Curitiba Week 5

Hi everyone!

We did an awful lot more of knocking doors this week, which is always exciting. By this point I can understand and be understood by almost everyone at their gate (as long as their dogs aren´t barking too loud, which is a really big if). Once inside, Síster Medrado usually does most of the asking questions and social stuff, though I can do more of that now. Then we teach the lessons as simply and powerfully as we can and commit the people to come to church with us on Sunday. This area is a little harder than some, so we are looking for new ideas for finding. We were hoping to have some baptisms this weekend but as commonly happens, difficulties arose and they fell through, though we´re still working with the candidates and hoping to get them baptized soon. The other sisters had a baptism this week, though it was really stressful and difficult to make it happen. But they managed great and our mission overall achieved 51 baptisms this week. If we can get 88 more before the end of the month, we´ll finally be able to go to the temple. We also did some hunting down of referrals and contacts in the street, which was interesting. The maps and streets are really accurate but the house numbers are not, so you never know if someone gave you an incorrect address or if you just can´t find it. For example, our house number is 3, the house next to us is 1045 A, and the apartment building across the street is 240.

We had rain this week, which was nice in the heat. It usually rains only in the afternoon and is pretty quick, but because it´s so hot, we often have massive thunderstorms and crazy hail. Last Thursday, during a storm of Biblical proportions, we knocked on the first door we saw and found, to our great surprise, that the sisters were already inside teaching the first lesson. Since they usually don´t work in the bairro of Pilarzinho, this was a really crazy coincidence. 

I bought a new umbrella because in the same day, the handle of my old one snapped off and a tiny ferocious chihuahua tore off the tip and punched several holes in the fabric. I laughed til I cried when this happened, but I really needed another because of all the rain. My new one rains quite a bit inside the umbrella as well, but it looks like something I can fix. My scriptures, thankfully, didn´t get too wet, though almost every experienced missionary here has scriptures that are almost illegible from being soaked so many times.

I made a risky move this week and got my hair cut, which was scary. I explained that I just wanted the ends cut, no more than 4 or 5 centimeters, and the hairdresser nodded in agreement and cut my hair off almost to my shoulders. I really wanted to cry when I saw it, but I guess shorter hair is more practical and easier to take care of in this heat. Also, my companion compared me to Mulan, who sacrificed her long hair for something of greater value and since I love that movie, I guess I feel a little better. 

One thing I´ve found is that unfortunately, there aren´t a lot of people in the state of Paraná with lighter hair or eyes, so I attact a lot more attention than I would like because of this. It´s usually the first thing people mention when they see us and I fear it may be distracting from our purpose. My companion suggested I dye my hair darker to blend in a little more, but I´m too scared to go that far. The other day, an older man who somehow didn´t notice my accent started talking about how great Brazil is because we have such diversity and yet are united in purpose and we didn´t dare tell him that I was actually from the US. I think most people assume I´m from Santa Catarina until I start talking.

Yesterday was Síster Medrado´s birthday. It´s a little hard to find ways to surprise your companion when you´re always together but I managed all right. She was taken care of really well by the ward, so I think she had a great birthday.

That´s about all I can write for this week so so long!

Love you all,

Síster Nielsen

Curitiba, Week 4

Hi everyone!

This will be a short one; sorry about that, but bear with me.

We did a lot of finding this week, which hear includes a lot of knocking doors. It´s always intersting to see who lets us in or not. I firmly believe that (as long as the missionaries themselves are humble and obedient) everyone we talk to has the Spirit prodding them to accept us and hear more, so they´re either accepting or rejecting that. Because of this, it doesn´t matter our ability in the language or the way that we extend the invitation to hear about the gospel as long as we´re trying our best to serve the Lord. This way, I don´t worry as much about saying the ´wrong´thing, because everyone has the agency to choose whether to accept us or not. Still, working here is the hardest thing I´ve ever done. Everyone is asking what is the hardest thing: the language, the food, living in another country, the weather. For me, it´s adjusting to a new mission culture, because the way we work is so different from what I know already. But I have a really strong testimony that without obedience, we accomplish nothing in missionary work, and this obedience is both to the Lord and to our mission president. So I´ve expecting to see really mighty miracles in the weeks and months to come. For now, I´m focusing on discovering the smaller ones that occur every day.

We got a new sister this week, Síster Constantino, who´s from Chile. She´s pretty great and we have a lot of fun in the apartment. We may try to speak only English in the apartment this week, which will be exciting.

We had a bit of an adventure on the way to zone meeting this week (we´ve had four of these in the last 3 weeks and no one knows precisely why). We were on a crowded ônibus with about 6 or 7 other missionary companionships and a rather distressed-looking man whipped out a gun and started waving it around. But fortunately he didn´t shoot anyone and we all got off the bus at the next stop, so I don´t know what happened after that. Zone meeting was pretty great; through some miracle of the Spirit I´m always able to understand what President Monteiro says. André brought his parents to church yesterday for his confirmation, which was really neat. We´ll start teaching his mom tomorrow. Anyway, that´s about it for our adventures now; hope everything is going great at home, too! Love you all!

Síster Nielsen

Brazil, Week 3

Hey everyone,

Life is pretty good here. In fact, André got baptized this week! He was so elect that he just sort of fell into the water. He´s really bright and asked a lot of questions and he understood perfectly everything we taught. He brought his dad to church with him yesterday, who kind of terrified me because he looked like a really successful businessman and is a member of one of the largest evangelical churches in Brazil. Right before sacrament meeting started, Sister Medrado said 'I´m going to go sit with Karen (another investigator), so you go sit with André and Luiz-Claude and answer any of their questions´, which really terrified me. But luckily my Portuguese was sufficient to understand everything and we also had a fabulous sacrament meeting, with one of the best departing missionary talks I´ve ever heard. Everyone (Luiz-Claude included) was crying from the Spirit. The Spirit  was also really strong at the baptism, too. Unknowingly, I was volunteered to sing 'Vinde a Mim' (Come Unto Me) but at the last second I convinced Irmã Luciene to sing with me, so it turned out all right. Overall, it was a really incredible expereince.

As for the language, I had a strange moment last night where I tried to explain a concept, using English for the first time in three weeks, and found myself quite unable to. This doesn´t mean that my Portuguese is anywhere near sufficient, though. I´m in the curious position right now of not being fluent in any language. I can only hope that my Portuguese improves some more. Right now when we teach, we divide up the lesson about evenly, which gives Sister Medrado the opportunity to explain and amplify anything I said that didn´t make sense.

This morning we got a call from the assistents saying that Síster Araújo was being emergency transferred today to take the spot of someone else. So we´ll be getting another companion for Sister Eulogio, though we don´t know who yet.

For all those who asked, our apartment is great, although there´s only one bathroom for four sisters so we need to plan our shower times really carefully. And since the shower is bipolar, it´s sometimes hot and sometimes frigid but mostly just lukewarm, but I don´t know why. Other than that, I think it´s a regular missionary apartment with all the essentials (interestingly, our laundry room is actually outdoors and no one uses dryers here since all your clothes dry so fast in the heat.) And yes, it rains a lot here, which I like except for the wet feet part. But I´ll get used to that eventually.

Oh, before I forget: my mailing address here is

Missão Brazil Curitiba

Av. Iguaçu, 1460

Bairro Agua Verde

Curitiba-PR

CEP 80-250-190

This is the address of the mission office so things might take a little longer than before to get to me, but that´s fine. Also Mom, I think you asked: the ã or õ is a nasalized sound that sounds somwhat like an n, so São Paulo sounds to an American like San Paulo.

Anyway, that´s about all I can write at the moment so love you all!

Síster Nielsen

Brazil, Week 2

Hey everyone!

First, it´s really weird to use English, because this is the only time all week that I really need to think in it. So try to take my spelling errors as a good sign. According to this computer, all the words are spelled wrong, so bear with me. 

Thanks to everyone who wished me happy birthday! I actually had an amazing birthday, though when my companion asked when it was, I accidentally said dezesete instead of dezeseis without realizing. So I had a relatively quiet birthday and then the next day, the entire ward, seemingly, descended on our apartment with an overabundance of cake and pizza and cute scented lotions. It was the best, though I didn´t dare tell anyone that my birthday had actually been the 16th.

The ward here is pretty fantastic and really friendly (and patient). We had two investigators come to church yesterday, André and Otávio, and they both felt really welcomed and happy (though Otávio´s actually been coming for a while and is kind of a fixture now. We´re hoping to get him into the water soon). 

The language is at times quite frustrating, partly because my prideful heart wants to be perfect and all. But I can, for the most part, understand the majority of conversations, though it´s a little harder to respond as easily. Luckily, most people here are really nice and patient with me, although the often try to respond in English, which is usually more difficult to understand than anything they say in Portuguese. I am pretty much at the edge of where the city turns into square blocks and high-rises, so our area covers both that and some more spread-out, forested (and hilly) neighborhoods. I understand that there are some more rural areas of the mission, but then again I don´t really know. I´ve only been here and then to zone meeting in the center of the city. It´s also really amazing to be able to feel the spirit while teaching, even in portuguese.

I have tons more to say but only four minutes left on this computer, so keep asking questions and I´ll address them next week. I was going to sent some pictures but there are some difficulties and all the settings are in Portugues, so until next week!

Love you all,

Síster Nielsen

Curitiba, Week 1 (or 20 or so)

Hi everyone!

I´m typing this on a keyboard that is configured slightly differently than I´m used to so bear with my misspellings, lack of correct punctuation, etc.

Anyway, I did indeed make it to Brazil. The flight was all night but wasn´t too bad and I arrived with all of my belongings as well, fortunately. The most interesting part was the really sudden leap into Portuguese. I did practice with Sister Zanella and it helped a ton, but there´s really no preparation you can get for being in a place where you need to communicate. Neither President Monteiro nor his wife speak English, but interviews and training went just fine. I´m serving in Bom Retiro (literally ´Good Retirement`), a wealthy suburb of Curitiba. My companion is Sister Medrado (from Cuiaba), who is fabulous, and we also share an apartment with Sister Araújo (from Manaus) and Sister Eulogio (from Peru). None of them speak more than a bit of English, so rest assured I´m learning Portuguese very quickly. 

The city is gorgeous, I can´t even describe how pretty it is. We use the public transportation to get to all our meetings so I´ve seen a bit of it so far. There are a lot of interestingly designed high-rises and graffitti on everything. Our most effective finding tool here is knocking doors (well, clapping at gates) so we do a lot of that. Curitiba is very mountainous, which I like, so we hike up a lot of very steep streets. We usually carry umbrellas to protect against blazing sun or pouring rain (the ntwo types of summer weather) and also to guard against dogs. EVERYONE here has at least three very sizable dogs guarding their houses. I thought I was a dog person before but perhaps I won´t be in the next month or so. Also, I know people always ask, so the food here is incredible. We have a calendar where members of the ward are assigned days to feed us, so we have a dinner appointment each day except p-day.

As for the language, I´m not very patient with my progress, but the Lord really needs me humbled as well. Sometimes I can understand most of a conversation perfectly, sometimes I get almost nothing out of what people are saying. I still lack the confidence to talk easily with anyone besides the other sisters, but Sister Medrado is really encouraging me to pull my weight during lessons and I´ve also given the spiritual thought at appointments a few times and was abruptly called on to bear my testimony in sacrament meeting yesterday. Accurate grammar aside, I can usually talk about most topics and be understood, so the last six weeks of study really did help a lot.

My last Saturday in Hendricks, Mark was baptized! It was an amazing experience because of just how far he came to arrive at that point. All of Mark´s friends in the church were there and everyone who helped to teach him or was a part of his conversion, which was a sizable number. We had a bit of a stressful moment before, when no on´s keys to the baptismal closet fit the old lock and we couldn´t get any jumpsuits. But thanks to the diligent lockpicking efforts of the Spanish elders and the timely arrival of the second counselor, everything worked out in time. The two talks were given by Haylee and Brother Snider, who are both really shy and kind of doubtful of their abilities. They were the best baptismal talks I´ve ever heard and I´m not saying that just cause I love them. Mark got baptized by Johnny and after the baptism we asked him how he felt. He responded ´Great! I´m kind of dizzy.` While he changed, we shared a couple of the conversion stories of his pioneer ancestors and then Brother Frailey gave the most enthusiastic welcome to the ward I´ve ever heard. His confirmation in sacrament meeting and ordination to the Aaronic Priesthood were also amazing experiences. I wish you all could have been there.

Anyway, gotta go because I need to email President Monteiro and that could take a while. But I love you all, have an amazing new year, and please send any questions you have. Love you all!

Sister Nielsen

Pictures:

 Haylee, Sister Zanella, Johnny, Mark, me, and Solomon right after the baptism

The view of São Paulo from the plane. I wish you all could see the enormous scope of the picture; each of those teensy grey specks is a massive high-rise building. And there are thousands of them

Me and Sister Medrado right before coming here, so you can see I still have all my arms and stuff

Jacksonville, Week 18

Hi everyone!

I hope Christmas was fabulous for everyone. Ours basically consisted of sitting in on one Christmas dinner after another, which resulted in one of the most exhausting days I've had on my mission so far. It was a great deal of fun, but we couldn't work like we normally do because everyone was so busy with family that proselyting as usual would be difficult. I'm still not sure what we're supposed to do for New Year's. Perhaps President will tell us to stay in like on Halloween, but I still don't know.

Mark is on for baptism this Saturday and he's so ready and excited. We also set a baptismal date with another investigator, Timmy, and he picked his own date of Jan 4th, so we may have two people this Saturday. He has a lot of work to do to be ready, but he's also really eager to go forward with this. Sunday will be my last day here, so I'm so glad I get to be here for both of these.

We put on a missionary program for the third hour of church last Sunday. Our ward mission leader is a pretty bold person and wanted to invite the ward to become more active in missionary efforts, so we had all ten of the full-time missionaries and 6 of our ward missionaries (who are all recent converts) presenting tools to use in member missionary work. I was a little afraid the ward would hate us after that, but a lot of people said that it was a great program so I guess they're a forgiving (and missionary-minded) bunch. We also went to a baptism in Arlington for the cousin of Solomon, who was baptized into our ward a few weeks ago. We normally wouldn't be allowed to leave our area for that, but since Mark was attending, we got permission to go with him. It was a really great and spiritual experience.

For some reason, this has just been an exceptionally spiritual week. I'm so blessed to be surrounded by so many great people with powerful testimonies. Brother Snider is helping us teach Timmy and he thinks he doesn't have a good testimony (he was baptized as a child and his family was less-active, so he knew basically nothing beyond the name of the Church before the sisters found and taught him). But he has one of the most powerful testimonies of the Holy Ghost I've ever heard. We really could just sit and listen to him teach us about the Church all day. We've persuaded him to speak at the baptism on Saturday to other people can hear him.

This whole week will be crazy (as usual) but also because of all the preparations we have to make to leave. I won't get a p-day next week because I'll be on a plane for it, so I'll do my packing on Saturday and email the Monday after next. So don't worry, I probably made it to Brazil just fine. Anyway, that's about it! Love y'all and happy New Year!

Sister Nielsen

Pictures: really blurry one of all the missionaries (plus Johnny and minus Elder and Sister Andrew) at the ward mission leader's home

Hannah, a member

Me with Treneice's son Junior. I love her sons to death; they're always bouncing off the walls every moment of the day

Jacksonville, Week 17

Hi everybody,

Where has the time gone? It feels like we have so much to do in these last couple weeks. We went to one of our investigator's church services yesterday afternoon, which was pretty neat. This was an African Methodist Episcopal church, which was different than any others I've been to before, but it was a great experience and the music was amazing. We felt like we stood out a little, though, because 1. we had nametags, 2. we were the only white people there, and 3. everyone around us looked like a model. Seriously, the entire congregation seemed to be the prettiest teenagers I've ever seen. They were all so nice to us as well and Mike was so pleased we came. We're inviting him to our church next week and hoping he takes us up on the offer. Since we went down to Mandarin to go to the church (which is out of our area), we also stopped to check on our Brazilian investigators again, but sadly, none were home.

Mark will be getting baptized two weeks from now. He feels like he needs a little more time to be ready for his baptism, but when he said "more time", we were expecting a few months, not two weeks! He read and prayed a lot and picked his new baptismal date himself, which was pretty amazing. We'll be seeing him tonight and I'm looking forward to the next two weeks with him so much.

We had tradeoffs this week but the sister training leaders are actually in our ward, so we were in the same area, just working with a different pool of investigators. It was a lot of fun and so nice not to drive for a bit! Sister Parmer has been in this ward for the last 9 (!!) months, so she knows all the members and investigators really well.

That's about all I have right now! I promise what we do isn't boring, but my mind goes blank once we have to do emails. We always seem to skip lunch on P-days so I'm starving right now. I will likely get my travel plans next week and then there will be a lot of work to prepare for new missionaries and pray over what is best for each of our investigators. Anyway, hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!

Sister Nielsen