Today is my LAST P-Day here at the CTM!!! It's kind of sad
because we have NO time to do aaaanything today...I'll probably finish
emailing here and then my P-Day will be over. We got back really late
from the temple today because the São Paulo temple
is closed for cleaning this week, so we went all the way to the
Campinas temple instead (which was fine with me - the Campinas temple is
GORGEOUS, and it was so refreshing to get away from the smoggy city for
a while), and then the devotional today was moved
to 4:00 since the speaker can't come later...so we have to be done with
all of our P-Day activities in about a half hour. :P Lame, and sad,
but I think it'll be okay. I'll have more time for P-Day stuff in the
field, right? :)
I can't believe how quickly those 9 weeks flew by...and looking
back on everything I've learned and experienced, and all the people I've
gotten to know and work with here, I'm amazed by how perfectly
everything has ended up. It's been such a good experience,
every part of it. It's amazing how the Lord guides you through
experiences and even if you can't see how things are going to work out
at the time, they always do somehow. :)
On Sunday I was back in Branch 7 with my original district, and
since I had been gone for so long...yep, I got to speak in sacrament
meeting again. :) I was kind of anticipating that, so I prepared
really thoroughly, and I feel really good about the
talk I gave. THIS time was a little different than the last time I
spoke because last Sunday the CTM put a new rule in place regarding
sacrament meeting talks: every district past Week 5 has to speak in
Portuguese! I actually think I liked speaking in Portuguese
better than in English, because I really couldn't analyze and stress
about how to word things perfectly - I just said what I could in the
simple language that I know, and let it be. I spoke on faith, and how
we can increase our own faith as well as the faith
of our investigators.
So yesterday I got to go proselyting again, only this time with a
different district and a different companion! I didn't think I would be
as nervous as the first time since I'd already been through
the experience and sort of knew what I was doing, but
I got out on the streets and was surprised by how hard it still is! We
finally got over the nervousness and started talking to people, and it
turned out to be an AWESOME experience. I definitely feel a lot better
about it than last week, and I had SO much
fun. Sister Young and I gave out 5 Book of Mormons, and met some
really amazing people. Again, everyone was REALLY friendly and REALLY
nice to us - even the people that weren't interested in what we had to
say. It was soooo good...we came back to the CTM
and I couldn't stop smiling for the next couple hours. :)We started
out kind of rough, like I said, and after a while I decided that I
needed to stop and say a quick prayer for help and for the
Spirit to guide us as we spoke to people. Sister Young agreed and so we
sat down on a bench and prayed together. Immediately after we stood up
again, a man came over to us, calling for our
attention. I was really excited and hoped that this was a man that
needed to hear our message....but pretty soon we could tell that he
wasn't interested at all. He was talking about the most bizarre
things...quizzing us on random Bible stories and talking
about demons or something? I didn't understand a lot of what he said,
but it was weird. We were stuck there for what felt like a looong time,
listening to this random man ... I was kind of discouraged, wondering
how
this is what came from our prayer, but after a while, another
man came past in a wheelchair, stopped and interrupted our bizarre
converstion for a moment to tell us what a wonderful work we were doing,
and then continued through the park. After we
finished talking to the other man, we found him in the park. He told
us his name was Adrian, and we talked to him about the Church and the
Book of Mormon - apparently he had already met some missionaries and had
a copy of the Book of Mormon, but he was interested
in learning more. We gave him the telephone number of the missionaries
here in São Paulo and he seemed really excited about meeting with
them. I was thinking about it later, and I realized that if we hadn't
been stuck there talking to the first guy, we might
never have met Adrian. It was a testimony to me that God answers
prayers, even if those answers aren't immediately apparent to you. :)
Anyways, I'm out of time again. Thanks for all the love and the
emails and the letters....they're amazing. :) Next week, I'll be
writing to you frooommmm LONDRINA!!!!! :D
Love love love,
Sister Melissa Gee
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