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| It is so magical here in the Fall!! |
This week has been amazing. O Espirito Santo (The Holy Ghost) has been so strong, Sis. Johnson and I have been working so hard with this language. We have had some amazing speakers this week. Sister Linda S. Reeves from the Relief Society General Pres. came and spoke at Relief Society. She said that she didn't even use any of her planned lesson, and went totally by the Spirit. That is what we need to do as missionaries. Chad Lewis also came on Sunday for Devotional. He talked about letting our light shine always. Our light should be the Savior, Jesus Christ. Others should be able to see Him and feel His love through me at all times, even here in the MTC. During choir practice this week our conductor said that we are going to need a lot more people, to be the best we can be, because we have amazing speakers coming in the next week. He made it very clear that we are going to have some amazing experiences. I am so excited to see who will be coming to speak to us missionaries. Tonight the member of the Seventy that spoke in Conference from Sao Paulo is coming to speak to us! We are friends with his son, I am so excited to hopefully meet him tonight.
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| Our District saying good-bye to Elder Burt |
Well, Elder Burt from our Little District 7D recieved his VISA yesterday, and left this morning! Crazy! He is from Oregon, so he had a different Brazilian Consulate than all of us, and recieved his faster. But... Pres. Jackson (our branch pres.) told us to orar (pray) for the Sao Paulo MTC this week. Supposedly they are in a bad drought, and in eight days will run out of water for the MTC. All of the missionaries down there might have to come up here? Rumor? I don't know, but sounds serious to me if he is telling us to pray. We have new Zone Leaders because the old ones left this morning to West Virginia, and Indiana. They are visa waiters as well. As a district we've talked about how it would actually be so fun to open new mission calls together if circumstances allow. Elder Harden, and Elder Katoa are the new Zone Leaders. Elder Harden and I sang in Sacrament meeting last Sunday. We both love to sing in our 'Opera' voices haha, so it sounds really good. We also tried out for Devotional, singing 'Come Thou Fount'. I am so grateful for the ability to share my talent with others. Elder Katoa is Tongan and is going to play football for Utah. He is huge and let's just say that the Elders won't have trouble getting to bed on time anymore. I almost forgot to tell you that Brother Adolphsen and his wife are in our branch presidency and they are from Alpine! Best place on earth.
Sis. Johnson and I have been memorizing like crazy! We have memorized our purpose, the baptismal invitation and now working on the first vision all in Portuguese. It's great.
This week our District took the "TOWER CHALLENGE". Oh man, it was bad. We had to eat a whole tower of cereal in one sitting. Don't ask me why we picked the most dense cereal: LIFE. Amazingly, we finished the entire thing in thirty minutes. All together we ate 73.2 bowls of cereal. What? Me and Sis. Johnson both ate five and we were dying. Pretty much the grossest thing I've ever done. But we were cracking up the entire time. Great district bonding. Elder Sukhee ate nine and a half bowls. I don't know how he did it. We were all so sick for the rest of the night.
We started TRC's this week. This is when volunteers come from outside the MTC and let us missionaries teach them a little lesson. They can be members, investigators, or less-active. We taught two sisters going to BYU. Both of them served in Brazil, one in Sao Paulo East! It was a great experience, and a fun way to try out our new language skills.
We have a new 'pesquisador' (investigator) in addition to Talone. His name is Ricardo, He is a fifty year old man that lives with another fifty year old man. He is such a sweet man, e Ele ama ler O Livro de Mormon. (He loves to read the Book of Mormon.) He has accepted everything so far, and accepted to come to church with us this Sunday. Sister Johnson and I love to teach so much. We try to sing a hino (hymn) every time we teach. Not only does it calm us down, but it invites the Spirit perfectly. This week teaching clicked for me. We were practicing teaching with the elders in our district, and Sis. Johnson and I were being taught by a companionship that has struggled with the language immensely. They haven't been getting along either. They were awkward, struggled with the language and not in sync. The Spirit was not there. There are cameras in the practice rooms and our teacher, Irmao Read, watches us sometimes on his computer. After the lesson was finished, he had them come and talk to him. Irmao Read asked if they could teach just me once more. They needed to have their focus just on one person I guess. First, they had me pray. I tried my best in Portuguese to express my feelings a Pai Celestial (to Heavenly Father) and poured out my soul to Him. They taught a wonderful lesson that was much more put together than the one before. They testified, they asked deep questions and they taught important doctrine. The Spirit was so strong as I tried my best to answer the questions they asked me. We ended with another beautiful prayer and went back in class. Without us knowing, our whole class was watching us the entire time. It was an amazing experience. While being the pesquisador (investigator) I learned so much. The importance of having the Spirit, meaningful comments, and testifying filled my soul and everything just clicked for me. I will never teach a lesson again that is so distant from my deep feelings for o Evangelho de Jesus Cristo (for the gospel of Jesus Christ).
I love you all so much, and I just teared up looking at all of the family pictures. You all are amazing examples to me, I love you!
Love you with all of my heart,
Sister Cordner
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