Transfer 10 week 3

What a great week we had! it ended with a great baptism of Marilene, our neighbor in our aparments. It is such a pleasure to see the changes people make becuase of the gospel. she stoped smoking in one week and the next week stopped drinking coffee. She never had a very religious background, but she pays attention and observes alot and has a desire to follow the Savior. We met a little family after church yesterday and they fully accepted the message of the restoration. It is awesome to see how much the Lord blesses us in our lives.
Sister De Oliveira is helping me loose my accent, which really isnt easy when im choosing to learn a northeastern accent; its difficult for us americans! I practice when i read anything to pronounce like she does. cuz her accent is awesome!
Sorry its short this week,
because of carnival its been hard to find a lan house open and so we are a little behind schedule.
amo voces!
sister smith
photo 1: what you do when your iron stops working and your companion cant leave the house with anything slightly wrinkled
photo 2: when you put your cup of tereré in the fridge and it freezes...

Transfer 10 week 2

Sending pictures!
me and sister De Oliveira
A family bem especial! Roni and Elaine. They take care of the missionaries. And we got a present from them yesterday! Gave us tereré boxes for our herb!!
Its been a good week. Im loving the time working with my new companion. She is always excited and wanting to work and talks all the time. She is going to help me alot, we are going to kick butt this transfer! We are working with Marlelene and Sueli. They both have their own set of problems, but willing to follow the Savior. Im hoping that we can surpass our goal and have two baptisms of two special women this weekend. This work only goes forward when we are all focused and working togeher. Its great to have a companion who has the same focus as you and you want to work to be better, no matter how difficult or challenging the task.
Im also working on my portuges, she is going to help me lose my accent. Becuase its really getting me frustrated lately, people deciding that they dont understand anything I say becuase I have an accent. I know how to speak your language, that is how we have been conversing for the last ten minutes!!
Hope everyone is doing well!
love kristin

Transfer 10 week 1

wowowoowowoooowwwwow!

Yes, that is how i am feeling today!!!
Why? Because its transfer day!!!!!!!!!
A NEW TRANSFER WITH A NEW COMPANIONS!!!
President did a LOT of changes for the sisters this transfer, hallelujah. and my companion will be *drumroll*
ssssiiissssstttttteeerrrrrrrr DE OLIVERIA!!!
YEAH. im excited.
We were together last year in Verdão and ever since that amazing month i have wanted to serve with her.
Im staying in Bandeirantes still, but im happy with that. we have some good prospects.
We are working with Sueli, ELECT!!!!!! She is a neighbor of our ward mission leader. We finaly were able
to catch her at home on friday, she has been looking for a church. She accepted everything we taught and in the middle of our lesson, she stopped us. ´´You know what question i have always had? ´´ Yeah what is that? ´´If God is one, why are there so many churches, shouldnt there be just one?´´
Sunday she said it was love at first sight when she walked into the chapel. she said she felt the spirit of God so strong as if he was saying, yes my daughter, this is the path. At the end of testimony meeting she shared her experience in every class and said that she knew this church was true too, and so excited for baptism. She is one special woman. her husband who has already passed away was a preacher in another church. The spirit was very strong in that meeting; our investigator Cema, who was born and raised in the relgion of Spiritism and wasnt interested at all, cried during the first hymn and after the meeting said she was searching for a church and felt good here.
I love the Holy Spirit, he makes everything so much easier.
Im really excited for a new transfer, new goals and everything to start afresh. Im glad for the experiences of this last transfer; it wasnt always easy but i learnt alot.
I hope everyone is well, that Grandma is doing better with the sergury and all.
So i hit my 1 year 2 month mark!! not that im counting or anything, but doing the math, i have 18 weeks left of my mission. Thats less than some elders have months. HAHAHAHAHA
NOT trunky. I love you all, and miss you all, but Im not crying my eyes out to return. I only cry about the work, because i know this time is short and i will have the rest of my life and eternity with my family.

im sending photos of the recent pieces of art i did.
the first photo is of the temple in São Paulo, i did it for Elder Conceição for him to give to a less active couple in Julio Castilho.
Underneath it says something like Not one sucess in life compensates for weakeness in the home.
photo 2: I designed again a t shirt for my zone, this time it turned out superb. guess which couple i am!

Talk to you all next p day!
kristin

transfer 9 week 6

OI FAMILIA E AMIGOS!!!
one more week has past and gone that has left me very tired....Gotta keep running though. This week was a week very difficult, as we were working so hard to find people to teach and bring them to the church, rejection was the daily meal. We had one teenager who had accepted to prepare for batism, we talked with her mom to get her signature of it and she said her daughter didnt want to be baptised or go to church. So I called her daughter, when i said this, she hung up the phone. Yeah. got my answer cleared. Yeah, its been a week of running after people who are whishy-washy....we dont have time for this! There are people out there! It is frustrating as everyday i am constantly thinking of what needs to be changed, why arent we having success, and really i just dont know what to do. One thing i know for certain, you can´t do this work alone. you need the Spirit and you need your companion. If the three of you arent on the same page, its not going to go right.
Our new ward mission leader Luis and his wife Ana Paula are so awesome! they are the couple I want to be. Return missionaries who have the vision of sharing the gospel, I have never had a leader who on his own will went to visit a investigator. We had a great activity last night, we watched 17 miracles, was such a great opportunity for members to bring non-members. we had one woman from our apartment go with us and we will start teaching her now.
hope you all enjoy the photos.
Hope you all have a great week.
love kristin

photo 1: henrique: the little car that has a lot of experience in missionary work
photo 2:Percídio, Edinira, Fatima, Ederlinio, The men recieved the priesthood last week and Percídio is preparing to recieve the higher priesthood! ITs so amzing to see how much the gospel changes people. Happy family. :)
photo 3: what we do after nightly planning session, sit on the veranada eating icecream and playing uno...

transfer 9 week 5

Dear family,
if i would have been thinking better i would be sending pictures of our new apartment. YEAH!! we have a new apartment, we moved this week. Second house move i have done on my mission, i should be pro. except this time the help we were to recieve from members fell through so it took a lot longer to get everything moved....the elders in my zone helped us out. we carryed alot of things in hand down the street and around the corner into the other neighboorhood, a good 15 min walk. It was so funny watching one elder pulling a purple and pink suitcase down the street. And then when we took the mattresses, there was a mattress fight in the street. got a ride from sister aires on the bike of juan, son of a recent convert. Its a good little apartment we are in now, its a lot more secure, where there is a gate with a man at the post and the rent is cheaper than the house. Im excited for this week of work; we had one of those weeks where we cut all of our investigators because they just werent willing to make a compromise with God to go to church. Some people recieve missionaries openly in their home, keep other promises of praying and studying, but when it comes to leavin the house, they can´t. Its sad when you work so hard with someone and you really love them and you know they felt that it is true, but they can´t seem to let go of the world. the world sucks, its not going to bring you any happiness!!! just repent and go to church. Its simple! salvation or damnation, those really are the options! For me, anything less than the Celestial Kingdom is damnation.
Hope everyone is well, im praying for all ya´ll. give my love to the little ones!
kristin

transfer 9 week 4

the week in photos...
last p day in the centro...
1. the tree that looks like a giant pineapple
2. the view from the park of the indidious nations
3. i was sick for the rest of the day after elder ertel spun us on the merry go round
4. the sky is beautiful in campo grande...
5. making pancakes with frozen eggs! yeahhhhhh!

yeah, i wish i would have taken a picture of all of us sisters this week. its pretty much rained non stop the past week. and i lost my umbrella so i was resorting to using a plastic poncho i found in another area in my mission. I got a lot of stare-downs in that one. ´´What, you´ve never seen a walking plastic bag before?`` .....``now i know what it feels like to be garbage...``

so yeah things have been kinda slow this week, i haven´t had numbers like this since Louisiana....it can onlky get better, right? We have met some really neat people the past two weeks, i hope that this week we can help them learn more of the gospel and become a part of the church. This transfer is just running past and i have so many changes to make within myself and my work. Today we will make pizza, sounds like it will be sisteres sem elderes dia, since the elders had marked with some other elders in another zone to go paint balling. i would like to, but today i have a lot to do. After here I have to go to the centro para comprar sandals, my sandals i bought that I thought would be good are already hashed after two months. and i need to cut my hair. its really hideous with its multi tone. i just want to loose light ends, really!

hope all is well with ya´ll. Have any of you watched 17 milagres...er 17 miracles, about the willie handcart company? we watched it last night in a FHE with a recent convert...such a moving film. I would have cried had we not 4 elders in the house watching to see if the sisters would bawl.

love, kristin