May 26, 2014

You guys are great! 

I really love reading and hearing about all of the adventures you have! 

Last night I was reading in an old liahona about a person who is a mountain guide in Japan. It was interesting to hear his point of view how most of the visitors just wanted to visit the top of the peak and take the easiest way to get there. He tried convincing some of the tourists to follow him to see some of the lower parts of the park, that were more difficult to get to, yet all the more beautiful. He mentioned that to understand and appreciate the view from the top, you have to know what is beneath. He then related that to the gospel. To appreciate everything about the gospel, we first have to understand where things began. He stated that at the top of the peak there were many fossils, but all those fossils lived their life below. It is the same, to appreciate what there is in store for us in Heaven, and the marvelous workings of our Heavenly Father, we first have to come to know  and understand the bottom. Its so true, it will be difficult, but those treasures that we find and see will aid our future understanding of the plan that our Father in Heaven has for us. Nothing is possible without His help. 

This week was really wonderful. We had two baptisms and should be having two more this saturday. We are focusing on reactivating less actives. One of the ways to do that is by baptizing the rest of their family that are not members. Its amazing how they remember the feelings, and the amount that they can feel the Spirit in their homes. This is what happened. It seemed so easy for us, but it was really the Lord that did all the work. When we deny the Holy Spirit to help in the work, nothing happens. I have learned that I really have to put the feeling behind the action. It is not enough just to do something because it is good or right, we have to do it out of love and charity. Sometimes I really struggle with this. I have to remember, that not every person has had the difficulties I have had and learned the same things. We all learn at different paces whether we are younger or older. 

Well I have to go again. Hopefully I will have more time next week.

Sorry for the short emails lately. 

XOXOXO

Sister CHatwin

May 19, 2014

Hi!!

Are you kidding?? Kirstens baby is the cutest thing ever!!  I just love those pictures. I will be busy finding time to write letters this week! :) But am so excited to be doing so!!

Congrats to super stratty. It can now be shoved in Remmi and Sterlings face that I will not be marrying him. Send me a picture of Bryce´s girlfriend. He had been sending me some emails. but when they stopped I figured he had started dating someone. My suspisions were correct! lol

I love you all so much! Things are going great here! :) We had a member organize a bunch of the Irmas (Sisters) here to do splits with us last sunday to go and find lots of people to bring to the second meeting in Palmares. It was a sucess. Not too many investigators came, but with the help of the members we will be holding meetings every week in Palmares filled with people. 

Their is a young women here who is deaf. She did splits with me and another member. I love talking to her in sign language. I am learning so fast with her help. I think that it is the funnest thing ever. I decided that if Emily is still in our ward when I get back that I will have her teach me! :)

I love working with the members here. This place is death without the help of the members. I truly understand and am so greatful for the strength of the church back home. Here in Brasil there are so many people ready to hear the gospel, but many times in the areas I am put in that backup from the ward is not there. It just makes things so much harder. I realize that it is the opposite there in the states. We have the back up of the ward, but are lacking people. That is where the members come in.. WITHOUT YOUR HELP missionary work is almost useless. Things are so much easier when we are unified in purpose and direction. 

Thanks for all of the pictures they are great!

I dont really have much more time, sorry! Tell brother Halsey that I will be sending him a letter soon! On the plane ride to Parintins, I was looking in the magazine, and I found and article about Flight safety. I tore it out and will be sending it to him!!  I took some pictures with it and should send them in next weeks email if you remind me.

Thanks for all you do and all of your prayers!! 

Sister Chatwin

April 21, 2014

Dearest Family, 

So much is happening with you all, I am really excited for all of the fun stories that I will hear! 

This week was amazing. First of all, I gave my second talk here in Brasil! It was great, I talked about the love God has for us, and how it is through that love that we are changed. I really recommend that you all read The Power of God´s Love by John H. Groberg. It is an old conference talk and I love listening to it. One of my favorite things to do on p-day is download random talks onto my usb. I come acros some golden ones once in awhile!

We have three baptism dates for this week. One is a couple, we will be having their wedding this friday and they will be baptized Sunday. The other one is a young man that we found. He is perfect in every way, and really understands the gospel. Only problem is that he didnt come to church Sunday, so we will have to wait another week for his baptism. I love the area of Gloria. I love the members and the people. It is great! God really does show us who we can teach and how we can work better with the members. That was something that I learned from being in Vilhena, and I am now applying it here: Love with all your heart, love with the love of God. Its true that not everything is perfect here, but none of the difficulties matter when you are filled with the Spirit of God.  Here in a few weeks I will have nine months on the mission. As I was thinking about this, instead of being happy about seeing my family again, I was filled with sadness. Sad because my time here is half up, sad because I will have to leave the people I love, sad because I won´t feel the spirit the way I do every day. There was a quote that I put in my talk that said something along these lines: if we want to be filled with God´s love, we show Him that love through our service.. Yeah, so I dont really remember what the quote said. I´ll try and include it in nex weeks letter.  A mission is great and I love to see all of the things that my family and friends are doing to serve the Lord. It really is through love and service that we come to know our Saviour Jesus Christ. ]

We were at the temple last week and I got to see Manuel Vasconseles. He was one of the session workers. I saw him as we left the temple and we just ran to eachother. I wanted to give him a hug, haha and he almost gave me one too. His family, i love them so much!! It is such a blessing to know them.

Good luck to Remmington on the three day boat ride! I miss riding bikes with Dad! I miss bugging Sterling and spending time in the great outdoors exploring with my Mom. 

I made a special little card for easter with a scripture and a flower that I drew for each of the Relief Society Sisters.

We got a little easter gift from a Recent Convert. 

Ate a lot of fruit on Sunday. A rare site in Manaus, fruit is stinking expensive here, outside of Manaus it is reasonably priced. 

Something funny, my companion always says good night when its good morning. 

Language is just fine, I dont have a problem with it. Its still not perfect, but it is the Spirit that does the teaching, not nessecarily my words. That was something I had to remind my companion of yesterday. She has problems speaking portugese and a few people told her after her talk that they didnt understand, she also said that the bishop told her she had less time to speak because she mixes up the language. I think the bishop told her she had less time to speak, because I was the first and I have no idea if I took more than the seven minutes of my share. Anyways, I love her and she is doing great.

Got to go, Ciao!

Sister Chatwin
  

I got told I speak with an italian accent, and another day it was with an English accent. I think is was because | was a little sick. Who knows, maybe I dont have an american accent after all.

April 14, 2014

Hi mom and dad!  ( and Remmi, and Tigger too.)

Some how I didnt get your email... Maybe it didnt send or maybe you all were having such a wonderful weekend that it got lost inside your head.

Either way I love you all berry berry much. Life wouldnt be the same without you all. This week was great. I love working with my companion Sister Nina. She literally talks to every one and doesnt lose an oppourtunity to teach a lesson.. I am going to learn a lot from her. We are such great friends already, and we pass the days laughing. Its great. We found so many new people to teach this week! Sadly pretty much all of them said they wouldnt be able to go to church until next week. We are trying to rescue the ward here right now. They have about 44 people coming to sacrament meeting every week. That is about the frequency of a branch. To avoid closing the ward they would join up with 2 other branches, but thats a little difficult. So we are working our tails off to begin to reactivate less active and baptize more people. The ward mission leader has some great plans to help with this and we are really excited.  Really, the Lord is blessing us so much in the work here. It seems like every day we find someone who is prepared to recieve the gospel. 

We were in a trio this last week with sister waite. She had dengue,so she stayed one more week with us to make sure that she was all better before she traveled to her new area.  We did a lot of divisions and made a lot of progress in the area. We stayed out until 9:30 teaching every night. It was great, but with the difference in climate, the hills, and waking up early after my travels from Rondonia it was a little too much for me. We all have our limits and we need to respect them. But really. I am just loving my mission. This last week we had zone conference with all 9 zones. I loved being in my first area and seeing all of my friends again! It was so great! We are going to the  temple this wednesday! I am super excited!! It has been a few months since I have been there. It will be wonderful. Afterwords I hope to visit the shop and by a simplified piano book, our ward right now doesnt have one and they just happen to be lacking a pianist. Also, Sister Waite was giving to recentconverst and investigators piano lessons so I will be trying to continue them... hehe. Serving a mission is great! I also want to buy our investigator or some of the members an easter gift.  I am excited for easter and I hope that all of our investigators will come this nest sunday. I am sad sometimes that I had to leave Vilhena, but I know that this is where the Lord is needing me right now! I couldnt be happier.

Happy Easter, Happy (really late) wedding anniversary {i promise i remembered, just forgot to write is in an email} and for future good luck, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD. lol

You all are the best, I couldnt have a better family!

Love you all so so so so much!

Sister Chatwin

May 5, 2014

Aww. Cute family!   I sure do love the diversity of students you teach!!

I absolutely love the island!! The festival is amazing and I hope to stay here and hear the music during the festival. The river is soooo pretty! I want to wake up early one p-day and sit and  watch the sunrise. 

The church is small here, there are  three groups. (I was transfered before transfers )    So are sundays are busy visiting all three groups. The church recently bought some land to build a chapel, so we deffinitely have a lot of work to do. The nights are beautiful here, bats flying over your head..  bugs, it   is paradise.  

The Elders that work in the office forgot to give us our cellphone before we lef, but hopefully it should arrive tomorrow. These last few days have been interesting. We get lost quite a bit, but we are  figuring out that the island is small.  All we have to do to find out where we are is ask where the cathedral is or the stadium. We live on the same street as the stadium, and the chapel is pretty close to the cathedral. 

We made some contacts today. One live in the middle of the jungle.. He live on the Elders side of the Island, but we pretty much share the island  so I hope they take us their to visit. 

I forgot to mention.. we are the very first set of Sisters here! The branch here is really excited about that. The young women were having a beauty night friday in the chapel and the elders were showing us around. The  young women gave us maicures and pedicures. It was so nice to have some one  clean my feet and paint my nails really cute. I love painting my nails here, but I always have problems  waiting for them to dry.

As for times on Sunday... I dont have a set time, neither do the Elders. They know of a house here of a member that has internet and we intend to use it there.. but seeing as our day is filled with meetings, I couldnt  tell you a time. Just keep an eye out during the afternoon. If I dont call on Sunday, I will for sure call on Monday. Just wait and see, I should call on sunday though. I am super excited to talk with you all!!! :) :) :)   

It was so nice to spend a day in Flores. I got to see a bunch of old friends and families from the ward. I really missed them. Sister Morales ( the friend I met on facebook from Peru  before the mission) is serving in Flores, so I got to spend the day with her too. I would have gotten to stay with  Sister Rocha again, but she was emergency transfered to another area last p-day. The same day the Elders called to tell us that we were getting transfered.

Love you all and i hope to be able to talk to you soon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As the piranahs  would say, Love you to pieces.  

 Sister Chatwin

April 28, 2014

Sounds like you guys are having a blast in Oklahoma. Our backyard must be looking pretty slim.

This week was one of the best and worst weeks of my mission. Just as always I will start with the bad, because in the end of things it is always better to remember the good! And boy do I have good news!!

Bad news: Our house has rats. We have always had the problem with cockroaches and spiders, but rats.. thats new. I was washing dishes the other night and a rat ran across my foot climbed up the tube of  the washing macheine that hangs out of the window to drain the water. Yeah, things went down hill from that night. The rats ate holes in 5 of my shirts, a skirt, and the sheet that mom wrote all over. They left their wonderful piles of poop all over the kitchen, bathroom and as I unpleasingly discovered last night right by my pillow on the top bunk. ITS SO GROSS. I bought a few new shirts today, to make up for the 5 that I lost. New clothes are always welcome, just happened to be in a time when I didnt want to spend the money. Life goes on. We are deep cleaning the house tonight. We had a man come, he was visiting all the mission houses and spraying for bugs and cockroaches, he left venom for the rats so I hope they all die! HA. Its nothing too bad, its just frustrating because I know they are filled with diseases and they are climbing all over my belongings and a can of lysol doesnt exist here. Mas tudo bem. Nephi 3:7

GREAT NEWS! Friday we had the wedding of two of our investigators! Even better was that they were baptized on Sunday. I have one of the most beautiful pictures ever on my camera. I waited outside the baptisimal font to take a picture of them leaving. Anyways the picture of Cesar is the greatest reward! His smile is celestial. That man is never smiling in pictures. I am really so super happy for the two of them. Our investigator Michael will hopefully be baptized this Sunday. He really is super, we made a goal for him to prepare to visit the temple and do his family history work. Only problem is that he works, a lot. He takes care of a little market, and basically if he isnt their they dont make money. But other than that he is perfect. He asks questions, and remembers everything we teach. I dont really have that much time today.... We took the wrong bus coming home so we arrived late. 

hmmmm, something funny this week. To cope with the rat poop by my pillow I sat down and ate Nutella straight from the jar. After that I made plans to kill all of the rats, because everyone keeps telling us that the rats here in Manaus dont die from eating venom. 

I really enjoy seeing the Vasconselos and random members from Flores. It really brightens up my day! I love being back in Manaus. I have so many memories here! So many people that I love! :) 

Sending you all a great big hug! OOOOOOOOO

Te-amo para sempre <B0C.png>

Sister Chatwin