Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Companion still lost in Provo; Teaching a real investigator... in PORTUGUESE!!??!

Dear Family,
Hello again from your favorite sister missionary at the CTM!!  :)  It's been another busy week... a lot of awesome things have happened and we've been learning like crazy.  We added a new elder to our district this week!  He was at the Provo MTC for the first week waiting for his visa, but it came and now he's here with us!  His name is Elder Andreas-Miller and most of our elders call him "Elder Hyphen" for short.  :)  He told us that there is one more missionary in Provo who's still waiting on a visa....yep, a sister and my long-lost companheira!  So yes, she does exist!  :)  Now we just have to hope that her visa comes before too long.  In the meantime I'll be here doing the solo-sister thing...it's hard sometimes, but it's okay.  God knows me and He knows why I'm here, and I'm sure He knows why I get to be a solo sister too.  Now I just have to figure it out! :)
Well, everything is going well here.  I'm seriously loving being in Brazil.  The food is sooo good and the weather is perfect.  I've had a couple more opportunities to play piano and sing with different choirs, which has been amazing.  We have THE best teachers and even though the classes are long, we have a ton of fun.  :)  This last Saturday our district had our very first TRC... Everyone in the older districts has been telling us how awful they are ever since we got here, so we definitely weren't super excited for it.  :P  Giving an entirely Portuguese lesson WHILE being filmed and observed by anyone in the MTC who feels like watching...pretty intimidating.  But we had a lesson planned and were feeling pretty confident about it - until we showed up and they told us to forget everything we had planned because we were going to be teaching a REAL investigator, not just another missionary or a member acting as an investigator.  That had us totally panicking.  I don't SPEAK Portuguese, I don't UNDERSTAND Portuguese, and this guy was possibly going to be basing his opinion of the Church off of what we taught in that 20 minutes.  We went in there and did our best to give a good, spiritual lesson.  It went well, even though I don't think I understood a word the investigator said to us, and we survived it.  The three of us in our companionship each had the opportunity to bear our testimonies to him, and even though we spoke very slowly and used very, very basic phrases and vocabulary, I hope that he felt the Spirit.  It was definitely a cool experience, and made me even more excited to learn this language and how to teach people about the gospel.  One of our teachers watched the recording with us later that day and translated so we could actually understand what he had been saying to us during the lesson.  It was so cool to hear him talk about God and life and his family and the gospel...he seemed like an amazing man, so ready to receive the gospel.  I can't wait until I can find people like him in Londrina, when I've learned Portuguese and can actually help to teach them!  :)
Thanks so much for all your emails, love and support.  It means so much to me!  It sounds like things are going great for everyone back at home.  I hope you're all enjoying your summer vacation for me.  :D  Please please write letters!  I would love to hear more from y'all.  I love you so much and am always praying for you.  :)
Love,
Sister Gee

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