Week 3

OLÁ FAMILY AND FRIENDS!!!

this week has been so short!!! i cant believe i have already been here for 3 weeks!! im halfway done with my time at the CTM!!! i am learning SO much portuguese it is amazing. sister madarani and i dont even need to look at our notes really when we are teaching a lesson!! especially the past few days i have been noticing God´s help with portuguese. in my lessons the investigator will ask me something and somehow i understand and am able to respond clearly. it amazes me every time! i never know how much portuguese i really know until i am teaching a lesson! i dont know how this would be possible at all without God helping me along. yesterday sister madarani and i did an english fast. we went the whole day without speaking english!! (except we took a break at dinner for our own sanity haha) it was EXHAUSTING!!! it is so draining to have to think so hard about every single sentence you say. it is worth it though because speaking the language is the best way to learn it! i have seen so many blessings for hard work. I am so thankful for prayer, and the strength that comes from it because it is really HARD work here!!! 

this morning we went to the campinas temple and it was BEAUTIFUL!!! except the bus driver got VERY LOST on the way there and it ended up taking over 3 hours for a 90 minute drive hahah. i took a nap in the begginning and woke up to the bus driver completely stopped on the freeway, then he started BACKING UP because he missed the exit he was supposed to take hahahha it was unreal. everything is very different here!!!

the temple was so worth it though!! i am so thankful for the peaceful spirit there. i feel Gods love so strongly. the temple is one of the best parts of the week! when we drove back to the CTM the whole drive was through jungle it was so cool!! I LOVE BRAZIL!!!

on the fourth week at the CTM you go proselyting on the actual streets of são paulo just you and your companion and it totally snuck up on me we are going in TWO DAYS!!! I am freaking out!!! i m excited and really nervous. 

this week has been a rollercoaster! mostly good!! the hardest thing is my companion has been having a really hard time. i have been trying to keep the mood positive but it is really difficult!! i am so thankful for all of the advice dad gave me from his mission. i know that being christ like is my first priority, when i do that everything works out. 

Every day here gets better and better and i am SO excited to get to salvador and start teaching people about the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!!! i CANT wait to meet the people in salvador i have heard amazing things about them already!! I LOVE IT HERE!!! i have truly never been happier in my life. 

com amor, 

Sister Jones

Week 2

This week was amazing!! I really love it here! the "investigator" we were teaching last week became our teacher and he is awesome!!! he hardly speaks any english, but the other day we caught him singing alejandro by lady gaga to himself we were all cracking up ahahahah. We are really busy!! we teach about two lessons a day and the rest of the time we are either preparing lessons, in a portuguese lesson or studying more. i am picking up portuguese so fast!!! it is really amazing. the gift of tongues is real! 

i LOVE my calling!!! i felt really inadequate and unsure about it earlier this week, but after praying about it, i got the answer to just love the sisters! thats really all i need to focus on. Im so glad that my mom was such an amazing example to me as young womens president now i know exactly how to make people feel loved and find out what their needs are. I am LOVING getting to know the new sisters and some more are coming in today! being a sister training leader has been the most amazing experience!!

our brazilian roommates left last night and i am so sad!!! i loved them so much we had so much fun together! we even had inside jokes with them hahah. they would always laugh at us because whenever they say something to us and we dont understand we just go "tudo bem!" which pretty much means "its all good" and can be used in almost any situation. everytime they see us they go "tudo bemmmmmm!" and then we all crack up hahah. the night before they left they were lecturing us about learing more words than tudo bem ahaha. I LOVE BRAZILIANS!!! they are so fun and happy and whenever i talk to one it makes me 10x happier! it is so cool having friends from all over the world here, argentina, peru, england, africa, etc. i will never have an expericence like this again so i am trying to really appreciate it!!

i LOVE MY DISTRICT so much!!! we have gotten so close! we are already bestfriends. there is so much love in our classroom. at the leadership meeting this week, our branch president said that the second he walked into our classroom, he could feel the spirit so strongly and knew that we had so much love for eachother!! we are all so different and balance eachother out perfectly! about a week ago i had us start doing a positive circle every night and it has helped us so much!!! it is the elders favorite part of the day! hahah its so cute they get SO excited about it hahaha. Shoutout to Brian and Dirk for teaching me to end the day on a positive note it is making a difference all across the world! hahah 

I feel Gods love for me so much every single day! it is amazing! i know that this is exactly where i am supposed to be and i have honsetly never been happier! it brings me so much peace to know that i am doing what God wants of me and the blessigns are AMAZING!! i have never felt so much love in  my life! 

my birthday was on monday and it was also dia de crenças (childrens day) and it was so fun!! we walked into breakfast and there were huge balloons EVERYWHERE and the cooks were dressed up as clowns and giving out bala (candy) and wearing neon afros it was HILARIOUS they were so into it and so happpy!!! we were all joking that it was my birthday party hahaha 

i was feeling so loved! the elders wrote me the nicest note!! and i got lots of love. it is amazing how many true friends i have made in such a short time.

I LOVE BRAZIL AND THE CTM AND MISSIONARY WORK!!! never forget how much got loves you and wants you to ask for His help! He will always be with you if you keep a prayer in your heart. 

con amor, 

Sister Jones

Week 1

Oi amigos e familia!!

 

i have been here fo one week today! it flew by! tiem goes by so fast here, but it feels like i have been here for a month! i love it here so much!! its bvery different from america. i am spending my first 6 weeks at the missionary training center (CTM in portuguese) in são paulo to learn portuguese and how to be a missionary. the CTM is beautiful!!! it is in the city and we have the most beautiful view out our bedroom window! there are trees and colorful flowers everywhere i look  it feels like paradise. on november 10th i will leave the CTM for salvador and start teaching people about the Gospel of Jesus Christ!  

 

my companion is named sister madarani. (Missionary girls are called sister and guys are called elder+ their last name) I LOVE sister madarani!!!! we have so much fun together and work well as a team. she is from england and even though ive only known her for a week i love her so much!! in my district there are 4 sisters and 5 elders. I love my district so much!! we are all very different. we get distracted very easily, but we have been improving a lot in that area! the elders are a lot less mature than i was expecting haha but i am really impressed with how hard they have been trying to be bettter! they really want to do their best and learn portuguese! they are all very sweet. every night they say "we love you sisters!" we do everything together as a district. we spend about 9 hours a day in our class room, learning about missionary work , in portuguese. we have personal, language, and companionship study for about three hours in the morning, then after lunch we have class with our instructor for three hours. it is a really long class because we are only allowed to speak portuguese and our teacher doesnt speak english. our teacher is named irmão (or "brother") oliveira. he is awesome!! he makes that three hour class as fun as possible. he is really funny and helpful with learning the language. he kind of acts out everything he says to help us understand and sometimes its super funny. brazilians also use a ton of sound affects hahah. we also have a teacher named irmã (or "sister") liahonna. i LOVE her. she is SO funny and kind! everytime i see her it brightens my day! 

 

portuguese is the primary language here at the CTM and all of the announcements and everything are given in portuguese! its kind of intimidating but im starting to understand. we had a devotional last night in portuguese and they let us have headsets and they had a brazilian man translate it to english for us and his attempt was so funny. like five times throughout the devotional he would let out a long sigh or go "uhhhhhhhh..." hahaha. 

 

every day during our studies in the morning, we prepare a lesson for our "investigator" named Yago. we teach yago almost every evening. sister madarani and i always joke that we are accidentally gonna call him yoga during one of the lessons hahaha. it helps a lot to practice teaching him. our last lesson was a huge mess and ended with him saying "mi batismo fue FAKE?!?!" we swear that he said "fake" in english just to make it more dramatic hahahha. we were like "não!! não!!" but we couldnt figure out how to explain it to him. 

 

on my fifth day here, my branch president called me to be sister training leader! im terrified.. i have no idea what im doing!! haha. basically that means that i am assistant district leader and leader of all the girls in my branch and i run releif society on sundays. i have been praying a lot about how i can help these girls! and i keep reminding myself that God qualifies who He calls! 

 

the food here is pretty weird honestly hahha. every morning for breakfast they have bananas and slices of ham and cheese, and then fresh rollls. you make a sandwich and put it in a panini press. its the same every day! and yesterday for dinner they gave us hotdogs and the lady put mashed poatoes and potatoe chips on it hahah weird but kinda good. 

 

one of the best things about being here is all of the people. there are people from ALL OVER the world!!!! i absolutely LOVE brazilians. from the second i sat next to one on the plane, i knew that i would love them. they are SO friendly and wonderful. I especially love my two brazilian roommates, sister silva and sister dos santos. they are amazing!! it is so funny trying to communicate with them we always crack up. we pray together in portuguese every night and the spirit is so strong!!! its so weird that i love them so much even though we cant communicate very well. 

 

it is CRAZY how well we are all picking up portuguese!!! after one week, i already know so much!!!! every day we have an hour long "english fast" where we only speak portuguese. we usually do this during meal times. my goal is to do a full day english fast on saturday!! i LOVE portuguese. sometimes it can get really frustrating, but i have  only been learning it for a week! there is no way that God isnt helping all of us because it is truly amazing the miracles that are happening with learning the language. I have learned more in a week here, than i did in four years of spanish! every night i try to sleep but i cant for about an hour because there are hundreds of portuguese words running through my head! it is so weird!! I aboslutely love it here!! it is really hard work , there are a lot of difficult things. but there are SO MANY amazing things!!! every day i am reminded over and over of why i am here. Even though it can be stressful, and hard work, it is the Lord's work, so it is completely worth it. I feel His love al the time. He truly is on my left and my right. I love my savior!! and I LOVE being a missionary!!

 

 

com amor, 

Sister Jones

Day 1

Hi family!! 

I made it here safe! everything went smoothly except the phones in atlanta didnt work! sorry that i couldnt reach you guys. I love it here!!! I am SO happy to be here! I can already feel myself growing closer to my savior and learning what is REALLY important. I love you guys!! hope you are all doing well :) 

My pday will be wednesday so i will get to email you guys again a week from today. My companion is named sister madarani and she is so cool!! she has lived all over the world and cracks me up. I can tell we are going to have a lot of fun together! She is serving in salvador too! she has friends who have served in this mission and said that we will be showering out of buckets sometimes. That made me feel a lot better about the condition of the showers here hahah. 

The flights were pretty long but im so happy to finally be here! in atlanta I walked towards my gate and I saw a group of people dressed up and I went up to them and was like "are you guys missionaries?" and theyre like yeah! whats your name!! it was so weird hahah. there were missionaries all over the airport. 

Today we havent really done much except travel and unpack and eat. We have classes later today, and I just found out that we will be teaching a lesson in portuguese TOMORROW.. wow thats intimidating. 

It is so different than I expected here but I really love it!! It still hasnt really "hit" me that im here but i dont know that/when it will. I have just felt so calm about everything its weird because im never calm! what justin said about the walls around houses with sharp stuff at the top was totally true even teh mtc has it! 

When I open the window in my room we have a full on view of the skyline of the city and its so beautiful. but its for sure not a rich city, its really colorful though! just like the pictures! 

I love being around all of these new elders and sisters and feeding off of their spirits. I have so much to learn from all of them! its kinda weird because everyone seriously only speaks portuguese! im starting to get used to it though and kind of pick up on it a little bit. 

I sat next to this lady on the plane who lives in america now but she is from brazil and i LOVED her!!! she was so sweet and it just made me so excited to get here and meet all of the people. What everyone has been saying about brazilians is totally true!! they are so open and friendly. There were several brazilians on the flight with us that just took us in kind of. They kept giving me advice and trying to be my mom hahaha. They were so worried about us staying safe in this country. I love love love these people already! I am SO blessed to have been called to this mission. I can already tell that it is the best thing I have ever done. 

I love you guys!!!

-Sister Jones