Keep my commandments and ye shall prosper in the land.

March 3rd, 2014

Dear Friends and Family,

Could there be a more blessed and happy missionary than me? I think not! Life is just too marvelous and beautiful to fully explain. My first blessing is that I am getting married! He is quite the catch! Tall, head full of white hair, hipster glasses, speaks english perfectly. I thing the only bad things about him is that he is partially deaf and 64 years my senior. Hahaha.Just kidding. However, he did ask me to marry him but i had to decline. Everything has a time and a season. 

But really, let´s talk about the miracles and blessings I received this week. 

#1: We finally moved to our new house. No more walking 40 minutes to get to our area and go home. The Elders did not lie. It really is the house from Snow White. It is REALLY small. It has a room, a kitchen and a small bathroom. We don´t yet have a refrigerator and our dresser is still in the box. We won´t receive our fridge or have our dresser put together until after Carnaval. Anyway, more about my house. The bathroom is great! You have to pull a string in order to flush the toilet and sometimes you have to flush 2-3 times. This week was Elder Myers´s birthday so Sister Goimarac and I made him a cake. It was 4 layers with LOTS of chocolate and sprinkles and good stuff. Unfortunately, we now have an ant farm in our house. We disinfected everything and bought spray. Our house is just too small for 2 humans and ants to be cohabiting. It is us...or them. ;)

#2: Paula is amazing and so are her children. We had an amazing lesson this week with Paula and her oldest daughter Emily. We read the Book of Mormon with them and then invited Emily to pray and ask Heavenly Father if it is true. She was a little confused so we explained that God loves it when we ask questions and she could ask clearly and simply if the book is true. We kneeled together and Emily prayed, ´´Heavenly Father, is this book true...´´ She didn´t say anything else. We stayed in silence. i did my personal prayer in silence that God would give her the answer she was seeking. I opened my eyes and her 11 year old face was scrunched in concentration. 5 minutes of silent prayer!! Finally she opened her eyes. She said she felt good. We talked about how the Holy Ghost feels and talks to us. Through our thoughts, feelings, etc. I told her my experience of when I received my own testimony. I told her of the peace I felt! In that moment she said, ´´I felt peace too! The Book of Mormon is true!´´ You can just imagine how much my heart was jumping with happiness. However, my happiness was completed when Paula opened her mouth and was the solidifying testimony for her daughter. Paula said, ´´I feel peace every time I open the book. I may only read 1 line or a whole chapter but the peace is instantaneous. It is true.´´ Yes, yes it is true! No doubt about that! Paula came to church this sunday with her 4 children and they loved it. We have plans to teach her husband this week. 

#3: Marcia. Oh, I love that woman. The other day we were planning for her and we discussed what could keep her from being baptized. In our last lesson she had told us about her oldest daughter and the guilt she feels concerning her. We felt that this past would keep her from wanting to be baptized so we prayed to know how to help her. We went to our lesson that night and the first thing she said was, ´´I need a chapter to read from the Book of Mormon. I am going to go see my daughter this weekend.´´ If I had been sitting on a chair i would´ve probably fallen off. The Lord truly does prepare the hearts of His children. This gospel has changed Marcia´s life! She smiles more often now. She laughs too! Her baptism is scheduled for this coming Sunday. Please keep her in your prayers as she prepares for this next important step. She is amazing!!

#4: Zone Meeting was amazing this week! Our topic has added more wood and life to the fire within my heart! It has given my brain a fever! Eternal vision! We talked about the 5 keys that we need and that our investigators need to be ETERNALLY CONVERTED! Faith is the Lord Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end. Everyday we have studied one of these keys and I have tried to find why they are of utmost importance and essential. These keys are key! They are all centered in Jesus Christ.They lead us back to our Heavenly Father. When we apply these things in our live we gain an eternal vision. These steps/keys bring us so many blessings in this life. Purpose, more faith, happiness, peace, knowledge, etc. However, the blessings are eternal. They are for more than just this life. When we follow these steps and help others apply these steps we are helping us and them to prepare to live with God again. These are the steps that will guide us to receive ALL of the blessings God has prepared for us. And why has this built the fire?? Because I know that if I help others catch this vision they will see that what we are teaching them will extend until the eternities. Just think about it! We don´t keep the commandments just to prosper today or tomorrow. We keep them because we know that we if are faithful till the end we will one day go back to live with our Father and we will be able to look at Him with pleasure and say that we did our best. And then the Grace of our Savior will make up the difference and we will be made perfect in Him and eternal happiness in the presence of our Father, and our Savior and our families will be ours. We must all gain this eternal vision. We are living for forever one day at a time. This vision is not anything new but it is always nice to have the reminder of our purpose. 

Ask for funny stories...wow. i have a lot. When we were walking into the chapel Paula´s children saw the Elders and noticed that they had the same name tags. Emmerson (one of her sons) said, ´´Look Mom! More Sisters!´´ haha. Oh! We took a member to a lesson and as much as I love her we won´t be taking her out again. During a lesson she went off on a rant about sunday school (we hadn´t been talking about sunday school at all) and she talked about how it prepares us for the second coming of Heavenly Father.  

Life is so good. I love you all much! I want to just say a few words about the little things. Life is extremely difficult at times. We all have different types of problems but I know that living the gospel of Jesus Christ helps us overcome those difficulties. And it all starts with the little things. Saying our prayers everyday! Talk to God! There is no better way to feel his love! Reading the scriptures daily! And going to church! If we do the small things we become a spiritual giants of faith. It is the truth! I have seen if happen over and over again. If we do the little things we will have the strength to overcome the big things. 

I love you forever.

Love, Sister Rose

Just another week in paradise...

February 24, 2014

My dearest Family and Friends,

I think we will finally move into our new house this week. After 2 months of living in my suitcase I am really excited to unpack and air our my clothing. On Thursday Sister Tanner called us and asked us if we were available to go out to shop for our house. Uh yeah! Of course! We bought curtains, blankets, iron, blender, etc. It was so much fun to be able to spend some time with Sister Tanner. For those who don´t know Sister Tanner is my mission president´s wife. Every mission in the world has a couple than overseas and takes care of the missionaries. When I got my mission call to teh Brazil São Paulo South Mission I was so excited because my dream calling is to be Young Women´s President and Sister Susan W. Tanner used to be the General Young Women´s President. Coolest thing ever!

Last week I told you about our new investigator named Paula. She is amazing. We taught her the Plan of Salvation this week and she loved it. She has been loving the Book of Mormon. She reads it during her lunch break at work, while she waits for the bus, as she rides the bus, etc. She loves it! It is so awesome to see how happy she is about the things she has been learning. The other day she quoted a scripture from the Book of Mormon and my jaw dropped to the ground. The Book of Mormon is so wonderful. It has to power to fill us with the spirit, erase our doubts, answer questions, give us comfort, light and it can change our lives for the better. We were able to teach her kids for the first time last night and they are amazing too. They love that I can speak spanish so they had me pray in Spanish (hardest thing I ever did because it was mixed with so much portuguese). They are excited to be baptized like Jesus Christ was baptized. We are going to teach her husband this week on his day off so we are really excited. They didn´t go to church because they thought church was at nighttime like the church they currently attend!! However, they are excited to go to church next week as a family.

Marcia and Samanta are doing great! Marcia has a lot of things in her past but she feels a special peace entering into her life. We taught her about keeping the Sabbath Day holy this week and she accepted to live it. She has also stopped drinking coffee!!

I received a marvelous miracle this week. I bought new shoes and had pieces of tire glued to the bottom so that they wouldn´t get worn out fast. However, this made the bottom of my shoes really hard and my feet felt like they were dying (I bought in-soles today so we are all good). Saturday night I had had enough and I was dreading the 40 minute walk home. I didn´t think I was going to make it but as I got up from our last lesson of the day my feet felt good. They didn´t hurt and I was able to walk home just fine. I knew that Heavenly Father had given me a miracle!!!! Mom and Dad..don´t worry...my feet are fine ;)

Hmm..funny sotry for the week. Yesterday we saw a man riding a motorcycle wearing a knight´s helmet...probably the coolest thing ever. and dangerous too.

I love you all! As my dad would say since he is a Star trek fan--live long and prosper.

I am reaching the halfway point of my mission and it makes me sad to see how fast time is passing. I truly do love being a missionary. An investigator asked me how I have felt thus far about my mission and I said happy. I am happy. I love the Lord. I love being a full-time servant and being able to take the truth to the ends of the world! (or at least Brazil!) I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior. He is the light, the life and the way. If we follow Him with all we have we will never have any reason to fear.

I love you!

Love, Sister Rose