December 3, 2012

Hi!! Today I am e-mailing in a different place because the internet was down in our regular place. This place is really hot and the keyboard doesn't work very well so I'm going to try to be short this week. Oh and before I forget, next week is transfers so I will be e-mailing Wednesday or Thursday depending on when my new companion arrives.

So we baptized the daughter of the man we baptized last week. She is 11 years old (12 next week) and had a really sweet experience with prayer this week that helped her develop enough faith to be baptized. She prayed that she would be able to have a pet dog one morning and that day when she got home from school there were two puppies in front of her house. Her grandparents didn't allow her to keep the puppies, but it helped her to know that Heavenly Father really hears her prayers. So we invited her to pray to know if being baptized was the right choice and she had good feelings so she was baptized! It was really great because she didn't just get baptized because her dad did, but she waited until she got her own answer. Now her and her older sister and her dad are all members and they can do temple work for their mom who passed away. Oh and their younger brother is 5 and the dad received the priesthood yesterday so he can baptize him in a few years. I am so happy for their family and that they are all preparing to go to the temple someday!!

We have Stake Conference this week so I am pretty excited about that. They have a special stake choir for the meeting. The wards here don't have choirs though. That's one of those special luxuries in wards with more than 80 people. Well at least that is how many the bishopbric said we had in sacrament meeting last week. This ward has lots of new babies. I think 4 were born this year and one woman is still pregnant. Two of them are learning to walk, I love visiting the members with babies. 

I feel comfortable talking with whoever on the street, but I still don't understand everything. I know I just need to be patient, but really it would be nice to just know Portuguese already. It's exhausting focusing so hard on everything people say. During lessons I am pretty fluent, I know basically all the gospel vocabulary. I miss speaking English sometimes, but I just try to remember to be grateful for the opportunity to learn a new language. It is frustrating too because people make comments to me that I am serious all the time and it would be good for me to make more jokes and lighten up bla bla bla. I just think to myself that I really am a fun person and people who know me tell me I am funny. It's weird because my whole life people have told me that I am a fun person and now it's the opposite, but my whole life people have been speaking English too so that's probably the difference. I am trying harder to be myself, but it is hard to make jokes and to show the real me when I am constantly focused on conjugating verbs right and thinking of what word makes sense. Patience is a virtue, I know.

I attached some pictures of a motorcycle accident in front of our house this week. We heard a crash and ran out on our balcony to see that a HUGE truck hit a man on a motorcycle. There was lots of blood, but the man on the motorcycle appeared to be okay. An ambulance came and took him away though. It was a pretty exciting way to start the day watching it all happen. 

 

This week I ate lots of treats. The elders in our district made an apple pie because we reached our baptismal goal for November and Sis. F and I made cookies. Chocolate chips don't exist here and neither does vanilla extract, but they tasted okay. 

I think I am going to get letters this week!! And my package that is supposedly waiting for me in the mission home! Wahoo! 

Have a great week and thanks for praying for me.

Love, Sister Laurel Udy
Here are photos from the baptism this week! This one is with Amanda and her older sister and dad.

Here is a photo with the YW Pres. in the ward and the YW.

And this is us eating pizza with Amanda and her family after the baptism! We bought them a pizza partially to celebrate the baptism and partially because it was the 5 year olds birthday on Friday and he didn't celebrate at all, they didn't even have cake. So we had pizza and it was great! I love this family! They are always smiling and giggling.