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.