Awesome Zone/things I have eaten

                                                                                                September 1, 2014

My awesome zone! And our new t-shirt!

Yes, we´re the only sisters. Its ridiculous(-ly awesome)

There in the middle is Presidente Morais, the stake pres here. he´s the missionary´s best friend in the field, in the ward counsel room, and on pdays - how he has so much time to help us, I have no idea but it´s AWESOME!

our awesome Natal zone!

 

 

Hey all!

Cool things that I´ve eaten in the last few weeks that I forgot to mention:

-alligator...tastes like fried chicken, just a little tough

-tereré - an herbal drink from the Sul de Brasil. You make a drink of bitter herbs and mix it with ice cold lemonade and use a special silver straw called a ´bomba´. It’s more a cultural, fire-side thing because there is just one cup and everyone passes it around. Also, chimarrão is the same thing but hot instead of cold with chamomile tea. SO GOOD

-picado. okay, so this wasn’t so great. it’s basically goat intestines. but when you put a lot of pepper sauce and farofa (flavored flour?) you can almost fool yourself that its beans, which is a staple food here kakakaka

Funny moment:

We´ve been teaching a less-active sister trying to help her come back to church, cause she has a super strong testimony, but she uses any and every excuse to not come to church. We invited her to an activity and she said, Í can’t come. Why? Ummm....umm..... I have only one finger nail painted....?

We looked at her skeptically and then everyone laughed. WEAK. weakest excuse I’ve heard to date. Man, I love her so much but it’s really quite sad that she has this barrier to get out of the house and get to a church meeting.

Moment that made my heart smile:

Vager! Our recent convert! He is 15 years old and soooo sweet. We saw him on the street the other day, eating Açai. (It’s kind of like ice cream but 10x better) We stopped to chat and then asked what we could do to help him. He looked at us and said - can you help me eat? I don’t want my acai anymore!!!
Well, we all know that is a lie but he was so sincere and gave us the puppy eyes look and I knew that if we refused, it would break his heart. so he just gave us açai and you know, that’s the real meaning of the widows mite. He gave all he had, and it was motivated by pure amor.

Favorite member moments:

Anne didn’t come to Church on Sunday :/ she was sick. BUT the YW President was so worried about her that we left the second hour with her to see if Anne was okay. And two YW had been sending messages to her on Saturday asking how midterms were going and if she would make it to Church on Sunday. Seriously, people, this is such a miracle!!!! Our ward is taking care of our investigators! And we didn’t ask them too! I just love Anne so much.
Pérola is the 8-year-old daughter of our Bishop. She´s friends with Alice, the 8-year-old girl of Dantas and family, the family we have been trying to reactivate. They didn’t go to church on Sunday and Pérola noticed before anyone else in the ward and she asked her Dad to go visit them after Church to see if they were okay and why they didn’t come. GO PÉROLA!

 

Favorite S. Baker moment:

She taught about the allegory of the olive tree for our message for almoço on Sunday and taught me something I never notice before. Every época in the story, when the Lord wants to burn his vineyard, the servant asks for a little more time, just a little more time. But the very last time, the last chance the servant asks for more servants. He doesn’t ask for more time, and the Master doesn’t give more time. Just take a look at the number of full-time missionaries serving today and you will know that this really is the last time, the last chance for the world before Christ comes. He´s asking for more servants. That’s why the prophet is asking the members to work with the missionaries - because in this last chance. We need everyone who has ever covenanted to take upon himself the name of Christ to rise to the call. The full-time missionaries aren’t enough this time.
Okay, so the last month and especially the last week have been really challenging and humbling for me. There have been a lot of difficulties with the area and the members and other missionaries and investigators that have left me wondering if anything I did made a difference. I think I haven’t ever in my life understood more fully the King Benjamin sermon that says even if we give everything we have and are, we will be unprofitable servants.

But. In my time teaching Anne, I’ve started to understand just a little bit more what it means to say that Christ takes away our sins.

We are never going to be able to pay the price for our own sins.
It just won’t happen.
And all our efforts aren’t going to change that.
We will never be able to earn Christ´s grace, we will always be in debt to Him.
But we just have to learn to trust Him enough to give Him our all and He makes up the rest. Its that simple. It’s because He loves us, and He will always be merciful towards us. It’s because of who He is that we are saved.

And our efforts should be less focused on trying to pay back the debt and more focused on appreciating the gift of the Atonement.

I know that Christ lives and loves us and I am so grateful for everything He has given to me. And now I can share this knowledge and testimony with others :)

-Sister Carroll