I'll try to get back to everyone who wrote me individually, but if I run out of time (which I will) know that I love you all and wish I could have more time to talk to you. But this week, I really don~t have that many exciting stories to share. Once I get into the field, every week will be different and I~ll be working with people instead of packing my brain full of words and techniques and whatever other conhecimento they want me to have before the set me loose on the world. So bear with me because I~ll have more to say soon, I promise.
(Also forgive any wacky punctuation; I set this keyboard on the Brazilian settings and I~m too lazy to set it back slash find the appropriate key for the English equivalent)
I~ll be getting my reassignment this Friday, most likely, so while I don~t know where I~ll be going, I do know that this is my last week here at the MTC, no matter what. Since I have no clue where I'll end up, it doesn't quite seem real to me yet. I~m certainly nowhere near ready, but I bet most missionaries feel that way upon preparing to leave.
We had colds sweeping around for the last few weeks and I got it really bad a few days ago, but I've totally recovered now. I passed it on to Sister Russell though and she~d been laid up far worse than I was, so I feel kinda bad about that.
Last week, the district that left passed a sister on to us who was put into a tripanionship with Sister Jackson and Sister Russell. Poor Sister Gold had broken a bone in her foot (she has no idea how, too) and had to stay for almost eight weeks already, so she has twice the language experience we do so far. She had to watch her first district leave and then her second district too, which much have been hard, but the most aggravating part was that she already had her Visa and could go to Santa Maria at any time, if she could get the walking boot off. So we had a bit of a miracle this Friday when she was finally cleared for service, because whichever bone this is (one of the slowest-healing int the body, too) was progressing a lot faster than anticipated. So we~re really happy, though sad to see her leave.
Today, we begin a final week of constant Falar Sua Língua from 6Ç30 in the morning to 9:30 at night. I can't wait to see how far we'll come in a week, though at the moment, communicating about non-gospel topics is stilted at best.
Right now, the biggest thing that I'm worried about is being able to teach to the investigator's needs and help them to feel the Spirit. At this point, I can pretty much forget that I~m speaking Portuguese when I teach (though when we try to FSL regularly, I crash and burn). I felt like a lot of the time, I was just teaching the lesson given in Pregar Meu Evangelho (with is fantastic, though) but not relating it to the person I was teaching enough. I hated feeling like this in my lessons and I was trying all sorts of things but I wasn't sure what to do, so I brought it up with my teacher, Irmão Nothum. He listened quite attentively and them gave me some advice that I thought was rather odd: he told me to work on developing charity. He read me the first few verses of 1 Corinthians 13, where Paul talks about the virtue of charity. I'd invite everyone to read it, but basically he says that we can have all faith and all power and all skill with words but if we have not charity, we are nothing. Moroni talks in Ether 12 about charity as well; about how this is a gift from God and that we need to pray earnestly to receive this Christlike attribute in our lives. Irmão Nothum promised me that if I could learn to have this pure love for everyone, regardless of who they are, the Spirit would help me to understand those who I teach and to help them as best as I could. So I've been trying this week to develop this attribute and at times, it has sort of worked and at other times, it very much hasn~t worked. I realize this is probably something I'll be working on my whole life, but I know that in the strength of the Lord, I'll be able to do the impossible and that even I, as imperfect and unworthy as I am, might be able to love and help someone else. Good luck everyone, and I hope that next week I'll have a little more news for all of you!
All the best,
Sister Nielsen
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