Hopefully you´re not tired of hearing
about my crazy adventures in Brazil yet :) I hope that everyone is doing
well and enjoying this beautiful time of year when we get to think
about Jesus Christ and the wonderful Gift that He is :)
Sister
Bundy and I worked our tails off this week and God has blessed us with
quite a few new investigators! We´ve been teaching a woman named Fati,
and another woman named Tina, and they are both so prepared and so
receptive! Tina is almost 82 years old! She´s living proof that it is
never too late to come to Christ :)
I stepped
into a hole in the sidewalk and twisted my ankle earlier this week, so
that has been a bit of a trial, but it´s recovering and God is blessing
me with added strength for sure.
There have
been so many moments this week where it was just so obvious that God was
guiding us exactly where we needed to be. At one point, we were feeling
pretty down because all our people cancelled on us. We didn´t have a
lunch appointment, so we were about to go home and make lunch for
ourselves, but we decided to just skip lunch and keep working. Not five
minutes later, a man stopped us and said, "Are you Mormons? I need to
talk to you!" (Yes, yes you do.) Turns out he heard about our English
class and wants English lessons and to hear about the Gospel as well!
God definitely wanted us on that street at that moment. If we had gone
home, that man might never have seen us. I know that God directs this
work.
We´ve also been working hard with Mar to
prepare him for baptism. He´s really struggling with quitting
cigarettes, but I know he´ll get there eventually. He owns a pizzaria
and he made us a pizza last night! Pizza is different here, but super
good!! I was so happy.
In other news, our house
in infested with cockroaches. It´s become a pretty serious problem. On
Wednesday night, we were trying to sleep, but Sister Bundy kept hearing
noises, so I flipped on the light and there was a HUGE (milano cookie
size) cockroach on her jacket, hanging on the closet. Up to this point,
we had never found a cockroach in our bedroom, so it was definitely
unnerving. Before we could kill it, it crawled behind our big wardrobe.
So our neighbor came over and helped us take a bunch of things off the
wardrobe (from past Elders) and we found a NEST of cockroaches!!
Complete with eggs. I don´t think I´ve ever been so scared in my life.
We killed 5 cockroaches that night, and then tried to sleep. We decided
to start going through our house, room by room, and cleaning out
everything!! This house has had Elders in it for years, and they never
cleaned anything, so it´s pretty awful. Today, we did the kitchen. In
four hours, we cleaned out everything and killed about 12 cockroaches
and more eggs. It was probably the scariest thing I´ve ever done. We´re
going to talk to President about getting our house professionally done
or something, because we can´t keep doing that.
Despite
the cockroaches, this week was great. I love my companion. I love this
area. And I love all the people we get to talk to every day. Transfers
are next week, and I can´t imagine being transferred from this area. I
love it so much.
Yesterday, we got to help with a party for orphans here
in Cidade Lider. When Sister Bundy and I first arrived, we weren´t
quite sure what to do to help the kids. But Sister Bundy had the idea to
have me design the children´s names for them. A stack of paper later,
we had a long line of children waiting for me to design their names. As I
designed their names, Sister Bundy and I talked with the children about
the dreams and their worth. It was so precious. I am so grateful for
the opportunity to serve.
I hope you are all
finding things you love in the midst of all the craziness of every day.
Sometimes, it´s easy to get down about the tough things in life. But I
know that if you just look up and ask God to show you something
beautiful, He will indeed do just that. There are beautiful things in
this world, even amidst great trouble and trials. God wants to find
happiness in life, and He has prepared many beautiful things along your
way if you´re willing to look for them :)
Dont´t forget your prayers or how loved you are!
All my love,
Sister Doyle
