My mission to Brazil: December 31, 2018.... my last email for 2018

Hello family... It was awesome to see you guys last week. I wish we could skype every week, haha, but its probably for my own good that we can't. even though I would love to.

This week was good. Pretty calm and I'm not sure that was a good thing because we always seem to get more done when we are in panic mode, but what can ya do. I don't have a ton of interesting stuff to tell you guys but instead of pulling a Jake or Ben and just saying nothing, I will tell you some boring stuff and see if it is interesting.

We had a ward activity this week and we went to see if Raiane and Silvia wanted to come with us. Silvia wanted to but Rai didn't really want to but Silvia said that she needed to. So what did I do? Totally picked her up and carried her to the church. She is super skinny, like Savannah skinny and the church isn't very far away from her house, probably the same distance as the church from our home in Nibley, but by the end, my arms were killing me. I woke up sore for three days. That is how out of shape I am. Walking all day does nothing for your arms. We went and saw her yesterday as well and did a cool activity with her. We took a picture of Christ and put a paper over it that when you write on it goes through to the other picture like how tithing papers do. We had her write all the bad things in her life on it. And at the end, we took it off and showed her that Christ has already felt all this things and that He is waiting for her to let Him take them away. I don't know that she fully understood what we were trying to tell her but I know that she felt the spirit and that she told us that she would start praying to get baptized. And she and Silvia made a goal to read the Book of Mormon together every day before dinner. I liked that.

We went and taught one of Silvias friends named Felipe. This man is amazing. Not just because he accepted all of our invitations but because he opened up within like 3 minutes and told us all of his life story that includes all of his drama with an ex and his dad leaving his family out of the blue. We just sat there amazed that he trusted us enough to tell us what was going on in his life because then we could use what he was saying to help him understand what the gospel will do for him.

We had our zone conference this week. I was super nervous the whole time because I was the chosen one to give a training on how to use the Book of Mormon in our teaching without just telling the story of the Book of Mormon. The day beforehand, S Souza and I were practicing what I was going to say and I started telling her all the blessings that the Book of Mormon has brought to my life and how it will bless other people and we both just started crying. It was the best comp study I have had in a really long time. When it got to the part that I had to talk, I didn't have an notes and had no idea the order that I was going to start talking. So I just got up and pulled a Heiner and wung it. And it went super well. I just started talking and without even realizing it, used up all of my time. And I didn't even stumble with my Portuguese. Miracles are real.

After our conference, S Souza and I decided that we were going to go to Burger King for lunch. So we went around asking the elders and if they wanted to come with us. A good group of them said yes, and they all started to leave. We stopped to try and convince another dupla to come with us. When we were leaving, we thought that the elders had already headed out, but when we walked out the front door, they were all there and the second they saw that we were there, they all started walking with us. It was a weird moment of feeling like we had influence over them, hahahaha, to the point that S Souza said, Let's go my people. It was really funny.

Just so everybody knows, Burger King here is as bad as Burger King in the US.

After our zone conference, we went home and started working again. All of our plans fell through so we started knocking doors and a woman let us in. We ended up singing for her and her husband. At the end, we knelt down with them and Joao Pedro said a prayer and at the end just started crying. Sadly, they left to go to the beach for the holidays so we probably won't get to talk to them for a while but we sent a Book of Mormon with them so I hope they are reading it.

We went to talk to Gabriel this week, just to see how he was doing. We ended up reading a little of the Book of Mormon with him and asked him what he thought that Heavenly Father wants him to do this new year. He told us that he knows that he needs to go on a mission but that he is scared to go because he is part of the military and he doesn't want to lose his rank and that he's scared to go to a different country. So we started talking to him about how there are people waiting for him to find them and help them. I got to share with him my feelings about going to a different country and how it really is hard but that the fear goes away after about a week. When we started talking about how in the pre earth life we promised to help certain people here on earth, I had the hugest feeling that I had promised to help Gabriel here. He told me at the end that I am his best friend here in Sao Luis. :) Cute. We went to talk to him after church yesterday and helped him clean the padio. It is so hot here and S Souza has low blood pressure so she gets pretty sick in the heat so we were throwing water at each other and talking about missions and it was the best informal lesson that we have had.

S Souza is learning how to speak English so we are only talking English at home and in the street and it is the most entertaining thing. I don't know how the Brazilians don't just laugh their heads off at me all of the time. She has used every swear word accidentally more than one time. And I just get so startled and tell her that she can't say that word and she gets so worried that I just laugh and laugh. I'm so glad that she just laughs with me and doesn't get offended.

Anyways, I hope you all had a good week, and that New Years is awesome. I will switch years sleeping because I no longer have the will power to stay up until midnight nor the desire to do so.

I love you guys!!!

Sister Heiner