March 31, 2009

Hi family and friends!
So, when I sit down to write it is hard to think of what I should include to update you on the week. I am so happy to be here and I´m so grateful to be in Brasil among such humble and open people! I love the spirit and blessings I have experienced here in the CMT! I just hit my month mark today...in a sense it has flown by and on the other hand it seems like I´ve been here forever. Time honestly moves differently in the MTC I think. As I said in the last letter we had an opportunity to go proselyting on Friday. It was AWESOME! It was so great to be out of the MTC walking around Brasil and speaking Portuguese with Brasilians, teaching them about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. It was invigorating! We get to go twice more before we leave the MTC and then pretty sure it´s like an everyday thing ;). I´m excited!! It was also a very humbling experience because as you can imagine I speak limited Portuguese and I understand limited Portuguese as well. But my teacher made a comment that hit me...he said "you are exactly where the Lord wants you to be...if he wanted you to be better you´d be better...if he wanted you to be better you´d be better" seems so simple but it hit me as very wise! I am doing the Lord´s work, I am a tool in His hands and if He wanted me to speak more or less...it would be. But I know I have been so blessed by the gifts of the spirit because I have learned so much in such a short time I know I could never do it on my own. I am so grateful for the help. I feel encouraged and positive and I know that the Lord is in control. Today I read 1 Nephi 3 in Portuguese and I understood what it was saying. Between being familiar with the story and knowing many of the words I was able to piece together the words and phrases I didn´t understand yet. It was a great feeling! Oh, back to proselyting...it rocked! My companions and I made a great team I think! I had no problem approaching people and opening up the conversation about the gospel and one of my companions is very good at pronunciation so when I struggled she would correct and my other companion is really good at understanding what they said back so she would translate when we didn´t catch everything. It worked out well. We had nine Books of Mormon and planned to give them all away. It came time to meet back up with our district and we still had one left. I told my teacher that we had to give the last one away before we left so he said ok go talk to that lady...I walked up to her and began explaining who we were and what we were doing etc etc and she was apparently not too interested because she dodged around another guy and walked away...ha. I was determined but my teacher wanted to take us to look inside this huge old theatre in that we were walking past and said not to talk to anyone on the stairs. I still had hope though that we would be able to give it to someone. We were the only ones in the theater at first but a couple walked in. I said hi how are you? Not thinking anything because our teacher had said not to talk to the people on the stairs. But he began talking to me about where I was from and what we are doing...and of course it was the perfect set up. My teacher smiled and nodded and I proceded to tell him about the church and the Book of Mormon and asked him if he would like the copy that I was holding. He said of course and I asked if he would read it and they both said they would. It was awesome and it was a blessing! We had a lot of other neat experiences as well! We talked with a lot of people that had some familiarity with the church and most people were so nice to us!! I had the opportunity to meet my mission President and his wife this week. It was great! There were about 7 Brasilian missionaries in the MTC who are going to the same mission as me (they left today) so our President came to do interviews and things with them. They came in the lunch room to tell me he was at the MTC and so my companions and I went and hunted them down. They were great! We only had a minute to talk to them but it was fun to beable to meet them before I get out there. Sister Cooley seemed great! I was very impressed with her! I am excited to get to know them both better!My time is up...but I will end assuring you all that life here is great! I am so happy and grateful to be serving a mission! This gospel is incredible and it is true and I am so happy to be sharing the message!Thank you all for your support! Hope to hear from you all soon :).
Much love!
Sister Chelsea Dawn