I'm in Maraponga!

Hey Family :)

So I'm in Maraponga, Fortaleza :) With an amazing trainer Sister Camacho who´s American with Mexican and Brazilian parents. Im her 6th daughter and this is her last area. So she works really hard to make sure she goes out with a punch which is great because I'm learning a lot. We´re opening maraponga to sisters for the first time in 9 years, and the members are really excited to receive us which is great because they're going to work on giving us references of friends to teach. Its a ward of about 400 with 115 active, so there´s a lot of work to do :) 

We´re moving to another apartment this week because the current house was left in really bad condition and honestly we don´t like the part of town its in, but during the day if you walk where there´s a lot of people its a safe city and people are friendly. 

It is REALLY Catholic here, which is great that people believe in God and Christ already, so we work on teaching about the Book of Mormon and the restoration of Christ´s Church through the prophet Joseph Smith and how we have living prophets today too. The bishop is working on rescue efforts to bring back the inactive members, and at leadership counsel after church we talked about ideas and the families are going to hold family home evening with non member friends and invite missionaries, things like that so that people get fellowship-ed. 

Our mission president and wife are wonderful, the mission has high goals and we work hard to achieve them, good news :) people can understand my Portuguese! although I have an accent that will hopefully kick the bucket in the next 16 months. 

I realized now that I'm in the field how important it is to have a relationship with my Heavenly Father, and rely on Jesus Christ´s atonement, and have love for people. Because its like getting dropped in a foreign country and living with just a companion, I´m so grateful for Sis Camacho because we´re each others family pretty much while we´re here, and the rest of the strength comes from knowing that I´m truly Heavenly Father´s child, and that he loves me and is watching out for me. Sis Camacho and I have seen his help so many times throughout the day. Like our first day in the area on the bus a member invited us to his family home evening with other youth, and when we didn't know where to buy our jug of water for the house a member was passing by the front of our house and pointed out where you go to buy water, and we have members that have been there when we needed them all the time! Bia is 16 and our first day she walked with us for 40 min to the metro so we could go to district meeting, and Adrianna went with us all day finding inactive members last Thursday, and its just so clear that God is helping us through the service of other people. Because of that, we've been able to start this week off really well getting to know and teach people in the area. 

Thinking about Christ´s atoning sacrifice helps too, because understanding that Jesus Christ suffered everything I feel makes walking in the sun and getting rejected more understandable. We watched a video by Bednar and Holland called the atonement and the mission or something like that. The thesis was the atonement wasn't easy, why would the mission be? And its true, but with the atonement, everyone was blessed, so that's the goal with the mission, how many people can I serve today? Starting with my companion, and then everyone I meet on the street. 

This mission is so good for me, thanks so much for supporting me being here :) I´m learning a lot and meeting so many people and experiencing things I would never see or feel or do before. Starting the day with prayer, scripture, and exercise is really good too, its like emotional, spiritual and physical preparation for the day :) 

I love you all, Have a fantastic week and read the Book of Mormon and pray :)