December 25, 2018

MMMMMMEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRYYYYYYYYYYYYY CCCCCCHHHHHHHHRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSTTTTTTTTMMMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It doesn't even feel like Christmas because it is super hot and there isn't snow so ya know, its really just how it feels when we start singing Christmas music randomly in July. But that is okay because I am extremely excited to see you guys today!!

But first, let me tell you about this week. We started the week off by drawing our secret santa names in our zone. I got one of our zone leaders and S Souza and I had a party trying to find something that he would like. We ended up buying water guns and writing on one, Elder Muraco and on the other, Comp do Elder Muraco. When he opened them, he got so excited, it was really funny. They said that they were going to spend the hot days shooting each other and shooting the dogs that are always following them. I thought that was funny.

One Tuesday, there was a man that came to the church saying that he had an appointment with one of the Bishops councilors but they don't do interviews or anything on Tuesday, so we sat down to talk to him. And he turned out to be a homeless man. The church is helping him try and find  a place to live and all that jazz. We gave him the first lesson and I felt so much love for this man. He is trying to get his life put back together and we gave him a book of Mormon and he just super gently put it in his bag that he carries around. The sad part of this story is that because he doesn't have a house, we didn't see him the rest of the week. And we weren't really in our area the rest of the week either so that was another problem.

We went to Gravatai for two and a half days to go on splits with the two duplas that are there. The first day, I went with S Alcaraz who is from Argentina. She has a month on the mission so I spent the whole day asking her questions just to get her to talk. It was super cute because at the start of the day she told me that nobody understood her when she makes street contacts so I made her do all the street contacts and everybody was understanding her and passing addresses and you could just see her confidence in herself get bigger and bigger. I love working with new missionaries.

Then I went on splits with S Marino!!! She spent the day telling everybody that we met that I was her first companion which I thought was cute. She is teaching super well, I was super proud of her. I am sure that it wasn't me that helped her learn how to teach like that because she is teaching a billion times better than I am. We ended up walking for four hours straight because the part of her area that we were working in is in the middle of nowhere so we just walked and walked and walked. We ended up talking about how they were probably wasting there time working there because they are using so much more time walking than teaching and the road that they are walking is super busy so it isn't really safe and there is nobody on the way to talk to because it is a highway so we were the only people walking. 

But both days, we ended up staying up way late just talking about the randomest things with the sisters and I left feeling like they really trust us, that we aren't just the annoying sister leaders that they see once during the transfer and who call them once a week to see how they are doing. I was happy about that.

We were in Porto Alegre on Friday because there were a few things we needed to take care of there, and the mission office paid for an uber to take us back to the rodoviaria to get on the train. When we were in the car, we started talking to the driver about the missionaries and all that jazz that we do as missionaries and he told us that he has already talked to the sisters and that he had a book of Mormon but he isn't sure where it ended up. When we were getting out of the car, S Souza started to say "would you like.." And he looked at the book of Mormon in my hand and didn't even let her finish saying the question before blurting out, "Yes". So we gave him my book of mormon. The bad part of this story is that S Souza ended up leaving our phone in his car. Irma Nadir called it for us and he answered and yesterday we went to a train station and he gave it back to us. Which means we went two days without a phone. I thought my life didn't revolve around a phone here because our phone isn't fancy at all, but it still has all of our contacts and addresses and all that stuff so the last two days were a struggle without it. 

We went to a woman's house named Farley and she invited her husband to listen to us, and he DID NOT want to because he is a pastor at some other church, so she just winked at us, got up, went and got his guitar and asked him to sing for us. Then he wanted to talk to us. We spent like an hour singing Brazilian gospel songs. It was the strangest spirit I have felt there. Because it wasn't like a super strong sweet spirit, but you could feel their faith. You could feel that they were believing in what they were singing. I liked that.

Yesterday we had a mission conference for Christmas!! It was really fun. It was super different from last year, because President Jones focused on the spiritual side of Christmas whereas last year was more of the phone side. We watched a video where a person asked a bunch of people questions about Christ and they had to answer without using words, and the spirit was so strong, it was incredible. Then there were a bunch of people that sang songs, including S Souza. And there was a lunch and we switched gifts, and it was seriously just super nice. it was the first time this year I felt like it could really be Christmas season. At the end Sister Jones gave everybody mini Christmas stockings which was super cute.

AND I GOT MOMS PACKAGE!!!!!!!!!!! And a package from Uncle Paul!!!! I was so happy!! It was truly a Christmas miracle. When I saw the picture of Luke, I just sat there and cried. I cannot believe how big he has gotten. I know I see pictures of you guys almost every week but still. I surprised me for some reason, hahah.

I am so excited to talk to you guys in a few hours. I hope everybody is happy and that you guys have a great Christmas! 

I LOVE YOU GUYS!!!

Sister Heiner