MONDAY - October 7, 2013

another chapter

Querido amigo, 

Its crazy to me how far we have come. How much has happened, how much my life has changed and moved...and transformed until I hardly recognize myself anymore. 

I sometimes look at the picture of the girl with the red jacket and the big blue bags going into the MTC. She was scared and unsure. And totally oblivious as to what 18 months could hold. Today, I look nothing like her. The clothes worn in that first picture are old or already thrown away, the contents in the bags of extra Floss and mountains of tampons has been replaced with tattered scriptures and colorful dresses. Her flawless pale legs are now marked and scarred and worn. 

I could sit here from now until Christmas and tell you all about what mission life brings. All about the love that begins to swell in you. All about the food, or the sisters I have been training, or the areas I have been through, or that one time....or another. 

We were in the leadership counsel meeting this past week when the question was posed; How much do you love your mission? An Elder with just under 2 years seated next to me was the first to speak. With tears in his eyes he said just one word- muito. And that is probably the only thing I could say. Muito. Because I can not say the smallest part which I feel. I can not even begin to explain how much I love Minas Gerais. How much I love love love Brasil. 

And it is the craziest, strangest dream I have ever had to be totally honest. And I would be oh-so ungrateful if I did not thank God from the bottom of my heart for the chance He took on me here in BH. For Him to have given me this small section in His vast vineyard to work for this short amount of time. Nothing has been better. 

But you know what the best part is? Sister Mad´s life did not begin in Minas, and it does not end here either. A mission was a chapter in the book. A large, very significant chapter-a turning point in the story, quite right. But it is just a chapter. This week marks the end of the page. And it is a page I will turn, a chapter full of stories and experiences, and I am ever so glad I wrote on these pages. . . But I have other pages, and other chapters to write. 

After all, it is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. It is perhaps however, the end of the beginning. 

love with all my heart, 

sister mad

p.s. I´m coming home, coming home-tell the world that I´m coming home.....

p.s.s. if you dont know that music, ask Logan. 

Pictures

MONDAY - September 30, 2013

a family from silver valley

Dear Family and Friends and those I do not yet know, 

Hi! This past week was rad. LIke bomb.com and to the moon and back. Let me start this blog post off in 2009, when Elaine was living in Belo Horizonte. (Thats her name by the way-Elaine, our elect recent convert). 

Elaine is 33, and the mother of three daughters (all being older than 8...score!) She is a beautiful black woman with very short hair and a wide smile. Elaine is married to Agnaldo. He is 41, and because of a car accident walks with a cane and has a mustache...or in otherwords, he looks a whole lot older than her. The two, as well as their daughters lived happily (not married) in Belo Horizonte. Elaine worked every day, and almost every day at almost the same hour of the day, she saw two young man in suits walking by where she worked. They were blondes, which is pretty much like saying aliens here in BH, and the more she payed attention, the more Eliane began to spot out the aliens walking around. 

It confused her, as I am sure it would confuse you-seeing young men in white shirts and ties  with backpacks strapped to their backs, walking around in the rain or in the sun in all different areas, with big smiles and dirty shoes. Infact, after a few times seeing them, Elaine swore to herself she would one day get the courage to talk to these weird beings, who seemed just too happy. 

And that is where it started. Elaine made up her mind she would talk to the young men. So she began putting herself purposefully in their way. Walking past them closely, Asking how to get to certain roads, or even standing straight in front of them with her mouth open. Nothing worked, these kids were working, and she was invisible to them. (She wasnt prepared yet). 

Fast forward to 2011, when Elaine and Agnaldo move to Ribeirão das Neves, to a small vally that had nothing in it but lost dirty roads. One day, as Elaine was walking through the village, she noticed a beautiful big church on the top of the hill. Pointing to the church, she swore for her oldest daughter that indeed, she would one day step inside that church. 

By the end of 2011, the cute little family from the valley decided they wanted to make a few changes in their lives. Elaine was going to church, but she didnt feel like it was the place the Lord wanted her to be. And so in that, Elaine began to pray to God that He would make the changes in her life so that she would be able to find the truth. She threw away the idols she had. They started reading the bible as a family. Agnaldo asked to marry her. After 20 years of living together, they finally got married.....that was 4 months ago. 

So that is right about when Elaine starts seeing the young men in suits and ties again. And she is all ``Agnaldo, it is about time I talk to these young men!`` When she and Agnaldo are in the local supermarket, buying groceries she sees the two blonde elders come in. Getting real excited, she decides to fake buying icec ream in order to get closer to the boys, and motons for Agnaldo to talk to them. 

After a few moments, Agnaldo comes back to her and tells her they are messangers fron God, and he has scheduled for the boys to come visit them the following sunday. 

The Elders dont come. Elaine is crushed. 

And then, just about 3 weeks ago, Agnaldo was in the middle of absolutley no where, I mean, for reals. No where, when the Elders spot him. They think ``hey perfect, a contact that cant fake being busy!`` and decide to contact him. The contact gets passed to us, and we mark to go by Saturday afternoon. 

We get to the home, and Elaine doesnt recognize the fact that these two girls represent the same church that the boys do. She listens carefully all the way through the lesson until we invite her to be baptized. We invite her to be baptized in just 8 days. She accepts gladly, and we mark for the family to go to church with us. Pointing to the chapel on the hill as where we would be going, she gets real excited and clarifies to us a few times if really, it was the same one she thought it was. We didnt get why she was so excited.

Getting a whole family to go to church never happens. Never, The mother is busy or a child gets sick, in other words, getting a mother and a father to buy a bus ticket and go away from the home for 3 hours on a sunday morning...it is a rarety. And a couple ready to go when you get there? Impossible. But there they were, ready to go and at the bus stop waiting for us as we arrived. 

She was quiet the whole three hours. Didnt say a word. She listened attentively, and Agnaldo flipped through the Book of Mormon. After the first two hours, we walked up to sacrament meeting, where Elaine was introduced to not just two, but six different blonde boys with white shirts and backpacks. 

Later in the day, as we went by to see how everything had gone, Elaine told us her story. Starting in 2009, and ending with ``yes, i will be baptized, and yes this is the living water I have been searching for``; 

She was baptized yesterday, and you know what is crazy? Sometimes mission work is talking to people on the road, or baptizing, or giving the lessons, or singing, or maybe, just maybe, walking through the road with a smile on your face. Because I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty that it was not me, nor sister yamaguchi, nor the elders who passed the reference that got the family ready for baptism. It was the blonde elders from 2009. The elders that didnt say one word, but just walked by happy that made Elaine so ready and so elect. Its incredible in mission work, sometimes we gather the crops, and sometimes we plant the seeds. 

 ..and this weekend we plan on Agnaldo and the three girls to be baptized. Say a prayer for them? 

love, sister mad.

MONDAY- September 23, 2013

praise to the boy

Dear Blog Readers,

 

About a year and a half ago Elder Marlin K. Jensen, then a member of the seventy came to the MTC to give a talk. It was, and is until today something I think about on a daily basis. He told us how he was being released as a member of the seventy, and after 20 plus years of being an Elder, he wanted to give some advice. To be completely honest, I dont remember all the advice he gave. I do remember that he talked about the true grit of being a missionary. That it is WORK. and it is a wonder, but it is a work first. And after a year and a half, Elder Jensen, you are quite right. But that isnt the phrase he used that I still think about every day. As Elder Jensen closed his talk, he bore a powerful testimony and ended with the sentence;

 

I have staked my life on the veracity of the first vision and invite you all to do the same.

 

I remember after the devotional we had a little talk in our district and I remember thinking and repeating that phrase over and over and over again. Our wise second couselor in our little Portuguese district made the comment that really, we being missionaries were making that same stake every single day of our missions. I didnt get it then, but I get it now.

 

Every single day, for the past almost 550 days, I have resighted the first vision. Lets do the math. I tried calculating it out this past week-just how many times I have probably said that little verse of almost scripture as Joseph began to see a pilar of light. It has been 550 days. I say the first vision on average, about 4 times a day, and bear witness of it at least 7 times. Making me having shared my testimony of that little moment around 3,800 times. And Sister Mad is just one little sister in a small town outside of a small city in Brasil. Can you imagine how many times missionaries around the world resight that story? How many testimonies are born every single day about that small moment?

 

As I tell the story of Joseph Smith in the first lesson I always try to feel the power in the story. You have no idea what I am talking about. I didnt get the power in the first vision until I was in Gutierrez and we were in a lesson in the middle of the favela and I began to resight ``I saw a pilar of light...`` We were teaching with Margareth, a recent convert, and she was sitting right across from me as I started. Her what was calm face, began to move and she began to just glow. I mean really, tears in her eyes, glowing. She knew what I was resighting was true, maybe more then even I knew it was true. In that moment, I realized I wanted a testimony like Margareth´s. So I knelt, and asked for it. You know whats crazy? Testimonies aren´t flowers you buy at home depot that are already ready for you to just stick in the dirt. They are seeds, that if tended well and nourished, blossom over time.

 

Sometimes I think about that 14 year old boy. How really, he was a farm boy. A nobody, who wanted just to follow the right church. He wanted an answer so that he could be faithful to God and feel of His Spirit. That was all. Have you ever thought about Joseph as he walked to the grove? What was on his mind? Had he eaten anything that day, or was he fasting? What was he expecting to happen as he knelt? How did he start his prayer? How did he feel as he began to see the small pilar of light grow...did he realize what he was seeing? And after God the Father and His son Jesus appeared to the young boy, what did Joseph think? While walking back to his home...what were his thoughts? How did he feel?

 

Our area is a very poor, dirty area. Lots of drunks, lots of crazy people. We happened upon a pleasant drunk this past week. He spuddered out ``oi there are girl mormons now! How do you ladies feel about Joseph Smith??`` It was a normal encounter, nothing out of the ordinary...but it blew my mind to think that a drunk man, in a little village in brasil 200 years after the life of Joseph Smith, knows his story. That really, as the old drunk giggled at us and screamed ``mormonss!!´´´He was fulfilling scripture.

 

Do you think the young boy Smith realized how that quiet moment in an unknown grove would change the world? That 200 years from that moment teenagers would leave their families for 2 years, wearing suits in the heat of the day, learning another language to spread the news that in reality, we have prophets that speak to us today.

 

I dont think he realized it. I am positive that the 14 year old boy had no idea what was happening as he walked home from that small moment. He was just a young humble boy, wanting an answer from his Father. And not long after that small moment, the crowds grew, the persecution followed and Joseph´s small moment in a grove of trees was ultimately the reason he was martyred.

 

Think about it. If the first vision is not true, then none of it is true. Take away the first vision and we have nothing. No prophets, no scriptures, no revelation from God. And so, after almost 18 months, I can finally begin to understand what Elder Marlin K. Jensen meant as he said he had staked his life on the first vision. In our day and age, the Lord does not ask us to die for His church. It is not something in the bill of being a member of the true church of God. He does however, expect us to live it. So yes, I have staked my life on the reality of that first vision that Joseph Smith had. I know, i know I know that really, it occured. And I invite you to know the same.

 

Love, Sister Mad

MONDAY- September 16, 2013

that one time we had a really bad day

Dear Blog Readers, 

Hellooooo!

Love, sister mad. 

hahahah my mother just had a heart attack. Can you believe that this week marks 2 years since sister mad decided to serve a mission? On wednesday the 18th,  we hit the big 2 year mark. I can not believe it has been 2 years. Can you? Wowzers.

Anyways, Saturday night we remembered we had to give talks the following morning...and we were all...freak out!!! And after a solid ten minutes of kicking the dirt around and ordering pizza, we decided to start writing such talks. The preperation lasted until about 1 o´clock in the morning when sister sackley hit the bed and couldnt stay up any later. So we set the alarm and woke back up again at 4:30am to finish the talks. 

Yeah. So sister mad and sister yamaguchi are like, you know, running on empty by that point and the day has yet to start. We get ready for church, go to pick up our investigators and find that the baptisms that were marked decided to just you know, go sleep somewhere else for the night instead of go to church. Yep, we went to church without anyone. win. 

We have an eternal investigator in the ward who comes all by himself to church. Yesterday he came drunk, and decided to announce in front of everyone that he wanted to sit next to the princess, and for the entire second hour he cooed at sister yamaguchi and the whole class laughed. I almost peed. 

We end church with sacrament meeting. And so we were nervous about our talks until the final hour. And then, just as I was getting ready to stand up and speak, the power went out. Have you ever heard an american screaming portugues? It sounds probably like nacho libre. 

The whole rest of the day we were running after less actives and contacts and trying to get our numbers put together for the week. After looking through the numbers and all the visits we needed to do, we called up some irmãs in the ward to go on splits with. And that is where the bad day got worse. 

So yeah, long story short sister yamaguchi needed the keys, and sister sackley had them so sister sackley makes the great mistake of trying to throw the keys at the asian and instead of throwing straight (i get my throwing skills from a duck i tell you) i threw them at the slugbug that was parked nearby. 

And thus begins the search for our house keys. The search started out with just us and the two irmãs, and ended with us, them, a kind young man, a little boy with a flashlight, an old woman and all the concerned neighbors. We were so desperate (there is no AAA or anyone to open the door, and it was sunday so we had no way of calling anyone from BH to get here) I got down on the ground and stuck my head under the old bug. Lets not talk about how many terds and suspicious lumps I picked up thinking it was the keys. After about 2 hours, a prayer and even a few attempts of picking the car up, we realized it was no use, and called it quits. 

The assistants called at that point and had the brilliant idea to ask a recent convert (...who had a...sketch life before) to try and get the door open. Jerfeson then came with a grin on his face with us to our house to try and force the door....good news, even ex-con men cant get the door open.

Long story short, we ended up sitting in the Bishop´s home until about 10 at night, when Bishop finally arrived from his meetings. He grabbed every key he had in the house and we set off again to try and open the door. I dont really know how to explain how the door opened, or how on earth Bishop had a key that fit into the lock, but honestly it was the power of the prayer of two exhausted sisters that the door finally opened. 

Around 11 at night, we stuck the sofa against the door (to keep it safe for the night), changed clothes and collapsed on the bed. Sister Yamaguchi wanted to take a shower so she hopped in as I tried to stay awake. Not a few moments later screams came from the bathroom and I go running in to see flames coming from the shower head. 

Yep. That is the day in this missionary´s life. 

A new sister asked me this past week if every single day of my mission has been hunky dorey. I thought about the conversation last night. No. In no means is it anywhere near perfect. That was the first thing I told her. She cocked her head to the side and said ``But you are always so happy!``

And I am. I am really, really, really happy. But as I have learned these past few months, happiness doesnt happen when you have a great day. Happiness happens when you have a great attitude. Sort of the come what may and love it feeling. You should have seen me laughing last night at 11:30 as I saw our shower head burning. You should have seen me laughing as I chucked dog poop out of the way looking for the keys. Or shouting my talk. 

Life is so funny. Why waste it being frustrated?

Love, sister mad

PICTURES

MONDAY- September 9, 2013

an 11 month mark

Dear Blog Readers, 

This past week we had a few miracles. Our little ward of 60 people here in Florença decided they wanted to be member missionaries. And so, with that being said, the ward was lit on fire and so were our planners. We were running all over the place, trying to get to know all the friends of all the members in the ward. It was crazy busy, crazy cold and I even fell and got all cut up (my legs are QUITE attractive after 17 months of running around in brasil). 

Anyways, yesterday we had Sacrament meeting with 176 people. Our ward frequency is normally about 60 or 70. Elder Cruz from the seventy came to visit, as well as President. It was a sight to see I tell you-more investigators in the church building then members. With that being said, some people from the stake came to help out. I ran into a few members that i just LOVE from Lagoa, got to hug a few old friends and got the fabulous news that Eunice (Kelly´s mom) finally, for the first time, went through the temple. Do you remember that story? 

As I sat on the stand on Sunday I had the realization that it won´t be for forever I get to sing hymns in Portugues. It wont be for forever I get to avoid men at all costs and greet the irmãs by kissing them on the cheek and go without shaving my legs for months and eat pão de queijo and açai daily, It isnt for forever I get to study the scriptures every morning, and go to sleep at 10:30. It isnt forever I get to wear a nametag. My emotions just kind of came over me in a big swooping wave that has yet to pass. 

This morning during personal study, I came upon my journal entry from when I hit eleven months on the mission. I think its exactly how I feel since day one here in Brasil, and I think it will be how I feel, come October. 

And then we hit that little eleven month mark with the year coming quickly, and I am left wondering how on earth I have come this far already? 

For reals it´s like I just barely left the MTC and already we have hit the top of the hill and are coming down. I can not believe it has been eleven months. What excitement, and joy and pain and learning I have had these past months. Who could have ever guessed life could be found in missionary work? 

Who would have ever known Brasil held life´s greatest treasures? It is an adventure that only God Himself could have chosen. 

And I am here, eating watermelon and bananas, and TOMATOS and all sorts of things I never thought I would eat, and speaking a language I have never dreamed to speak, living in a ghetto apartment, walking through the favela at night. 

And I am totally helplessly in love with my life. And I am okay with that. 

I am okay with not knowing what is ahead, not being sure of what life will bring. Because as I have learned these past eleven months, walking God´s path is always a blessing and will always lead to where I need to go. 

I can not say the smallest part which I feel. 

love, sister mad. 

Pictures!

zone conference 

our awesome ward

the local police...

oh and dont worry about it, sister yamaguchi e sister sackley are being EATEN ALIVE BY MOSQUITOS HERE.

yep. if you didnt know yet, sister sackley as of a year ago is really scared of dogs. 

also caic inviting random people on the road to go to church

also our cute little town

bugs!

sister yamaguchi has turned into sister anderson and sister sackley!!!

the legend of elder costa-a photo that is worth 3000 words. 

i dont remember what they are called in english...toucons?-but i LOVE these birds, they are EVERYWHERE here in ribeirão and we love it. 

that one day it rained

and i fell