April 7, 2009

Dear Family and friends,
Hello so I have such limited time on the computors and I have so much I want to write! I will try to hurry... This week was great! General Conference being the highlight! It was so powerful to watch it here with a bunch of missionaries it was so powerful and I learned a lot! I felt a big focus on being of good cheer! What a blessing to be a part of the church of Jesus Christ, knowing the fullness of His gospel and perfect plan in these hard times! I am so grateful and feel at peace! Protection through the temple was another theme that stood out to me! Another blessing in which brings much peace to me life. And I loved Elder Jefferey R. Holland´s talk about the atonement...he is powerful! His talk shed new light on the atonement for me and helped me understand why our Savior had to suffer completely alone. He being a perfect man never experienced aloneness...he was always worthy or the Spirit and had the Father so close...but in order to understand how we feel when we are far from perfect and feel completely alone the Father had to take His spirit away and our Savior suffered for us completely and alone! WOW! I also loved Elder Hales talk about provident living...so important and very needed in this day! What were your thoughts? I would love to hear what you all got from it!We went to the São Paulo temple today for the first time. It is the temple in my mission and it is BEAUTIFUL I would venture to say the prettiest temple I have ever been in!! We also went to a BBQ place with our teacher. It´s like Rodisio grill...or however you spell that. It was really good! I´m not a huge meat eater but it was fun to try and experience...and it did taste really good. I ate chicken heart...um...tasted fine but the texture was sick. I hope I wont have to eat much more of it. The language is coming along! This week our teacher told my companions and I that we don´t need to speak English anymore. He said that we can say everything we NEED to say and even though we can´t say everything we WANT to say...that according to his definition we are fluent...ha. My problem is what I want and need to say is all relative...he may think I can say everything I need to but I disagree. Forcing ourselves to speak Portuguese is great though. This week we are doing 3 no English days...wow...it is hard for me! I like to talk and express and relate to people and I can´t do that very well in Portuguese...it will come!I love you all! I want to write more but I have no time! Thank you for your emails and letters...it is so fun to hear from home!! Keep me posted!
Much love!
Sister Richins