Well friends, you know what happens the moment you find a mango
tree and have a baptism scheduled the following weekend with the sweetest
Marlene with her pink bible and you just turned 20 years old and have many
progressing almas (souls) ready to accept the
gospel and life is good?
You get transferred.
#whoopwhoop
And wow this new area is CRAZY and just KINDA OF
DIFFERENT.
So I was transferred to the ala Natal, as in NATAL,NATAL.
Which is in the city with 5 or 6 bairros (neighborhoods)
and onibuses and 2 shopping malls and everyone is practically running
all the time because they are in such a hurry and essentially completely
different than the smallest little residential area of Cidade Verde. The
crazy thing is that I am serving in the first ala (ward) that was ever established in
all of Rio Grande do Norte!! Including the fact that we meet in the very first
capela (chapel) that was ever built here - which
is very cool and very small. But what is crazy is that the work here is
completely different, which was apparent with my first visit to the capela -
there was just trash everywhere on the ground including old wrappers and
plastic cups, INSIDE the fence. It is a ward that really everyone has forgotten
about and the members are not very strong, and really I have discovered they
need a lot of love. The number of people actually in the records of the ward
number almost about 572, but weekly just a little over 85 is the normal
frequency rate. So my first day here was not spent as a normal day going around
meeting new people to teach and doing a lot of street contacting - it was spent
jumping house to house nurturing and visiting those members who haven't made it
to church in a month or more, have forgotten what the Book of Mormon is about,
or are too sick to leave their home yet still haven't received a visit from a
loved one or amigo. I have been learning that here, the ward doesn't need more
names on the long list of members who don't come or are being forgotten by the
world - not throwing more seeds onto the ground but nurturing the roots and
young saplings that are already struggling to survive. Some people get
distracted with the numbers and the pressures to have physical evidence of your
success as a missionary, but what really is important is that these are real
people needing real love.
This week I really had my eyes reopened to just how much
Heavenly Father loves His children, and just such immense gratitude for my
family which is such a funny random thing. But when I was bent over, picking up
all the trash that littered the ground of the capela I remembered one time when
we were visiting our family in Sun Valley and we stopped by the church to
practice piano for a couple hours (#dedicated) and my sweet mother who spent
the 2 hours stooped pulling weeds and making an effort to make the house of the
Lord a little more lovely, not because of anyone else, but because she really
just loves Him.
Man how much I love them is just unreal.
Give your family a little extra love this week folks, having
a family that speaks kindly and tries to have a little more patience with one
another, who listens when they have had a hard day, or simply there to laugh
and make pancakes and cinnamon syrup - yo there's NOTHING BETTER.
Also funny thought -
I don't know what it is, but literally EVERY day since I
turned 20, everyone in the whole world has asked me how old I am. Which really
isn't that weird until you start figuring out that they are all wondering how
you can be serving a mission because you look like you're SIXTEEN. I kid you
not everyone is INCREDULOUS when I say that I am 20. So I started asking people how old they
thought I was and this was the most priceless example:
- asked a little girl who had 10 years and she says: hmmmm
13?
So yep, staying fresh and young folks despite entering the
second decade of my life so don't stress about me getting old or anything :)
Also sorry my SD card for my camera has been entirely a pain
and hasn't been recognizing my pictures but I'll try to look for a new card for
next week!
MUITO AMOR,
Sister Staheli
