Sunday, September 7, 2014

Sister Tillman's Experiences in Lorena and in Sao Paulo --Vila Mariana. Oct. 21, 2013 to Sept. 1, 2014

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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