September 1, 2014
Dear Family,
This past week was very
normal. Except for the change in mission president, but since I still don´t
even know what he looks like, it´s still a mystery.
We spent the week
contacting a few less-actives or recently-returning less actives in order to
see if we could find some new investigators and get some references.
The Elders from São João
Clímico also came to do some contacts, which helped out a ton and we´re going
to contact them this week. We´re both excited for that!
Everyone jokes about how
I should just ask Salt Lake to send my records over here hahahaha. There were a
couple of families that hadn´t been to church in about a month that we visited,
and they were still surprised to see me here. It was pretty funny.
The Relief Society had a
really awesome activity last night for Visiting Teaching, which went really
well. There were psychologists there and the Relief Society presidency had the
cutest ideas for the table and the decorations. It was a huge success, and
there were lots of irmãs that went. There were more irmãs there than there were
people at the Talent Show last week! So about 60-ish or so. It was a good
group.
Saturday morning, I had
pancakes for breakfast! A member´s friend sent pancake mix, so she made
pancakes for us and there was syrup and everything! And she bought something
that´s very similar to Peanut Butter as well, so I had peanut butter pancakes.
It was super delicious. The last time I had pancakes was my last Sunday in the
states! Sadly, we forgot to take pictures :(
Saturday evening, we went
to a less-active´s party that she threw for her son´s birthday, and we met
Michele, who is seriously awesome. She´s had a rough life (she´s 24 years old
and has five kids) but she´s super mature and she treats her children very well
and wants the best for their lives. She´s in a lot better situation than most
girls her age would be in. She said that in order to have the best life for her
kids, she and her husband don´t drink, smoke, and aren´t into drugs. She´s
completely different from anyone else I´ve ever met who´s in the same
situation. We´re going to visit her this week!
I loved one of the
messages in the September Liahona that talked about Charity. It broke down all
of the things that Charity means and talked about how one girl put each thing
into practice. Sister Godoy and I have used this article and have set goals to
put some of the things into practice as well. I´m pretty sure the article is in
the New Era in English, mas eu não tenho certeza. And the Gospel Principles
lesson yesterday was also about Caridade. Crazy stuff. Charity is seriously one
of my favorite topics though because it´s so necessary in our daily lives. If
we aren´t charitable, then we aren´t living the gospel the way it should be
lived. There´s always something we need to improve on when it comes to
caridade, o puro amor de Cristo.
Well, that about wraps up
my week! Hopefully things continue to go well for you all at home and that
school is doing well.
I love you all!
Sister Tillman
My new mission
president´s name is Elder Andrew. He´s temporary, until July. He was already
serving in the Recife temple for the past 11 months, and everyone says that
they´re elderly folks-I think they´re about eighty years old, although I haven´t
seen a picture yet.
As for visa waiters, I
don´t know. I think there aren´t too many missionaries from the states being
called to Brazil. Tomorrow there will be two visa waiters coming in to the
mission, but the number has seriously died down a ton.
Thanks for getting my
gator sweatshirt!! I had no idea that I even left it there! Crazy. I was
actually thinking about the TCU HR this week as well. Funny how that works out!
August 25, 2014
Dear Family,
It´s great to see so many
of pictures of you. You´re all growing up so quickly! I can´t believe that
another school year is starting already. Man does time fly by! Although you
guys really did have a great summer, so you can´t complain!
Jacob, what´s life like
with braces?? I see that you´ve already adopted the ´´I have braces´´ smile by
not showing teeth, although, it looks good on you (the smile, that is)
As for here in Brasil,
the past week was pretty eventful. The Talent Show was pretty fun, although
there weren´t a lot of investigators, which was a bummer. It´s hard here in São
Paulo because there are lots of things to do on a Saturday night, so it´s not
really anyone´s idea of fun to go to a church talent show. But there were
recent converts there and a few non-members, which was great. We set up a
little band with Priscila and Felipe, and played the song ´´Glad You Came´´
which was a hit.
On Thursday, we had our
mission conference, which was really, really good. We learned a lot about how
to plan better and use are time more effectively by making better goals. It was
really good, and it has already helped me a lot with my planning. I´ve already
set some reachable goals in sight to not only become a better missionary, but
to become a better me.
The conference also
served as a good bye for Pres. and Sis. Ferrin. Pres. Ferrin told lots of funny
stories from his mission. Their son also came to visit and he has a very
powerful spirit. He was born with... I don´t know exactly what, but some kind
of physical defficiency. Growing up was hard for him, but he´s a
full-functioning adult and everything, so that´s good. When he walked up to the
pulpit to bear his testimony, the spirit was so strong!
On Friday, we had a very
interesting day, although it didn´t go exactly as we planned it. However, we
had two very good lessons. One with Jilssara, who´s an investigator who wants
to get baptized, but her ´´husband´´ is kind of really strange. She´s thinking
about separating from him.
The other lesson was with
Vanessa, who´s planning on getting baptized today. We watched the video clip
´´His Hands´´ (which is super amazingly good for those of you who want to watch
it. Although it has to be the video with the clips from the old videos of
Christ and not the new ones, because the old ones are A LOT more powerful and
the way they arranged it is ten times better!) The video brought a very
powerful Spirit. We then asked her how she liked church and what she has been
feeling as we teach her. She talked about how she loved church and that she
felt awesome there. She also loves our lessons. She felt the spirit so strongly
while she was talking that she started to cry because of the happiness and joy
that she felt with the gospel. It was such a great lesson and definitely one of
the most powerful experiences of the Spirit on my mission. He is truly the one
that toeches the hearts of these people. We read in 3 Nefi 11:3 about how the
Holy Ghost isn´t a strong or loud voice, but that he touches our hearts and
peirces our souls. She´s going to be baptized the first week in September,
which is awesome.
I´m truly so grateful for
these eighteen months that I have to serve the Lord! We watched ´´The Other
Side of Heaven´´ last night with the Rodrigues family, and there´s a part that
I really like when they shout ´´Conviva Israel!´´ (Long live Israel!)
I love you all!
Conviva Israel!!
Sister Tillman
P.S.- Photos are coming
shortly :)
August 18, 2014
Mi
missión-Brasil ou español?
I stayed in Vila Mariana for mais uma
transferência!! My new companion is Sister Godoy, and she´s seriously so cool!
We like the same things, it´s amazing! She likes Star Wars and Harry Potter and
reading books and Marvel movies and Spider-Man and everything else that´s cool.
And her soccer team in Brazil is also São Paulo (which is pretty rare for
missionaries, most missionaries are Corintianos) and everything else that is
wonderfully wonderful.
And since she´s my THIRD
hispanic companion, I´ve decided that it´s officially time to learn Spanish.
And so every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, Spanish will be the official
language of the day.
Eunice was baptized
yesterday, which was awesome. She was so happy!! She sacrificed a lot at work
in order to be baptized-she works until later on Saturday nights so that she
can go to church in the mornings. On Sunday, she said that she was really
tired, but really happy as well. It was great. The service was really good.
Simple, but good. And her husband baptized her as well, which is awesome.
We had ward council yesterday,
and we talked about all of the recent converts and how they´re doing. There are
a lot of them. The bishop congratulated us on our hard work. I was talking to
Sister Godoy this morning about how we´re going to have a very busy week! We
want to do so many things and don´t have the time to do it all. But it´s a
great feeling. And it´s not all work work work, there´s some fun mixed in as
well. For example, we´re going to participate in the Talent Show with Paty,
Pri, and Felipe, so we´re going to practice a couple of times this week, and
stuff like that. We´re going to show Flávia how to get to Seminary and what
seminary is like, and maybe do an FHE with José Carlos. All in all, it´s busy,
but it´s fun!
This past week, there was
a ward activity where the men cooked and got judged on it. It was pretty tasty
:)
As for our investigators,
things are going really well. We taught Rodrigo, which was a super awesome
lesson. It´s probably the most welcome I´ve felt in a first visit ever! He, his
mom, and his grandmother were all waiting for us and were really happy to hear
our message. He was going to go to church, but we don´t know what happened. He
didn´t answer his phone, and the doorman rang their apartment for five minutes
and nobody answered. We think that he maybe slept somewhere else or something.
The hard part is that we ran out of crédito (don´t even get me started on the
annoying Brazilian phone system) and so we haven´t been able to call him since.
However, he´s super receptive and we´re really excited.
Vanessa went to church
yesterday! And she liked it a lot. She keeps saying that there´s something
different about the church and that she likes it. And she has no problem with
the commandments. She hates coffee, which is a miracle. We´ve set her baptism date
for the 31st. I think the hardest part for her will be connecting the dots
between the ´´different´´ feelings and the Spirit, but it should be great all
in all.
As you can see, this past
week was great. And this coming week will also be really good. I´m so happy
now, it´s the best! My companion is awesome, we have investigators, and the
members are great.
August 11, 2014
Dear Family,
First things first, I´m
not going to get transferred!! Woot woot!
This past week was a
little rough, but it´s over, which is great. On Sunday, Sister Antunes (my filha!!) baptized FIVE
people in one day, so President went there to see the baptisms. While he was
there, he told Sister Antunes´ companion (who is leaving in September) that he
has a special mission for her this coming transfer-she´s (Sister Galvão) is
going to my companion´s new companion. I´m just happy that I´m going
to stay. I don´t know who´s going to be my new comp yet, but I know that it´s
be great!
And so I´ll be in Vila
Mariana until the end of September. However, the biggest bombshell that´s
dropped this morning is that my MISSION PRESIDENT will be transferred- to his
house! He didn´t go get his visa renewed when he was supposed to, and applying
for a new visa takes a lot longer than renewing the one that he had, so at the
end of the month, he´s leaving. It´s a huge shock for everyone, since we have no
idea who´s going to be the new president or how this will affect the mission.
Everyone´s in shock right now, that´s for sure!
Oh, but good news: Since
I´ll be staying here, there are lots of people that travel to the States, so
I´ll ask around this week and see if anyone is going there soon and maybe they
can work something out with you guys and I can get a camera again! I didn´t
realized how much I liked my camera until it was gone. I´ve been using my
companion´s but the quality isn´t the same.
And now on to the
investigators: Eunice, Flávia´s mom, is getting baptized on Sunday for sure!
Hooray! And one of Patrícia´s friends came to church yesterday and liked it a
lot, so we´re going to be teaching her. And one of our contacts seems awesome,
so we´ll be teaching him as well on Wednesday.
However, hardly anything
seems important now in the wake of President INDO EMBORA. Tchau. Wow, it´s
seriously so weird because it came out of nowhere. As a leader here, it´s going
to be interesting to see how things will change. I´ve talked to some of the
other leaders already and it´s going to be a challenge, but obviously the work
of the Lord keeps moving forward!
I love you guys so much!
I´ll send pics in a bit after Sis. Oliveira is done with her camera :)
Love,
Sister Tillman
August 4, 2014
There´s the good news...
... and the bad news. But let´s
start with the good news!
We have a super awesome new
investigator. Her name is Vanessa and the entire time we were teaching her the
Restoration she was saying how she wanted to follow ´´um caminho´´ and she
needs to have more religion in her life. She accepted baptism and everything,
but she wasn´t able to go to church because her leg got all swollen and she
couldn´t walk. So that was a bummer, but we´re going to visit her this week and
remark her baptism. She was really sad that she couldn´t go to church, so that
was a good sign.
Flávia´s mom went to church
yesterday!!!! This is a HUGE step forward. I called her Saturday to see if she
was going to be able to go to church and she said no, but it was a surprise!!
When we walked into Gospel Principles (we went to Pri´s lesson in Young
Women´s) she was there! It was the coolest thing ever! Yes yes yes!! Now she
just has to go to church two more times (please pray that her boss will let
her) and quit smoking (she´s so, so close!) She´s the last person in the family
that needs to be baptized, which is awesome. Eternal families!!
Parque Ibirapuera was so
awesome! It was like a mix of the Botanic Gardens with Robot Park and French
Lake TIMES A THOUSAND. We´re going to go back next Monday. It was going to be
today, but we have a zone p-day. Sadly, I don´t have photos due to Bad News #1.
Then there´s the bad news...
Bad News #1: I lost my camera!!
I´m pretty sure it fell out of my backpack when I took out my Book of Mormon.
Sadly, we were walking on the street when that happened and I didn´t even
realize it was missing until the next day, so it is long gone. Luckily I still
have my pin drive with photos though!
Bad News #2: This is the last
day that I`m allowed to write friends during email time. From now on, it´s just
family, which has always been my priority, but it´s going to be hard not
writing to Emily anymore. Sniff sniff. Lot´s of people in the mission are
upset, but hey, if it´s what President thinks what´s best, it´s what´s best.
Mom, if you could post my emails on Facebook or something every week, I´m sure
Emily would appreciate it :) And it´s also sad because I won´t be able to keep
in touch with the Rodrigues family through email, which is such a bummer. I
wish you guys could meet them, because they are seriously the best ever!
Bad News #3: This is most likely
my last week in Vila Mariana because transfers are next week. My heart is so
torn. I love this ward so much and I´ve seen so much growth not just in
baptisms, but in the ward as well. However, every era has an end, and it looks
like my time in Vila Mariana is coming to an end. I´ve been really blessed on
my mission to stay in my areas for a long time so that I can see the
investigators progress, get baptized, and have callings as recent converts and
everything. It was the greatest! We´ll see what happens next week though. I
wonder where I´ll go...?
Anyway, that was pretty much my
week! Sister Andrade came with me to Vila Mariana on exchanges, which was
awesome. We had a lot of fun and got to teach Vanessa, which as I said earlier
was a great lesson.
Other than that, life is good.
It´s going to be a good Week Six of the transfer, if a little sad because it´s
my last week here!
Love you all! Hope the travels
are going well for the summer and everything :)
All my love,
Sister Tillman
July 28, 2014
Dear Family,
This past week was pretty
chill and very normal. We had a P-day das Sisteres last week, which was pretty
cool. We ate pão de quijo and mandioca frita (which is yucca in español) It was
delicious.
Monday night we had
exchanges! Divisões! I went to Vila Prudente, which is a whole lot different
than Vila Mariana, that´s for sure! It was so fun to get to know a new area and
talk to new people. The sisters there had a couple of baptisms this week, so it
was fun following up with them and helping them out a little. I had a great
time with Sister Andrade there.
The rest of the week was
pretty slow in terms of new investigators. We did get to help the Rodrigues
family paint their house though, which was pretty fun. I can now say that I
have the classic, missionary-painting-a-house photo.
While we were moving the
furniture around in the house-painting process, a book shelf fell on my head
and it hurt really bad. Luckily nothing bad happened besides the pain. Heavenly
Father truly looks out for me while I´m here because I could´ve had a
concussion or something, but since it fell right on top of my head, I just had
a lump for a couple of days. It´s still a little tender, but that´s pretty
normal!
It´s gotten a little
colder here-and by that I mean it´s in the sixties. Lots of people are
complaining though. It´s pretty funny because my companion is from Natal, Rio
Grande do Norte, and there it´s NEVER cold, so she gets excited when she can
see her breath in the air since it´s new for her. It´s hilarious. It´s crazy to
think that here, nobody has seen snow, except the people who lived in the
south, which is pretty rare. Everyone asks me what it´s like. I tell them that
it´s fun at first, but then it gets all wet and cold and it´s time to go back
inside and drink hot cocoa.
Yesterday, José Carlos
was confirmed, which was great! He´s going to be such a strong member.
This week we´ve been
visiting the members and building up our relationships with them and stuff. It
also helps me remember Alma 37:34 which talks about how we should never grow
weary of doing good works, because it´s only when we do service that we receive
our rest. So remember, hang in there, because it´s what makes us happier in the
end!
Hopefully you guys are
having a good summer! I love you all!!
Sister Tillman
P-day das Sisteres!
Painting the house! I
wore a plastic sack so that the paint wouldn´t get in my hair. The new inside
joke in the Rodrigues´ house it that I´m always in fashion since I wore a
plastic sack, put a bunch of ice on my head with a bright pink rag, and wore
mis-matching socks.
My companion had a day
where she was really sad for various reasons, so we bought pizza so that she
could be happy again!
July 21, 2014
Ho-Ly. Smokes. Sounds like you guys have had so
much fun!!!!!! How much longer are you going to be in Puerto Rico for? And
how´s the Spanish for the others? Are you able to communicate and stuff?
I LOVED the pictures. And
Jakes, congrats on the narrating, it was pretty sweet. I felt like I was
actually there as well. Have you guys taken any pictures of yourselves as well,
because I would really like to see you guys pretty please :D
I won´t have too much
time today to talk, so hopefully you get online in time! We´re have a P-day for
the sisters, and took awhile to get out of our house this morning, so we´re
running late, sadly.
Jakes, I liked how you
still use my rule of how to tell when it´s another day or not :D And it really
is unfortunate about the whole 20 ft splash getting you soaking wet and your
tennis shoes.
That´s so nuts that BOTH
cars had messed up tires! But I´m glad to know that everyone made it home
safely! What holiday was it in Puerto Rico?
This past week was pretty
good. I´m trying to remember what happened... We had a baptism yesterday, which
was awesome!! José Carlos was super elect and he was so happy. He cried a
little at his baptism because he was so happy. Felipe ended up baptizing him,
which was awesome. He´s going to be good missionary one day. Flávia was also
confirmed yesterday, so it was a busy Sunday for us, but in a good way.
Yesterday we ended up
being locked in our LMA´s house with his wife, which was pretty funny. He left
with a friend and on his way out he locked the deadbolt, but the deadbolts here
are way different. They can only be locked/unlocked with the key. Anyway, his
wife lost her key and their son was gone as well, so we were stuck until they
Jorge came back. It was pretty funny! Sister Oliveira and I were cold, so we
stayed under the blankets until they came back. I´ll send a picture.
Yesterday I ate squid and
codfish!! We ate lunch at our LMA´s house and they like really healthy food and
frutas do mar (seafood) so we ate squid. They also have a lot of money, which
helps out. I took pictues.
Other than that, not a
lot happened this week. I´ve been studying with my companion 1 Corintios 10:13
and talking a lot about how Heavenly Father would never put us in a position to
fail. Never. We may feel like we´re weak or that we just can´t handle life
anymore, but Heavenly Father still loves us. Sacrament meeting was also really
good yesterday. They talked about Faith, which has always been one of my
favorite topics, and there was a talk about obedience as well. A few of my
favorite phrases were that ´´Fé não permanece estática´´ or basically that
Faith doesn´t keep without using it. And one of the thoughts that I really
liked about obedience is that obedience isn´t a selective choice. Either we´re
obedient or we´re not. There isn´t a so-so and there isn´t an inbetween.
Anyway, I love you guys
tons! Glad to know that everything´s going well in Puerto Rico. Tell everyone
that I say hello and that I love them a lot!
Love you all,
Sister Tillman
July 14, 2014
Hello Mom and Dad and my favorite Fan Club :)
How are things going in
Florida? Man, sounds like it´s going to be a lot of fun. I was looking forward
to pictures (Jacob!) but I still haven´t received any :´(
This past week was pretty
good. Flávia was baptized and her dad received the priesthood to baptize her,
which was awesome! Flávia was really one of those elect people. We started to
teach her, and she accepted everything. She went from drinking tons of café one
day to never drink again the next. It was awesome. She just knew that
everything was true and that the Gospel will help her life. It´s so great to
see someone convert to the gospel!
This coming week, José
Carlos will be baptized. He´s a contact that the other sisters did in our
stake. He´s accepted everything. I didn´t get a chance to teach on Friday
because of the mission council, but he went to church on Sunday and likes it a
lot. We´re going to try and get a member to come visit with us this week. It
should be a lot easier since his work schedule will change and he´ll work in
the afternoon now. Hooray!
Tomorrow are interviews
with President, which should be good. This past Friday was mission council,
which was super good. I learned a lot of good things about habits and character
and how to always be positive. It was a great spiritual experience, and as
always, it was fun to see good friends.
Today we went to Avenida
Paulista for a district P-day and went to the super tall building to take more
photos because it´s free. It was pretty cool.
The world cup is over!
It´s kind of crazy to think that it´s all over when I thought it would never
end. Boy does time fly. The Brazilians didn´t want Argentina to win since
they´re super huge rivals in futebol. Poor Messi.
Love you all!
July 7, 2014
Jacob!!! It was so good
to hear from you! I´m so glad that you liked EFY. It´s such a great experience
and such a testimony grower as well. What was your favorite topic/lesson?
As for the world cup,
everyone´s super worried about losing Neymar. Man, that game was such a killer
for him, coitado. We´re actually more worried about losing our captain, Thiago
Silva at the same time. Man, it´s going to be intense.
ALSO. You have to cheer
for BRASIL!!!!!! Vai Brasil! Alemanha (Germany) isn´t a good choice. You have
to support me in this!
Also, you never gave
Stanley his Birth By Sleep back?? Man, poor guy. I thought Benjamin had given
it back by now!
Have a great vacation!
Please take lots and lots of pictures!
Love you and miss you!
Monica
June 30, 2014
GENTE DO CÉU
For all of us that have survived the Brazilian
game against Chile, we will never have heart problems in the future.
The situation was tense.
When the clock wound down for the final time, the emotion was thick. Our voices
were hoarse from all the screaming. The ref was clearly against Brazil the
entire game, but the players didn´t let it get them down. Julio Cesar, the man
of all men, carried the team on his shoulders as the goalie. One by one, my
favorite players had their chance at penalty shots. David Luis. Marcelo. Hulk.
(Willian isn´t really my favorite, but I heard that he plays for Chelsea, so I
thought of Jacob). And then, the star of all super stars, O Craque, the one and
only Neymar Jr. took his final shot and made the goal. And Julio Cesar blocked
the last shot and it was OVER!!! Man, such a great ending to an unbelievable
game!!
The ward also had Festa
Junina, which is basically a country party that reminded me a lot of Texas,
since it had some country music, Brazilian line dancing, and hot dogs. A bunch
of investigators went, but the music was so loud, I didn´t get a chance to talk
to them and get their contact information, which was a bummer. Our neighbors
went and had a good time as well. I love them a lot.
Today was transfers and
P-day all wrapped into one, which is why I´m writing a little later than
normal. It was cool to see all of my friends and there are a lot of Elders who
are leaving, which makes me sad. I got to see Sister Antunes, which made me so,
so happy. She´s the best.
I stayed in Vila Mariana
for my fourth transfer, woohoo! This ward has really turned around, which is
such a blessing and a miracle. I´m excited to be here for my fourth, especially
to help the Rodrigues family with their new callings. Eliana and Paty were
confirmed yesterday, and Eliana was called to be the Primary Secretary. Felipe
blessed the sacrament yesterday as well. Priscila and Paty have started working
on Personal Progress. All in all, they continue to be the best golden family
ever. This week we´re going to orgainze an FHE with their grandmother and
cousins, and they´re already thinking of other friends who live in the area who
would be more likely to accept the gospel. I love them so, so much!
As for our other investigators,
things are going well. Ed Carlos appeared again and went to church on Sunday
and liked it a lot. They talked a lot about tithing on Sunday, and he was
already wanting to pay, which was awesome. Flávia is the daughter of a recent
convert and she said that she liked church a lot as well. The other Flávia
we´re working with once again didn´t come, which is hard. She went to the
activities throughout the week, but didn´t go to church. We´re going to try and
help her understand that while it´s hard to wake up, it´s the sacrifice that
she needs to make to turn her life around.
I´ll never regret the
decision to come on a mission. I love everything about Brazil, but the best
part is serving the Lord and doing my best to help others. Service is the best
feeling that there is!
Love you all!!
Sister Tillman
JUNE 23, 2014
Hey mom, dad, and the whole
gang!
Just to give a little update on
how the Brasil games are and how the world cup is coming along.
The Brasil games are actually
pretty chill, since everyone is inside watching. When they score goals or do
something cool, everyone screams and there are lots of noisemaker things and
lots of fireworks. It´s pretty cool.
We were all very upset about the
tied game, especially because Brazil had so many chances to score a goal and
they just weren´t able to make it past the line of the goal. Que droga.
There aren´t too many new
investigators, but things are coming along well. Eliane and Patricia were
baptized by Felipe yesterday, which was way cool. Yes! The whole family
finally! We´re still working with others, but there are lots of scheduling
conflicts, so we´ll see what happens this week. Only good things.
The weather isn´t too bad. There
will be one day where it´s kind of chilly and misty, and then three or four
days with sunshine.
Transfers are next week, so
nothing´s changed because of the world cup. Brasil won´t be playing, so it´ll
be pretty calm.
Things with my companion are
going well. She´s probably the most challenging companion I´ve had so far, but
it´s nothing I can´t handle with the help of the Lord.
There are Sister Leaders here in
the mission, and I´m actually one of them. It´s pretty cool so far, I get to
help the other sisters out with divisions and such. It´s a lot of
responsiblity, but it´s cool to get to know the other sisters as well.
Since my area is in the middle
of São Paulo, I get to see lots and lots of foreigners. I talked to some people
from Sweden, from Canada, from the States, and from England. It´s been way cool
to see the world come together. The streets are pretty calm, but the metro is
always busy and that´s where we see the most foreigners. It´s so cool. I always
get so excited :)
But yeah, the coolest story of
the week was definitely Eliana´s and Patricia´s baptism. Thursday night we went
to talk with them, and then Eliana said that she wasn´t sure if she wanted to
get baptized because she felt that she hadn´t received an answer yet, and she still
had a lot of doubts about why she needed to be baptized again and why there are
prophets. Basically everything super important. So we retaught her basically
everything using exemples from the scriptures, and she agreed to do the
interview on Saturday. I didn´t get a chance to talk to her afterwards and she
went to do the interview on Saturday, but I was super calm about it. I just
knew that everything would work out. And it did! She told me afterwards that
Thursday night, she prayed with all her might and faith and had a dream that a
man came to her and told her to follow the path of God.
Felipe was able to baptize them
on Sunday, which was awesome. Paty had a little trouble and it took a few
tries, but she finally got it right. And Eliana only took one try. She almost
didn´t get into the font because the water was super cold and she gets a little
antsy around water because she doesn´t know how to swim. But she was baptized
and now they´re the happiest family ever!!! Yesss! And thanks for adding them
on Facebook :) Which reminds me mom, can you send a few baby pictures to Felipe
and Priscila on Facebook. We were looking at their childhood photos and they
want to see some of mine. Thanks so much!
I went on a division with Sister
Silva for a day, which helped her out a lot because she felt really... not
lonely but just all by herself and she had a blast. It was good and I loved
getting to know her a lot better.
I can´t believe that transfers
are already next week! Although I feel like I´m going to stay a fourth here in
Vila Mariana because of my new assignment as Sister Leader here in the zone.
We´ll see though. Gah. I think my least favorite week is the week leading up to
transfers!
Sounds like you guys are having
lots of fun with all the summer camps and the like. When are you leaving for
the super awesome vacation?
Love you all!
Sister Tillman
June 16, 2014
VAI BRASIL!!!
Dear family,
The Brazil game was so cool! I
was so happy that we got a chance to watch it, and tomorrow we´re going to
watch it with Priscila and her family. Yes! It´s going to be even better!
This past week was a little slow
on missionary work due to the World Cup, the Mission Leadership Meeting, and my
companion getting a migraine/something wrong with her sinuses. We did get to
teach a few awesome people though.
We taught Ed Carlos, who said
that he already had contact with the church a few years ago, but stopped because
of his work schedule. But now he gets every other Sunday off, and so he´s
excited to go back and learn more about the gospel AND he´s already accepted to
be baptized by the end of the month. Yes!
We also met Dora, who is the
mother of a member who moved away to Itaquera. We tried visiting the less
active who was on our list, but his mom was there and said that she wants to
learn more about the gospel and she wants to improve her life and quit smoking
and find religion. We´re going back on Wednesday. So that´s another great thing
that happened this week. Blessings!
Felipe was confirmed yesterday
and also received the Aaronic priesthood, which he was really excited about.
He´s going to baptize his mom and his sister this Sunday, which we´re all
excited about. This family is the coolest family ever and I just love them so,
so, so much! It makes all the difficult times worth it when we find people like
them!
On Friday, we had a Mission
Leadership Meeting, with President Costa ( the area president) and he talked a
lot about faith. Many times, we have lots of faith when we set our own personal
goals, but what happens is that we don´t use that same faith to complete the
action. We stop in the middle and give up without even really trying. What we
really need to do is work our hardest, and then rely on the Lord. President
Costa also said a bunch of other super awesome things that I won´t even begin
to write because it was a lot of stuff.
Last night, Sister Oliveira and
I painted our faces and took lots of fun pictures. Vai Brasil!!
Love you all!
Sister Tillman
June 9, 2014
LETS THE GAMES BEGIN
Dear Family,
The world cup starts this
week!! And let me tell you, there is all kinds of craziness going down because
of it. The metrô is on strike, so the traffic is really bad and the busses take
forever! Hopefully the metro will stop being crazy and finally start working
properly.
President Ferrin also
came out with the rules for the World Cup, which are awesome since WE´RE
ALLOWED TO WATCH!! Just the Brazilian games (but let´s be real, the US is kind
of in a terrible position) because everyone is going to be Brazilian in the
mission when the games start. Woohoo!
We met our neighbors this
past week, and they are awesome!!!!!! They´re so fun, and they have two little
boys that are super cute. They went to church with us on Sunday (we actually
haven´t started teaching them yet because we´ve been getting home late) and
they liked it, even though it was kind of crazy with the whole stake conference
via satellite thing that didn´t really work and the reverence level was
basically at zero. But they went to church and are awesome. They need to be
married, but they said it´s something they´ve wanted to do for a long time, so
when we actually teach them, it should be good. I just love them and their
little boys so much. We ate pizza with them the other day, and it was tasty and
fun.
So yeah, we had Stake
Conference, and the Stake President asked me to speak at the Saturday night
session! I was a little nervous, but it all worked out ok. It was funny because
I had ten minutes to talk about missionary work and I was like ´´I spend a year
and a half on the mission and only get ten minutes to talk about it?´´ But I
didn´t go over at all, which was good. I shared the story about how before
Andrew was born, we all felt that someone was missing in our family, but after
he came, we didn´t feel anyone missing ever again. I used that to relate to how
we would feel in the Celestial Kingdom if we didn´t do our part to convert our
brothers and sisters who are always by our side here on the earth but won´t be
part of our eternal family if we don´t invite them to change their lives and
get to know the church. Everyone said that they liked it, which was good. I was
a little nervous about my accent, but everyone said that I talked like a
brazilian already and there was someone from the MTC who said that he would use
me as an example from now on for the Americans who think that they´ll never
learn the language, which is pretty cool. I love portuguese :)
Sunday was a great day
because FELIPE WAS BAPTIZED!!!! Man, he is so strong in the gospel. Felipe is
Priscila´s brother who we´ve been trying to get baptized for some time now, and
looking back, it was such a perfect day and that there truely is a right time
for each person that we just can´t rush, no matter how badly we or our leaders
want it to be.
Tuesday, we went to his
house and said the opening prayer and then he started off by saying ´´I can now
say that I have a testimony´´ and he told of his experience of how he´s been
really thinking a lot about baptism. We did a big group fast with him and his
family and later that day, he went to a park to just pray and open his heart up
to Heavenly Father and while he was praying about how he wanted to be baptized,
he said that he felt such a great peace and warmth and it was almost like
Heavenly Father was giving him a huge hug. Man, it made me so happy to hear
that!! And he bore his testimony after his baptism and the Spirit was so
strong. Everyone who was there couldn´t believe that a recent convert was
already so sure and strong in the faith.
He´s going to baptize his
mom and his sister next week. They´ve both had answers and I don´t know why
they didn´t want to be baptized yesterday, but everything´s going to work out
soon. This family is just so special and I love them all so much!! We´ve become
part of their family already, and it´s going to be hard to leave (it´s pretty
much 90% positive that I´ll leave the first week in July) but I´m going to
enjoy my time with them while I can!
My companion and I were
watching The District 2 this past week, and one of the Elders said something
that I really liked. He talked about how it´s logical that he´s had more
frustrating and sad times on the mission than happy moments, but that he
doesn´t focus on that. He only focuses on the joyful, spiritual moments and
because of that, he remembers each of those joyful moments with clarity and in
detail, and that the tough times are just a blur. It´s such a testimony about
attitude. If we choose to focus on the bad things, then we´ll only remember the
bad things. If we focus on the good moments in life, then we´ll remember those
and we´ll be much happier. I also did a really cool activity in Preach My
Gospel where I wrote down all the spiritual experiences I´ve had in my study
journal and why and how I felt the spirit. It was so cool to see all the
blessings that I´ve had on the mission so far and I know that more will come!
I know that we have the
restored gospel of Jesus Christ and that He lives! Eu sei disso com todo meu
coração, e ninguém pode tirar isso de mim!
Hooray for the
Restoration!
Vai Brasil!
Sister Tillman
June 2, 2014
Transfers have come and gone, and I´m still in
Vila Mariana! Sadly, Sister Antunes left for Cumbica, and I now have Sister
Oliveira, who has the same amount of time as me on the mission-11 months (also,
let´s just stop and think about how quickly time has passed. Holy smokes.) But
yeah, my first ever companheira brasileira!! She´s from Natal, Rio Grande do
Norte, which is waaaay far away (nordeste) and very hot, so she´s been freezing
here. It´s actually kind of funny. We´re excited because we´ll be together when
we pass our one year mark and for the start of the world cup, which we still
don´t have rules for.
Transfers were kind of
nuts. President is doing this new thing where he´s splitting all the zone
leaders and stuff and other kinds of craziness. I went into his office last
Monday because he wanted to talk to me about my new companion and then he
SHOWED ME THE TRANSFER BOARD. Gente, President NUNCA shows the transfer board
to anyone besides the assistants, and now I know why. It was the craziest thing
I´ve ever seen with tape and sticky notes and cards all over the place. He was
showing me how the new zone leader thing is going to help out and stuff, which
was cool.
Felipe is going to be
baptized this week! And most likely his mom and sister will be too! Woohoo! We
fasted with them this past Saturday, which was a super cool experience for them
and for us as well. They´re such a great family.
We´re going to have Stake
conference this week, which I´m excited about since it will be my FIRST stake
conference on the mission. Isn´t that nuts? If I had gotten transferred out, I
would´ve missed stake conference since this area is having it so late in the
year. It´s weird that way.
I´m excited to be staying
in Vila Mariana. I really like a lot of the members and I´m excited that I
still get to work with Felipe and his family. Woohoo!
Last week, we went to the
stadium that the world cup will have the opening ceremony, which was pretty
cool. We went with Sister Williams and her companion Sister Saavedra. They were
still putting up a bunch of seats since the last ones they put up fell down.
There´s this saying called ´´jeitinho brasileiro´´ which means that there´s
always a way to work things out at the last minute, even when it comes to huge,
important things that the stadium that will hold the opening ceremony. It´ll
definitely be interesting.
Que mais... I got to see
lots of friends at transfers, although I didn´t get to take as many pictures as
I wanted to. I did take a few though. I switched District Leaders, which made
my old district leader sad because the two best areas in his district got taken
away from him.
I can´t remember if I
told this story last week or not, but we were at Priscila´s house and she was
baking a cake and talking about her new calling, and I caught a glimpse of her
a few years in the futue, married and sealed in the temple and everything. It
was so cool to see her potential. It reminded me that Heavenly Father ALWAYS
sees us who we can become and what we can do, and not just who we are. It was
so neat.
Love you all! The past
few weeks I´ve been studying a lot about gratitude and how it change any
situation. Nefi was ALWAYS grateful for what he had and the circumstances he
went through, so he was always happy and blessed from the Lord, while Lamã e
Lemuel weren´t ever grateful, which made them bitter and they didn´t get any
more blessings. Being grateful also demonstrates our faith in the Lord, which
I´d never thought of how the two were linked before.
Love you all!
Sister Tillman
May 26, 2014
THE UNEXPECTED
Well, this past week was full of
all kinds of craziness.
Due to some strikes that have
been going on in the police force and the bus drivers, Elder Nelson cancelled
the much anticipated conference. And then he one upped himself by telling us to
stay inside our homes on Wednesday. That was kind of hard. We were so excited
for the conference, and then out of nowhere, it didn´t happen and we were stuck
inside for a day.
And then at four o´clock on
Wednesday, we got a phone call from our district leader saying that we were
allowed to work again. It was the strangest thing.
Wednesday night, we went out to
work, and since we didn´t have any appointments, we decided to do street
contacts. As we were waiting to cross a four-lane street, Sister Antunes took
off without telling me. I tried to catch up behind her, but I accidently kicked
my shoe off my foot and it skidded to the middle of the road. I yelled at
Sister Antunes to grab it since it was in front of her, and she bent down and
got it. When we got to the other side, I asked her where my shoe was, and she
said that she wasn´t able to get it, pointing to it IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD.
By that point in time, it was too late, and we looked on helplessly as multiple
cars passed by. Luckily, not a single car ran over my shoe and after the cars
passed, we ran out to the road to grab it. Miracle! I don´t think I´ll ever forget
the image of my shoe in the middle of the road all alone as the cars started to
come up on it. Man, that was crazy.
Other than that, the rest of the
week was pretty normal. One of the strangest things that´s been happening
lately is that we´ll do a really good street contact and it seems to be very
promising, and then when we go back, everything is completely different and the
person doesn´t want anything to do with us. It´s so crazy. I´ve never seen
anything like it. These are definitely the last days, and Satan is working
harder than ever to corrupt the hearts of the people.
Good news from Priscila and her
family! Felipe said that he´s been thinking a lot about setting a personal goal
for baptism, and he said that depending on some other things he needs to clear
up (we know he has a girlfriend that he never talks about, but I don´t think he
wants to keep dating her) he´ll either be baptized this Sunday or the next!!
Woohoo! And with him being baptized, his mom and his sister will be too! Yes!
We told them about transfers this week and how one of us might leave, and they
got very sad. Man, I love that family.
Priscila also got a calling!
She´s going to be the Beehive´s teacher the first hour, which is super good for
her. She´s really excited, and right now the Young Women´s presidency is made
up of all of her friends, which is also really good. She´s going to be great.
It´s such a great feeling when a recent convert gets a calling. I realize that
I´ve never seen that before. I´ve seen recent converts get the priesthood, but
never a calling. And she invited us to sit in on her setting apart, which was
LINDO. Priscila is going to be a great example in the church. Domingo was a day
of pure happiness!
A lot of our other investigators
have gone cold, and our group is so tiny. Street contacts aren´t very promising
either. What we really need is member referrals, but we hardly have any. We do
have one that we´ll teach this week though, which is exciting. We treat every
reference like gold.
I don´t think I´m going to send
any pictures this week because there´s a little pop up on this computer that
keeps saying that the computer might not be safe since it doesn´t have an
anit-virus software, so I´m going to play it safe. If we make it to the office
before the meeting, I´ll send the photos off tonight.
Love you all!
Sister Tillman
May 19, 2014
Dear Family,
Well, this week was a
fairly good one! I won´t be sending pictures right away because w´re going to
go to the aquariam later and so I´ll send them a little later when we go to the
office.
This week, we had the
temple! It was so super awesome of course, and I got to see some other mission
friends, which was great. It was a beautiful day. The São Paulo temple is so
different from the Campinas one. It´s right in the middle of a busy street, so
it´s nice because there are lots of things to do that are near there. The
Campinas temple is at the top of a big hill out in the middle of nowhere, which
is also beautiful. I´ve come to realize that I like the countryside a little
more than the bustling city life. But both temples are gorgeous.
This week, the people
weren´t very accepting of the gospel, and so we didn´t find any new
investigators. We do have a reference that we´ll contact this week though,
which is awesome. Hopefully it works out well!
We´ve being going on more
member lessons, which helps out a lot.
Sadly, Priscila´s family
doesn´t feel like it´s the ´´right time´´ for them to get baptized, and we have
no idea why. They already know everything is true, and the mom even stopped
drinking coffee! They´re just so scared of something that´s so simple. They´ve
already changed their lives, and will continue to go to church and everything.
We just don´t get it! We´re going to start to teach the grandmother, who went
to church because of Priscila´s baptism and confirmation. Hopefully she´ll be
willing to take action. At least Priscila was baptized, which is already a huge
step in the right direction.
Sunday evening, there was
a huge thunderstorm that reminded me lot about Texas thunderstorms. There was
tons of hail and heavy rains. The hail piled up in a few places, and it looked
kind of like snow. I took pictures, but they´ll come later this afternoon.
Luckily, we were in the church having ward council, so we weren´t out on the
streets and stayed safe and dry. Thank goodness. Sadly, the storm passed
quickly. We´re going to need a lot more water than that to make sure that we
still have water in a few months.
The world cup is coming!
There are lots of Brazil things on the streets and everyone is getting excited.
I don´t even know what we´re going to do. It´s definitely going to be an
interesting experience!
Other than that, the week
was pretty slow. This week we´ll have our conference with two other missions
and Elder Nelson! Woo hoo! It means that we get to ride the fanciest subway in
the world, the Yellow line. Seriously though, the yellow line subway is like
the Iron Man version of a subway line, it´s that chique.
Love you all and have a
great week!
Sister Tillman
May 12, 2014
THE DAY AFTER MOTHER'S DAY
I know! I
loved it so much! It was so fun and I can´t believe that the time went by so
quickly. How was the rest of Mother´s day?
I´m just
happy that I got to see you all :D
Alright,
so this past week was fairly eventful. We had a district P-day, where we ate
pasteis and played frisbee. We also had Priscila´s baptism, and at the
interview, we played a fun game with her family where we each had a superhero
on sticky notes on our foreheads and we had to guess what super hero we were.
And the other fotos are from Pri´s baptism. Woo hoo! Pri was an investigator
for three years, and finally everything deu certo (worked out) and she was
baptized!
May 5, 2014
Dear Family,
This past week was a
really, really good week. Thanks for all of your prayers!!!
I don´t even know where
to start...
First off, we have a new
family of investigators! Their names are Miguel, Lázara, and Rosali. Miguel is
so adorable. He´s eighty years old and has kidney problems so he has to go to a
clinic every other day to circulate his blood or something like that. (My
portuguese is good until it gets to medicine and then I´m down and out.)
Anyway, there´s this street in our area that we ALWAYS use because it´s one of
the two or three roads in our area that has houses that we can knock if we want
to and people that hang out in the front and stuff. We usually go up the hill
on one side of the street, but Tuesday, I had the feeling that we should go up
the other side to see if there would be anyone new to do contacts with. AND
THERE WAS.
Miguel and Rosali were
waiting for the van to pick up to go to the clinic, so they were waiting
outside and we started talking to them and they were awesome and super
receptive. We´ve been teaching them and Miguel´s wife Lázara all week and they
went to church and everything. Miguel is kind of old and forgetful sometimes,
but he really, really wants to be baptized. He´s so freaking cute. He didn´t
want to leave church yesterday and was sad when it was over. Rosali and Lázara
are wanting to think about baptism some more, but we just feel like they´ll be
baptized. The members loved the family and made them feel really welcome, which
was awesome.
Priscila, Felipe, Pat,
and Eliana are slow going. We were trying to prepare Priscila and Felipe for
this past weekend, but they weren´t in their house all week, which made it
impossible to talk to them. We talked to them and Pat on Sunday when they went
to church (hooray!) and said that we were going to stop by every night all week
to help them be baptized on Sunday, and to not plan anything else at all, which
they agreed with.
We met and taught
Guilherme this week, a nine year old of a recently-returning less active.
Marisa (the mom) just needs to talk to his dad (they´re separated) and he´ll be
baptized. Guilherme is so cute and he´s super smart. He understands a lot
better than some of our adult investigators do!
We also had one more investigator
at church, Vania, but she still hasn´t accepted baptism and also needs to be
married in order to progress more. She´s pretty tough, but likes us a lot. She
agrees with everything we say and understands the importance of the Gospel, but
every time we invite her to be baptized she says ´´But, I´ve already been
baptized´´ So we go through the whole authority part again. We´ll see how far
she progresses. Sister Antunes doesn´t like cutting investigators (she served
the first few months in Portugal where every investigator is gold) but if Vania
doesn´t accept baptism soon, then we´ll have to stop teaching her. She
definitely needs lots of prayers.
So that´s what happened
on the investigator´s side. On the random/fun side, we ate SO MUCH FOOD
yesterday. Our LMA´s wife loves to cook, and everytime we go, she cooks so
much. Luckily, she doesn´t use sugar or overly fattening things, otherwise,
we´d leave like roly polies. Sister Antunes and I are going to start our
´´regime´´ (diet/excercise) this week so that we don´t get an overdose every
Sunday.
Sister Antunes ended up
being partially illegal in the country because she wasn´t able to get registered
within the thirty days. We planned with the secretary to be there Thursday at
7am, but whe we arrived, nobody was there. He´d forgotten to tell us that he
wasn´t going on Thursday anymore, so we woke up really early for nothing. We
were soooo tired that day. And Friday too because we had to do it all over
again to actually go.
Vania has two adorable
kittens that we play with everytime we go there. They´re so freaking cute, and
one of them looks almost like a baby Zobumafoo lemur when he plays with string.
Don´t worry, I´ll show pictures.
Other than that, life is
good. The work is coming along well and we´re both very happy. Thanks for all
of the prayers, because I feel them every day!
Beijos!
Sister Tillman
April 28, 2014
IT'S ALWAYS DARKEST BEFORE DAWN
Dear Family,
So remember how last
Sunday was probably the worst Sunday in existence because a baptism fell
through? Well, that bad feeling is long gone, and this week lots of good things
happened!
First off, we have an
investigator family!!! They´re awesome. Priscila is the driving force behind
all of them, and she´s been investigating the church for two years now, but
this week and next week it will finally work out. She´s 22 and has a twin
sister, a younger brother of 19 (and six as well) and her mom. They´re all
preparing for baptism within the coming weeks. The mom has only been to church
once, and she didn´t go yesterday, which was sad. But then we had the great
idea that Felipe can be baptized and confirmed this week, receive the Aaronic
Priesthood, and then baptize his mom and his other sister on Mother´s Day! He
was pretty excited about that. So there´s a huge possibility of him and
Priscila being baptized this Saturday and the other half Mother´s Day. We´ll
keep working with them.
But holy smokes, is this
family amazing. I love them so much. We leave our lessons with them so happy,
which is the mark of good investigators. This family is definitely what we
needed after last week.
Another great thing that
happened was while we were at church. A member came up to us and said that she
wants us to teach her nine year old son so that he can be baptized. Actually,
the conversation went something like this:
Member: Sisteres, my
husband and I are divorced and my son spends half the time with me and the
other half with his dad. He´s nine years old, and it´s time for him to be
baptized. I talked to him the other day and he said he wanted to have the
missionary lessons. Would you two be able to come over and help him out?
Us: CLARO QUE SIM!!!
It was a great moment.
It´s not every day that people ask to get taught.
Other great news: ELDER
NELSON IS COMING. That´s right, an apostle of the Lord will come visit our
mission, and I´m so stoked! He´ll be coming May 21st. Woohoo!
Well, that´s pretty much
what heppened in a nut shell. Oh, we went to the neighboring area to do
contacts one morning as a district and one of our contacts is getting taught
and is preparing for baptism. It was the very last one we did too. It´s such a
great feeling to know that we make a difference, even if it´s just a little
bit.
And we´re teaching
another family too, who are also awesome. We´re going to be teaching them
tomorrow night. And there´s a member who moved into the ward recently who will
be helping us out tomorrow night, so hooray for member lessons! They´re the
best!
Well, I love you all! I
pray for you every day.
Love,
Sister Tillman
April 21, 2014
A WEEK OF ALMOSTS
Dear Family,
This past week, lots of
things happened. Some of them were good, and some of them were bad.
We had transfers this
past week, and Sister Antunes got to stay with me, which was awesome. We were
both so happy, and very grateful to President for letting her stay. Sister
Guerrero was transferred to another city kind of far, but it´s what she wanted,
so she was happy too.
At transfers, I got to
see a bunch of my friends from my old Guaratinguetá zone, which was super fun.
We went to lunch together and I introduced Sister Antunes to them. A bunch of
them were transferred out of Guará, and we were all sad about that.
Friday, we had interviews
with President, where he said that we would only be companions for this
transfer, which made us very sad. He said that he couldn´t keep two
´´powerhouse´´ sisters together because he needs us to help out other people in
other areas. We´re going to try to make the best of it that we can. He wants us
to help out a another companionship this transfer by going on splits with them
and stuff, which makes us sad, but we´re willing to do anything that President
asks us to do.
Friday was also a major
holiday here in Brazil, so everything was closed. I don´t like holidays.
Everyone goes on vacation and makes teaching very hard. After interviews, Elder
Santana and his companion came to our area to do a baptismal interview for Ana
Nilda, and everything was going well. We went back on Saturday and called
Saturday morning and got her a ride to church and everything, but when we went
to pick her up, she said that she didn´t want to be baptized just yet, that she
talked to her husband and didn´t feel ready, that she would still go to church
and stuff, just not be baptized. We tried everything we could to help her
realize that she is perfectly ready for baptism, that she´s not going to get a
´´better´´ answer than she´s already gotten, but she wouldn´t listen. And then,
the even sadder part was that she didn´t even go to church! It was so crazy.
I´ve never had a baptism fall that close! It was soooo sad. I´m pretty sure her
husband said something to her or something. I don´t even know what happened.
And then, to make matters
worse, our other investigator, Valeria, called us and said that she didn´t want
the commitment of baptism in her life, that quitting smoking was just too hard
and that she didn´t even want us to go over anymore. I don´t even know what
happened there, but it was the final straw for us. So we went to the bathroom
and had a little cry, and none of our investigators went to church because they
went on vacation and we worked so hard. It was incredibly frustrating.
However, the Lord is on
our side, and we´re going to keep working as hard as we can. Part of the
problem is that the Bishop here is super fechado. He just doesn´t open his mind
to see other things. It´s been four months since there´s been a church activity,
and the members want to have one, but the bishop says no, because it´s too
hard, or it will cost too much money, or some other excuse. So we´re just going
to try our best and throw our own activity in May. And we´ll keep making street
contacts for São Paulo Sul, since that´s where everyone lives. Man, we found
two super elect people that have big families and everything, but they live in
the other mission. So we passed the references and hope that the other
missionaries there will understand the importance of visiting them because they
are awesome.
A quick break from
missionary tales, our fridge is full of sweets!! Two cakes, cookies and two
bags of candy (thanks mom and dad!), chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate
and some milk. That´s all we have in our fridge. It´s insane. Happy Birthday to
me, mwahaha.
Love you all!
Sister Tillman
April 14, 2014
TRIO!!
Well, this week has been a crazy one.
It all started Tuesday
morning, when Elder Andersen called me during studies asking if we had space
for one more Sister. I looked around our already tiny apartment and said that
if we put on a mattress on the floor it could work out. I didn´t say no, because
I knew that he was calling me for a reason: because President wanted us to be
in a trio and not another dupla of missionaries in the mission.
Turned out to be one of
the best decisions of my mission.
Sister Antunes is from
Portugal. She served in the Portugal mission for two months while waiting for
her visa, then went to the MTC here in Brazi before coming to our mission a
week before transfers. She´s a little older for a missionary (she´s 26) but
that just makes her that much more awesome. I´ve loved being in a trio, because
it makes everything so much better. There are three voices in the lessons,
there are three minds with ideas, there are six eyes and hands to look for
people. It´s the best. Sadly, it´s going to end today. And we don´t know how. It´s
basically a guarantee that I´m going to stay here. We just don´t if Sister
Antunes will stay or Sister Guerrero.
I decided to call
President about letting Sister Antunes stay. Well, first I called Elder
Andersen and he told me to call President since transfers are this week. When
President answered, I was like ´´Can Sister Antunes stay with me here?´´ and he
said ´´Do you mean will she?´´ and I said ´´No, I mean CAN she. Because she´s
awesome´´ and we talked about it for a little bit. I´m glad I called because he
was going to transfer her to another place and leave me and Sister Guerrero
here, which I think would have killed Sister Guerrero. So we´ll see what
happens tonight.
On Tuesday, all we did
was contact people, which was good, but hard. We also played a prank on Elder
Santana, our district leader, saying that Sister Guerrero went home and Sister
Antunes arrived that same day. It was hilarious. He totally believed us. I
don´t know why, but pranking district leaders is so fun.
Our investigators are
coming along well. We had four people at church yesterday, which made us very
happy.
Our schedule is already
packed for the week, which is good, because this week is Páscoa, ou seja, it´s
a holiday so nobody will be here. It´s a good thing we already have a full
schedule!
Yesterday, we stopped by
the house of one of contacts, who turns out to actually be Catholic and was
having a churrasco with a bunch of other actual catholics to celebrate palm
Sunday. We said hello to everyone, but we had to run with our other million
appointments and as we were leaving, she was like ´´why didn´t you tell
everyone to be quiet so that you could share a message?´´ We were just like
What?? But we didn´t do that because we didn´t want to walk into her home and
disrupt everything. Especially because we´d made the contact with her twelve
year old daughter and not her, so we´d just met. And we didn´t want a spirit of
contention, which we were already kind of feeling just by saying hello to
everyone. But we remarked for Wednesday. That was a crazy experience.
Last night, we went to
bed late because we got home late after our last appointment and planned until
late and wrote in our journals until late, and then it was midnight which meant
it was my birthday, so my companions stuck a candle in some ice cream and sang
happy birthday. It was neat.
Oh, and the ward mission
leader´s wife made me cake too. It was great.
Well, that was pretty
much my week in a nutshell. Lots of hard work, lots of good success, and lots
of photos!! Woohoo!
Love you all, and have a
great week! Thanks for the birthday video!!
Love,
Sister Tillman
March 31, 2014
PESQUISADORES EXISTEM!
Dear Family,
This past week started out
pretty slow, but luckily things picked up a bit!
On Tuesday, my companion
was sick, so we stayed in the house all day while she slept and got better. Our
teaching pool had been reduced to basically zero, so I spent a couple of hours
looking through old teaching records (really, really old teaching records) and
found a couple of promising people.
The next few days, we
spent tracking down the people in the teaching records, and only one of them
still lives in their house (the records are seven years old). However, we did
find a lot of other people on the way, and now are teaching group has grown a
ton, which makes me very happy.
I finished the Book of
Alma this week, which makes me kind of sad because it´s probably my favorite
book in the Book of Mormon. As I was reading in the war chapters, it mentioned
over and over again how Captain Moroni prepared for war during the times of
peace, which is what we should be doing too-- preparing for spiritual war each
and every day. If we get complacent during the times of peace, when the war
comes, it´s way too late to be prepared and we will be beaten. I thought it was
very interesting.
I love you all. Have a
wonderful week!
Sister Tillman
March 24, 2014
Dear Family,
Well, another week has
come and gone on the mission, and half of my mission will have officially
passed by this Wednesday. Yep, that happened quickly!!
This past week was fairly
normal-ish. We were challenged by the assistants to get 20 addresses every day,
which is suuuuper hard. We had one day where we probably talked to fifty
different people, and only four of them gave them their address/lived in our
mission. Even though it was a hard day, when we got home, I felt so good
because I knew that I had literally laid everything on the line. It´s a good
missionary feeling.
We´re currently teaching
Ana, who is the mother of a teenage member. She´s really awesome, and she´s the
product of other missionaries three years ago. And she just now finally decided
to come to church and get baptized. The miracles happen, we just have to keep
working hard. I was talking to my companion who was kind of complaining a
little about why contact don´t work and how they seem impossible, and then we
started talking about how we can talk to two hundred people in a week, and if
just one of them accepts to listen to us and is baptized, it makes the other
199 contacts worth it!
It cooled down yesterday,
and our apartment is starting to get cold. My poor companion is suffering
because she´s never experienced super cold before (it´s like in the 70s right
now) and I´m just happy that my year of summer time is FINALLY over. It´s been
a crazy year, but the heat will be gone! Until September. Yesssssss.
Yesterday during Relief
Society, the second counselor in the bishopric pulled me out and asked me to
give a ten minute talk about whatever I wanted because the second speaker
called in sick. I was like ´´Uh... sure, sounds good´´ and then the freak out
started because it was my first talk in Portuguese and I had basically zero
time to prepare. It went well though, and everyone said that they liked it. I
talked about the importance of the Plan of Salvation and how I was so grateful
to have such awesome parents who taught me that the eternal perspective is so much
more than today or next week, or next month, but it truly is about forever, and
how we can help our other brothers and sisters who haven´t had the chance to
know about the gospel understand about the eternal perspective. I was just
happy that I didn´t make any major grammar mistakes in Portuguese. Yes!
This past week I´ve been
reading in the ´´war chapters´´ of the Livro de Mórmon, and this time around it
struck me how often they talk about having good fortifications and good
strength. Even when there were four years of peace, Captain Morôni never
stopped strengthening the city. And that´s how we should be too. It´s not
enough to just be strong in the times of war, but we should constantly be
fortifying our testimonies during the times of peace as well.
Love you all. Have a
great week!
Love,
Sister Tillman
March 17, 2014
Dear Family,
This past week has been
fairly chill and very normal. Ianda, our recent convert, was confirmed on
Sunday. And Bernardino, our miracle who told us he wants to be baptized before
we even taught him anything, is firme forte. We have a few other families we´re
trying to work with and we want to progress, it´s just hard to get them to come
to church. We´re going to try even harder this week though.
Sadly, St. Patrick´s Day
doesn´t exist here. So there aren´t any people walking around with green beards
and hair and things like that. Que pena.
Other than that, life is
so normal. I think this week we´re going to try and some cool pictures of
things here because my area is so neat and relatively famous in the Brazilian
world, so we should take advantage of that.
One of the coolest things
that happened this past week actually happened yesterday, while we were
teaching our super golden investigator Bernardino. He´s 23 years old, and has
always wanted to be a dad and have a family. When we taught about temples and
eternal families, his eyes welled up with tears of joy because he always
thought that his family would end at death. It was such a sweet and tender
experience, and I´m so happy to be a part of the gospel of Jesus Christ, where
families can be together forever. As famílias poderão ser eternas!!
Amo vocês!
Sister Tillman
March 10, 2014
I was
transferred! I´m in Vila Mariana, and it´s the opposite of the mission! It´s
also completely different. I´m basically living in the Brazilian New York,
which is a whole lot different from the country side. The ward reminds me a lot
of the Ft. Worth 3rd Ward too.
Saudades is a word that doesn´t have a direct
translation, but it´s that aching feeling that one gets when they miss someone.
And that´s what I have right now for Lorena.
I was transferred to Vila
Mariana last week. Vila Mariana is the EXACT OPPOSITE of Lorena. Where Lorena
was super interior (country side) Vila Mariana is the heart of the city of Sao
Paulo, which is one of the largest cities in the world. Needless to say, it´s
been a big change. The work here is completely different. It´s so hard to find
people, but the people that we do have are good.
First off, we had a
baptism yesterday, which was awesome. We also got a super great text message at
11 o´clock last night from one of the ward members. Her neighbor has been to
church twice, but we haven´t been able to teach him because of his hectic
schedule. But he told her that the wants to be baptized because of the peace he
feels when he´s at church. So how cool is that??? We went to sleep very happy.
My companion is Sister
Guerrero, and she´s from Ecuador. She was actually Sister Ortiz´s companion in
the MTC, which is crazy. This past week has been hard on her because she misses
her trainer, just like it´s been hard on me because I miss Lorena. She´s also a
little disanimated because it´s hard to teach here. But the people we do teach
are golden, while in Lorena, we could almost always find someone to teach, but
they almost never progressed very far. Each area has it´s strong and weak
points.
Our area follows the
metrô line, so it´s pretty long and narrow, which makes it hard to work. All of
our investigators are far away from each other, and taking the metrô is
expensive. The buses aren´t very good for us either, because they only go to
places where the metro isn´t at, which for us means out of our area, which also
means out of the mission, because we´re the last area on the southwest side.
I´m in the same zone as
the mission office, so when the other Elder gets here in a week, I´ll be able
to get my package right away! I also live above the post office, which makes it
easier to send letters out.
Love you all. Have a
great week this week. Keep warm! (Speaking of which, in the city, it´s not
nearly as hot. And th 16th floor always has a nice breeze at night!)
Love,
Sister Tillman
March 3, 2014
Dear Family,
Not knowing about transfers is killing me slowly. Luckily, we
only have... less than twelve hours to find out. No biggie. I just get to use
this opportunity to learn more about patience, right? The worst is that we have
no idea what´s going to happen this transfer. Either of us could go, either of
us could stay, and we still have no idea whether or not Lorena will have
another set of sisters. So yeah, it´s hard waiting.
The hard part is that I have no idea what I want. I don´t know
if I want to stay or if I want to go. Staying would be fine. I know Lorena
better than anyone else, and if we were to have another dupla of sisters, it
could really help out. But then that would mean almost eight months in the same
area, and I don´t know if I could handle that. I want another adventure!
This past week, we went to Cruzeiro, which is about an hour away by bus. Irmão
Thiago from our ward was called to be the branch president there this past
month and asked us to do some visits, since Cruzeiro has NEVER had sisters before.
It was so fun, and a super neat adventure. We walked A TON, but we got some
good work done, which was good. It made me realize that I´m kind of ready for a
new area and some new people. But then I remember that I love Lorena, and the
members here are awesome, so I don´t want to leave. It makes life difficult.
Other than that, this past week was fairly chill. We went to
Cruzeiro, had some great lessons here, and all in all, it was pretty normal.
This Thursday, we´re having our mission tour, and President Costa, the Brazil
Area President, will be speaking. We´re supposed to be there at 8am. If I stay
here, that means we´ll have to leave our house at 3:30. I´m NOT looking forward
to that. Although road trips are always fun on the way back. Last time, there were
five of us Americans talking, and we realized that we all went to BYU and that
we´d all get back around the same time, so that was pretty neat.
Tomorrow is Carnaval!! Hahaha. Here in Lorena, it just means
that everyone went out of town, which means we didn´t have anyone for church.
But we did meet this super awesome family on Saturday that´s HUGE. Seriously,
their family is like half the neighborhood. I´m excited to teach them this
week, if I don´t get transferred that is.
So yeah, that was pretty much my week! Hopefully everyone is
staying warm!
Love,
Sister Tillman
February 25, 2014
Yesterday, we had a mission conference with
Elder Brad Evans, which was SO GOOD. Holy smokes. So inspired.
We talked a lot about
CONVERT baptisms. As you may know, Brazil has a reputation for baptizing tons,
but the retention rates are very low. it´s because the focus in a lot of Brazil
missions (and it was the focus in this mission until a few months ago) was to
baptize has quickly and as many as possible to help the numbers look good. But
now the mission is focusing a lot more on converting people, because the
numbers don´t really matter.
Elder Evans talked a lot
about eternal life, and expounded on a lot of doctrine. Eternal life is not
just living WITH our Father in Heaven, but living LIKE him. Ou seja, to be
sealed here on this earth and have an eternal family. And he said that this
ETERNAL focus is EXACTLY what we need to be teaching our investigators, because
this heavenly truth is what will convert them here on this earth so that they
can stay firme forte. While it might not sound like something new here in the
email, the way that he said it, and the spirit that was there was just so
incredibly strong.
At the beginning, he said
that he would ask questions and that we should raise our hands, not just to be
´´chosen´´, but to show the spirit that we are willing to learn something new.
So I raised my hand every time AND I WAS CHOSEN. So I stood up in front of over
200 missionaries and basically talked to Elder Evans one on one for a little
while. I thought I would just answer the question and be done (it was a
question about D&C 4). However, he switched back and forth from talking to
me to talking to everyone else, and because he did that, I was standing up for
a reeeaaaallllly long time. Like 20 mins. But it was such a spiritual
experience. To look into the eyes of a general authority... man, it was so
neat.
Sister Evans also spoke,
and man after she was done, she left every one trunky demais, because she
talked about our families at home and our futue families.
Elder Evans doesn´t speak
português, so he had a translator. I´m so glad that I speak English. Although
when I was talking to him, I was having a really hard time separating the two
languages, since he was talking about the gospel, and the gospel has been in
strictly portuguese for the past six months. It was funny because afterwards,
Elder Andersen (my former Zone Leader and the current AP) was talking to me and
he said that he was like ´´Sister Tillman has been speaking Portuguese for way
to long´´ since I was struggling to get my thoughts across. It´s just because I
don´t remember any of the gospel words in English. I have to translate them
from Portuguese.
Basically, the mission
conference was wonderful! I could probably go on and on and on about it, but I
won´t.
Sunday, Edvaldo was
baptized! Woot! He´s just so good, and I´m really excited for him to continue
to grow. Lucia and Domingos are also awesome, and they were confirmed on
Sunday. Domingos also received the aaronic priesthood, which was great.
That´s about all that
happened this past week, which is actually a lot. It rained last night, and it
hailed while we were driving home. Just baby hail though. And we were in the
bus, so it was all good.
Love you all! Have a
great week! Don´t forget about the eternal perspective!
Love,
Sister Tillman
February 23, 2014
Hey mom!! And dad. And Benjamin, Jacob, James,
Adam, Emily, and Andrew!
Tomorrow, we´re going to
have a mission conference with a couple of the area seventies, and we´re be
going to São Paulo. So I won´t be on the computer tomorrow, but Tuesday I will
be. Just a quick FYI.
Also, I finally got the
Christmas package yesterday!! Obrigadão!! It was so awesome. My district
leader, Elder Hanni, brought it to me yesterday when he came to do a baptismal
interview, and I opened it in the bus station. I have pictures. I was so happy.
And I got the box from the Young Women, but I think they sent me Dallas´ box.
Or at least they put Dallas´ notes in my box.
Love you all. Thanks
soooo much for the box! It was the best!
Love,
Sister Tillman
Febraury 17, 2014
CASAL!!!
The word casal means couple. And that´s exactly
what happened yesterday here in Lorena. A couple was baptized. It was such a
miracle. Hooray for Lucia and Domingos! Man, they are such a miracle story.
They´re the couple that I talked about last time. They´re so perfect and I love
them so much!!
Also, another family
appeared at church yesterday, which was an awesome surprise. They´re going out
of town this week, but we´re going to teach them when they come back.
And we have a very high
chance of baptizing again this week. We just have to accompany every single
night with Palavra de Sabedoria (word of wisdom), but he´s a great guy, and
after some pushing and shoving, woke up for church yesterday. It was awesome.
It also rained this
weekend!! Last night was the first night in a loooooong time where we didn´t
use our fans. It was awesome. The sun stays behind clouds and we don´t sweat
out all of the water we take in.
Rumor has it that there
might be another dupla of missionarias here in Lorena. I´m going to talk to
President in interviews tomorrow to see if that really will happen. If so, I´ll
probably stay here a fifth transfer to divide the house and the area,
especially since Sister Ortiz still doesn´t know where a lot of things are
(Thanks Dad for teaching me about landmarks and paying attention, because I had
the area down after one transfer). So it will be interesting.
Things are looking up in
this area. I´ve always loved the ward, and now they´re starting to get excited
again about missionary work which gives us lots of work to do!
Well, that´s about
everything that happened this past week! Hopefully things will keep moving
forward in this area, because I love Lorena! Don´t forget to talk about the
gospel to people and to give the missionaries referrals, because those are how
people get baptized! And even if the person doesn´t want anything to do with
the church, at least you tried your best to help the work progress.
Love you all!! Have a
fabulous week and a great President´s Day!
Love,
Sister Tillman
February 10, 2014
MILAGRES!!!
Dear Family,
This past week has been
one of the best weeks of the mission. We finally, finally, FINALLY, have
investigators who are progressing incredibly well. Three are doing awesomely,
and the others we´re going to work with this week. Yesterday was the best
Sunday church I´ve had on the mission!
That Friday, we had a
Noite Familiar (FHE) at the church that we were in charge of, and we were
trying to track down and invite a ton of people. On our way back to the centro
to buy some things, I turned to Sister Ortiz, and said that we were going to
pass by their house on the way, and maybe we should invite them, even though
the activity started in an hour, and we hadn´t talked to them in two weeks. We
were kind of up in the air about it, until we saw the daughter who is
super-contra in the street, leaving the house. We talked to her for a bit, and
then decided that we would go, because the worst that would happen was that
they would say no. AND THEY DIDN´T. They went to the activity, and had a good
time, and then went to church last week. After church, we re-taught the
restoration, and the evangelho de Jesus Cristo, and we´ve been teaching them
every night since then. And they are so awesome. They stopped all of their Word
of Wisdom problems already, and they went to church yesterday and are so
excited for their baptism!
We went last night with
Bishop to visit them, which at first was a kind of terrifying experience,
because when we walked in the house, I realized that we hadn´t planned anything
because we were worried about other things, and we hadn´t co-ordinated with
bishop about what our propósito was going to be. Luckily, the Spirit is always
a great guide, so we read out of Mosiah 18, which talks about baptism, and
bishop talked about what it means to be baptized and the importance of the
baptismal covenant, and it was great. And bishop got really excited too,
because it´s a couple-a tiny family, but a family. So he started thinking, and
asked his wife (who grew up in the ward) when the last time a couple got
baptised-both people, the husband and wife- and she said that it was in 2000
and it was when LUCIA´S SISTER GRAÇA was baptized. Yep, so now bishop is super
stoked, we´re so excited, and everything is going really well for the first
time since I´ve gotten here!
So yeah, I´ve decided to
basically only work with Graça´s family, because they´re golden in this ward.
Miller was her daughter´s long-time boyfriend, and now her sister is getting
baptized. Yep. Life is good.
We also have another
golden investigator who is progressing well, Edvaldo. Edvaldo is the friend of
Paulo. Paulo is pretty quiet, especially after his mom passed away last month.
But Sunday the 2nd, when he got to church he came up to me and said that he had
a referência para nós. He was literally the last person I would have thought to
give us a referral. Edvaldo is super awesome. He´s also pretty soft-spoken, but
he´s super excited to get baptized. He stopped drinking and drinking coffee
after the first time we talked to him, and he just wants to get baptized as
soon as possible because he´s ready to start his life over again. His parents
are also interested, and the mom wants to get baptized too, we just need to
resolve some other issues, like getting her married to her husband and stuff
like that. So we´re super stoked about Edvaldo, who will get baptized the
23rd.
This area has been so
hard since I´ve gotten here in September. We were working so hard and having
little success, but with lots of patience (and lots and lots and lots of
patience) we´re starting to see the miracles come through. We have a few other
investigators that need to get married, and we´re working with an atheist who
is super neat and part of a less-active family we´re trying to reactivate (I
never thought I´d work with an atheist here in Brasil). There were a few times
that I just wanted out of Lorena, but now I don´t want the next transfer to
come, because I want to see all these people baptized before I leave. We´ll see
what happens come March 4th.
So yeah, that was pretty
much my week so far. Eight investigators came to church yesterday (four are
eternals until they get married) and things are looking great here. Except for
the no rain part. That part´s the worst. At least it cools off a little at
night, so hopefully that keeps up.
So yeah, that´s basically
been our week. We teach a ton, and it´s a great feeling!
Love you all, and I hope
you have a great week! Stay warm!
Love,
Sister Tillman
February 4, 2014
Yesterday we went to another waterfall, which
is always awesome, and it was beautiful. This hike was the hardest yet because
it was pretty steep and very hot, but when we got to the waterfall, it was so
pretty, and the water was so cold, which was awesome. It´s been awhile since
I´ve felt cold, so it was totally worth dipping our toes in the water! It was a
great day yesterday, even though it was kind of exhausting. We also got to play
ultimate frisbee for awhile, which was super fun.
My area has been on the
upswing. We have new people to teach and we´re hoping to baptize a few of them
this month. One of the families is the sister to one of the irmãs here in the
ward, which is always a great foundation. We have also finally received some
good referências, so we´re going to track them down this week too.
Saturday, the Elders from
Cruzeiro came with us to help a less-active family move to the other street,
which was a great way to build trust. This less-active family has a son who
became angry at God and said that he lost his faith. We´re hoping to help him
regain his faith enough to get baptized. I´ve never taught anyone who claims to
not believe in God, so it´ll be interesting. Good thing I know that the Lord is
on my side!
Other than that, life has
been pretty normal here. And hot. Oh my goodness, I don´t know how I´m not a
puddle right now. It was hotter in Arizona, but at least there we had breaks in
the houses with air conditioning. Here, there is no air conditioning, and our
house is so hot at night. There´s never a break. Except the waterfalls, which
are only like once every two or three weeks, sadly.
Have a great week
everyone! Good luck with school and work! Keep being happy!
Love,
Sister Tillman
February 2, 2014
So, we´re going to be climbing a mountain
tomorrow, and we won´t be able to use the internet until Tuesday because of the
bus schedules and stuff like that. Rest assurred, I´m fine, and I´ll talk more
on Tuesday.
Also, I´m melting here.
There is no break from the sun, and there´s no AC. I miss AC.
Have a great Sunday! I
love you all! Até terça! (That´s Tuesday in Portuguese.)
Love,
Sister Tillman
January 27, 2014
Well, nothing too crazy happened this past
week. It was a fairly normal week with lots of working and teaching and trying
to get investigators to come to church. Sadly, hardly any of them came, even
though we walked to their houses and gave it our all.
I think one of the
lessons I learned this week, is that it doesn´t matter what my leaders think or
what the President thinks, or if my numbers look bad because we haven´t
baptized in a while. I´m not here to serve them and make them happy. I´m here
to serve the Lord, and I know that I`m doing my best and working my hardest.
And that´s all that matters.
An awesome thing that
happened this past week is that I got to see a bunch of my MTC friends! We took
a fun picture and it was great to talk to them. Two more of the Elders arrived,
and the other two went to the office because they needed things too, so we were
all there and it was awesome!
Also, this past Saturday
night, we learned how to make some different types of food, and I showed how to
make peach cobbler. It was my first time making it by myself, so I was pretty
nervous, but everything worked out ok and it turned out really well.
This coming week, we´re
having a ward activity on how to establish goals to keep our family strong.
We´re hoping that our investigators come too!
Oh, and I kind of got
attacked by dogs this morning and got bit again. But mom, before you freak out,
this time it barely broke the skin, and since it was P-day and I was wearing
jeans, it just left a really ugly purple bruise. I officially don´t like dogs
now. Especially brazilian ones.
Love you all! Keep warm
this week!
Love,
Sister Tillman
January 20, 2014
Dear Family,
Well, I didn´t get mom´s
email, I only got dad´s. Thanks dad! (And before I forget, what are the chances
of me becoming your translator in Brazil? Because that would be pretty
awesome!)
Mom, I hope you feel
better!! Strep throat must be pretty terrible. How did it happen?
This past week here has
been pretty chill. We spend a lot of time with Rose and Pamela, helping them
parar de fumar and making sure they stay happy. Pamela went to church yesterday
with her kids, which means that she´s officially progressing, and she´s so
excited for her baptism in February.
It´s kind of a crazy
feeling have to wait two more Sundays to baptize her, but she´s still firme
forte for here in a few weeks, so we´re really excited for her!
Saturday, my district
leader and his companion came to visit our area and help us out. Sister Ortiz
and I did divisions with some of the members, which was great. We got twice as
much work done, and the Elders tracked down a less-active family that they said
is pretty neat and there are some future sacerdócio there too if we can help
them get baptized. So we´re pretty excited about that too.
It´s kind of crazy how
time flies. Tomorrow is transfers, but the odds of me or Sister Ortiz being transferred
is slim to none, since I have to finish her training. We´re just anxiously
awaiting the news for the other sisters in our district, since Sister Chaparro
has been here as long as I have, so she has a huge possibility of leaving. I
hope not though.
Other than that, life as
a senior companion/trainer has settled down. I´m finally feeling like I´m
getting the hang of things and that my area is doing well. It´s kind of crazy
how my feelings are so closely tied to my area. If my area is doing well, I´m
happy, if it´s not, then I´m more stressed out and sad. But it´s just because I
love Lorena and I want to see the ward grow!
Anyway, that´s pretty
much what happened this past week. In church this month, all of the sacrament
talks are about the second coming, and I´ve also read Alma 5 this past week,
which has all of those powerful questions about where we think we´d stand at
the last day. It´s kind of crazy to think that the second coming of Christ tá
chegando, but at least we don´t have to be afraid since we know we´re on the
Lord´s side. As long as we´re doing everything correctly, He´ll always be there
to protect us.
Love you all! Have a
great week!
Love,
Sister Tillman
January 13, 2014
I don´t have too much time today, but just to
let you know that I love you all!
This past week we went to
the Campinas templo, which was GORGEOUS. Pictures will come next week. We also
visited a different waterfall today, which is why we don´t have too much time
because we have to get back to our area still. But it was totally worth it and
a lot of fun.
I think the hardest thing
about our area is keeping investigators. We have so many awesome investigators
that for some reason or another are almost impossible to find in their house to
teach, which is frustrating. But we keep finding new ones! We´re hoping to help
a few that we have progress a lot more than just a few lessons, so we´ll see
how this week goes!
Love you all, and have a
great week!
Love,
Sister Tillman
JANUARY 6, 2014
HAPPY THREE KINGS DAY!
For the record, Three Kings Day is not an
official holiday here in Brazil. I don´t even think they recognize it. But it´s
fun to say, so I keep saying it to people and they look at me funny.
This past week was pretty
good. New Years was pretty chill because that morning we had gone to São José
for training from President and left pretty early in the morning, and the other
Sisters in our zone came to our house to sleep, so we were pretty exhausted. We
actually went to sleep Tuesday night early and woke up five minutes before
midnight and then went back to sleep five minutes after midnight. So yeah,
suuuuuper chill.
The town finally woke
back up and turned to normal. Thank goodness. It was so weird walking around a
ghost town. I didn´t like it.
We got rained on twice
this past week, and one time it was a super crazy rain with tons of wind and
really cold. Foi extranho.
We´re working with a
reference from the neighboring ward here. Man, referrals are SO important in
the missionary work. I was looking at all the baptisms since this area has had
sister missionaries, and EVERY SINGLE ONE was a referência. So that´s how
important it is to give referrals to the missionaries!
My companion´s birthday
was on Friday, and we threw a surprise party for her. Actually, I had no idea
it was happening either until like an hour before. It´s hard to throw suprises
for my companions. Something to do with the fact that they´re always right
there beside me.
Tomorrow we´re going to
the temple!!! So excited. I´m less excited about the fact that we´re leaving at
4am. And the Elders are less excited about the fact that there will be fourteen
elders in the same house. Que bagunça que acontecerá.
One crazy spiritual
experience that happened was when we were teaching our progressing
investigator, and he asked a TON of questions. Luckily, the Spirit is on our
side, and I was able to answer every single one of hem without hesitation and
with scriptures to back it up. It was one of those cool missionary moments where
I could feel the promise in D&C coming true about how the words would be
put in my mouth. Because those questions would have been hard to answer in
English, let alone another language! It was awesome.
Speaking of the language,
it´s coming along really well. Technically, I shouldn´t be speaking as well as
I am. I don´t know what it is, but it´s really just clicked for me, and people
tell me that my portuguese is really super awesome (actually, the word they use
is ´crack´ which sounds like ´cracky´ but it´s just the slang they use
hahahaha). I wish I could talk to you all to demonstrate, but that´ll have to
wait until December.
Well, that´s pretty much
my week! And it´s hot again. I´m excited for winter in May. (I´m still not used
to the backwards seasons.)
Well, have a great week!
Good luck with starting school back up again!
Love you all,
Sister Tillman
December 30, 2013
HAPPY NEW YEAR
Dear família,
Man, it was so fun this
past week to get to talk on Skype! Seriously the best. Definitely made my week.
I´m excited now for Mother´s Day!
The other crazy awesome
thing that happened this past week was that our zone baptized fifteen people,
which was awesome. Even though our area didn´t baptize, I still got to help out
by playing the piano and such. It was so awesome, and the spirit was so strong
at the baptism we went to. It was kind of wild, with broken down cars and last
minute baptismal interviews, but in the end it all worked out perfectly. Foi
nossa meta da zona to baptize 15, which had never been done before in our zone.
Ever. It feels great to reach a goal.
As for my area, Lorena
basically shut down this past week, which was pretty frustrating. I´m just
really excited about this week and the new year. Woohoo!!! 2014. It´s going to
be the BEST.
My district leader asked
me to give training today in our zone meeting sobre caridade. It´s been a great
way to truly study about Charity and how important it is and how we need to
have it. There´s a scriptue in Ether 12:30 that says that without charity, we
won´t enter the kingdom of heaven. But it makes total sense, because charity is
such a pure love, but not just love, it´s action too. So if we don´t have it
here on earth, how can we expect to just magically feel this love in heaven? We
can´t.
And then I wondered how
we can help this love grow. And it´s actually pretty simple. We need to ask for
it, and to constantly think of others. If we do that, our charity for other
people will grow. And this pure love is truly the only reason why do anything
here on earth. Why we have missionaries, and families, and jobs. It´s the
´porque´ de TUDO.
So yeah, that´s what I´ve
been learning about, and trying to put into practice.
Love you all, and have a
Happy New Year!!!
December 22, 2013
Yesterday we had a miracle. A couple showed up to church!!!! On
their own! I´d never seen them before, but they´d had the missionaries over a
long time ago and are just now interested! It was awesome. I´ll explain more
Christmas!
Love you all! You´re the best!
The computer´s not working with pictures, but hopefully when I
come back it will let me use photos.
Sister Tillman
December 16, 2013
Green Green Green like a washing machine
It´s so green here. And it´s kind of freaking me out a little
because Christmas is NOT this green, let me tell you!
Speaking of Christmas, on the first day of Christmas, my
President gave to me, one brand new daughter! Yep, that´s right, this transfer,
I became a trainer. It´s pretty wild. She´s from Chile and there´s a huge
language barrier. But. Things are somehow miraculously working out, thanks to
the Lord. I struggle sometimes with not knowing what to do, but thank goodness
we have good leaders who have great ideas!
Our investigators are doing alright. The biggest struggle, as
always, is getting them to come to church. Man. It´s so hard. But we´ll be able
to do it!
(Quick side note, since I´m now Portuguese 24/7, half of these
sentences I´m having to translate into English, so I apologize if they don´t
make sense sometimes.)
So yeah, becoming a trainer was pretty crazy. Monday evening,
one of the assistants called me, and said that I was going to become a trainer
and that President was really excited for me and that he really wanted me to
train this transfer. I was like ´Tudo bem, sounds good´ because I know Lorena
now, and I was almost positive it would be an American. But nope! Chilean! How
cool is that!
So yeah, becoming a ´mother´ was pretty crazy. I´m just doing
the best I can because I know that the Lord will bless me!
This past week we had a really awesome training on the two types
of faith. The first type of faith is easy. It´s just to believe in something
because it happened before or because you trust the person who told you. The
second type of faith is the faith to change the outcome and to do something
about it. The second type of faith is a lot more rare because it requires a lot
of work and diligence, but it´s the only faith that creates miracles.
Well that sounded a lot better in my head/in Portuguese, but you
get the drift. Fé para FAZER não só para saber. Hard, but rewarding.
Christmas here in nothing like Christmas in the states. Although
there have been a few houses that have Christmas lights, which are fun to see.
Everyone here works a ton during the holiday season, but that´s pretty normal.
Honestly, it doesn´t feel like Christmas. I´ve heard that in some places they
have huge bonfires Christmas Eve and that nobody goes to bed, but I haven´t
heard about anything here in Lorena.
Well, that´s about all that happened this past week that I
remember! I´m really excited for the Christmas conference tomorrow to see
mission friends and eat food and get the package from the Elder.
I hope everyone has a great week. And Merry Christmas! Somehow
it´s here again, and it´s sneaking around the corner real quick!
Love you all!
Sister Tillman
P.S.- Next week I´ll send fotos, I promise!
December 9, 2013
I have officially been in Brazil for two
transfers! Man, how the time flies by!!! But at the same time, it goes really
slowly too. But such is life.
A lot of things happened
this week.
Wednesday, we had a
surprise ward activity for Sister Waite. Basically it was a farewell. It was so
fun, and she was really suprised. Mwahahaha.
Thursday, we were walking
along in Centro, and I was trying to figure out where we were because centro is
the king of mazes. But I wasn´t paying attention to the sidewalk, and didn´t
realize that the gap between the sidewalk and the road was a LOT higher than
normal. So I lost balance in midair and fell. There went my 12 week streak of
not falling. It was petty funny.
Thursday and Friday, I
was in Vila Ema, another area in a different zone because Sister Waite needed
to go to the mission council. Vila Ema is REALLY nice. I felt like I was in
America again. Especially because we ate lunch with an American, and she made
Cafe Rio rice and gave my salsa. It was delicious. I also might be getting
Oreos at transfers tomorrow from her, which made me really excited!
Friday night, we went to
Sister Waite´s fist area to say goodbye, which was really awesome and pretty
fun. It made me realize how far I´ve come in twelve weeks because I was able to
talk to everyone without any problems and they thought I was brazilian! It was
awesome. I also want to have the opportunity to come visit
Lorena next year, but
luckily I won´t have to miss this ward just yet since I´ll be staying. Unless
President wants to do something crazy this transfer, but I don´t think he will.
Because Sister Waite is
leaving and it´s Christmas, she gets lots of presents. The great thing about
this is that I get presents too! It´s awesome. It´s not extravagant or
anything, but it´s always fun to get little lembrancinhas de Brasil!
We won´t find out transfer
news until tonight. I just want to know who my companion is!! And there´s rumor
that our stake will get mais tres duplas of missionaries, and I want to know
where they´ll go. And if anyone else in my district will get transferred and if
my friends that got their visas will be in my district or not. Basically I´m
just really anxious and really excited!
Love you all! I hope you
have a fabulous week! Stay safe with all the winter-time happening there. Don´t
worry, it´ll keep raining and being hot here for the next three months. Hooray
for summer!
Love,
Sister Tillman
December 2, 2013
Happy Thanksgiving this
past week!
Even though we were in
Brazil, we got to have Thanksgiving too, which was the best! On Wednesday, we
went to São José for treinamento, and we got letters and packages. One of the
packages that Elder Kaopua received was from his mom, who had sent a bunch of
easy to make Thanksgiving foods. So we cooked it all up and had Thanksgiving
the next day. It was Elder Pila´s very first Thanksgiving, and it was a good
one.
On Friday, the Elders in
our District had a Luau, because they hadn´t had an activity in awhile, and
Elder Kaopua is from Hawai´i. They sang and played some games. It was very fun.
On Saturday, one of the
girls in the ward was baptized, but it was in a river! Her mom, Bianca, was
baptized in a river, so she wanted her only child to have the same experience.
It was pretty neat. Bianca´s really creative and made lots of cute foods too,
which were tasty.
Our investigators are
doing alright. We have been helping this friend of a member all week to get
baptized. He was interviewed by Elder Pila, he knows the church is true, that
we have a prophet today, but for some reason, he just doesn´t want to be
baptized, and we have no idea why. So we´ll keep working with him to figure out
what his doubts are and try to eliminate them.
We have a few other
investigators we´re working with, but they´re having a hard time coming to
church. So far.
We´ve discovered that
it´s most likely going to rain every day. The days that it doesn´t rain, it´s
hot and sticky and the nights are miserable. Saturday, it POURED. The water
just came and came and came for almost two hours. It was crazy. It rained
yesterday too, but luckily we were doing weekly planning inside our house, so
we weren´t caught in the storm.
It´s Sister Waite´s last
full week! The ward is planning a family night activity for her, but she
doesn´t know it yet. She just thinks it´s a regular family night, but Stella
and Stephanie (the bishop´s wife and her sister) and putting a video together
with pictures of her and stuff. It´s fun being in on the secret.
Have a great week! Love
you all!
Sister Tillman
November 25, 2013
Dear Family,
I love Lorena! Man.Life
is good here. I love being a missionary!!!!!!!!
So this week, we focused
on Christian. I don´t remember if I told you about him, but he´s a friend of a
recent convert, Tiago. Well, Tiago is awesome. Seriously. He´s only been a
member for five months, and is already doing missionary work and wanting to
serve a mission. It´s the best.
So we went and visited
Christian every single day, which is hard because he lives in one of the
farthest neighborhoods from... well, pretty much everywhere. But that´s ok,
because to see him change was awesome! Watching an investigator progress was
one of the coolest things ever!
Saturday, he had the
interview with our district leader, which happened really late because bus
times on Saturdays are the worst. I accidently got the Elders a little lost
when I gave them directions on how to get to Christian´s, since the closest bus
stop is forever away. But it all worked out in the end. We were having some
trouble with getting Christian´s mom to sign the Ficha, which is the baptismal
form thing, but Elder Pila has a good way with words and so he got her to sign
it.
And yesterday was his
baptism! Hooray! It was awesome. Tiago gave the thought (by the way, Tiago is
14 and Christian is 15) and Bishop baptized him and he´ll be confirmed next
week. It was so cool!
We also had a few other lessons with members this week, which is
always good. We have a few possibles for baptisms, but we´ll follow up with
them tomorrow and throughout the week to make them firme forte.
I love Ala Lorena too!
They´re the best! Bishop is awesome, and so is his family. And the language is
coming along really well. Yesterday, Sister Waite and I were able to split up
in the chapel and get twice as much stuff worked out, which is awesome. I´m
understanding people! They´re understanding me! It´s a great feeling.
So yeah, that´s pretty
much it. Living the life of a missionary and being in Brazil! What a blessing!
Love you all!
November 18, 2013
Hello hello!!!
So this week, we had lots of
fun, and there were some saddish things também.
Our four baptisms all fell
through! It was so frustrating, but we´re hoping to help at least two of them
out this week.
What happened was is that right
away we knew we couldn´t get the twins baptized, so those were gone. The mom
just hasn´t talked to us and every time we go over there she has some excuse. I
don´t know what happened, but they´re also going out of town again this week,
so we´ll see what happens.
The other two baptisms that we
lost were the most frustrating. At the start of the week, things were going
great! One of them is the grandson of a member, and the other is a friend of
the member. And the moms were super cool, and it seemed that everything was
going to work out.
The only problem was that they
were never in their house for the rest of the week! The friend of a member is
ALWAYS playing futebol (soccer). He has a trainer that calls him at random
hours to play. And the everything looked great with the grandson, but the mom
didn´t let him get baptized because she thinks it´s too soon. Neither of them
showed up on Sunday either, so right now we have no idea what´s going on, which
is sad.
But happy news! We had an
AWESOME talent show this week!! It´s a little frustrating because everytime we
try to do an activity with the Ward Missionaries, it ends up just being our
activity because nobody does anything, but that´s ok. The stress is gone.
A few weeks back, we invited a
city band to come perform, and they did! So that´s 18 non-members who were at
this activity! We have 7-8 addresses of people, and we know where they
practice, so we´re going by tomorrow night to see them and thank them again.
And get more addresses. Hooray! Estela, the bishop´s wife, said that we´re
going to be known as the musical ward of the stake since we´ll just baptize
them all! I sure hope so!
I also ate an ant this week.
Yep. That happened. There are these weird giant ants that come out this time of
year. The people take the wings off and the head, and then fry them and bake
them. It´s disgusting. We were walking home one night and passed by our friends
of the french fry cart, and they had made some of them and gave them to us. It
was weird. It wasn´t disgusting, but it was oddly crunchy and flaky and had a
strange after taste. Definitely not doing that again!
Today, we went to the
mountains!! It was sooooo pretty! We did a little hike, and got to see lots of
pretty trees, and birds. And I saw a parrot! It was gorgeous. Practically our
whole zone went, menos one of the duplas in Guará porque Elder Fernandes hurt
his knee really badly. Poor guy.
So yeah, that was pretty much
our week. I´ll send lots of pictures!
Love you all!!
Sister Tillman
November 11, 2013
Dear Family,
This past week was fairly
normal-ish. It rained three days in a row. I got to use my rainboots, which
keep my feet nice and dry. Totally worth buying those things!
President Ferrin and the
Assistants visited our house this week to make sure it was clean. It was the
first time President had ever visited our homes. Luckily we got a call from the
Zone Leaders after President had left their home, so ours was clean :) And when
President arrived, he made a dog joke. Everyone makes dog jokes now.
We have five potential
baptsims this week, so we´ll see how it goes. Of course the two families live
in opposite corners of the city, so we´ll be walking a lot. But what else is
new hahaha.
The ward had an activity
about the Book of Mormon, which they have every year. They made a giant cake
thing. But it´s not cake, it´s salty. It was the weirdest thing ever!
Other than that, life is
good! I´m going to buy new shoes today since my black ones are officially
toast. It´s going to be a nice, chill P-day, which is always exciting.
Well, I hope everyone has
a good week this week. Good luck on games and such! And school. That´s
important too!
Love you all!
Sister Tillman
November 4, 2013
This week, I had my first
baptism! And I got bit by a dog.
Yeah, that´s right, one of those crazy Brazilian dogs bit me this past weekend.
It was probably one of the most awful experiences of my life.
We were walking to our
next appointment side by side, tudo normal. Here they have this huge fence door
things for their houses, and I was walking on that side of the sidewalk. All of
a sudden, something catches my arm. Really hard. At first I thought it was
something that was sticking way far out of the door that I didn´t see, so I
stopped to see if I could unhook it. That was when the pain set in. And then it
happened again. I looked down, and lo and behold! It was a dog. It had stuck
its head and neck out almost a whole foot to bite my arm. I then started to
yell in English to my companion `It bit me twice! That dog bit me twice!´ And
that´s when it started to bark. And I was bleeding too. And then I started to
cry because it hurt and I was terrified and what if the dog had rabies and then
I would get sent home but I didn´t want to go home and it was a Brazilian dog,
and I´m in a different country. So yeah, all of that came down at once and I
cried.
Then the owner came out
and tried to say that it was my fault for provoking the dog and standing too
close to the fence, and all they wanted to do was rub some alcohol on it and we
were like no way! We´re going to the hospital! So we went and waited forever
and ever because it was a government hospital. I eventually calmed down (by
that point in time I was more crying out of shock than anything else) and we
finally got a hold of our Ward Mission Leader and his wife, so they came up.
And Bishop called us back, so he came up too. Bishop´s awesome.
So then they cleaned me
up and I got one stitch. My very first!
And the best part of this
whole story: It was on Halloween night! So yeah, I´m definitely turning into a
werewolf. My district leader and his companion call me Sister T-wolf now. It´s
pretty hilarious.
On a happier note, I had
my first baptism this Sunday. Man, it was such a sweet and tender experience.
Miller is awesome. He was taught by the Elders about six months back, but he
was living with someone, so he couldn´t get baptized. But they broke up and he´s
living at home now and he was baptized. He was just so happy, he cried tears of
joy. That´s all he wanted and now he has a new life ahead of him. He´s so cool.
Well, that was pretty
much my week. We worked a ton and have a half dozen families we´re trying to
teach, which is neat.
Have a great week. Love
you all!
Sister Tillman
October 28,
2014
Dear Family,
So this week was pretty
great! We had a sister´s conference, which was super fun, and very spiritual
and uplifting. I got to meet a lot more of the sisters, which is great! Sister
Ferrin gave two great talks, and the assistants talked about how to be good missionaries
and the importance of women in the work. All in all, it was very good.
We also had a ward
acitivity of Halloween! The theme was faith, and we had a few fun activities
that included chilled pasta for brains. It was gross. But the kids loved it.
We´ve picked up a few new
families this week-hooray families! Our ward definitely needs all the
priesthood it can get! Our poor bishop works really hard to keep our little
ward up and running. A lot of our priesthood gets funneled into the stake,
which is hard for him.
We made french toast and
maple syrup at our ward correlation meeting, which was fun.
We´re teaching this one
family that is pretty cool. They own a pizzaria, and work other jobs too, so
it´s hard to get a hold of them.
Transfers are tomorrow,
but I don´t think we´ll be transferred since I´m just now getting to know the
area. My portuguese is LOADS better.
October 21, 2013
Dear Family,
I hope all is going well
this week in Keller! We just did the whole ´spring forward´ thing here this
past weekend, which was crazy. But it doesn´t get as dark as early, which is
very comforting.
I usually write little
notes in my planner throughout the week of things and stories that I want to
write, but this week just flew by before I even knew it! I´ll try to remember
what happened though.
The best experience I had
this week... hmmm. Oh I ate pizza here for the first time this week, which was
pretty tasty! And I ate this thing called Pastel, which is very similar to
empanadas, just more fried. While my mouth loved it, my stomach did not, since
I hadn´t had greasy food in forever. But man were they tasty.
Teaching wise, my best
experience was with Aline, an investigator we met this week trying to contact
another investigator. I really felt the spirit so strongly when we were
teaching her. Sadly, she listened to her friend more than us, and her friend
dissuaded her from continuing on with the lessons, which was very hard for us.
Especially because she´s awesome.
Also, the Primary
Presentation was really beautiful. The little crianças bring the spirit so
strongly. I was honered to play the piano for them!
This coming week, we´ll
be having our Noite Familiar of Halloween! We´re very excited and hope that
there will be lots of new investigators there for us to get to know!
Today we had a P-day with
the zone, which was very fun. We just hung out at the stake center and played
volleyball and some other games, and ate lunch and such. Next week is transfer
week, but I don´t think I´ll be transferred any time soon since I´m still
finishing up all the training and such.
Mom, I made the cookies!
But, we had no idea what the equivalent of shortening was here in Brazil, and
we didn´t have baking soda. Somehow they still turned out alright. And we asked
the member who lived in America what shortening in Brazil is, so now we know!
Hopefully the next time I make them they will actually taste like they´re
supposed to, and not the Brazilian version of American cookies.
Nothing super crazy
happened this week. It rained a lot. A lot a lot a lot. Oh, and tomorrow is
going to be the sister´s conference for the mission! We´re going to be singing
for that too. Hooray singing! I love singing. It´s the first time they´ve ever
had a sister´s conference, so it´s going to be great!
I hope you all have a
great week! Keep being awesome. I pray for each of you every day, and I know
that your prayers have strengthened me too!
Oh, the Heiners sent me a
package! They actually sent it to me in August, but I didn´t get it until now.
I don´t know if it was a mix-up in the mission office because it arrived before
I did, or if it really didn´t come until now. It was a cute little candy gram,
and a few notes. It was adorable.
Keep working hard! One of
the things I´ve learned on my mission so far is that the scriptures truly have
the whole gospel! They can apply to WHATEVER situation we have in our lives if
we´re just willing to study them. I love study time because that´s when I get
to learn tons and tons.
Thanks for everything!
I´m super blessed to have you as my wonderful family!
Love,
Sister Tillman
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