it's gonna look

The others are from today because we went to the mall and they had a giant shark there and that was cool, and then the other is because we tried on normal people clothing for the first time (for me) in 6 months and were a lil excited

Feliz Ano Novo

So this New Year Probably wasn't my favorite New Year...We tried to work on Tuesday but the Sister Training Leaders called us saying that it probably was a bad idea because everyone is super hungover or still drinking, and a lot of men were trying to kiss us so we ended up just staying inside that day haha. 

Right now there is a child at my computer reading all my emails and quizzing me on my English so that is really funny because he doesn't know any english. :)   Speaking of that, we are starting to have an English Class because so many people are interested in that, iIhope people actually will show up haha mas vamos ver. 

One thing Sister Jarrett and I (well actually just me) have decided is to be healthier this year. We went to the supermarket and bought like 15 things of greek yogurt, not really sure why because I really hated greek yogurt in the US. Now it's about all I eat in the morning so hmmm, maybe its different in Brasil? Couldn't tell ya 

Part of me is so happy to be in Taguatinga because we literally have everything here, the giant supermarket even has peanut butter. No one believes me when I say that because it's literally impossible to find in Brasil. I also found blue diamond almonds and that made me very happy. The only thing Taguating lacks is people who want to be baptized...Both of us are getting super frustrated because we work super hard.  The only numbers we lack are people who go to church and baptisms. I think this transfer is going to teach me that people have agency too and we can do everything in our power, but it's still up to them to choose. 

The Zone Conference was fun this week, It feels like so long ago haha so I cant remember a whole lot. But this week I will have 6 months! I can't believe it has gone by so fast...Everyone says that after 6 months, the time just flies - by but lets see about that...

We got pizza this week and even thought I know this is normal in Brasilia, the dessert pizza had cheese on it and I don't know why that still catches me off guard after 6 months...it was still delicious. 

one of these photos is  because i was super excited to see a montana sign

Another is the many greek yogurts we bought

I also got burned for the first time ever here because we walked so long for lunch in the sun. just on that one side lol