This week has been pretty long and crazy, but the upside of that is that I feel I've been here for months, rather than just two weeks. I feel like I can barely remember a time before I arrived here; I've learned so much since then. Probably two weeks from now, I will look back on this letter and laugh at my ignorance.
We've been able to do some teaching this week, despite having appointments fall through, which is fantastic because I need all the practice teaching in English I can get. Just last night we met a really awesome family who were simply full of questions about our church and I was able to teach the whole first lesson for the first time not in Portuguese, which was an adventure. But I think it went fairly well. We visited a recent convert, Kevin, and gave him a lesson in sign which I was sort of able to follow. He can speak fairly well and I could handle extremely basic conversation in ASL, so it was all right, though there were a few times where I had to nudge Sister Shumway and ask her to translate something Kevin had said for me. I'm still really rough on gospel vocab, but I was able to talk to him about his dogs and the triathlon he's training for at the moment. We were also able to meet with one of our current investigators, Amanda, and give her the third lesson while her son Mikey chewed on my nametag. It's the strangest thing: small children and animals are attracted to me like never before. Anyway, Amanda was entirely out of food and called us in desperation with the last few minutes on her phone. Luckily, there had been a zone meeting that morning and some elders dropped off cans and boxes of pasta they didn't want, so we just went to the church and grabbed some boxes of food for her. There's a great disparity between rich and poor here in Jacksonville: lots of gated communities and beachy resorts interspersed with really humble homes and some people in positions so dire it would make you cry. It makes you stop and think about what you have or want to have and if it really matters.
We stopped by one of our recent converts, Derek, last Monday to see how he was doing. He's 9 and is this adorable little redhead who loves to run around and experiment with things to see if they work. He lives with his dad, Stephen, and a less active member who is their landlord, which is how the missionaries found Derek. Stephen didn't mind his son getting baptized, but at first when the missionaries began teaching, he wouldn't even talk to them. This time he stayed for the lesson and the prayer and then thanked me and and Sister Shumway in a really heartfelt way for the blessing we've been in his life and in the life of his son. First, it's astonishing when anyone considers your presence a blessing and second, it's amazing to see so much of a change in someone's heart. It's a real miracle.
We wanted to get more clothes last P-day so we (the four sisters) went thrift shopping at the local Goodwill and had a blast. I got a few more skirts that are really long (but not quite maxi; you can see my ankles so they're allowed!) I'm not used to really long skirts so I kind of feel like a nun but I really like them. (Actually, my companion keeps calling me a Jedi because I like to wrap myself up in a really long blanket and trail it around the house during studies and apparently I look like Darth Sidious?) Sister Cline and Sister Wallentine bought some really ridiculous suspenders for Elder Coleman and Elder Jenkins (our zone leaders who are also in our district) and forced them to wear them. We might go again today to search out more goofiness and get Sister Shumway some more clothes.
Little-known fact: the Florida Jacksonville mission is one of the few missions that is an authorized Facebook mission! Right now, we're testing the pilot program before it gets sent out to all the missions and Sister Shumway just got called as a Facebook missionary! So she gets to spend an hour a day on the internet chatting with investigators and converts. Before you ask, odds are extremely slim that I will ever be recommended as a Facebook missionary, because they have no clue how long I'll be here and they won't want to go to the effort of training someone who could up and leave at any moment. I'm quite relieved by that, though it's cool to see this program in action. I'm just going to do language study when she's on the computer to use time more efficiently.
There was a really big Mumford and Sons concert in St. Augustine last week and thousands descended on the downtown area, so we avoided it like the plague. We've still got to visit the ancient part of the city and the forts sometime and being a history geek, I'm really excited for that.
I keep running into this problem where people are really surprised to see me instead of Sister Lewis, Sister Shumway's former companion. We don't really look alike at all, but since I suppose I sort of look blond, people confuse us a lot. That's sort of my nickname at the moment, I guess, though some of the members call me "farm girl" because we helped the Collins family move the other day and apparently I can lift more furniture and boxes than they expected. Oh, and apparently (according to our district leader) I have issues with pride, because I refuse to let him and Elder Cancel carry things for me or lend us their car when ours was in the show. So my nickname and ASL name since is Sister Pride, but just to him. Mostly me and Sister Shumway roll our eyes and pray for charity.
So I've been reading in the epistles of Paul this last week and in his first epistle to the Corinthians, he encounters a problem where the saints in that city are dividing into churches based on who baptized them and saying that they're better because they're the people of Paul or Apollos or whoever else. Paul explains to them that a missionary is just a person and not necessarily a great, noble, or powerful person, because God works by using weak and simple things to spread his work. 1 Cor 1:26-27, he says that "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty". in the next chapter, verses 4 and 5, he says that "my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God". This sort of hit me like an anvil as I was just doing my morning reading, because as a missionary, I am becoming increasingly aware of my many, many weaknesses and flaws. My desire to change and improve is good, but I need to remember that this is the way that God works to bring about his purposes. That's actually the whole point of sending me as a missionary, because I'm certainly not perfect, so if people listen to our message, it's because of the Spirit, not because of anything I do. This is a pretty marvelous promise to have. Anyway, that's about it for this week!
Love you!
Anna
P.S. Mom, I did get the pictures and the Nosy Notes; thanks so much! I may lend them to Sister Wallentine if she wants them. Also, can you send me some of the family recipes that we use the most? Especially cookie ones? I'd love the one for Fresh Apple cookies but other than that, surprise me. Thanks!
PPS. Pictures are me beating Sister Pecchia's rugs, the most attractive picture I could find of both me and Sister Shumway, and us boxing the elders in at the church parking lot today. They always try to do this to us, so justice is served. I promise we're usually grownups
PPPS. One more thing, I totally forgot again!
Our mission has a blog, so you can stalk our pictures at http://
And my address, if anyone wants it, is as follows:
420 Villa San Marco #201
St. Augustine, FL 32086
Love you all!
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