February 25, 2019

This week was a painful week but it was good too. I just had to go with the flow and accept that Heavenly Father knows better than I do. I've had to learn to just breath, cry when I'm alone, and then smile and work hard.  The start of the week was good. and the end of the week was good too. And now that I'm thinking about it, the middle was pretty good too, there were just a few hours that weren't so good. I really should be more grateful for the blessings Heavenly Father has given me. is this even making sense, hahaha? I feel like I'm just rambling about how I don't know how to feel about this week...

ANYWAYS. on Monday, we went to the beach in Santa Caterina with Helder and Jennifer. It reminded me a little bit more of the beaches in Oregon because the sand was harder and not as fluffy. Also, I think it helped that it was overcast, so the sky was gray like in Oregon as well. We played in the water, just up to our knees because we can't break the no swimming rules, and made a sand castle and played on the sand dunes. Really it felt like I was 12 again and we were at the lighthouse on the coast. We even went to the lighthouses there! I think we went to three of them. Unfortunately, there weren't any covered bridges to make it a true Heiner get away, but we got half of it right.

We had a funny experience with the milkshake man this week. There is a place that we go and get milkshakes every few days called Bah Milkshakes. But for some reason, we hadn't gone in like a week. Which is probably our record of not getting milkshakes. And when we got there, the owner got super excited and said, "as meninas!!" (the girls). and then he already had our order because we get the same thing every time we go there: mint chocolate. When the guy in the back heard the order, he came running out and said "you guys came back!!" and we laughed. The owner man asked us if we didn't want to try a different kind of milkshake, which we said no, and he got sad and gave us another milkshake for free. What is the moral of this story? Be friends with the milkshake man and he gives you free milkshakes. We invited them to come to church and had a fun conversation about that while we were drinking our milkshakes. I don't know if they will go, because I'm not there anymore, but hopefully one day they will remember the meninas who always got milkshakes and will want to see why we were in a different country.

We went on splits with the girls from Sao Luis, Canoas which was fun. We took them to the beach and they were both super excited. We walked from the end of Torres to Santa Caterina on the beach. which took a really long time. I had never done that before and didn't think it would take so long. But it did. Then we took them on the pencil bridge which is that super sketchy bridge that you have to cross to get to Santa Caterina and they were both super nervous about it and it was funny. S Macena and I taught a crazy woman named Lourdes. She gave us juice which was cool, but then she started talking about the miracles her church does and how her husband got his sight back because of the miracles that happened and we were both sitting there like, wat.... but hey, at least she believes in God, that is a good start. 

We went to Porto Alegre on Friday to get my visa renewed. I don't remember if I told you guys that my visa had expired, but I haven't had a visa in a few months. But now I do!! Which is nice. The only sad part is that while I was there, I got a lovely little phone call saying that I was being transferred to Farroupilha. I can't tell you how much I cried. But I think S Ruiz cried even harder than I did. I had to hold her because she was shaking so hard and I thought that she was going to fall over. It was just a crying party.

I didn't go back to Torres to get my stuff, S Ruiz sent it to me the next day, which means that a few things got left behind. Including my camera cord so it might be awhile before I get pictures sent to you guys again. Hopefully not too long, but a little bit.

I got to Farroupilha and President Jones came to explain to us what was going on. There is a lot going on, haha, one of the biggest things is that a missionary ran away. I don't know how that works out, but it did. We are thinking that he ran away while his companion was taking a shower. Because after a few days, you know how long your companion will be in the shower, so it would be easy to time it. Not that I had ever thought about that before I heard that he had run away.

My new comp is named S Squeira. she is from Manaus, she is super funny. Its only been a day but I think we are going to get along just fine.  This afternoon we are going to a grape festival.

Also, first day in the area, we had a baptism, I like that. It was a good first impression, haha.

Anyways I think that is the important stuff. I love you guys!!

Sister Heiner

February 18, 2019

ARE YOU GUYS AS EXCITED ABOUT THIS NEW RULE CHANGE AS I AM?! I GET TO CALL YOU GUYS EVERY WEEK IF I WANT TO!!! But I probably won't call every week just because it wont help me focus, haha, but next week I'm going to call. You guys have got to meet Helder and Jennifer. These are the best people I have been able to meet. 

SO! This week. Let's start with the fact that we finally  moved houses, haha. Which was good. Because this church is super creepy at night. And our new house is a house and is in the back of some apartments so it is super safe which is nice. I have slept so well these last few nights that I didn't even know that I was sleeping poorly. The house is pretty small, but it is perfect for the two of us. And the best part... they bought us a washing machine. I seriously almost cried, hahah. I called Elder Menezes just to say thank you. He laughed and called us dramatic. But I never appreciated a washing machine until we were washing our clothes by hand for a month. Heavenly Father really does love us to let somebody invent something as amazing as a washing machine. 

This week we also had a Mexican family home evening with our branch and it was AWESOME! We decorated the church as much as we could, how S Ruiz says they decorate there, and we didn't tell anybody. So when they all walked in and saw the banners and the piñata, everybody just stood there star struck. It was awesome. It made me feel so good about the time we spent even though it really wasn't even a little bit Mexican, haha, and nobody here has ever hear of a piñata so it was super entertaining seeing the little kids hitting it and then getting super excited to see candy explode out of it. We also made tacos but it didn't work out too well. Not that anybody knew because they have never eaten real Mexican food before. It was a really fun night. We turned on music and everybody danced and ate and laughed. There were over 40 people there and 10 of them were investigators. TEN!!!!! The branch president said that it was the best family home evening that they have had in a very long time which made me super happy. 

We went to the beach one day this week super early and studied there. It was perfect because we went to a beach a little farther away and nobody was there until it was about 10:30 when we needed to leave anyways. This area is super pretty. 

We also had a fun little story yesterday. I think that last week I wrote about Jackson and his family. He is a preacher and has a ton of kids. They all love that I speak funny and they like when we sing for some reason. So to get them to come to church, we told them that we were going to sing during sacrament meeting. Which turned into a truth because we went and asked the branch presidency if we could sing. They luckily sad yes and we sang a song that I have never heard in my life, but it is Helderson and Jennifer's favorite hymn and they sang with us so we just went with it. It turned out super pretty. Alright back to church yesterday. Pedro went and picked them up because they actually live in Santa Caterina which is like an hour walking. While they were on their way, Jackson asked Pedro to stop the car so that he could pick up the tithing of a member in his church. Then when they got to church, the kids were super cute, hugging us and staying by our sides and everything. Ana (the wife) stayed quietly by Jacksons side, but Jackson was super rude. He is the son of a less active member and already told us that he does not like the church. But we mostly just invited him because we wanted his kids to come. During sacrament meeting, he kept yelling "gloria a Deus" and things like that even though he has been to church before and knows that we don't do that. Then he tried to raise his hand to talk during a talk and the man talking told him that he couldn't, so he got mad and got up and left. Luckily it was the last speaker. I went out to talk to him and he said that it wasn't right that he couldn't talk when he wanted to and I told him that he was being disrespectful and that I was extremely sad that he would do something like that in the house of the Lord. I asked how he would feel if somebody walked in and treated his church like he treated the Church of Jesus Christ today and he just got super quiet and then started to argue that the Bible says that we should be yelling Glory and Hallelujah during church.  Then I got mad and told him that if the Savior walked in during his church meeting He would get up and leave because He doesn't feel comfortable when He cant feel the Spirit. It was a tense little hushed argument and he said that he was going to leave. His kids all liked it though which was really the point of this whole long story.

Alright, fam, I think that is about all that I have for this week. I am excited to see your faces next week. I love you all a ton. This last Saturday marked my 2 more months. How weird is that...

I love you!!

Sister Heiner 

Alright so the pictures aren't wanting to send, but here are a bunch forwarded from Jennifer.

February 11, 2019

This week was good!

A little more about Helderson and Jennifer, because Mom asked, Helder is 34 and Jenny is 30. Helder has some pretty serious health problems, including diabetes and he can't eat gluten, and he has depression, and some other complicated stuff that I don't understand in Portuguese. They have never told us why they don't have kids, but we are pretty sure that is why. They have been married 9 years. Helder served a mission in Recife and Jenny was baptized when she was 18. Jenny is an English teacher and Helder works with the lights and billboards at shows and stuff like that. They are super duper awesome, and I seriously love them so much. We have seen them every day this week because of something or other, and they are always so ready to help us and make whatever we are doing into something fun. They are both really funny. Anywhos, I think that answers the questions.

On Monday, we went with them to the cliffs that are around the beach and climbed around. it was really fun. I think we might be going back today, haha.  Then on Tuesday, they drove us to Tramandaí again, which they didn't have to do. But when we were driving, Jenny pulled out some crackers and passed them to us, and Helder said, "eat them quietly and be happy!" like a dad, haha, we laughed so hard. 

S Ruiz had a really weird dream this week. Like really weird. She dreamt that a man entered our house and tried to pull her out of her bed, and when she tried to call me to help her, he told her that I wasn't there any more, and then one of the members walked in and the man went away. She woke up, told me about the dream, went to the bathroom, screamed, came out, and her arms had weird marks on them. So we called Helder and Jenny and they came over, looked at her arms and then looked around the church. Nobody was there, and he thinks she did it to herself while she was sleeping. Which is probably right. But needless to say, we are moving houses today so we won't be in the church anymore because Helder called the mission office and told them that it wasn't okay that they had left us in the church for so long :) Now the elders there are scared of him and the moving man will be here in about an hour.

We had a fun teaching moment this week. We were walking home after a long day of working in Santa Caterina, and a man stopped us and asked us to teach his wife. We started talking to him and he told us that he has 7 kids living at home with them, 5 that could be baptized. So we went. And when we got there, we found out that he is a preacher. And that his house is a church. So we taught a preacher man and all of his kids and his wife in his church.  At the end, the kids all said that they want to be baptized. But the preacher man got mad because he has a church and doesn't want his kids to leave his church. But they all said they would come to our activity on Wednesday, so we are going to win over the preacher man and everybody will be baptized, haha. The oldest son was super interested. He kept asking questions, and because it was super late, he walked us over to where the river divides Santa Caterina and Rio Grande do Sul. When we crossed back over to Rio Grande do Sul, we called Jenny, and she came and picked us up and took us home. When we got home, what time was it? 10:35. Whoops.... but it was good.

We went to the Torres museum this week. It was like if Nibley had a museum. Enough said.

We spent a few hours trying to learn how to make tortillas because we are going to have a Mexican night and our Mexican, aka S Ruiz, does not know how to make tortillas. Needless to say, it did not turn out well, haha, we might just be buying tortillas to make tacos because I think the real thing just wont turn out well.

We had lunch with a family that has the cutest kids.  Cacau  started telling S Ruiz that she was my new companion. She told her mom that she was practicing for when she goes on a mission because she never left my side, haha, it was the cutest thing ever.

I have been reading the Book of Mormon this week marking every time that it talks about the Saviour like President Nelson asked us to do, and it blows me away how often it is. Like, we always talk about how the Book of Mormon testifies of Christ and nothing else but Christ, but seeing all my Book marked in yellow has helped my testimony grow that we really do only read this Book to get to know our Savior better. 

I love you guys!! Have a good week!

Sister Heiner

S Maionese.

Torres!!

S Ruiz picked up a turtle.

Sketchy bridge we cross every day.

Açai.

Our new map is a little huge.

A cool tree.

Making tortillas.

Cacau <3

February 4, 2019

I feel like this week was super long yet super fast. How often on my mission have I started my email with that? I have no idea.

So last pday when I stopped writing you guys, we went to Helderson and Jennifer's house and they took us to lunch before taking us on a tour around the beaches. Which was super cool. They took pictures of us but I don't know where those ended up, so I will have to find them and send them next week. They also took us to Santa Caterina (because it is part of our area) and we went to a really huge river with Jennifer and her sister´s family. It was super fun. We couldn't get in, obviously, but they made us a little bench out of rocks so that we could sit and put our feet in the water. Which was exciting, haha.

We had to go to Osorio Monday night so that on Tuesday we could go to Tramandai for a zone conference. The conference was good, I love hearing President Jones talk. Sister Jones as well. We also had interviews, I think I have yet to have an interview where President Jones talks about my missionary work. This weeks topic was who I should or shouldn't marry, and how to know. It was super funny. 

There weren't any onibuses to get back to Torres so Helderson and Jennifer came and picked us up. Which they totally didn't need to do, seeing as it is 2 hours to get there and 2 hours to get home. But we all just talked and laughed the whole way home, and we gave them the money that we would have used on the bus to get home. Helderson got offended that we thought we had to pay them, and we got "offended" that he wouldn't let us pay. In the end, he took the money ;) 

We had a branch activity on Wednesday about the Atonement that was super awesome.  They showed a video about a German dad who had to choose between saving his sons life or the lives of a bunch of people on a train. I just sat there and bawled, hahaha. But it was a sweet reminder that while the Atonement was part of the plan, Christ is Heavenly Fathers son, and it probably was not easy seeing Him crucified. He asked us to think about if we were in the same situation would we save our child or the people on the train who would probably never know that your kid died to save them. Nobody answered, but you could see the look on almost all of the parents faces that they would pick their kid without even thinking. Just made me think a little more about that. It was an interesting food for thought the rest of the week.

While we were working this week, we meet a few women that spiced things up. The first is named Michele. She's got the peace and love vibe, and has some crazy ideas that make me laugh. She has been together with her husband for 5 years, not married, of course, because that would be too easy, and they have 2 kids together. He has asked her to marry him 3 times and she has said no every time because she thinks that the second she says yes, he will stop being interested in her. I am so grateful to know the importance of marriage and how it makes us stronger, not weaker. 

Then there was a woman named Maria. When we went to talk to her, she just started crying and crying. She told us that her husband passed away two years ago and that she misses him so much that it hurts. We started explaining the plan of Salvation to her, and she got super surprised and happy when we told her that he remembers her. She sat there and said, "he remembers me?" and then she yelled for her daughter in the other room, "Elaina, this girls say that your dad remembers me!" Then she just started crying even harder. Her daughter came in and started asking questions too, about how we knew that they could remember us, if we thought they could see us, if we thought they just sat and watched us, so we got to explain what we know and believe about life after death. It was kind of cool, because I got to use Grandpa Heiner and Uncle Todd as examples, which is something I haven't done my whole time here. 

We went to visit an Irmã that hasn't been coming to church because she was sick, and she had a friend there who the second he saw that we were missionaries asked us to sing a hymn for him. He picked How Great Thou Art which is one of the longest hymns in the Portuguese Hymn book, but we sang for him, and he just sat there filming us which was a little weird, but at the end, he told us that it was food for his soul. Oh, he's a pastor at another church.

It has been raining from like 3:00 until 10:00 every day this week, so we have had some fun playing in the puddles and getting super wet. It is super flat here, so the streets flood. 

We haven't moved into our house yet, we are still at the church, which has been fine, nobody strange has come in yet, they usually yell up the stairs when they enter to let us know that they are there. And our door is almost always locked so they couldn't enter if they wanted to. 

Helderson has started calling me Sister Mayonnaise because there is a brand of mayonnaise here that is close to Heiner but I cant remember right now, I'll tell you next week.

We had a meeting with the Branch President and he started talking about all of the less active members in the branch, and Sister Ruiz and I both got the impression that we should go visit all of them and make an effort to bring them back. The elders quorum president told us the same thing, which was kind of cool. I think Heavenly Father was trying to talk to us.

Also, funny fact, there were a lot of irmãos that reminded me that it was super bowl Sunday, and I had to explain that that isn't as big of a deal as the world cup is here, haha. They thought it was our world cup. Nope. Sorry Brazil. 

Anyways, that was about my week. I hope you guys are doing well, I love you!!

Sister Heiner

Next to our lake.

The huge rain clouds.

When it starts to thunder and have

 a lot of wind so you hold on for dear life.

Playing in the puddles.

The next day started with sun... 

… and ended with us super wet.

Ice cream!!