November 24, 2014

Hi Dad!

I sure do love you all a lot! :)

I would love to have a late christmas with all of you when I get home. :) It will be a lot of fun!

So our big family home evening this week was a sucess! So many people came, and they even brought less actives! :)

Our lunch yesterday was super yummy. Brazilian style pancakes. Then for dessert we had the best açai ever!!

I am having the time of my life working in this ward. It is so much fun! I am really going to miss it here.

Lots of things happened this week. I started a piano class for two little girls in the ward. I am the pianist for ward choir now. They are going to sing for our ward conferance.

We had interviews, and conference with President Castro this week. Elder Aidukatis of the seventy also came to give a training. It was a lot of fun. Sister Marinho and I called all of the sisters to have them bring or borrow a pair of heels to wear at conference. We wanted to make Sister Castro really happy. She is always talking about how the sisters need to make an effort to be pretty and dress out best for conferance. She was so happy that she made us do a fashion walk and recorded it on her phone. Sister Marinho thinks she might have put it on the mission facebook page.

We learned a lot about planning and about how we need to do a better job.

My companion goes home in two weeks. YAY. It is fun talking about all the things we have forgotten about. Poor thing. She doesnt want to leave. She only spent the last 5 months of her mission in Brasil. Other than that she spent it all in the states waiting for her visa.

Funny story of the week. After lunch we walked out to see that the chickens left poop and pee in her shoes. I sent the pictures to you in another email. I couldnt stop laughing it was sooo funny. She was mad, so I took the advantage to record a video on my camera of her reaction. lol.

I sure do love you all a lot! I am excited to share all of my stories with you soon!

 Sister Chatwin

Pics: Conference with President, Sister Marinho and I planned for every Sister to come wearing heels. It made President´s wife super happy! The other one I think is me showing how I think chickens could be related to dinosaurs.

During lunch the chickens pooped in my companions shoes.

It was super funny. I got a really funny video of her reaction. We were laughing for a long time.  Also , I decided chickens are related to dinosaurs. I was listening to  a rooster crow the other day, and thought it sounded more like a t-rex than a chicken.

A butterfly that has outer space painted on its wings. ZOOM IN!  
My mad butterfly catching skills.

November 17, 2014

Sounds like you all had a blast at Indy. :) I really enjoy seeing all of your pictures! I am super excited to see you all again. 

This week was really good. And it was really hot! First of all we set a goal as a district to find 75 new investigators this week. Sister Escobar and I were able to get 13. That is a record for us. Normally we get 5 or 6 a week without trying. I really enjoyed having this goal and trying to look more earnestly for people to teach. 

One of my favorite investigators right now is Michel. He is one of the young women´s boyfriend. She comes to every lesson with us. They read their scriptures together and she always answers all of his questions before our next lesson. I love that when we teach him he is completely honest if he has doubts or questions. He answers questions when we ask them... and basically he is just perfect! Normally we spend a lot of our time teaching the poorer people, but by far I love teaching the educated people. They aren´t afraid to hide what they think. It is so much nicer. We have some wealthier areas in our area, and I want to start proselyting in those areas. We may not be recieved to well, but we will find someone who is ready. 

Today for p-day we got up early to go walk the trails in the forest at the college. We went with our neighboors less active husband. Unfortunately today is a holiday, so their were armed guards at the entrance that said it would be better to come another week. Lots of people like to do drugs and bad things in the forest. And all of this people were free, because it was a holiday. So instead of walking through the forest we did a 3 hour loop around the forest. 3 HOURS OF WALKING. It was fun, but I sure was tired. I took lots of cool pictures. We found an ants nest in a tree, a cinammon tree, I think I found soapberries. I tripped over a plant with thorns and cut my leg. After that we went to centro and did some shopping. It was a fun p-day, but I would rather walk through the forest next week. I am never going to walk around it again. I did see a lot of houses though, and thought that they have probably never heard the gospel, and also that if they have they probably never went to church because it is so far away. That is the hard thing. You find a lot of good people to teach, but they just dont understand enough to make the sacrifice to come to church. 

We spake in church last sunday. We had like a 20 minute notice, because the other people who were supposed to give talks didnt come. I decided to give a talk I had already given in Manaus. I talked about the tree of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Roots=Christ Trunk=Atonement Branches=Principles of the Gospel Leaves=us. I explained that leave get their nutrients from the branches which get it from the trunk which gets it from the roots. It is a nice way to think about how we really are reliant on the Atonement of Jesus Christ as our support. Without the Atonement out tree is nothing. If it weren´t for the Atonement we would be nothing. Everything is founded upon Jesus Christ, everything that gives us the proper nutrients to grow strong!

I love you all bunches!!!

Beijos, Sister Chatwin

November 10, 2014

BE CAREFUL MOM. 

Your a good strong woman. :) I love you a lot! You always are a good example for others. 

You should tell Ashley that she should come to school with me. I think that she would love it there. 

As for work.. I don´t know what I am going to do. Temping for Halsey again would be nice, but is also quite a drive and a lot of gas money. Start looking for options??? Maybe start having Bruce look for options where he is too. I don´t know what will happen, but I know that I need a job until the end of April. It might be good to spend some time living with your family... I dont know. It would be good for them to have an example around, and maybe I could help Laurel out a little bit. Sei lá. 

Last week we did a big ward family home evening in a members house. Only a few members came, but they loved it! We talked about faith and then did a egg race. (the one where you have to hold the egg in the spoon) Only that the people with the egg didnt know that there were going to be sock balls thrown at them while they were trying to walk. They loved it and were laughing a ton. Adults are just like little kids. Anyways we are wanting to do this everyweek. This week the family that volunteered to host is planning on going to the temple in January. So our message is going to be a few morman messages about temples, and afterwards they are going to split into groups and build temples out of gumdrops and toothpicks. It is going to be great. I hope that more people start coming. Our goal with this is to strengthen the testimonies of the members and less actives of the basic principles of the gospel. IT IS GOING GREAT. Last week we invited an irma to bear her testimony. It was the first time ever, and she loved it! Now our goal with her is to get up next fast sunday and bear our testimonies together.

I really like it here in Acre. It is super pretty. It can also get stinking hot. Mom, there is a pretty neat college in my area. They have a big lot of rain forest with some trails in it. We are going to try and get some members to take us there for p-day. I saw some people who were studying foresting ( i think) last week. I am really excited to look into this college. 

We went to centro today and there were a lot of cool things. We sat down and chatted with the hippies for awhile, and then we came across an native indian. He was really excited to be talking with americans who knew english. He said that he had never had that experience before. We left a book of mormon with him. 

Life is good. 

LOVE YOU ALL!

Sister Chatwin

November 3, 2014

Mom and Dad,  

I definitely prefer coming back during the summer if possible. Especially seeing that I am in a different state right now, it would make things difficult if you were to come pick me up. :)  But then again, I will be back in school and I think I only get 1 week off during the semesters. But then again it is a whole week. 

It´s like you guys moved or something. Funny to think about all of the changes that can happen in a year and a half. New ward, new stake..    I am excited to see what it will be like. So where is our stake center now? Bartelseville??

As for adjusting  to the new area... its going good. This  area is really big  and we travel by onibus a lot. I love it here. It is super pretty and the weather is nice. 

All of the members are really trying to speak english, there is an irmao who served in the states, and one more who learned a little english while on his mission. This last irmao, i love his family. They are so much fun! He loves making american pancakes, and the sister that was here before me gave him some maple extract. I  was helping him make it one night and telling him about how you can put chocolate and fruit in the  pancakes. He got super excited. We are going to mark a night with him just to make breakfast food. My companion Sister Escobar is going to make homade torillas so we can  make breakfast burritos too. It will be a lot of fun!

It is super weird to think that I will be coming home soon. It is just unreal how fast time flies by.

Irmao David is a really fun person! He really likes to go biking. He passed us a reference once, and when I finally found the guy in his house, the first thing out of his mouth was, which one of you bikes? I said that I did a little, we tried to mark an appointment to come back and he tried to get us to biking with him, and just teach him during the bike ride. He was a vetrinarian, so he was hardly at home and that was the first and last time I talked with him. 

Sounds like you all had a blast at halloZOOween! Haha, I wish I could have been there. It would have been so much fun! I am exited to do fun things with you all again.  :) 

You will have to record the band show for me! I am excited to see it!

Tell Sterling to keep practicing a lot!!! He is such a great person. 

Remmi- your a lazy bum for not wanting to go trick or treating, but  you really are better off without all that candy!

Mom´s hat she made  looked really cool. :)

I LOVE WARREN AND IVY TOO! 

Ya´ll are going to love the presents i have picked out for you. 

Beijos e Abraços, 

Sister Chatwin