Oi Familia!

Thank you for all of the packages and letters! Aunt Cherie we ate your package in like two days, when Sister Hayes and I opened the box, she took one piece of popcorn, ate it, and then threw it back in the box, closed the box, and hid it... she didn't want to share;). Mom, Irmao Porter loved your banana bread so much I let him take one of the loaves home, he was super excited. Also, I absolutely love the water bottle, Sister Hayes, not so much though since it means she has to accompany me more often to the bathroom;). The cookies were perfect also! The day before they came, Sister Hayes and I were talking and I was like I want no-bake cookies and she was like, that sounds really good, and then tada! Some came from you! You were probably making them while we were talking about them:) Revelation;) Your package is gone also, for our district complaining about being full, they sure didn't care when it came to your packages;).

So not as many interesting things happened this week as in previous weeks, but as of tomorrow we're halfway done! On Tuesday after I last emailed, we had a Tuesday night devotional, and those tend to be more important people than on the other devotional days, and guess who it was! Elder Scott! He gave a really good talk on recognizing the spirit and then he stopped reading his teleprompter and started talking about missionaries, it was pretty cool. He even gave us an apostolic blessing that included we would all master our languages! I'm definitely gonna master mine I guess since I got told that in a blessing this week that I got from the elders because it wasn't Sister Hayes who got sick, it was me! Well after Elder Scott finished, we sang, and then as the sister was getting up to give the closing prayer, Elder Scott jumped up (literally! that is one fast old man!) and ran back up to the pulpit to tell us again that we were called of God and not to get discouraged and that we would get our language. It was pretty awesome!

Sister Hayes and I have grown quite tired of our district. They're great people, but even the teacher told Sister Hayes and I that we were the only mature ones who he knew wanted to be there. So Sister Hayes and I have decided to rededicate ourselves to studying elsewhere. We did it for the first time yesterday, and it went really well. I just can't stand the sisters talking about how cute the elders are and how they want to know if they can get their addresses to write them, and about how they just had "a moment" with a elder (funny story, the sister who said that is super gorgeous, so when she showed him to us, we were expecting someone like SUPER hot, and nope, he was a poor awkward gangly looking creature, though I'm sure he probably is a great guy!). Sister Hayes and I think they are all very ridiculous when they talk about things like that. We're missionaires, we're supposed to give that up, we said that we would!

Oh, we had a pretty awesome miracle in our district. We're always being told that our families are being protected, and one of the elders, his family is having some really big financial problems (they had to move out of their house and etc), and they had a $1,000 bill due in a few days, and they weren't sure what they were gonna do. Then, in the mail came a $1,000 check from a job the father had done five years before! Pretty awesome. That elder is pretty awesome, and a stinker also, he's like one of my brothers, I love him, but I wanna wring his neck...;) The other day, because our computer in our classroom is broken, we have had to keep going to other classrooms, and we have to reserve them, well we went to this one classroom and we had about 10 minutes left in it, when this elder from the building we were in (it's the English classroom building and it's SUPER SUPER nice) came in, slammed his bag on a table, and said in a very rude tone, that they had this room reserved and that their teacher had told them to kick out anyone who was in there. So we got up and Irmao Porter said "Com Respectio" (spelling error, as I have no idea how to spell that) which made the elder mad because he had no idea what Irmao Porter was saying, and then we left and the elder in our district walked up to him and said "Say it with respect next time. Next time knock. Missionaries don't do that." and then he walked away and we just all burst out laughing! Our current catchphrases are "Com Respectio" and "Missionaries don't do that." Haha

With our lessons that we teach, our teachers decided that we can't bring in papers with written lessons starting on Monday, and Sister Hayes and I who really struggle with this, decided to start Saturday. Let's just say, who knew we would actually kind of speak Portuguese?!? We were able to teach a really great lesson on prayer and the restoration without having anything written down! We felt really good about it. Our lessons to our fake investigators are going well. Tomorrow we're teaching about the Plan of Salvation, though we still haven't found what the investigator "needs to hear" and so we need to figure that out. We haven't asked the right questions yet. On Friday we taught TRC, and Sister Hayes and I were so so nervous. We got there though, and we ended up teaching a very lovely lady named Anne who had served in Portugal. She was great. We gave a quick message on enduring to the end, and then she told us about Portugal and she bore her testimony about how we could serve missions, and that we would love it, and that the language would come if we learned the language of the Spirit. We absolutely loved it, and all three of us bawled super hard because the spirit was so strong! Then when we got back to class, the teacher asked someone to tell a cool experience that they'd had and of course my class through me under the bus and picked me! Well I suddenly start speaking in Portuguese, and I guess they were all super shocked! I haven't been doing very well with actually speaking Portuguese, and I'm still not, but having given up our papers for the lessons made it as though something clicked. I'm now trying to say more things in Portuguese in my everyday life.

On Sunday we had another great relief society, this time by Sister Cheryl Esplin, the second counselor in the general primary presidency. She talked about keeping our testimonies strong. Then she had us do something really awesome. She said to us that she was going to start humming a song and we were going to stand up and sing it as soon as we recognized it. We all stood up at the same time and sang "I belong to the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints..." etc. It was just really awesome and powerful and I just started sobbing!

Oh and I saw Aaron! I don't know if he told you, but the BYU Men's Chorus came and sang and I saw Aaron and so I made poor Sister Hayes run in a HUGE circle to catch him so we could say hi!

Sorry, no pictures again, one of the sisters in our district has a card reader and she said I could use it, but I haven't seen her today, so I can't send any. I really haven't taken any anyways:).

Talk to you next Tuesday! Love always,

Sister Wach

 

Side note written by Ricki:  Aaron is Megans cousin (Chris' sisters son).

Hey Familia!

I hope all is well and that everyone is doing great!

This week at the MTC was good! We had some really great speakers and spent lots of hours studying the scriptures! They also changed the amount of time we have to email, because they changed whom we can email we now have an hour to email instead of half of an hour. Though that still doesn't mean there is enough time to email! I'm starting to stress just thinking about it;). I'm still loving my companion! She loves to sing, and so we realized something funny today:). The girls in our district were begging her to sing Phantom of the Opera and I told her I would sing with her and we could sing the song where Meg and Christine sing, me singing the Meg part. Now this is the funny part:) Her name is Christine and mine is Megan, kinda cool:). Also, I want to say thank you for all the many letters (letters are my favorite!) and emails that I've received! I'm attempting to write everyone back, but it's slow work since I can only write on Tuesday. But I love getting all the letters anyways, they make my day! I'm probably the most spoiled missionary at the MTC! Everyday that there is mail I have gotten at least one letter, whether from dearelder.com or handwritten (the best!) and I'm so grateful for the amazing family and friends that I have! Also Mom and Dad, thanks for the packages! You're the best! The cookies were absolutely adorable! The elders all took pictures of themselves biting the sister missionaries heads off;). Super cute;) I ate the one in the all purple dress with the brown hair because I figure that one is probably me;). Also, Mom and Dad, Happy Anniversary! I hope that it was a great one! Sister Hayes and I got to teach our "investigator," Olivera again this week for the last time, and as everyone said he would, he became our teacher. Too bad he speaks Brazilian Portuguese. Though I have a much easier time understanding Brazilian than understanding what Irmao Porter says. Irmao Olson (Olivera) is a great teacher, though we do have to correct his ds and gs sometimes;). Sister Hayes and I work great as a companionship though, she doesn't understand what's being said but she can spit out phrases, and I have a hard time remembering phrases (though I know lots of individual words) but have very little problems understanding. So when we teach we converse back and forth about what's going on haha. I know that when the Lord wants me to get this Portuguese stuff, I will! Oh, we met with the Branch President this week and we talked about as a zone the Stripling Warriors, and how none of them died but all were wounded and President Hodges compared us to them. He said we will all come back wounded, and then he gave examples of wounds. The first he picked on a girl and said a situation where you have been teaching a family and you love them and then they after many lessons tell you they don't want to see you anymore and they don't want to be baptized. The second he asked a boy if he had a girlfriend and he said no, then he asked a girl and she said no, and then my zone threw me under the bus! Next thing I know both Sister Hayes and Sister Alvarado on both sides of me are pointing at me! So he asked if I would feel wounded if my trainer came home and she and Dakota started talking and getting to know each other and they feel in love. That's when I said that his mom would just kick her out! That got lots of laughs, even the president laughed:). Then he said what if he told you that and then he and your trainer got married, would you feel wounded. And I said, yes, I'd kill him. More laughs, sorry President, I didn't mean to be the class clownl;). My mean zone, boy do I love them;). My boss from the MTC, I see her all the time, and she said that she saw pictures of me on Facebook, Mommy, what have you been doing?! Haha. We had some super amazing speakers this past week for our Sunday devotionals. We got to hear from a woman named Mary Ellen Edmunds, who spoke during relief society, and who has served tons of missions and who is just a fantastic speaker! She was a hoot! She talked about how she knows we can do this, and she was just hilarious. She also talked about how to deal with the elders. She said that we couldn't touch them but instead to take a list of the ones we want to touch and then touch them when we get to the reunion, she made this funny face and reached out into the air and said "touch!" Hilarious! I wonder if it's on the church website? The other speaker, his name was Greg Drouby (?) and his is in charge of Missionary Media for the church, so he's in charge of all the "I'm a Mormon" things, and he talked about some campaigns the church is doing, and that was pretty cool. There's one in London going on right now because of that really nasty play, The Mormons, which slanders LDS missionaries. They have 250 of the 1000 double decker buses with ads on them, plus they have whole escelators filled with ads, and the platforms, and the stations, including the two stations that are right near the theather for The Mormons play! The coolest part is that they have ads in the play bills though! They say things like "The book is always way better" (you know how we all say that after reading a book and seeing a movie that is based off the book), and you can request a free copy of the book! One family he talked about did it, and they ended up reading all the way to Jacob before calling the missionaries and saying they knew it was true and they wanted to be baptized! Talk about awesome! Those missionaries in London have got their work cut out for them! The obnoxious sisters who were in Sister Hayes and I's room (their alarms went off at 5:30 but no one ever got up... and they made us feel too uncomfortable to talk) finally left for their area! So we have our room to ourselves until at least the Wednesday after this coming one. We said we were gonna get more sleep last night without them, but what did we do? We stayed up until midnight talking to each other;). I also forgot to turn my alarm on, so that was interesting. What I'm sure was a miracle, we both woke up at 6:31 am. Still a minute late though. Today, for Pday has been great. We didn't go to the temple because Sister Hayes was feeling sick, so instead we got up and got ready and we did our laundry really quickly, then we went back, wrote letters for a little while, and then took a nap! We didn't want to get up, but I said I'd email at 2 and so here we are! Though we're going back to sleep after;). The rest of the day should be good, because we have another devotional tonight.

Well, I love you all and I'm so grateful for all of you! See you in 17 months and two weeks;)

Love always,

Sister Wach

Ola Familia!

Tudo bem?!

So I finally understand what everyone says about the MTC. It's great and it's awful. The food makes you sick, and you really are exhausted all of the time. My companion, Sister Hayes and I have decided that it's the Spirit that makes us so tired! Today is P-day, so we got to go to the temple. We ate lunch there, it was pretty fun. I've sent you a really long letter that should probabluy get there tomorrow. We aren't allowed to write any day except P-day, but we were supposed to write home the first day in our spare time (hahaha, spare time? Yeah right!), so please share it with the extended familia! I'm going to write them letters while I wash my laundry. Tell them thanks for the dearelder letters and that I'll try and get back to them soon:).

Life at the MTC is pretty great! We get to feel the Spirit all the time! The Portuguese is coming along. It's pretty amazing to think that I can understand a ton about the gospel! Sister Hayes and I had to teach a lesson in the TRC on Friday and we bombed it haha. We changed our lesson last second and Sister Hayes didn't say any of her part and so I was just floundering in Portuguese! We couldn't respond to anything he said. It was kind of depressing. Monday morning they surprised us with another teaching time without telling us! We prepared in twenty minutes! We just prayed, bore our testimonies, challenged him to read, and talked a little about Joseph Smith, the First Vision, and the Book of Mormon. He asked me to pray for his son at the end, and I almost freaked out because I didn't know how! Then I looked down at my paper and there it was! I already was planning on praying for the investigator, so I just added e Gustavo! It was awesome:) He even said he felt the Spirit!

The MTC is really interesting. I thought that we would have a very structured day, and we kind of do, but because there aren't enough Portuguese teachers (because the missionaries headed to the Brazil CTM haven't gotten visas, so they stay and use our teachers:P), and so instead we have lots and lots of personal study time, which is when we read our scriptures. The branch president challenged us to restart and get done by the end of the MTC, and I'm already on page 85!

I love my district, they're super awesome! Most of us are headed to Portugal, but the rest are headed to Cape Verde. There are 11 of us, three elders and 8 sisters! It's kind of crazy, but we love it. I love that we all get along so well, and that we aren't like the other districts in our building. What I mean by that is that when the other districts aren't studying and are goofying off, they're playing games and running up and down the halls, what we're doing when we should be studying and we're goofing off is talking about the gospel as a district! I love it. Haha, so the sisters in my district think that the teacher is super hot. Haha. He is pretty cute, but that is so weird.

Well, talk to you next week! Look for that letter! Love always,

Sister Wach!!

 

Me: I asked her where her companion was from:
Meg: Vegas is her home town, but her family just moved to Riverton!:) She's 19. We have the exact same personality! We get along great:) I love her:)

 

Me: she said that she went to the temple - I asked what time: and if other missionaries already spoke Portuguese and then we talked about the teacher. lol:
Meg: We went at 10:15. We did a session, there were tons of missionaries! No, not really, but a few speak Spanish and a few took a semester of Portuguese:). He's cute, but here's the thing, the other sisters talk about him all day, but I am over it haha I think it's because I haven't thought about any guys except Dakota for 18 months that it's so easy for me to not notice haha:) Yeah I got your emails and texts too. Okay thanks! Because Gma and Cherie and Jim have written several times and I don't know when I'm gonna write back!

 

Me: I asked where Cape Verde was and I asked about the people that "they teach"
Meg: Africa! They're not real investigators, they're volunteer members who speak Portuguese and pretend to be investigators:) It was just to test how I was doing with Portuguese:

Time to go:(

Meg: We have thirty minutes no matter when we use it, so we came in to check emails quick so we would know what to write back:P Sister Hayes and I didn't have any:P In fact, she got her first letter yesterday! Poor thing

Me:  I asked a few more questions

Sim. Sim. Sim. Haha I wrote about the first two in my letter! I must go! I love you! I'm out of time! 22 seconds left! and I must be exact! Exact obedience brings miracles! Love, Sister Wach

Let me introduce you to "Sister Wach"