Sister K. Seal's Day

Well this week flew by like crazy! Hope Holly and Michael both had an amazing birthday! And happy 1 year birthday to my amazing Best Friend, McKenna. 

Well, we have been working a lot with the members- well,seeing as how we stopped teaching all our previous investigators that is about our only option. This week, we had an activity to get as many people as we could to come to the women´s session of General Conference. We had a spa day, and as missionaries we were able to serve the sisters of our ward. I really enjoyed getting to talk to them and get to hear stories from them as we served them by painting nails, fixing hair, and make-up. McKenna would be proud to know that I taught everyone how to do the messy bun that she always does on her hair. Funny story, 4 of the girls did that with their hair the following day for church. Yes, it’s very funny. Well, sad part of the story, none of our new investigators went, and only 6 sisters including the 4 young women came. It was a little sad. But conference was good. How was it going for the first time Skylar?? Wow can't believe you’re old enough to go to these kinds of things now!! 

Also everyone keeps asking for what a day in the life of Sister K. Seal is like so here goes:)

6:30 Wake up, throw on workout clothes and start working out. It usually is only running in the back basketball court we have-- We have a basketball court because our house used to be the old church building. 

8:00 Personal study

9:00 Companionship study

10:00 Language study-- it gets harder to learn new material the longer I am here which makes me feel like I actually am learning some things

11:00 We do street contacting during this hour now because we don't have very many investigators. Ya, that is rough.  We just stand in the center and just talk to everyone we talk to.

12:00 Lunch

1-9:00 We go to all the appointments we made the previous day.  Our area is pretty big and we end up walking a lot because a lot of the appointments we have are from street contacts and it doesn't always work out that they are close by. But it’s the best part, getting to know the people.

Well, I love you all. I got lots of letters this week. My zone leader doesn't understand, but I do. I have amazing family and friends!! Thanks for all the love and support! 

I hope you are all as excited as I am for General Conference! Also, I hope you all have an amazing week. To answer dad's question I get to watch in English-- what a blessing!! 

Well, Much Love,

Sister K. Seal

Photo 1: Old photo, but I thought it was ironic. No I am not going crazy I use an umbrella so I don't get cancer. Very cautios!!

How Old Am I?

There are a lot of ways to see how long a missionary has been out. 

1. Months-traditional way

2. Transfers-when a missionary is in the dumps and 18 months just seems impossible.

3. Language-you can see how much English a missionary has forgotten. 

4. Companions-this one is a little harder because there is not a set number of companions that a missionary will have. 

5. Umbrellas-That's right I heard this way to measure this week and laughed pretty good. 

So this week I am:

5 months, 3 1/2 transfers, well hopefully mom is editing out all the grammer mistakes so you don't notice, 2 companions, or 2 umbrellas old. 

So you can probably tell from the last comment that we've gotten some rain this week. It was beautiful and rained for like 3 days straight. Definitely, a blessing. But with that good news I also have some bad news. We had a district meeting this week where we were asked to cut all our investigators that are not progressing. So that means all of them. Literally, we are having to start over. Our District Leader told us that our job here is find the people that God has already prepared for us, and that one day these people will be ready too for other missionaries. It was sad, though. 

Well, the rabbit food is gone with. I am feeling much better. Don't worry, Mom!! 

So, as we don't have any good investigator stories this week I thought I would share a funny joke that I heard:

A missionary gets called to Brazil-he is super excited. 

1 month in goes to a members house and finds a piece of hair in the food pulls it out, and barely manages to fork down the rest of the plate.

4 months in goes to another members house finds a hair in the food pulls the hair out eats the rest of the food. 

9 months in goes to another members home yet again finds a hair pulls it out, but goes back optimistically for seconds. 

14 months finds the hair in the food and doesn't even bother removing it. 

20 months goes to the members house looks on the plate and can't find the hair looks to the member and says, "Sister Smith, something is missing..." Pulls out a hair from his head and puts in the food. 

Haha:)

Well, I love you all. My camera is fixed, but I forgot to charge the battery and the computer I am using is not star quality for charging. So next week I promise to upload photos. Promise!! 

The church is true. I love being a missionary. Have a great week! 

Sister K. Seal

Week Full of Stuff to Do

WARNING: This letter is not going to be very long. 

This week was full of stuff to do, unfortunately, I don't have any good stories to accompany all the work I did. Maybe that is a good sign? I don't quite know. 

Well, baptismwise--Okay, so we talked with Êmily.  She is still wanting more time to decide, and that is hard as a missionary, because honestly you can only do so much. Ultimately we all have this thing called agency. 

Also, this week, I consulted with my mission president's wife, I haven't been feeling really well for about a month now. So to help me she recommended I cut out certain foods. So here is my diet plan: I can eat carrots, kove(sorry this is portuguese and I don't know the english word), beets, cucumbers, corn, rice, salad--without anything on it, tea, and water. Yup that is it I am living like a rabbit for the next week. Haha, it’s kind of funny. Here’s hoping that this is going to help!

Also, last week my camera downloaded a virus and wouldn't open the photos. I went to a photography place and luckily they were able to recover the photos, but I don't have the memory card yet, so that means no photos this week. 

I love you all so much. Thanks for the love and support! Special shoutout to all those that are continuing to write me! Love the letters. 

Well, if I can I would just like to leave you with a thought I found this week:

“Sadly, much of modern Christianity does not acknowledge that God makes any real demands on those who believe in Him, seeing Him rather as a butler ‘who meets their needs when summoned’ or a therapist whose role is to help people ‘feel good about themselves’.  It is a religious outlook that ‘makes no pretense at changing lives’. ‘By contrast,’ as one author declares, ‘the God portrayed in both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures asks, not just for commitment, but for our very lives.  The God of the Bible traffics in life and death, not niceness, and calls for sacrificial love, not benign whatever-ism.”—D. Todd Christofferson.

I love this, often we just want the “nice God” the one that is going to console us.  The problem is, He is one and the same.  The God who loves us chooses to give us trials to make us better.  We should honestly take His willingness to criticize and build us up as a compliment that he finds us worth the time to perfect.

Love you all,

Have a great week,

Sister K. Seal

Long, Crazy Week

Hi everyone!

How has everyone been? I wanted to start off by thanking everyone for the great letters I got this week. Mckenna, Grandma, Papa, Oma, Mom, Conner, Skylar, and my lovely amigas Sasha and Katelin! And of course you can't forget McKenna. You could say it was a good week for letters! Thanks for the support and love this week--Much needed!! 

Well, Emily came back from EFY, and the baptism didn't happen, but it’s okay because we are going to have a double baptism in 2-3 weeks!! She loved EFY and wants to be baptized and that is what is important. 

Well, Carnival is officially over, and good news, yup no water was thrown at Sister Seal. Que Benção!

Sorry this letter is really short there is just not much to tell, it was a long week, in fact one day this week we left the house at 11am and didn't even teach our first lesson until 5pm. Crazy, right? Well, I guess that is the explanation behind the lack of fun details. 

Also the virus on my camera well took away all my photos, so I don't know how long its going to be until I can send some. Sorry I had some really exciting photos, but Já era! 

Love everyone and wishing everyone a happy week!!

Sister K. Seal

Carnaval

Well this week was really good.

Transfers: I think someone told my mission president that Seal Sisters prefer to remain in the same area for a long time to get some serious work done.  I am staying here in São Borja with Sister Claret. It’s really great, there is so much that still needs to be done. 

BAPTISM: Ya, like how exciting! Emily is going to be baptized on Saturday! Right now she is at EFY here in Brazil. I know that she is going to feel so excited for her baptism on Saturday! 

Thanks for all the weather prayers. I think I finally figured it out, so just like packages, and letters take a long time to arrive here in Brazil I think that my "present" from God also took a little time getting here. Finally the weather is getting better. Actually it is beautiful! Yay. So if you all could start praying for warmer weather for me in about 1.5 months that would be great okay? Haha:)

Well, Carnival is still going on. Luckily, no buckets of water yet, knock on wood. But we have heard that tomorrow is supposed to be the worst, but I think that Carnival is worse where Sister M. Seal is at. 

Speaking of the great. I got to talk to McKenna last Friday, it was super great! For those of you who don't already know McKenna, she is kind of the best sister ever-- I mean that in both ways-- and you're missing out. You should definitely go stalk her blog. Sister M. Seal.

Well everything is going well! I am excited to get some good work done here. The church is true. I love my Savior. I love all of you. Thanks for all the kind words these past few weeks. I have loved the letters, emails and everything else.

Have a great week!!

Sister K. Seal

Monkeys!

Well this week has flown by so fast, but it has been a really great one:)

First off, last week we were walking in the center praza and we saw monkeys- You were right Kim.

But more importantly we had a really great week with our investigators:

Diane and Lidiane: We had a really cool lesson on their potential because both of them are not completing the things they need to be baptized, so we talked about their potential as daughters of God. -- Cool side note for OMA remember how you used to always make salt dough for us to play with when we were little, ya I made some of that to use in an object lesson we did- So I guess thanks for the idea.

Susana: So we went to the bank last Tuesday and as we were leaving a lady stopped us and asked if we shared the same message as the Elders did. We told her yes and then she proceeded to ask if she could give us her address and if we could visit her. So again we said yes. She told us she lived at the end of Dos Andradas, next to a blue house, close to a house number 1590. So we went there Thursday. We found the house number, but it wasn't her house. I began to wonder if I took some of the information down wrong, so I asked my companion if we could just keep looking for blue houses for a little bit. Well, a little bit turned into close to an hour, but we finally reached the end of the street and literally right as we were going to give up we saw a beautiful, blue house numbered 1590 and well, we found Susana. It was such a miracle. Sad part of the story is that we found she doesn't live in our area, she lives in the area of the Elders. So we got to teach her only one time, but I know she is going to be baptized. But well, I guess it all works out.

Êmily: So we talked with her a lot about the doubts she has had and how she can clear up these doubts. We had a really spiritual lesson with her and well, we marked a baptismal date with her for March 8. YAY, first baptism here in Brazil.

This next Monday we have transfers again. I know crazy. I feel like we just had transfers. Time is flying here.

Also, I need to solicit all the prayers I can get this week. So this week marks the holiday Carnival. For those of you who have never heard of it, it’s like Mardi-Gras except 100X crazier. So we've heard that it’s a fun tradition of many people here to throw buckets of water on people that pass by on the street, sometimes people here like to get creative and throw other substances, too. So just pray, pray for the people that I don't punch them and that I can be patient with them all, okay? Haha really, but some prayers in behalf of the missionaries in Brazil would not hurt.

Well I love you all,

Have a great week!

Sister K. Seal

Photos:

1. We got to do a service project and help paint some desks and sidewalk for a school in our area. It was really fun!

Today marks 2 months that I've been in Brazil.

This week has been pretty slow unfortunately. We're still trying to help with the marriage process of our two sister investigators. Yesterday we taught the "husband" of Diane and he told us he is afraid to get married. He says it’s too soon- they've been together 3 years, are raising 2 kids, and he wants to have another kid. Well, that just means we have some work to do. Also Lidiane hit a road block this week.  Her boss is constantly smoking, and she has used this as an excuse for her relapse. SAD!  But it’s okay.  We will continue to help them out. Emily is still really hesitant.  Also, she wants to learn more before she is baptized, so much work to be done here is São Borja.

Well, I came into the mission thinking I would leave speaking 3 languages. Well, right now I count myself lucky if I can manage to form a sentence in one language. So we were doing contact in the center of the city last week when we ran into a guy that is from Argentina. That means he only speaks Spanish. I was excited to use my Spanish, except guess what?  I have already forgotten most of my Spanish. I understood what he was saying, but when it was my turn to speak, it was a pretty good mix of Spanish and Portuguese. Also this week I was training my companion how to pray in English. My head hurt just thinking of the words to use in an English payer. It’s a good thing that I write in my journal daily in English or these weekly emails would no longer make sense. I guess that is kind of a good sign.

So kind of cool story about today- I usually don't prepare a spiritual thought for my blog entries, but today, I don't know why, but I was thinking about what I would write here today and this thought came to mind- after a couple hours into today I've already realized that the thought I received was for me. So I just thought I'd share it anyways with all of you. Maybe someone reading this needs the same thought:

I was reading in D&C 90 and found vs. 24. It reads, "search diligently, pray always, and be believing and all things shall work together for your good..." Then I read a quote from one of my heroes, Elder Holland which reads, "Because Christ's eyes were unfailingly fixed on the future, He could endure all that was required of Him. He knows that for the faithful things will be made right soon enough." In the world we live in today, it is not easy to have this mentality that all will eventually be made right. Bad things happen to good people and we begin to wonder how a loving and just God could allow all this to happen. Its then we need to remember the saints persecution in Missouri and the revelation they received in the 101st section in the doctrine and covenants. God easily could have taken away their problems completely but why didn't he?  In D&C 101:16 it says, "Therefore let your hearts be comforted concerning Zion; for all flesh is in mine hands be still and know that I am God."

To conclude I would like to finish with a small quote from Elder Holland, "Even in the darkest hours at Gethsemane and Calvary, He pressed on continuing to trust in the very God who He momentarily feared had forsaken Him." 

Like I said if for no one else, this thought already found its intended recipient.

I wish you all the best of weeks. I love you all.

Sister K. Seal