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Holy Moses, a Baptismal Date!

Hellooooooo family!


I'm going to write this really quickly.  First of all, I have officially learned to do laundry by hand! I did it last week...it takes a lot of time, especially getting stuff to dry on cold humid days, which describes all of last week. The hardest part is just when I have to wring all the water out of the clothes. But it's a good experience. :)

Last Tuesday at district meeting, I got a stack of letters and a package! It was like Christmas! There is also an Elder in my mission who I know from the CTM, who looks like Obama. It's funny. I didn't know he was going to be in the same mission as me until I saw him here. Also on Tuesday (I think), I saw a bus that was jacked up, because it was broken. The front end was off the ground...it was totally weird! But pretty cool. I didn't have my camera though. :(

We taught English to someone last week. We helped her with the alphabet and such...and it makes me really glad that I am NOT learning English! Portuguese is cool, and it helps that I've already studied Latin and French before now. Oh something cool I learned about Portuguese...The word pastor literally means shepherd. It's interesting how all the languages (Latin, English, Portuguese, etc) are all connected. Because pastor is the Latin word for shepherd, and in English it means a leader of a congregation of church. I love it! I want to study more languages again after the mission...at least study Latin again on my own.

I TAUGHT THIS WEEK!!!! I actually spoke during a lesson...this is a big breakthrough. I still don't speak the language well, but every day it gets a tiny bit better. This week, I made big strides, I think also because we have people who are progressing now. The first week was a struggle, with things here and things I heard about home. But this past week, we found people who are interested, people who are progressing, and people who are praying and keeping commitments. We have a couple people committed to baptisms...they were supposed to be baptized this coming Saturday, but didn't go to church yesterday, so now we are pushing it off a week. We have a guy named Mauro who went to church, and we are teaching him, and he should be baptized on the 29th, hopefully with Isabel, Marta, and Rosalva. All people we found this week! And we also found a FAMILY which is fantastic, and we are going to try to work with them too, to be baptized this month. This is so exciting, and I am just starting now to see the joy that truly comes from missionary work. It's hard, it's tiring, but it is all worth it, even for just one person who progresses. D&C 18:15-16 is so true!

Lately, I've been reading a few conference talks per week, from October Conference. It's fantastic, and so refreshing! I love hearing from our prophets and apostles every 6 months, and reading and studying their words over and over. I have learned so much already, and yet still want to learn so much more!

Meetings are the bane of my existence, sometimes. Hah. I have never been to so many meetings!

Finally, something that is weird, is that I am quiet here. Everyone thinks I am a quiet person and I
never talk. Some of them understand the language barrier, while others just don't know why I don't talk. It can be very frustrating when they try to make me talk, not taking into consideration that I only understand half of what they say. But like I said, it's a process, and in just two weeks, I've already seen improvement. I don't like being this quiet. My comp and I are allowed to speak English for a couple hours on Sundays, but it's weird! It's weird to think about speaking English, because we never do, and I never hear English! Crazy. Oh language. It's an interesting thing.

Love,
Karen

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