With President and Sister Tanner

May 19, 2014

OIIIII FAMILIAAAA!!!

It’s been so long since I have been able to talk with you!  Wow I don’t even know where to start because I have so many things to tell you, so here goes...bear with me.  Also I haven’t spoken English for a while so sorry in advance for any grammar issues.

Brazil is wonderful.  I miss Michigan so much and it is such a weird transition with completely new missionaries and completely new people and a completely new language but I have had confirmation after confirmation this is where I am supposed to be right now.  I have a native companion named Sister Vieira from Parana, Brazil.  She is really great.  We are pretty much the same person but she is Brazilian and I am not...we both love working hard and learning new things and teaching lessons in similar ways so I feel very blessed.  We live with two other sisters--one is Brazilian and one is American and so I have the perfect balance of speaking all Portuguese but I can ask Sister Marino if I don’t know a word.  This week has been really good.  When I was in the MTC, I fasted that we would be able to teach and work with a family because I never got to teach a family in Michigan.  Right off the bat, my fasting and prayers were answered.  

We taught a woman named Celia on Tuesday (my first day in the field).  Every day we have gone back to teach her, we have started teaching another member of her family.  Now we are teaching Celia, her niece Nickoly, her nephew David, her sister Adriana, and another girl who lives with them named Laticia.  It has been so wonderful to see a family grow together in the gospel and it’s amazing to pray with them and feel the Spirit so strongly. Celia, Nickoly, and Laticia all came to church on Sunday for the first time (the others were sick) and I feel very blessed.

The people here are so kind and accommodating.  It’s crazy to have so many people say we can come back to their houses and teach about Christ...not many people in Michigan let us come back so it’s really different here!  The language is hard but I think I am slowly but surely coming along.  I feel really blessed because I can pretty much understand everything I hear.  Speaking is another story...but it’s coming.  Also everyone calls me Sister Geexon, but when I say it in my gringo accent, no one can understand me. So it’s pretty funny when I have to practice saying my own name with Sister Vieira.

Here are some funny/interesting things about Brazil:

--When I first arrived, I had all of my bags and stuff with me but we don’t have a car and no one could pick us up so we had to take the metro and walk to our apartment with all of my stuff.  Oh goodness we looked ridiculous.  When we were in the metro, we got on an elevator with my bags to go up a floor.  However, the elevator got stuck when we were on it!  We were standing there for probably a good ten minutes and we tried pressing the buttons to call someone but none of them worked.  Just imagine me, bewildered by being in Brazil with a new companion who doesn’t speak a lick of English....it was great;-)  But we made it!  

--When it rains it pours!  We had a huge rainstorm yesterday while we were out tracting.  It was seriously nuts.  I was so happy though to have my first Brazilian rainstorm.

--The members here feed us lunch instead of dinner.  They are so welcoming and hospitable and I feel very grateful.  We have rice and beans every single meal but mom I think you would cringe at the combinations...rice and beans with lasagna for example:-)

-- I forgot to tell you all but on my flight to Brazil I sat next to a Brazilian man who had just been released from prison literally a couple hours before.  He was really nice but he kept saying things like “Wow this food is so much better than it was in prison” and stuff like that.  What an adventure!

-- People are indeed gearing up for the World Cup. I am interested to see what will happen when it starts. People have been painting Brazilian flags and the World Cup logo in the streets and stuff...it’s pretty cool!

Well that’s about it on my end!  I did get to meet the Tanners and both of them raved about how awesome grandma and grandpa are.  Also Elder Anderson will come to our mission this week so I am really excited for that!!

Love you!

Sister Dixon