Bailey's First Letter

PUXA VIDA I LOVE THE MTC!

Seriously though. It's great. After those first few moments of initial
panic.

And everyone is yelling at you, "Welcome to the MTC!!!" And you don't know
where anything is and soo..... Also the food is fine, there's always salads
and wraps for when you don't want to eat anything else.... And tell Papai
the lines for the showers are terrible. Ugh. I just want to take a stinkin
shower.

Haha when I walked into my classroom for the first time my teacher was just
like, "Oi! adfasdjd aslkdjfkdjf sadf adkfja;fj dkasdjf dfkdfakj d tudo
bem!!" And I was like, "uhhhhhhhhhhh." But it's all good now. Irmao Barlow
is a great teacher and yesterday I actually understood what he was saying
for the first time!! Woop woop for Portuguese!

Anyways...my companheira is soooo great. Sister Lopez is so spiritually
righteous. She is funny, pretty, and speaks Spanish! Woo! She can
understand Portuguese because of that and so she's been having to tell me
what our teacher was saying those first few days. I seriously love her to
death.

Something crazy, our branch president told us we need to read the entire
Livro de Mormon in the six weeks we'll be here. I know, it's crazy. Also,
I've already memorized Our Purpose in English and Portuguese! We're also
supposed to memorize a ton more things in Portuguese....ugh! But it's
great. I love it! Portuguese is a beautiful language, us four sisters in
our district decided it's the baby of French and Spanish. Also one elder,
who speaks spanish, told us that the language of angels is Spanish but the
language of God is Portuguese! :) I'd have to agree.

So, our second full day here we taught a pequistador named Geraldo in
complete Portuguese. It was great, I think. I couldn't understand anything
he said. Yay for Sister Lopez! We resolved to do much better the next time.
I was praying so hard to just be able to understand what Geraldo said.
Also, Irmao Barlow had us write down perguntas por Pai Celestial for
Conferencia General. I've never actually done that before and I was
surprised because ALL of my questions were answered. I felt so much peace
and comfort.

CONFERENCIA GENERAL was soooo good. I feel so blessed that I got to be in
the MTC for it. I've never learned so much from it and everytime they
talked about missionaries I cheered inside! ALSO listening to the speakers
in their native tongues was soooo cool. Especially Carlos Goday! Yay for
Brasil and Portuguese! O evangelho e verdadeiro. Muito bom.

We taught our second licao yesterday and Sister Lopez and I were planning
our licao and realized we were pretty much writing the whole thing out
instead of learning the doctrine and relying on o Espirito Santo. We were
walking outside to get ready and get some air while praticing our
Portuguese when an Elder turned around and was like are you sisters
speaking Portuguese? Turns out he was from Portugal and Sis Lopez and I
felt awkward because our Portuege pronunciation is terrivel. But it was soo
good. We talked with him and his companions for a while and we told him we
were getting ready to teach a lesson. He asked for our notes, on which we
had pretty much just written our entire lesson. We gave them to him and
then he put them down and said sisters, tell me about the Restoration in
Portuguese. Yup. So Sis Lopez and I changed our tactic. When we went in to
teach Geraldo we put away our notes and taught by the Spirit and in caveman
Portuguese we taught him about the Restoration and bore our testimonies.
Also, let me just mention that I understood nearly every word he said to
us. It was beautiful and amazing. I am so blessed to be here on dedicated
ground with O Espirito Santo by my side.

I love this work. I love learning Portuguese. I've only broke down once.
Yesterday, after the lesson we taught I felt frustrated that I wasn't able
to tell Geraldo what I wanted to because of the language barrier. It's all
good though. I need to remember that this mission isn't about me. I'm here
to serve the Lord and the people I meet.

Today we get to go to the temple! Also, for our gym time last week some
sisters in our zone went our and played sand volleyball. Turns out none of
them ever played volleyball before. And it showed haha. Just over here
working on my patience! But yesterday I got to go and play real volleyball
inside with a bunch of people in our zone and it was SO FUN. Ahhh finally
real volleyball! (make sure Papai hears about this!)

I've met the coolest people here. Seriously. I wish I could tell you about
each of them, in detail. But it would take forever! I'll just say that my
district is the best, we're getting so close! Kinda like familia. Also,
when our branch presidency was picking our district leader we were all like
whose it going to be?? And when they said Elder Boyd the Spirit confirmed
to us that he was definitely the best choice. He's great...and he's from
Blackfoot, ID! All the Elders in our district are the best. And the Sisters
are even better! I wish I could tell you more, but I'm out of time.

Sei que Jesus Cristo e meu Salvador. Sei que A Igreja de Jesus Cristo do
Santos dos Ultimos Dias e verdadeira.

Com amor,

Sister Helm (What!!?/!) :)))))))

P.S. Eu te amo!

P.P.S. Sorry about the rando Portuguese words....actually I'm not
sorry...there's this thing called Speak Your Language and you're supposed
to use your language as much as possible. It's hard, but awesome!