Thanksgiving dinner-ish sort of meal; An answer to prayer for Rose; Igor taught *us* the lesson

Hello everyone!!  :)  First of all, THANK YOU to everyone for the birthday messages!!!  It was a pleasant surprise to log on to my email today and find it FULL of Happy Birthdays from all of you.  :)  It means a lot to know that there are people thinking about me and sending their support and love.  I'm super excited for my birthday - it definitely will be different than usual, but good.  We've actually been planning a branch activity for that day, so it will for sure be busy, getting everything organized and put together, and hopefully still squeezing in a little time for a piece of cake.  ;)  Our plan is to have a Karaoke Night, which should be LOTS of fun, especially since the other sisters have told me that the branch here is really enthusiastic about activities and always has a pretty good turnout.

It's been a gooood crazy busy awesome week.  Sister Bullen and I somehow managed to pull off an almost Thanksgiving dinner-ish sort of meal, with a real live apple pie with vanilla ice cream, mashed potatoes, and gravy.  :)  The most important parts, right?  But it ended up being a lot of fun, and we were both really excited to be able to at least SORT of celebrate Thanksgiving.  Our Brasilian companions weren't quite as enthusiastic as we were, but they humored us and went along with it... and of course we went around the table and each one of us said what we were grateful for.  It was fun to be able to bring a little bit of our American culture here to Brasil.  

The next day, Friday, was the 9 month mark of Sister Gomes, so we threw ANOTHER party to celebrate.  Cake, cachorro quente, balloons and the other crazy sister missionary traditions to celebrate the half-way point!   So yeah, it's been a week fuuuullll of things to celebrate.  :)  Don't worry though, we've been working hard too!  We've had some amazing lessons this week, taught some great people, and it's been awesome.  Remember last week I told you about Rose and her two daughters?  We've visited them a few more times this week (it's hard to go very often since it's sooo far away - bummer :P), and had an AMAZING lesson on Saturday.  We stopped by to see how things were going, if they'd prayed about our message, read the Book of Mormon, etc.  Eduarda had some more questions about how she would get an answer to her prayers, so we shared a message about the Holy Ghost - it's purpose, how it works, and how we can recognize it.  During the lesson, Rose shared a story with us that had happened earlier that week.  Her other daughter, Heloise, got reeeally sick all of a sudden and they took her to the hospital to do some tests and figure out what was happening.  Rose said that she was verrry very worried while waiting for the results to come back, when she suddenly remembered us and the things we'd taught her.  She said that she prayed there in the hospital, asking that if our message really was true, Heloise would be fine.  She told us that she immediately felt a calm assurance that everything was going to be fine, that there would be nothing wrong with her daughter and that she didn't need to worry.  Sure enough, the tests came back and everything was normal.  She told us that she knew this was an answer to her prayers, and that she knows that our message is true.  It was SO soo so amazing to hear her share that...the Spirit was definitely present, and Sister Marques and I were both filled with this amazing happiness and excitement for her - and gratitude for that answer to her prayers.  :)

We've also been teaching a young man named Igor.  He is 16 years old, and heard about the Church through his cousin, who is serving a mission now.  He has been coming to church for the past 3 weeks or so, and really enjoying it.  The problem is that he lives in a little city outside of Ibiporã, so it's REALLY hard to find time to teach him.  We FINALLY were able to take a bus out to where he lives on Sunday after church to visit him.  He is the MOST amazing investigator I've ever had.  I've never seen anything like it....We started to teach the Plan of Salvation, right?  Sister Marques - "So, Igor, where do you think we came from before this life?"  Igor - "Well, we were spirits, and we lived with God, and He created this plan for us .... " etc.  And he basically taught the lesson to US.  It was incredible...afterwards I asked him how he knew so much without ever having been taught by the missionaries, and he told us that he's been studying the scriptures on his own, and has almost finished reading the entire Book of Mormon.  His mother-in-law was there during the lesson, and when she asked a question about the Holy Ghost, how to receive an answer about the Church, HE opened up to Moroni 10, taught the scripture to her, and bore his testimony.  Seriously, blew my mind.  He is so prepared to receive the gospel, it's crazy.   The only thing that's keeping him from being baptized a few problems that he needs help to resolve...it's SUPER complicated, but I'm praying that Sister Marques and I will know what to do to be able to help him be baptized.  

Okay, super long email today.  :)  Probably should run and write President Tavares before my hour's up...  Hope you all are doing well!  CONGRATULATIONS to Kyle on the Eagle!  And to Megan for her fancy hoop skirt!  ;)  I love you all so much, and pray for you every day.  I'm sooo glad the house situation got resolved - an answer to prayers!

Well, thanks for everything again!  

Love, 

Sister Gee

New area, Ibiporã! Really great family - Rose and twin daughters;

Hello from my NEW AREA, Ibiporã!!!  :)  Like I mentioned last week, it's a little city about 20 minutes away from Londrina.  It's definitely different than Maringá, but this last week has been really good and I'm definitely enjoying being here.  Sacrament Meeting yesterday was the biggest difference - we have about 50 people who are active members here.  It was not exactly the kind of congregation that I'm used to, but the members here are very friendly and supportive of the missionary work, excited to help us however they can.  The branch president is AMAZING, and really such an inspiring person.  Last night we spent the evening with him and his family, and it was sooo cool to hear him talk about his experiences and testimony.  He was called as branch president after just ONE year as a member, and even though he felt completely overwhelmed and didn't know much about how to lead a branch, he trusted enough in the Lord to accept the calling.  He's seriously been an example of faith already, and I'm excited to be able to work with him this transfer.  Also, good news for me - they don't have a pianist in the branch, so I get the opportunity to play the piano in Sacrament Meeting now!!!  That was exciting.  :)  I wanted to play SO bad EVERY week in Maringá, but never had the chance...so yeah, I'm happy.  :)

My companion, Sister Marques, is GREAT!  She is from São Paulo, 26 years old, beautiful, loving, and, after 9:30 pm, CRAZY.  :)  She likes to laugh and joke and be goofy (once we finish daily planning, of course ;), and it has been so much fun this last week.  She also really wants to learn English, so we've been teaching each other - She teaches me something in Portuguese and I teach her in English.  :)  We also have another companionship of sisters here in Ibiporã - Sister Gomes (Brasileira) and Sister Bullen (Americana).  If that name sounds familiar, it's because Sister Bullen was my roommate in the CTM for 3 weeks!  I was SO excited when I found out that she was going to be in the same area as me.  It's always nice to have someone you already know close by.  :)  She already knows Sister Marques too, so everyone gets along really well, and we have a lot of fun. 

The work here has been a little bit slow this week.  I think we've been facing the effects of some things that happened here in the past - we've met a lot of people who have heard rumors about the Church and don't want anything to do with us.  It's frustrating that so many people here have become so closed up to the gospel, but despite the opposition, we've found a few people who have invited us in and listened to our message.  We met one really great family that I'm excited about - the mom, Rose, and her two 11 year old daughters (twins!).  We taught them the Restauration last week, and it was a really great lesson, I think one of the most spiritual lessons that I've had so far.  It actually went over the 45 min. time limit that we have because they had so many questions about the Church!  Rose told us after the lesson that she already believed our message was true.  It was so exciting to see her accept so willingly.  I'm excited to go back to visit this week and teach them more about the gospel.  

Well, that's about it for the week.  It's been really good to be here so far.  I love you all and hope you have a great Thanksgiving this week!  Seriously, enjoy it for me ... I don't think anyone here has even HEARD of Thanksgiving, let alone pumpkin pie ... so it's up to me and Sister Bullen to plan some kind of little celebration ...  haha, wish us luck.  :)  Hope everything's going well back home, love and miss you all, and look forward to your letters... (*hint*hint*)  :)

Love,

Sister Gee

Relaxing P-Day in Maringá; Stomach flu; Comfortable speaking Portuguese

Hey everyone!  I'm writing a little bit later today because the four of us sisters spent the afternoon in the city - looking at shops, visiting the cathedral, taking pictures...awesome, and so good to finally have a semi-relaxing P-Day, especially since next week is transfers and I might not get another chance to enjoy Maringá!

So.  This week has been....interesting.... haha.  I don't know what happened exactly, but it seems like almost everything has been going wrong, and we've been struggling to work through it all.  Sister Lopez said that our numbers this week were the worst of her mission so far.  :P  I think we're both a little bit tired...ready for a change.  It's a good thing that transfers are coming up, I think we need it.  But we talked a lot about the difficulties we've been having, and made some decisions to help us do better.  

It all started at lunch last P-Day.  A lady in our ward had called to invite us to eat at her house - for some reason she had a ton of food and wanted to share it with us.  We were pretty excited - free food, right? - and agreed to go there for lunch.

Cut to later that day, appr. 12 am. .... four sister missionaries all racing for the bathroom.  Haha, yep, SOMEthing we ate did not react well with our stomachs, and every one of us was SICK as a dog the next day.  We missed District Meeting on Tuesday and spent most of the day at home, miserable.  Not fun.

The next day it RAINED like crazy.  Rained and rained and rained, and we arrived at our lunch appointment COMPLETELY soaked.  I didn't mind too much, because it had been SO hot that the cool rain was a blessing.  :)  

Sister Lopez and I tried our best to celebrate Halloween, but it didn't end up being too great... haha.  We had plans to have a real party - "costumes" (aka those mustaches you sent me), candy, apple cider....the whole shebang.  The day turned out to be super busy, running around trying to visit all of our investigators ... and we didn't get home until it was too late to do much.  We each bought a sucker to eat on our way home and tried to remember the little we knew of the Thriller dance, and THAT was pretty much the extent of the festivities.  :)  Sister Lopez is determined to do better for Thanksgiving, but we'll see what happens.... How was Halloween for you guys?  Got pictures?  

The good news is that I'm definitely getting used to speaking Portuguese - there were a few times this week where people asked me to speak for them in English, and it was HARD!  It felt really, really weird to be speaking in English again, and took me a few seconds to flip the English switch in my brain.  :)  That's a good sign, right?  I'm learning this language!!!  Woohoo!  :)

Well, that's about it for this week.  I hope everything's going well there.  I love you all sooooo much, and it's always so good to hear about what you all are up to.  :)  

Love,

Sister Melissa Gee