Water Balloons

First of all. I don´t know how long I can keep this up. I´m running out of things to compare. One day i´ll probably compare something to dirt. Because that is all i´ll be able to think of... Anyways.

Experiences

Remember the gate lady? Well, turns out that her relative needed our help. Funny how God plans things that way huh? Turns out her relative lost her mom in a car accident and has a brother that was severely injured in the accident that is living through a tube. It was horrible to see, but It was cool how much hope a person can get knowing what is going to come :) Also, we did more service! WOOOHOOO! We helped a lady cut her grass! She had literally been working on it for a while, and she was planning on cutting her grass with shears. Holy dang that would take for ever. SO we offered to help and went and borrowed a lawn mower (thank goodness hahahahah) and finished tidying up her lawn for her! We also helped A paint her house again which was absolutely wonderful! AND D hasn´t drank for about 3 weeks! It´s so amazing! It is wonderful to see him completely change! OH And G's Birthday! We brought a cake for her birthday and talked a bit about everything. We just had an FHE with her family and another family and it was awesome!!!

Things I learned

My camera is high tech! Just figured that out! I´ll show you through the pictures! PLEASE look up prayer in the bible dictionary. It helps you realize so many things. I wanted to tell you but I didn´t bring my journal.. haha. I FOUND A SECRET TO PORTUGUESE. Not really. But I think it works... Basically you take any english word, think of the fanciest word for it in english, and portuguese-aphy it. It really works

First timers

I mowed the lawn with one of those ancient mowers thats really heavy! Props to you pops. Those things are hard.... 3 month anniversary! It´s crazy how fast time flies!! Had my first break down. Hehehe me and sister lemes were alone without our trainer, and it was a very successful day, but the language really got to me that day. There were so many things to communicate and no way how. But that happened. And it was such a girl thing. But some things need to be done. But everytime we pass the same spot, we always pretend we´re gonna take a break and cry. I look back now and laugh at it :) Also! A guy said I look brazilian because I´m always smiling all the time :) That was pretty cool :) One day I want to actually convince people that I´m brazilian ;) I also saw Obama for the first time today! HE LOOKS OLD. Enough said.

I called raindrops here cats for the longest time and no one told me. So there´s that... ;) 

Sorry this is rushed... I am trying to have time to send pictures :)

Water Balloons

I´ve been thinking a lot about hope faith and confidence this weeek, because it´s an interesting topic. So related. So intertwined. Everything builds upon each other. And one affects the other. So, Clearly, or course, I thought of water balloons ;) Hope. What is hope? A desire. A yearning. A wish. A want. So many things. But what should we hope for or have hope in? Don't worry, the water balloons are coming ;) But I´ll address the process and get the things ready. First. we connect the hose. For us to have faith, we need to connect the hose, and we need to connect it to the right source. Dirt won´t give us water. Aimlessly leaving the hose on the ground doesn´t give us water. Any other source won´t give us water. But, the water faucet, (get it, living waters, i thought it was clever....) will give us water. All together, we need to have hope in God. Hope that he knows us. Hope that he knows our trials. our sorrows, our heartaches, our difficulties. Next, we need to act in faith, or, get out all the kinds out in the hose. Faith (works), means we´re going to do everything in our power to make what we are hoping for to happen. We wond´t fill that water balloon with a kinked hose. We examine every length of the hose and fix all the kinks. Maybe we have a long hose. Perhaps a mile. Or maybe it´s a shor one with only a few kinds. Either way, whether big or small, we have to unkink it, or else it won´t work. And now for confidence. We´ve got to actually physically turn that water on, and we got to turn it on on full blast. Confidence in your divinity. Confidence that God created you specifically. Confidence that there is a plan. Confident that he loves you more that you can imagine. Confident that you are exactly where he wants you to be. Confident that He exists and is Merciful. Then, when our confidence is on full blast, we will be able to fill those water balloons to the maximum. Because, clearly, water balloons that are huge and about to explode are far more better than the puny ones you give to people who don´t want to get wet ;) So fill up your water balloons and have a party. Because parties are wonderful. And that´s what we´re meant to do-be confident and enjoy every lick of life :)

I love you all so much! And hearing from you all always brightens my day!!!

Love 

Sister Parco

Tightrope

A lot of wonderful things happened this week! We met so many wonderful families that were so amazing and so wonderful!!!! I also got a new companion! SISTER L! I love her! She is so awesome! She is a goof like me and has the same personality as me. We get along well and teach well together. In fact, me and her were alone this week because sister M went on divisions, and our day was awesome! So productive and just happy! We have a game that is the same as slug bug but it´s called fusca. And then we try to wave to every person on the street with the biggest smile ever and try to get them to smile :) So much fun! People here are a little more closed on the street so we celebrate when we get someone to smile :)

One of my favorite people that we are teaching this week is G and P! They are wonderful! They are a great family that is very interested. But they aren´t married. At first glance it was hard to guess that they´d be perfect because the guy had that motorcycle slicked back hair and tattoos. The scary type. But, he is so sweet with his kids and he´s so awesome!!!! They are all reading and learning so much!!!!

Another experience was with a lady we met named S. We were just walking and probably joking and we see this lady cleaning this huge fence. We approached her and asked if she needed help :) Hahahahaha she thought we were joking with her. She asked about 4 times until we told her we were going to run back and get our clothes for cleaning. Seriously. I have never been more happy to clean a fence ;) I love helping people! We just sat there cleaning the fence and talking to her. She was telling us all her views about everything and how religion has played a role in her life. It was great. AND we finised in the same day. A job that would have taken 3 days alone! After 3 hours, we talked with her for a while and she gave us all these people that she wanted us to talk to! It was miraculous! And we just sat there smiling the whole time :) Cleaning has never been so much fun ;)

One more. There was a lady on the street one day. She stopped and we introduced ourselves. She stopped us after that and she said she needed to hear the word of God. We quickly picked a scripture. Ether 12:27 I think it was and read it out to her. While we were reading it she started crying and thanked us so much for it and we gave her a Book of Mormon. I think that was exactly what she needed to hear. Funny how the Lord works in mysterious ways, huh? ;)

Anyways, that´s pretty much it. Sorry that that was a bit scattered. I´ll try to be better next time :)

Tightrope. So, I´ve been thinking a lot about the gospel in our lives lately and I read a scripture in 2 Nephi 9:41. And in the middle it talks about how the path is narrow but straight. And I sat thinking. TIGHTROPE. So here you go for another one of my long stretched analogies ;) If you think about it this life and the gospel of Jesus Christ is a tightrope. We start at one platform and have to get to the other. And like it said in the scriptures. It´s going to be narrow. Meaning, that it´s going to be difficult. A tight rope isn´t something you can cross while running. You need to hesitantly put one foot in front of the other. Careful that you are keeping your balance. Taking it slow, and possibly backtracking sometimes. And sometimes you're gonna look at others on their tightropes that perhaps have more practice and are going faster than you. But you put one foot in front of the other. Always keeping your eye on that rope. Because, frankly, this life is so difficult. And there isn´t much wiggle room. The thing about the tight rope though is that you´ll always get to your destination. Becuase there is only one destination. But there is only one path. And although it is narrow. It is direct and leads you to where ou need to go. Life isn´t easy. Following the gospel isn´t easy. But it is direct. And it´s going to lead us to where we need to go. I´m grateful for the gospel in my life and am grateful for my Heavenly Father and his beloved son.

Stay strong! Love the Lord! LOVE YOU GUYS!!!

Sister Parco

Those Popper Things

Hello my dears! I hope you are all doing wonderful! I have a bunch of pictures so It´s going to be short again :( But I will feel you in on details!

dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd... YEP! I´m staying! I´m with 2 other brasileiras! WOOOOHOOOO! We´re staying in the same area and continuing to work hard! This is super good because we were originally going to stay, and Sister M had to go on a division and she would leave us alone. 2 Americanas that only have 6 weeks of experience teaching the world. Oh yeah baby. But it didn´t happen. Probably good ;) BUT I have two wonderful companions! Sister M and Sister L! They are both wonderful and nice and beautiful and I think we are going to have lots of fun! I´m a bit scared though because naturally it will be easy for them to talk to each other than the american, but we will see. I hope I can communicate! :P I think i´m going to learn the language pretty fast ;)

Things I discovered

So. I looked on the wrapper of the recess bar. Did you realize that Recess has fiber AND protein! So, in a nutshell. ( haha get it.) RECESS ARE HEALTHY! What a nice wonderful discovery! ;) I already ate all of them btw. And I loved every single one. Licked the wrapper on all of them :) Also those peppermint things? Probably sent from heaven.... ;)

Fireworks are legal here. Very loud. New Year's was crazy. It sounded like the revolutionary war. (Not that I would know...) But I´ve come to a conclusion that it is good that fireworks are banned in MN ;)

READ YOUR SCRIPTURES. They are so legit. I wish I could tell you everything I learned this week, but I never have time. But look at Ephesians 2:10 CR a and c. I love cross references. Did I tell you that? Oh. And Mormon 9 all of it. Another one of the bosses in the Book of Mormon. Man oh man. You´re gonna quake in your boots while you read that chapter. So good. 

MOM- You´re going to love this. Yesterday at lunch they had green olives in the salad so I decided to try them. And I think I discovered that I think that I li8ke green olives. So mom, when I return, we can eat green olives together ;)

What we did this week

This week was really slow. EVERYONE was at the beach and travelling and everything seemed to fall through. BUT this week, I absolutely positively know is going to be better :) AND we did our first service this week! We went to a recent converts house and helped her paint her kitchen!!! SO MUCH FUN! The pictures tell it all! It was funny because we didn´t have already mixed paint so we had to do it by eye, so one wall was darker than the other and we had to paint it again. Hilarious. :) But, it looks wonderful now! We´re going to help them move the rest of the stuff into their house this week!

Those popper things

Alright. Remember those popper things? Those tiny things that you turn inside out and wait for them to fly up into the sky? Those ones that make you giggle like a little child? It´s funny how  these popper things, no matter where you are, whether it be in the living room kitchen, or bedroom, still make you giggle like a little kid. Well, Heavenly father gave me a popper thingy this week. Something that despite where I was, I giggled like a little child. This week we visited our investigator that drinks and lost his family because of it. And we asked him to pray at the end of the lesson. The prayer was so simple but yet so incredible. A simple plea to heavenly father for help and for love. I´m a big baby so I teared up during the prayer, but it was truly powerful. Even though I didn´t understand all of the words. It´s so wonderful that we have these wonderful little popper things in our life, isn´t it? :)

Well that´s all :) BRACE YOURSELF FOR PICTURES! :)

I love you all so much! Don´t change! Be yourself!

Sister Parco