Thanksgiving 2013

Thanksgiving, 2013

Hi everyone, this is Sister Peart’s mom. Right now I get the exciting opportunity to live vicariously through my daughter and serve a foreign mission. I thought I’d take some time today and write a Thanksgiving letter vicariously for her. I’m pretty sure this is what she would say:

You know how you don’t appreciate the things you have until you no longer have them? Here are some things I REALLY appreciate and look forward to having again:

-     Being able to call or email my mom and hear her melodious voice and receive her glorious wisdom and counsel. (Or talk to my dad, siblings, friends, and other family members.) Her cooking would be good right about now, too.

-     Having both hot and cold running water in my house. Having both a washing machine and dryer. Having a bathtub with a shower head and curtain. Having a reliable sewer system so I can flush everything down the toilet.

-     Having weekly trash pickup at my house.

-     Having mirrors in my apartment.

-     Being able to drive a car. Being able to use the internet whenever I want. Facebook!

There are also things I appreciate and am thankful for wherever I go:

-     Knowing that Jesus Christ loves me, and you, and he wants all of us to return to Him.

-     I can be forgiven of my sins.

-     I can have the Holy Spirit wherever I am and I’m thankful for his promptings.

-     There are good people, kind people, happy people, helpful people everywhere I go.

-     I have a healthy body that can withstand hours and hours of walking. It can also (eventually) withstand another country’s cooking and different cuisine.

-     I’m thankful to have inherited my mom’s “smarts” so I can quickly learn a foreign language, my mom’s “great personality” so I can make friends any and everywhere I go, her pale skin and beauty that gets me noticed everywhere I go. But I do wish I had not inherited her “athleticism” (or lack thereof).

-     I’m thankful for good friends and family members who write me letters often and for those of you who don’t, you have no excuse! Email them to my mom and she will make sure I get them!

I am so thankful to have the gospel in my life. I am honored to be a representative of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I am quickly coming to love the people in Brazil and I’m so thankful for all they teach me. I also want to let you, my friends and family, know that I am in the right place at the right time. I miss you all but this is where I need to be. I’ll have so many stories to tell when I get back! I love you,  Sister Peart

Ahh!

Hi Everyone!

Sorry this letter is going to be super short! We moved into a new house today, and it´s been suffering under the care (or lack thereof) of the Elders. So we need some extra time to clean it...

We had another baptism this week! Gabriel! I almost cried at the baptism, which is saying a lot. I don´t usually cry. It was kind of embarrassing. I had to stop paying attention for a little bit to get myself under control. No tears fell, so it doesn´t count as crying.

I was only crying because Gabriel started crying when his mom went up and said a little speech. She got baptized right when I got into this area, and now both her son and daughter are baptized. Gabriel is a really special kid. When we wanted to start teaching him, we asked him what he wanted. He said he wanted to learn how to be happy. So we taught him. :) At one point, he wanted to give up, but Sister Bruno promised that he would be happier once he got baptized and was obeying the commandments. She told him that if he didn´t feel happier after he got baptized, then she would throw away her missionary nametag. After the baptism, she asked him if she had to throw out her nametag, and he said no, she could keep it. It was sweet.

Other than that....Sister Jennings is probably going to die from a flesh-eating bacteria. She and Sister Bruno went running one morning and she fell and destroyed her knee on the sidewalk. Which we all know is completely sanitary....not. I always knew running was bad for you.

Today, when we moved into our new house, I learned what termites look like. I had never seen one before. 

I think that´s it for now, but I sent a bunch of pictures to mom, so hopefully yáll can see them soon.

Amo vocês!

Sister Peart

 Breaking in new shoes. Gotta love those tan lines!

Wall Graffiti

 

Making french toast

Interesting Week

Hey Everybody,

This week I kept a better list of things that happened, so now I´m not just sitting here, staring at the screen and trying to remember what happened this week.

The first story was only 3/4 my fault and sucked a lot. Last Monday we were going to our zone meeting, but we decided to just go by ourselves and not wait for the other sisters. To get to the meeting we have to take two buses. The stupid Ónibus system changed its route a few weeks ago, so we weren´t exactly sure where we were supposed to get off the first Ónibus. We were both sitting there watching the buildings and the bus stopped and opened the door. I was thinking to myself "I think maybe this is the stop?", and then my companion said that she thought this might be the stop. So we ran off the bus before we missed our opportunity, because what are the chances we would both, independently, pick the wrong stop?

We soon realized that it was not the right stop. We were already late, so we quickly walked in the direction of the terminal where we usually take the second Ónibus. After a little bit we asked a man how far it was to the terminal. He said it took about 30 minutes to walk there and that it was just 3 stops away. We had a decision to make; it definitely does not take 30 minutes to walk 3 stops, so one of these points was not true. We decided that maybe it takes him 30 minutes to walk there (Brazillians generally walk a lot slower than we do), so we decided to just go for it. We walked and walked and walked, and after about 5 stops we still hadn´t arrived. At that point we were super late, and we knew our zone leaders were probably going to be irritated, but oh well. We walked and walked and walked and we ended up on this weird sidewalk. This has got to be the WORST sidewalk in existence. It´s crumbly and sucky and right up against what I can only describe as a jungle wall. It was our only option, so we kept going. Everything was just fine for dear Sister Bruno (who´s like five foot nothing) but I was plowing through all sorts of plants that I didn´t recognize, eating all sorts of bugs, and started bleeding on the inside of my shoes from some blisters I had.

In the end, we got to the meeting like an hour late, sweating buckets, but we still beat our zone leaders. :)

To continue with this theme of "gross, dirty and sweaty", I got pooped on by a bird. So that was awesome. We were sitting on a bench getting ready to start a fast, and this bird poops right on me. We walked to the nearest shop and asked the lady for some toilet paper. I explained, or at least tried to, that a bird pooped on me. She just laughed and went to get the paper. As she was getting it, the other lady expressed her (incorrect) opinion that I was just lucky. In the end, it turns out that the first lady´s husband is from Indiana. So we went back on Saturday and talked to their whole family. They don´t live in our area, and they weren´t super interested in hearing about the church, but it was still kind of cool. Super weird, but kind of cool. Americans are very distinct.

Later that night, we were sitting in recent convert´s house, reading the Book of Mormon. Everything was cool...We´re all so spiritual...When she grabbed my head and started tearing through my hair. My reaction was obviously to almost fall off my already broken chair, but luckily she was holding my head very securely... After 5 minutes of hair tearing she announced to the world that I have lice, and that I needed to go to the pharmacy and buy medicated shampoo. We finished our visit, and started the long ride home so that Sister Bruno could check my hair. It was a VERY long ride; for both of us. I was itching all over with the idea of being covered in bugs, and Sister Bruno kept looking at me like I was about to grow a second head. When we finally got home, Sister Bruno went through my hair and found it to be completely free of lice and eggs and any other gross things. All she found was a little black fleck of dirt. Close one. Thanks for the scare....better safe than sorry though, right?

In other news, I almost broke my arm this week on the Ónibus. My stage 3 technique of controlled falling was disturbed by the intrusion of someone else´s body, so I ended up falling and catching myself on a pole. With my arm. After that it got pretty swollen, and it still hurts now. 4 days later. But it´s own of those stupid invisible bruises. So it just hurts a lot but looks fine. Dumb.

We also have been harrassing the general public. :) We were doing contacts one day in the street and I met this guy named Alfredo. My companion immediately proceeded to inform this poor guy that his name means a delicious type of pasta in English. Now, every time we see him, she tells him that she really wants pasta. Poor guy. He´s only 19, and is pretty much being stalked by these Americans that keep telling him that his name makes them hungry for foreign pasta.

Also, I am very sorry if nothing in this email makes sense. I´ve proof read it several times now and I keep finding major mistakes. The first time I wrote the last sentence of that story it said "Americas that keep telling they that his name he makes him hungry". It´s a real problem...Portuguese...I blame it on the Portuguese, but let´s be real: that sentence would be a hot mess in any language.

Anyway. I hope yáll all have a great week! Writing letters to missionaries would bless your week and make it even better. Just an idea. :)

Love,

Sister Peart

PS, one day I will send pictures. And videos. One day....

Whoa!

Hey Yáll,

So this week was a little bit insane. We had four baptisms on Saturday! Wooooooo! And one day in the future I will actually send pictures of all these baptisms. So you know that I´m not lying. Raquel, Renata, Guilherme and Steven all got baptized Saturday and confirmed on Sunday. It was awesome. We had cake. It was the first baptism that I´ve had with cake. But we figured if someone made cake, then more people would come to the baptism. Success.

So I´ve reached a whole new stage in how I ride the Ónibus. As far as I can tell, there are three stages:

Stage 1: You freak out every time you get on the bus because it´s pretty much like riding a rollar coaster while standing up. You almost fall down every 5 seconds and you sometimes almost stab people´s eyes out with umbrellas.

Stage 2: You´re determined to look like you know what you´re doing, so you concentrate a lot on where you put your hands and feet, how you move, time everything with when the bus turns and goes over speedbumps and such.

Stage 3: (Where I am now) You stop caring about what you look like, and have accustomized enough that you use enough physics to move about in a state of constant falling. Get on the bus. Swipe your card. Use the momentum from the bus speeding up to through you through the revolving gate thingie. Grab the nearest handle to your desired seat and use that to direct your fall into the seat. It works pretty well.

While I was with Sister Sorensen, we developed a fun game to play during rush hour on the Ónibus. Brazillian Twister. The rules? Put your hands and feet in spots that don´t already have hands and feet and try not to be the first one to fall down. My dream is to drive an Ónibus in São Paulo. One that is covered with big dots in all the primary colors. Plus green. :)

For the record, as I was writing this, I was eating these tasty chocolate wafer thingies that I´ve developed an addiction too. Only just now I found a rock in one of them. Or rather, my teeth found a rock in one of them. No longer hungry...

So for the baptism, I told Renata I would do my hair. So we show up to their house on Saturday morning and I´ve got my hair all straightened and contacts in and stuff. She decides to do our makeup. She does Sister Bruno´s and it´s very Brazillian, but cool. Then she does mine. They don´t have a mirror in their house, so I pretty much just hope that it doesn´t look ridiculous. Then Raquel comes home. She takes one look at me and demands to know what Renata was thinking. She insists that those colors are only appropriate for going out at night. She then takes all my makeup off and redoes herself. Still don´t have a mirror, so I didn´t really see what it looked like until I got to the baptism. It was dramatic, but nice.

Anyway, while we were at the baptism, someone told me that my hair was tasty. I wondered if maybe there was some other meaning for that word that I wasn´t understanding. That night I asked the Brazillian sister that we live with, and she said nope, it doesn´t make sense to call hair tasty. So yeah. That was new.

I´m trying to remember what else happened this week...I´m back to eating these tasty wafer thingies, in case anyone was curious. It´s a pretty hopeless situation. They are here, and I must eat them. I´m just chewing them a little more slowly, so I don´t break my teeth on any more rocks. Oh yeah. This week I was looking at a bunch of pictures of sisters from this mission. Before and after pictures. It was terrifying. I vowed never to eat again. Then I went out and bought some chocolate wafers. So much for that...

Thanks for all the letters this week! Our zone leader decided to read all the names of the letters from the pulpit, so I looked super popular. Jared, Rachel and Jacob&Tammy. I am in the process of responding, I promise. :)

Anywho, I think that´s pretty much all for this week. I really need to get back in the habit of writing things down as they happen. This week just flew by. I think because we were working so hard with our baptisms this week.

Have a great week!

Sister Peart

Kinda Boring

Hey yáll!

Not much happened this week to write about. It was kind of a tough week and I forgot to bring my old planner that has all the stories that I haven´t written about yet. :/

We had transfers at the beginning of the week. I am staying in my same area and I got put into a trio with two other Americans; Sister Bruno and Sister Oborn. We only had Sister Oborn for 5 days and then she got transferred back to her old area, but it was a good 5 days as a trio.

Tuesday night, after transfers, we realized that we were going to have 7 people sleeping in our house that night. This house really is only big enough for two people. We´ve been having four sisters there, because the stupid elders refuse to move out of the house in our area, and we make it work. But 7 is just too much. We have two beds, one of which is broken in the middle, so it sags like a hammock. Sister Brita and Sister Jennings slept on the beds. We put two of our three cushions together and Sister Bruno, Sister Oborn, and myself slept sideways on the floor. Sister Sorensen and the sister that was her companion until she left got to share the last cushion on the floor. It was a little ridiculous, but everyone survived. The best part was the bathroom we all got to share...

Let´s see....what else...Sister Oborn almost lost her eye. And I´m not even exaggerating. On some streets the gates have these metal trays that stick out for people to put their trash on. I don´t know why it´s better to suspend the trash in the air rather than set it on the ground, but whatever. Anyways. They have these trays that stick out over the sidewalk about eye level if you´re shorter than me. Sister Oborn was walking along, looking at the ground, and BOOM. Smacked her head on the tray. She had a cut that was so close to her eye that it was touching the inner eyelid. Then it puffed up and turned colors. She was a little less than pleased about that.

Sorry, I know this is not a very interesting letter, but I guess that happens sometimes, right?

Have a good week!

Sister Peart

PS, Obrigada Irmão Fabio! Minha mãe gostou das coisas no Face. :)

 

My new companion