The Lord works for our good.

June 15, 2015

OI!

Glad to hear you guys are doing well! Funny story, so before Sister M. returned to the states she left me two boxes of Mac and Cheese haha and this week we ate the last box, I was missing home so I made potatoes :) with eggs :) it reminded me of Grandma Post with the Mac and Cheese and then you (Dad) with the potatoes. So I had a little taste of home this week :)

It is crazy to see the weeks pass by. Already we are on our last week together, Sister V. and I. It is possible that she will leave next Monday or Wednesday. I will probably stay here and work, and have members stay with me and work with me. It will be interesting haha but I am excited for a little change :)  and to shake it up a bit and get to know some other sister missionaries ;) haha

I still talk with Sister S. when I get the chance. She is still cute and fluffy as ever. The work is going on, and it is amazing to watch the hand of the Lord direct His work!

Here is a cool story for ya, so this last week the Elders of Itacoatiara, they use the same church building as us, we serve in different branches, were walking when a woman walked up to them and said, my daughter needs to be baptized, and so does her cousin. The elders said great lets baptize them this Saturday. haha turned out that the mom was a menus activo so we had a baptism of a nine and eight year old girls :) it was cute :) 

Anyways this week I realized a lot of things. One thing that is really big that I realized is how the Lord works for our good. Everything that is in and happens in the church is for our good. To help us change and internalize the changes that they become a part of us. Seriously the callings we have, church each Sunday all of it is to help us! It is amazing to watch my testimony grow in the small things that make such a huge impact! Sorry this email is small this week.

But I love you! Please keep praying for our investigators, they need them. I know the Lord has already touched their hearts; they just need the courage to take the steps. Pray that they can be strong and take the first step! And not let fear keep them from this huge blessing of the gospel! I love you!

Love,

Sister Post

oi mãe!

The heat has started to kick it up a few knots.

June 8, 2015

Oi Mom and Everyone!!!

eh... This month will mark six months here in Brazil in like one week.. so yeah crazy haha I don’t think I remember how things work in the states because the things that I thought were weird when I arrived are now normal haha funny how that works :P

This week: wow! This week has been amazing!! We had splits with Sister R. e Sister J., something really cool. So Sister J. is my ``grandma`` because she was Sister S.´s (trainer) trainadora! Wow I love Sister J. so, so much! It was such a good two days with her! It was like I was back with Sister S. it was so good! haha we taught so well together! Anyways I learned so much from her! She is so cute! 

Week of miracles! So guess what happened last Tuesday? I seriously think that it was a huge miracle haha so we went to the house of Eli and Luc. Clapped; clapped; clapped; waited, waited, waited, clapped; clapped; clapped…. waited, more and more. The whole time I am just praying right, please, please let them be here and ready to go to the (court house) cartorio. After like five minutes I was really sad, then we were like, one last time and we clapped and waited again. When we were about to walk away we paused and heard someone walking towards the door! They were there! So we went in and talked with them and they were like, we will wait two more weeks for the check from work to pay for it, and i was like so happy because I had a really good feeling about it getting done and then we asked if they found witnesses and she was like yeah you two, and I was like no, we aren’t Brazilians we can’t be your witnesses and then they were stressed but then I was like but you have your daughter and I will call an elder. (we only have one elder who is Brazilian the rest of us in our district are from other countries) and we got him to go to the place, we went to the place, and it all got put together and on the 27th of June they will be married, baptized, and have a reception! yay! What a process! Going from working with them all last transfer to having it all come together is amazing!  Luc liked church Sunday! Lots of people talked with them and Eme and Wes told me the things they learned in primary. It was a good week :) when i asked Wes what he learned he said ``coisas de Deus`` like things of God haha it was funny.

Another miracle. So a teenager that was a referral opened our way to talk to his mom. So last Sunday he came to church, and this week we went looking for him. I was with Sister J., and Aida, his mom, was in the house and we asked if we could share a small message with her and she accepted it really openly. Then Saturday when I returned with Sister V. we taught the plan of salvation and she had a problem with being baptized again, and i explained what is needed and then it like clicked and she accepted! Sunday she came to church and really like it! So I am really excited to help her family be baptized!

The work is picking up and I feel like I have like no time! Well I always felt like I didn't have enough time in the day to do things but right now it is really busy. haha it is fun :) also we have a cute couple, Sab and Iza that we are teaching. She is this crazy bubbly girl, and he is like quiet and doesn't talk to us and it is funny to see them together because she is crazy haha but they are cute and progressing. 

The heat has started to kick it up a few knots.... like yeah, I can’t even lay down and not sweat, standstill, or literally if I do nothing, I am still sweating buckets.. haha

My body is doing better! yay haha I have allergies pretty good down here, It is funny because I have a smokers cough that is really loud and strong and people look at me weird all the time haha it is funny. 

haha photos:  

Oh and I cut my hair.. haha boa sorte. ;P

us four in our apartment 

 I think the last photo was of an area of water.?

So the water rises up and we have to walk on what is called a ponte (bridge), which is just a wooden walkway, to visit people in certain areas.  My companion has like a hard core fear of walking of them, so I have to hold her hand and walk her across and it is really funny when people try to pass because she doesn’t move from the middle board, and usually it only has three.. haha 

Anyways keep working hard :) I love you!

Love,

Sister Post

Milagre!

June 2, 2015

Mom and Everyone!

 Well this week was a little crazy!  We saw miracles! First off; Eliane and Lucio:  here is a story for you; so last transfer we set dates for them to be married and to have a baptismal service, and Lucio had a back slide and didn~t talk to us at all and we keep talking and teaching Eliane and she started to look for another house so that she could be baptized! (she is so amazing! she has so much faith! that she has seen angels and had so many amazing dreams and had a dream of the temple, though she thought it was another chapel but when she said they were all in white Sister Vega and i looked at each other knowing she had just described being in the temple with her mom one day! anyways) so,  we went to their house, this last week because Lucia called from upstairs to where we were in the kitchen and talked with Eliane then she handed me the phone and said he wanted to talk. So i talked with him and he said he wanted us to come over the next day at 7 so that we could talk and i agreed and then we hung up. When we returned the next day they weren't there and i was thinking no, please, no. (like i have so much love for this family, i want nothing more than them to come unto Christ and save their family) and so we talked with Adriele, after like 20 minutes they walk in together and sat down at the table everyone else leaves so it is just us four. We share small talk for a little bit and then i just let it go. I talked so straight forward and was like look if you want to protect your family from what is going on, you need Christ. If you want to stay with Eliane, you need Christ and i have no idea what all i said, but like for an hour i talked to them about lots of things. Then Eliane said if he wanted her to stay in their house he was to marry her, and then we set a date (tomorrow) to go to the marriage place and get them started and then i marked the 20th of June for their baptism! It was a huge (miracle) milagre! and now i need muito, muitos (many, many) prayers for them! Please, please pray for them!! Please! 

Another miracle, so this week was like the first time since being here that members have given us referrals and we contacted them and like half of them are already golden! I don~t know if i said this before but i love teaching gospel principles!! So this week we had a lot of progression! And i am so excited for this week! Keep praying! I feel the strength of your prayers! Keep being awesome and a good example! I love you so much! I love the quote and i am so excited to read the talk! 

I heard about Elder Perry, it is sad, i will miss him but how amazing were his last words in General Conference!

MISSIONARY WORK! It is so crucial that the members help! Missionaries can’t do anything without their help! It is so, so, so very hard! I understand that now!! So if you have a fear (this is for anyone that reads) of talking or sharing the gospel, have the missionaries teach you the restoration!! Receive this lesson! and you will feel the power needed, you will remember why this is so important! This message has the same importance as the Angels who announced Christ´s Birth!! The Gospel of Christ is again on the earth! I know this is true! I know that we have a Prophet who speaks with Jesus Christ, who knows Him! I know we have Apostles who also speak and Know Him!! This is Huge!"!! So many people don’t know this! Revelation is back! and we need to walk towards our salvation, we can’t sit back and think all we have to do is believe; no, the gospel Christ taught was not one of ``convenience`` (The Convenient Messiah-Elder Holland) no, we need to ``learn heaven`` and `practice` for it. We will all receive immortal bodies. what is to be determined is how long we plan on staying is God`s presence, and how comfortable we plan on being by him. (Brad Wilcox-His Grace is Sufficient.) 

Keep being awesome! I love you!!!

photos:

I miss frozen yogurt so I bought some yogurt and stuck it in the freezer and made my own haha :)

Love,

Sister Post

  

Teaching Sunday School

May 25, 2015

OI!!!

I am doing better :) this week i learned a lot about myself. One thing i learned yesterday is that i love to teach Gospel Principles class on Sundays!! Wow! So we show up to church and they are like yep you are going to teach today and Sister V. turned to me and i was like; well then.. haha so i didn~t prepare anything, how could ? i didn~t know i was going to teach.  So i found the next chapter, read the headings of the sections, and then just started talking. At first i kind of rambled about the topic and then it was like a wave of change just happened all of a sudden i was seeing lines in the book stand out that we read, and i asked people questions and then they shared powerful testimonies and we all learned together! The Spirit helped a lot! haha It was like the words were in my mind and I just spoke a lot of different things. Then i would look down at the book when someone was talking and read ahead to find that i~d already talked about what was to come. After the class Sister V. told me i gained her trust with teaching haha and others said that the spirit was really strong in there. It was way cool!

Another thing i learned; i feel things really deep. haha like when i learned this week that a woman we had just met named Maria split from her husband i felt so much sorrow and she isn~t in our area anymore and i don’t have contact with her but i feel that she will come in contact with the church again. Other things have happened this week where i just felt so much for people, and then i found this scripture today in John 15:13 ´´Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.`` It is talking about Christ how no one has more love than he; he who calls us friends and in turn all he asks is that we first love the Father; Heavenly Father and Him, Jesus Christ. Then love your neighbor. If we can develop even a portion of the Love they, Christ and God have for us, our bodies would hum with love from our toes to our head.

Then i found this scripture today 1 Corinthians 10:13 ´´There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able to bear it.`` Wow what a scripture! and it is so true! Why would we be here to fail? He would never do that to us! We first need to be willing, and then try with the help of Him we can overcome anything and everything that could happen in life!

Then this scripture will happen Philippians 4:7 ´´The peace of God, which passeth all understanding`` this is the greatest feeling in the whole world. Once upon a time i asked, how would i know that i am forgiven?? And the only thing people said was, you will know and it is exactly like the scripture says, it is beyond our understanding this feeling.

This is the message to the world! :) I love being a part of it!

 So here’s the story about Sister A.

hahaha Sister A! i love her :) she is cute :) so last week when we went to Manaus for the tour of the 70 we were told we were staying in a missionary home that hasn~t had missionaries in there. So we show up and there are three sisters who were going to their home. and then when we got to the house we found out there were five beds! yay perfect! One for each of us! Then we found out that three more sisters were coming to stay there too... hahaha  i heard that there was a missionary with who has been out 7 months who is from Cape Verde; e um americana que tem 4 (and an American who has been out 4 months); e (and) another who just finished training with the sister leaving to go home and it was like already 11 at night. Given this area of the house isn~t the best for us sisters to be walking around at night, then we have an American, Cape Verde and a greenie walking around and us sisters are thinking, where are they; anyways they finally show up around 11:30ish and i see the Cape Verde sister and we talked lots cuz she and i have talked before and i was terrible at speaking then, so she said i am a bajilion times better now hahaha then i saw Sister A. and i like was like ahhhh!!!! and gave her a huge hug! Because she was trained by Sister R. who was my sister training leader, and so we just talked and talked. Then came the situation of the beds.. haha and so we were trying to figure out who was going to share beds and they were like well Sister Post where do you want to sleep, i laughed and looked at Sister A. and said, with the American of course! bahaha it was funny because everyone made jokes and such. Then we stayed up for another couple hours talking and shared my shoulder story and just talked about her experience and the language and all things normal haha :) but i love her, she is so stinking cute! :)

 até próxima semana! muah!!   (until next week! Muah!!)

Love,

Sister Post

  

photos:

Our district now, elder far left, is from Texas forgot his name, it is a weird one. Then the white one if from Massachusetts... also he has a really weird long name but he isn~t in our district he was waiting for his companion to arrive. he~s gone now. Then Elder F, yeah he is crazy, then Elder L, then our new district leader Elder L, from Cape Verde. He is way cool! I like him a lot.

fancy Sunday with my comp :)

Transfers

OI!

Transfer time again! and (drum roll please). . . . . . I am staying with Sister Vega another round until she leaves to her house this next month! I love it here and am excited to stay in this area!! So some notes from our conference. It was amazing :)

Sister Castro:

Attributes of Christ! Funny thing, when Elder cook was here his wife said, ``we need to developed Christ like attributes until we are safely dead!´´ isn’t that the truth of it! haha so i will continue to work on it! 

President Castro:

 Fé!!! I need to teach, live and breathe more faith! And this transfer have enough faith to leave English behind :)

Sister Schemeil:

All things are done through the Lord! When we study we only remember a part, so we need to study lots to remember more :) and then the Spirit will bring that small portion to our minds. Our manna in our days is our daily scripture study. That is our dependence upon the lord! The Israelites needed a physical reminder of the Lord, and we need to find our own manna. We are stronger than them! Let us use our manna and ``enjoy the fruit there in!`` if not we won’t be eating of the bread of life, and therefor will have hunger for the words of Christ. We have to choose!

Elder Schemeil:

Plan! If we want a successful life after the mission, we dang better learn how to plan in the mission. haha we need to ask the Lord for things! Then he will bless us! What good does it do if he just gave us everything? What lesson would we learn? haha the Spirit is EVERYTHING! We NEED him in our lives! Is it easy? No, but it is possible to see miracles in our lives daily! When we continue to be converted unto the lord! With the 10 virgins, only 5 were converted through daily drops of knowledge, and spiritual experiences that slowly converted them. The other 5 only had testimonies that weren~t enough for the Lord to ´´recognize`` them. In all things testify! Remember that this is a grand joy! And always pray for the Lord to help many, many times, and then have the faith and hope that whatever happens, is in accordance to His will; Not ours. There are many good talks in the April Liahona! The one that talks about weaknesses and sin is amazing! I wish i had known that stuff before! But seriously! Read the Liahona! It is modern day scriptures! There is a page in there that says something like the words of the living prophets are always more important than those of a dead prophet. Wow how powerful is that!

Here are some drawings, one is a sketch of Christ i did on the bus coming back from Manaus. it is a little scratchy but isn~t too bad for doing it on the bus haha and the other is a little abstract of planting a seed through reading the Book of Mormon and then in the shadow shows the tree of life in the place of his heart and yeah haha

Anyways i love you!

Keep taking care of dad! And give him a hug for me! And tell him to give you one back for me :)

Love,

Sister Post

Photo:

This is Sister Arbuckle from Denver Colorado! She is so stinking cute! We stayed together the night before conference, and we talked and talked and i told her all the things that were happening were normal and she is so cute! haha she arrived the transfer after me, and is doing so well with Portuguese! I hope one day we will be companions! If not we’ll be friends after the mission for sure :) 

Happy Mothers Day

May 10, 2015

oi!

It was so awesome to talk to everyone last night! It is really weird being the one here, and not there... haha “the missionary”  i guess reality hit me again last night haha when you get used to something it becomes normal, and then when you realize that what you doing isn’t something normal you have to reevaluate yourself and your situation. haha but man what an amazing opportunity that you and dad have allowed me to experience! Last night felt like thirty minutes of talking, but i know it was much longer! I am so grateful for the technology we have now a days to be able to skype :) 

This week we will have a tour of the mission by Elder and Sister Schmeil of the seventy this week. That will be fun and a spiritual uplift! yay! I like how they have these kind of things haha

This past week i have really gotten comfortable taking the lead and starting and ending our lessons. It is kind of fun haha :) i love to just testify of Christ! and the plan that our Heavenly Father has for us! It is also nice that when i do testify now i don’t see the blank look in their eyes anymore because of my Portuguese hahah

I know without a doubt that Heavenly Father is helping me with my Portuguese! There is no way, no-way i could learn this while not being a missionary. Remember when i tried to learn Spanish? haha yeah, this is a miracle. Remember words, seeing wording becoming meanings and not translated words of English, it is all one huge miracle! I love the small little moments when i realize that the spirit is here, or when i speak and it is Portuguese it just feels good. I don’t know how to explain it but i am excited for it to keep growing! I still need to learn a lot more words, but i think the change is starting to take place in my mind. i~m not translating as much, and some days i am but when i learn words, that’s what they are, the word for the object, feeling, or whatever things and not a word that means the same in Inglês. It is beginning! haha yay!

Give my love to baby Lydia this week for me! I love you! and you looked so beautiful yesterday!! i love you!

the sun is shining and tonight we will be teaching three families! so yay! i am excited!

i thought you would like these quotes of a talk i read this morning waiting for my laundry to finish.  

photos

it likes to rain here haha and i like how people drive with umbrella’s here too :) haha

 here is a picture of the sun set :) 

Love,

Sister Post

This week I learned so Much!

May 4, 2015

Oi Mãe! (Hello Mother!)

Wow! They look so cute!! Man i love, love, love, receiving pictures of everyone!! Wow another week gone! I am so excited to talk to with everyone this Sunday!!! Wow already!! haha oh mom i sent a package home with Sister Maughan, and she should have sent it your way any day, but if not call her grandma :) i have your mother~s day present in there :)

This week i learned so much!

So splits with Sister R. and Sister G. were AMAZING!! Wow how i love, love, love these two sisters!! I learned lots of things from Sister R.!! She taught me that i can just speak straight out in one sentence and not lots. When we were talking one night she was giving me advice and she said something that has really hit home to me. She said that an Apostle said that the language you are called to preach in on your mission is the language you can testify of Christ the best in! I feel like that is true! in English i get all jumbled with my words because i know English and i want to say it and give it justice, you know, so i talk and talk and talk but don’t hit it on the nail so to speak and in Portuguese i can share still a basic testimony, but as Sister R. told me, it has power behind it. It was so nice to get feedback from her! She helped me out so much! And now I’m not so scared to talk to someone on the street! 

I am starting to understand the culture here! And am trying to adapt and use the language they use here, because it is way different then what i use. I use proper stuff, which is good, but i want then to understand me right, so i am trying to know the proper, and speak to them how they will connect and understand. It is a working process haha. 

Oh with E. and L., well he has changed a lot! And this week E. was in a lot of pain so we had the Elders come over and give her a blessing, and she is doing so much better! I talked to L. about how he could have the same authority to bless her and his family and he said he will! And he will stay strong!  He went to visit his son so tonight we will see him. I love E. so, so much! She is so amazing and has such strong faith!! I am so excited to help them get married and start on the path to happiness!!!

It is so amazing this area! I have experiences all the time where i literally feel my heart grow bigger!! It is through touches of the spirit, following a prompting, making someone who is sad smile, sharing a scripture that uplifts! and what a difference it is to know the scriptures so that i can have a scripture come to mind and it helps another person! I am starting to really understand the scriptures of Portuguese! and wow the different things i get out of them!! Because the words are different right, and i get a whole different meaning! It is amazing!! I still love, love, love chapter nine of second Nephi!! It is so good! and all the footnotes it is like mind blowing! We are so blessed to have all these footnotes and everything in English because there is more in English then in Portuguese. Seriously haha 

i am adapting the theory of tomorrow will be better haha :) because every day has its ups and downs and it is good to think of how tomorrow will be better. Though i look at today and say what was good and what needs to be worked on, i think i have started to feel a little lighter and not so down on myself about what i should and shouldn~t have done in this day, but to start to see those and then say well tomorrow i won’t, or will do this differently :) haha

One thing i am also learning is how Heavenly Father places us where we are and with the people we are with to stretch us just the right way, help us grow the right way that we can adapt and be better.  I am still learning lots of Portuguese and still don’t know a lot but it is fun now talk to someone off the street and they ask how long have you been here and when i say four months they always say serio! Haha( like really!) haha it is good :) day by day, moment by moment, we see miracles happen, every day they happen, some small, some larger than others, but they are the same.! Continue to listen to the spirit! and say hi to people on the streets! it is fun! Because a lot of people now days don’t talk to no one on the street, they are stuck in their busy or sad, or happy worlds. but when someone says hi and smiles, it like brightens their face. it is cool haha or others just look at you weird, but what they don’t say or show is that really you saying hi or good afternoon made them a little bit lighter inside :)

This week is good! Yes i am the same, normally agora (now) i run into corners of walls and things like that. It’s not fun with my left shoulder still.. but it is sempre (always) my left shoulder hahah

Ummm this week... i got to see a really cool bird!! and hold a baby turtle :) those were cool. 

Here is a cool bird! It is a pet and so pretty! We asked if we could see it and the lady was like ya! haha we will be returning there ;)

 Oh funny thing, in Portuguese they don’t have a word for awkward all they have is like guilt or discomfortable. haha but boy do i have a lot of discomfortable moments, very awkward. i think it is funny when people talk really fast and then i ask then to speak a little bit slower and then they talk to me like i~m deaf... and stupid... haha fun times :) Portuguese is becoming natural to talk in but i still don’t know a lot of words... haha i know the basics of conversations and how to preach the gospel but when people start talking about certain topics.. yep i~m out hahaha but it is good. I ask lots of questions.

I love you all! and look forward to skyping and seeing and talking with you all next Sunday!! I love, love, love the Lord, and our Heavenly Father!! They love us more then we can even imagine!! Keep being amazing!

Love,

Sister Post