Hey Mommy!

Love the pictures, looks like it was really fun! Oh, and Tay is SUPER tall! Wow! That's cool that you got to see Sister Pinto, I just talked to her the other day. I told her to tell you I said hi! Haha. 

This week was good. A little bit crazy, but good. Monday, we went to Lisboa and we just kind of wandered around. Tuesday I don't even remember what we did. Then Wednesday we had divisions with the Sister Training Leaders. It went well. Sister Call and I took Manuel with us, and it was really cool for him. We found more people in those few hours than I have in any day in my whole mission! Manuel did some of the contacts just by himself and kept telling people he would call them or pass by to take them to church. He did great. We even ended up getting dinner because one of the doors we knocked gave us dinner! Manuel afterward was like "I was really hungry and I was praying and Heavenly Father answered my prayers!" He's awesome haha. Though, in one of the houses, Sister Call´s camera got stolen. She left her bag in another room with the son of a family and we went and saw their baby. Oops, later we realized it was gone. On Thursday we went and we got the camera back. Talk about a miracle! We weren't exactly sure how we were gonna do it, but we went to the apartment and we knocked and said we'd left something. We explained to the mother that we thought maybe the camera had "fallen out of S. Call´s bag." She got the hint and she called up the son on the phone and she chewed him out in Creole. Then she went and found it in his room. Sadly all the pictures were gone, but thankfully Sister Call had saved her pictures a few days before. We did her a favor and took some really great pictures of us getting ready for bed to replace the rest (hehe). Then on Saturday  I learned something really important. We worked really hard this week looking for new people and doing contacts, and just everything seemed to keep falling. We've also been trying to do activities to strengthen our ward and Miratejo, and almost no one comes. Then Saturday, our ward mission leader planned this big activity about how the members can help to teach and what they need to be doing, and only three people came. A recent convert from the other ward, and two older members from our ward who fell asleep. The recent convert talked about how no one was taking care of him and how he was going to go inactive, and one of the other members left. It was a disaster, and I just ended up sitting at the back of the chapel on the floor crying. All I could think about was just how hard working as a missionary is when the members don't want to help and I just thought, why are we even here. Why don't we just give up. It was Satan speaking but I couldn't help it, and we went out to keep working. We ended up finding a man whose mother had just died and we were able to teach him the 2nd lesson. The spirit was really strong and even if he doesn't progress, at least he knows that Heavenly Father has a plan for us. Then on Sunday S. Warner and I had the pleasure of going to watch 5 of the people she taught in her old area get baptized. That experience just changed the whole way I was feeling. The ward is SO strong and loving there. They just reached out in love toward the new members and the missionaries and the new family was SO happy. It's things like that in the mission that make me realize that there are people here in Portugal who really are ready for the gospel and will be loved and kept strong in the gospel. I regreted those feelings from the day before. It's interesting that one of the things that I think that I've learned the most in my mission is that Heavenly Father loves us and that when things like that happen that are hard, He will turn and show his love or show us that missionary work really is worth it. I'm really grateful that I'm here and that I have the opportunity to serve here in Portugal.

Also, two funny things happened. First off, someone called us "As Primas dos Élderes" or the cousins of the elders. No one knows who we are, so they always say weird stuff like that we're their wives or girlfriends or whatever, but that was the funniest one yet:). Then, at the baptism, I got called Branca de Neve (Snow White) like 4 times by 4 different people haha.

Love you tons! 

Love,

Sister Wach

 

http://www.lds.org/prophets-and-apostles/unto-all-the-world/unto-all-the-world-hastening-the-work-in-europe?cid=HPTU021814479&im=true&lang=eng

I just thought this was cool because at 3:02, you can see Sister and President Fluckiger! Sister Fluckiger is wearing green and you can just see President's hair haha.

Hey Mom!

Thanks for the emails as always.  I'm glad you got some time to rest even if it meant you were sick. I got sick this week too and it was kind of nice to just stay home for a day. I slept for like 8 hours. I think that mostly I was just super exhausted because the next day I was great again. Don't worry about transfers yet, they're on the 3rd of March, so there is one p-day left, so you could write this week and then not write the week after. I don't know if I'll actually be transfered though because we've had some interesting stuff happen this week and it's possible that Sister Warner will leave and I'll get transfer jumped. We'll see. The other sisters who were in our house are still sick. The luckies got to spend the week in the mission home! Though, they haven't left the house (they're now living in another house that was empty that belongs to the mission, thank goodness because it was really hard to leave the house to go work in the rain and wind while they were still in their pjs) in like 15 days to work, and that sounds REALLY boring. One of them goes home in 2 weeks, so that's gotta be kind of sad for her that she's not working. I'm gonna make sure that when that time finally comes around, that I don´t have any energy left and feel like I've left it all on the field.

Well, this week was good. We're still just looking for people to teach, which is kind of a bummer, but after trials comes the blessings! We´ve had lots of blessings and miracles and just funny things happen this week.

Sister Warner and I were looking to go and contact an inactive family and see if they still lived in an area, but they weren't there, and we realized that the neighborhood was really green and beautiful so we decided to walk through some gardens. While we were walking I saw these huge lines and groups of caterpillars and of course was fascinated and had to step on a few and poke them with my umbrella. Then a man came out of his garden to see what was going on, and he told us that they were poisonous (no worries, I didn't touch them with my hands) and we contacted him and he showed us his garden. It was really beautiful and we ended up teaching him about the Plan of Salvation. The Spirit was SUPER strong. I think it was the coolest contact I have ever been in. Then we marked to go to his house. Later when we tried to go back, he ended up having to leave just before we got there. His mother was there though and she answered the door. She was super grumpy. Then we introduced ourselves and she did a 180 and was SUPER nice. Turns out that he'd talked all about us and how he thought she would love to hear what we had to say. It was really cool because their family is really special. I really hope that we'll be able to teach them more in this coming week.

Funny:

1. Cigano Children-
On Saturday, we were walking through a really ghetto area (our whole area is ghetto, but this was a really ghetto area) and there were a whole bunch of cigano (that means gypsy) children and they were all yelling at us "What's your name?" in English, and so we stopped to talk to them. They were super adorable, and one of them said the funniest thing! She said to us that she knew the wife of God´s name and that it was Gloria. It was cute because I can understand why she'd make that mistake in Portuguese because when you talk about the wife or girlfriend of a man, you say it like "Ana of José" and it's the way it's possessive, so in portuguese the phrase is glory of God so that would be the same thing. At home, Glory isn't a name, but here it is:). Super cute.
2. We ironed LOTS of clothes-
People here iron EVERYTHING and we offered to help out a woman we wanted to teach, and it ended up taking FOREVER!
3. We were walking and we said good night to a man walking past, and he put his hand to hide his face, like that would make it so that we couldn't see him and wouldn't contact him! Some people are just a little goofy. We laughed forever afterwards.

4. Creeper

Sister Warner has got herself a stalker! She met him on her last day in her last area (he contacted them and that was all the contact she had with him), and since then she's been getting creepy emails from him that have her nickname on them, and the other day she got a Valentine from him at the mission office, then to top it all off, this week, during church some of the young women knocked on the door of the class we were in and gave me a bag and said that someone had given it to them and said it was for Sister Warner. I got the WORST feeling and I knew immediately who it was from and what it was (I knew it was either flowers, or the part of me that watched to many crime TV shows thought it might be a hand). He'd given the young women flowers for Sister Warner and turned out he was outside! When church had ended he was outside waiting for her (too bad that he didn't come in to church and sit during sacrament because at least then we would have had someone at church...). So the elders went and yelled at him and then we got a ride home. She also got a creepy email from him today. President didn't emergency transfer her, so it's not anything to worry about. But man, sometimes I'm grateful for my acne (and that I'm not blonde) because it makes me ugly haha.

Well, it was a good week, and I love you tons!!
Love always,
Sister Wach

 

Hi Mom!

If anyone understand being tired, it's us missionaries:).I'm glad that things went well with the funeral and the wedding. I didn't recognize Brooke at first, she looked very pretty. I was like why in the world did my mom send me this random picture of this random wedding? But, you should be careful about what you write in your emails to missionaries, soda happens to be a soft spot for foreign missionaries, poor Sister Warner would give her right arm for a Diet Dr. Pepper or a Diet Coke. 

Well, this week was good. On Monday after I emailed, Sister Warner and I went and got our matching companionship thing, we got ourselves some super crazy and mission innapropriate skirts (they're cheetah print;)). Tuesday was good. It was a little crazy because one of the sisters in the house had gotten hurt and she can't walk and so she and her comp had spent the day in the house, and then we had another sister who was leaving and going home the next day. Then to add to it, in the morning we always sing together for companion study, and one of the sisters wanted to sing "Aonde Mandares Irei" (or "I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go"), and so we did. But, the thing about that song is that it's bad luck. If you sing it near transfers you'll either go or you'll stay but it'll not be what you want, but it'll be what the Lord wants. Well, the sister wanted to sing it and she said to us "it's bad luck, but I think that we're far enough from transfers that it will be alright," and so we sang it. Later that night, we got a call from President, and she got emergency transfered! Oops:). Then it RAINED SO SO MUCH!! It was ridiculous. Then Wednesday, Sister Duran went home, and the sister who was being emergency transfered to the house showed up. So then we had our companionship in our house, and then we had Sister Hill (the new sister, who was sick), Sister Decker (who can't walk), and Sister Rivieros (from Peru, and is 39 years old) in our house. Since Sister Decker and Sister Hill couldn't go out, we had Sister Riveiros go with us. She still has that new missionary fire (she's in her 3rd transfer) and just wants to work hard, so that's great. Nothing else interesting happened the rest of the week, but Sunday was really good. On Sunday we went to get our investigators and no one would come. So we went to church and we went to pick up before sacrament (it's the last meeting). It was raining REALLY hard, and it was REALLY windy. By the time we met with the investigator and got back, the sacrament was over and testimony meeting had started. I was really bummed about it because we hadn't had sacrament in 2 weeks because of stake conference last week. But, then I had every missionaries' dream happen. Manuel got up during fast and testimony meeting and he bore his testimony. He did SUCH a good job. He bore his testimony about the Book of Mormon, which was just really cool because he was having doubts about the Book of Mormon. He said that he had been praying to know that the Book of Mormon was true, and he went out with the elders to help them teach, and they were explaining the Book of Mormon when he said he just felt this burning feeling and knew it was his answer. Then after, Sister Warner wanted the sacrament and so we asked the ward mission leader if we could have it blessed for us, and guess who blessed it for us! Manuel! Super cool, and it was his first time, and he did amazing. He's gonna be a fabulous missionary:).

Well, it was a good week. I love you tons! Have a great week! 

Love always,

Sister Wach

P.S. You should watch this. I was watching this while I was writing you, and it was fabulous. The part about President Monson shaking all the children's hand made me tear up haha. 

http://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2009-09-01-on-the-lords-errand-the-life-of-thomas-s-monson?category=feature-films&lang=eng

Hey Mommy!

Sounds like some serious fun! I'm jealous! I'm sure Brazil is great, just from hearing about it from Dad, I'm sure that it's paradise. I love Portugal.   Tell him to ask the missionaries for pamphlets too, maybe the first and the second lesson pamphlets. How did the funeral go? What a great opportunity to do missionary work! Find some references for the missionaries! Remember how you sent me a card by her of the Manti temple? Well, it's now in the hands of a recent convert, who is 13, named Ariana, who thought it was absolutely beautiful:). Good thing you sent me 2:). 

This week was good, it was a little rough, but good. We still don't have any investigators and no one is progressing, but it'll all work out. There is someone here who is prepared to hear the gospel, they're just really hidden. So pretty much all we do all day is do contacts and compete with the Jehovah´s Witnesses. There are a TON of them here. It's ridiculous. They're kind of funny, they're always little old ladies in long skirts, with pamphlets, sunglasses, boots, long coats, and crazy hair. Whenever we pass them I like to say hi, just to see the looks of shock on their faces that I said hi. Haha. They're spoiled though, they only go out on days when the sun is out. Though, that's happened a few times this week. Spring is in the air! I took off my jacket for a little while today and it was great!

Not much happened this week, but we did have something that was kind of cool. When I got to this area, there was a woman named Dica that the sisters were teaching, and I taught her once with Sister Williams and then she never was home again (turns out she got a new job), so we just stopped passing.  Then on Friday, we were looking through the Area Book for people that we could pass, and Sister Warner kept seeing the name Dica, turns out she'd been contacted a few times, and I just kind of brushed it off and said that she was never home. Then later, we contacted a girl and got her address and marked an appointment with her. Then before the appointment we contacted a young man who we see quite a bit, and he acted like he was scared of us. He wouldn't give us his contact info and said he didn't know his address or his phone number, so we just let him go and we went to the appointment with the girl. When we got there, a woman opened the door and looked at us like she knew us. Then I looked behind her in the house and recognized the house, and realized it was Dica! I didn't recognize her because I'd only seen her once before, but I'd seen what the entry to the apartment looked like because other people had opened the door. But it turned out that it was the house of the girl too. Then we talked with Dica a few minutes in the house (she asked why we'd not come back because she said she wanted to be baptized...) and we looked at their family photos and we saw a picture of the boy that we'd contacted! Turned out he was her son and the girl was her daughter! So we are going to be teaching them again. It was a miracle for sure! 

Well, I love you tons!!! 

Love always,

Sister Wach

P.S. I'm still talking in my sleep, though I think not as much because we turned the heater off because it was making it to hot and making it harder for me to sleep:).


From Ricki:  So you know what Megan is referring to:)-  Chris' younger brother David who also had cancer passed away on January 29th after his two year battle.  We went up to Eugene, OR to attend.  Chris spoke at it - he did a fantastic job:) 
Also - Chris is headed to Brazil.  He and my father are going on a cruise.  They will stop at 14 ports, mostly in Brazil where he served his mission.  After the cruise they will do some traveling and then head home from Sao Paulo, Brazil.  No - I'm not going I can't leave my babies for that long. lololo.  I'm excited for Chris to rest, be warm, go back to "paradise" (as he calls it) and eat lots of food.  He's suppose to come back tan and fat:):):):)  No he isn't well but hey - he can be sick here at home where it is cold or he can be sick where it is warm........ I sayyyyyyy go for WARM:)

 

Hey Mommy!!

So, this week was a great week. I LOVE my new comp! She's super fabulous! Love her to death:). Manuel is doing awesome. Still prepping for the mission, and as you can see, he came to a baptism (of the other sisters in the other ward) dressed very nicely (see attached photo). He goes to institute every week and is really excited to be a ward missionary (just like you!) and the ward really wants to send him out on a mission:). As long as he doesn't get deported to São Tome (The problem is that the church is not in São Tome), then we'll all be happy. He's also been working on his family history. Our little eleito! We've been fasting that his stepmother will let us teach the rest of his family, nothing yet, but we're gonna try some brownies, no one can say no to brownies.

So, when I say that this week was great, I really really mean it this time:). I love my comp! We worked really hard and had fun too:). We marked a man named Luis for baptism, but then he unmarked himself when he refused to keep the Law of Chastity (sick haha) and said that those things were "natural" things (he wouldn't take the fact that the scriptures say that the natural man is an enemy to God) and that he didn't believe that was a law from God. There are some really interesting people in this world, plus I can't believe anyone would even break that law with him:P. We saw him the day after, and he had changed his mind. He says he really wants to be baptized and that he will obey all of God's commandments. We're gonna really pray about him first, a baptism isn't worth the risk of his soul if he backs out of that. Missionary work is a little scary when you think about the fact that people who get baptized and make wrong decisions and don't repent are condemning themselves... yikes. We also found a family of 7 people in one day! We were fasting and we were tired and grumpy, and Sister Warner, who had just come from training a greenie, told me to go and contact a young man, and being a willing companion, I contacted him. Turned out he'd just moved here from São Tome to be with his family here and he was very nice, but didn't have a phone and didn't remember the number of his house. So we stood there kind of stumped about what to do until an idea came to my mind to ask him if we could just walk to his house with him. We did, and we found a huge family of seven smiling family members who were really nice and totally open to listening to us. Then, the best part of them all, that is usually the scary thing here, I asked them if they were married, and THEY WERE!!! We're super excited about them. That same day, we also ate at TWO houses. I was extremely full. 

Then Sunday, we had a miracle in church! We'd invited a whole bunch of people and we'd passed lots in the morning and yet no one who we had marked to be there showed up, but we still had 3 people! We'd done a contact in the road on Saturday who is from France, and he came and brought two friends from France! We are going to pass their addresses to the missions in France. I hope that there are some missionaries there who speak Portuguese! We also had a fun party for one of the sisters who is going home next week. It was kind of crazy, because she was supposed to go home at the end of this transfer, and President called and he said he felt like she should be sent home a month early! So, she's on her way home! 

Oh, and poor Sister Warner, I wake her up all the time! I've never talked more in my sleep than this past week! I think that the practices that president has got us doing are stressing me out because I keep having dreams about doing the practices, and then I wake both of us up repeating the practices and scriptures out loud in my sleep... oops:). Just thought that was funny:).

Then today, Sister Warner and I went to this cute little used clothing store, and I (for my birthday and for my halfway mark, which it's almost been a month, but oh well) got myself some really cute used skirts for super cheap:). I'm pretty excited about them:). Now the problem is just how am I going to transfer with them? Good thing that winter is almost over and I can just leave that stuff here...:)

Well, I love you tons and I hope that you have a great week! This week, carry a Book of Mormon with you, give it out to someone who needs it. I promise that you will find someone:). 

Love always,

Sister Wach

 

Hey Mom!

It sounds like it was a good week. Eventful is always better than nothing happening. Give Jake a kiss for me and tell him I said I'm sorry that he hurt himself and that I love him! I did receive your package! Thanks a ton! I also got a few cards, which was really nice, and Gma e Gpa Wach sent me some tights, which I was needing because the tights here stink and I have holes in the toes of all my others:). The life of a sister missionary:).I'm still in Almada, but I got a new companion. Her name is Sister Warner and she's from San Fransisco. I had to wait in the train station for 4 hours for her to get there! Thankfully, Sister Galloway from my district in the MTC had to wait too and so she and I waited for 3 hours together:). Manuel is doing fabulous, he just got called as a ward missionary and he's really excited about it, but he was really sad that Sister Williams left. It's cool because the ward has a goal, they want to have him out on the mission by the end of the year, so they're working on that! I just hope that he can figure out his citizenship because right now he's not a Portuguese citizen, he's from São Tome and was just here studying. But I know that if the Lord wants him to serve a mission, then he'll get everything figured out:). The emails that I send and receive just stay in my LDSmail because it's too expensive to print them out, and I would have to lug them around during my mission and that would stink. I'm just hoping that I don´t get transferred from here until the end of winter so that I don't have to take any of my winter stuff with me. We have no new investigators, which is really hard. We've been strictly obedient and we've been doing contacts ALL day every day, but sometimes we just have our faith tested and then we receive blessings. I can feel that things are about to turn around here with Sister Warner here with me. My birthday was great. I got up and the other three sisters sang Happy Birthday to me, and then Sister Williams made pancakes for breakfast. Then we went out and worked for a while and then we had a cake that I'd made (from the package because I got it the day before) for lunch and all the 6 of the sisters were there. It was really fun and they tried to sing to me in portuguese but it went really badly haha. The song is different in Portugal than in Brazil and so none of us know it all the way, we hit this point where when the Portuguese sing it the words become inaudible and so we just kind of all mumbled at that part haha. Oh, and Cátia from São Miguel called and wished me a happy birthday, so that was really cool. Then the rest of the day we just worked:). It was good. I liked it a lot. On Sunday, we do go to all three classes, except instead for going to regular sunday school, they have one especially for investigators and recent converts that we go to. 

Things are going well here. We really still aren't teaching, and that´s hard, but as long as we just keep trying, everything will work out. Truthfully, there is not anything to talk about. Sister Williams and I taught our first first lesson (the restauration) together for the first time in the transfer, so that was interesting. We're working on finishing up teaching our recent converts and just looking for new people. 

Oh, and I learned some AWESOME news! Remember José, my first baptism, the one in Ponta Delgada? Well, before I moved from the islands, he moved back to Canada, and so next month he's going to go to the temple for the first time! Then in October he's going to Utah to see all the temples!! So I might be able to see him right after I get home! I'm SO excited for him! He is really really awesome!

Well, I love you! Give everyone there my love! Thanks for everything mom!

Love always,

Sister Wach

 

Hey Mom!

I love the picture! It's adorable! Tell everyone that I said thanks and that I love them all!:). I'm glad that you had a great birthday! It sounds like it was a fun day, though I do not want to hear what tasty food you ate or what movie you went and saw that I have to wait 9 more months for;). That's cool that you got to go to Sunday School, and I'm excited for Ryan to start his mission papers (I want you to send me a video when he opens his call) and I hope that Jacob LOVED the temple:). I haven't gotten the package yet, but I'm sure it will get here eventually. The dermatologist went well. The lady said that it's looking good, and she's right, I'm not really clearing up everywhere, but my forehead is really clear and she said the rest will be in a few more months. It was kind of a nice day when we went because we had to go back to Benfica. We'd just finished divisions with the sister training leaders (I went with Sister Nigri from Brazil, who is really great, and I learned a lot, and I contacted a TJ on accident and wow, in the end of the contact, he was crying and he even let us pray with him! It was a super strong contact!  Afterwards, Sister Williams and I took the metro from here in Feijo to Pragal where we took the train, and then we took another metro to Alfornelos and then walked to the office. I'd actually gotten a package from Gpa and Gma Wach which was really nice of them, tights, which was perfect, because I had just gotten a hole in my last good pair of black ones:). Then we went to lunch in the mall (I had Brazilian food, tell Dad he should be jealous;)) so that was a change:). Then when we got back to our area and we had a ward activity where we watched a movie:). It's always nice to have a little change.

Well, this week was good. We saw the drunk man who I almost hit with my umbrella a few times. He had a lovely metal stick this time and wanted to know where my umbrella was haha. We see him all the time, and he always says "Ola Sister! Onde está a guarda chuva?!" I think I'll remember him forever:). 

Well, truthfully,  I can not think of anything else to say about the week! It was one where everyday was the same. It was a little rough:). It was cold and dark and rainy. Plus we have absolutely no investigators. I don't think we taught any actual lessons this week other than for our recent converts. Manuel is doing really good. He's been going to the Young Single Adults activities and he likes to walk with us in the road and do contacts. He also is going to talk to the bishop this week to talk about preparing to serve a mission, or at least a mini mission. Oh, and during church yesterday, the bishop gave a really strong talk about how the members need to bring someone to church next week for Ward Conference, and invited everyone to do so, and so after church, Manuel was telling us that he was going to bring someone.  He's a really great guy. Then Pedro, who was baptized just before I got here, he got the priesthood on Sunday (Sister Pinto actually found him when she was here, and she calls him every Sunday to make sure he went to church, in fact, I got to talk to her yesterday on the phone! Super weird:)), and he's super excited to use it. Then another recent convert who had gone inactive, she came to church on Sunday because we taught her this week with one of the counselors in the YWs (the girl is 15), and wow the counselor did amazing! The counselor, Irmã is a recent convert also, who was baptized in São Miguel and moved here. There are SO many amazing members here! 

Our only investigators that we have, we're going to drop. It's really sad. The man, M., is just to much of an atheist, and the mother just thinks we're entertainment, those cute little American girls;). We went over to their house yesterday and we talked about the Book of Mormon and we watched the film The Testaments with them, and M. was really rude and just laughed through it. Sister Williams and I were pretty offended by that, and when we got out of the house, we both decided that we weren't going back because we're not helping anything, plus the house is just not a good environment. I've never taught in house and had an investigator that makes me doubt what I'm doing until now (Sister Williams said the same), and we decided that it wasn't worth it to keep teaching them. Maybe one day they'll both be ready. I think that one day M. will accept, but not just yet. It’s always sad to drop people, because we just come to love them and we feel sad that what we've got, that will bring joy into their lives, isn't what they want.

It's almost time for transfers again! This is the last week of the transfer! Kind of crazy! Sister Williams will probably not stay any longer, so I could have a new companion next week! 

Well, I love you tons! Have a great week!

Love always,
Sister Wach