Women's Conference

March 31, 2014

Lol, I got some funny comments on Sunday. Especially about the picture with the frog in your mouth. :) :) I just laugh and tell them that that is our family! I wouldnt change anything about you guys!I sure do love my family. 

Womens conference was great! Although I think I missed out on the significance of a lot seeing as I watched it in Portuguese. Brother Torrie emailed me talking about some of the things President Eyring was saying. lol I thought it was funny. I am still at the point where I can understand, but if I zone out on my own thoughts... boa sorte. lol. I will download it in english and listen to it again. I really loved the video about the importance of the temple in our lives. And also the video of all of the cute kids singing around the world.  :) :) People are just wonderful. 

I am super jealous of Ryan right now. It sounds like he is having the time of his life in Japan. I really want to see his pictures. lol. We sure will have a lot to talk about when we get back. I was thinking about the day when I get to see you all again! It will be such a happy day! I really do love what I am doing here, but I also really really love my family. Even a little bit more now! Today is 8 months on the mission!! Woo hoo! Looking back I am a completely different person now. It is amazing how the Lord changes you for the better.  I am excited to see how a mission will change Ryan too!

Transfers are this Sunday. I think that I will stay here in Vilhena. I hope that my companion stays here too, but we never know. Next transfer is only five weeks, not six. My district leader thinks that I will train next transfer. We will just wait and see! 

I am having so much fun here in Brasil serving people! It really is when you are lost in the service of the Lord that you are the happiest. I learned that lesson this week. We were running back and forth in a rush this week looking for the new furniture for our apartment and waiting to see if the mission office approved what we had chosen. We found a good deal, but seeing as the mission is opening a lot of new areas they are also opening up a lot of new houses. So this week we should finally move with just a washing machiene, fridge, and beds. We will be buying the rest of the furniture little by little. I am just happy that we will finally be moving to our new apartment. It is so much closer to our area and everthing else that we need. Right now we are walking at least 3 hours a day to get to our area and back to our house. It is really taking a toll on our bodies, and this last week was even more because we walked to literally every furniture shop in the center of town. Hence, we didnt really get time to visit people like we normally do. Not serving others, really lets the stress of a mission enter in. I know my limits and we were definitly hitting them this past week. BUT all that should be over soon. (Mom, this is why I really want that exercise dvd. I need something to help me start my day calmly. We walk so much here that if I do any other exercise my body is dying by the end of the day) 

As always, the Lord is wonderful. He is always there to help us when we need it most and through other people too. I am so greatful for the oppourtunities that we have to listen to the words of a prophet and apostles this weekend. ( and to have a break from playing piano on sundays) :) I enjoy playing, but we dont have the keys to the chapel so we have to walk at least an hour to arrive in the branch presidents house where they have a keyboard. Yup. We walk a lot here. I think that is is funny. Warren got a car on his mission, Ryan gets a bike, and I get my own two legs. :) Its a good thing that I dont mind walking.  I think it will be strange not to walk to the chapel when I get back to the states, but then again I will gladly take up driving again! I will never take a car for granted in my life again. They are such a blessing. :D

Love you all, but sadly I am out of time! Enjoy General conference and know that I pray for you all every day!

Such a lucky girl to have my family! :) :)

Sister Chatwin

St. Patrick's Day

March 17, 2014

WOW! Those pictures are stunning! This planet is absoulutely beautiful!  REALLY.

Teaching was went well this week. We didnt really get to work a lot in our area, because the branch presidents wife (For now we are a part of Branch 1) is taking us to see a lot of her neighboors and teach them. Her son just left for a mission so she is super excited to be helping and that Vilhena finally has sisters. She has one neighboor that is super excited. She asked us a ton of questions the sencond time we visited her. We are seeing a lot of less actives also. I hope that with time they will begin to go to church! There are a few who really want to come back, but as always something comes  up and they dont make it to church. But that is okay because we have church every week. 

Its so crazy that Ryan will be going to Japan here in a little bit. I am super excited for him and all of the delicious food he will be eating! I just email Elder Chatwin and told him this. :)

I am the pianist in our little branch right now. It is fun and I enjoy learning to play the piano again. It really is amazing how the Lord blesses us with the talents to do the things that are required of us.  I am learning so quickly! I will be playing three songs at new beginnings this saturday. It is a daunting task because I have never really played an actual piano song before, but just practicing I can see my improvement and I know that it is only through the help of the Lord that I am able to do this. When I play I have to help keep myself calm and really focus all of my energy into playing and reading the music. Thanks mom for haveing me take piano lessons and letting me play in the band all these years! It has helped a lot!! :) :) I may not have enjoyed piano at the time, but now I am absolutly loveing it. The music is so beautiful. Saturday I will be playing Eu anda pela fe, Juventude da Promessa, and Como Viverei. ( I walk by faith and How shall I live) They are songs in the young womens songbook.

Hmm..  a scripture that I I really liked this week was 1 Nephi 18:15-16, Verse 16 is my favorite. After four days of this pain and suffering we read ," Nevertheless, I did look unto my God, and I did ^apraise him all the day long; and I did not murmur against the Lord because of mine afflictions."   We have  so many reasons to complain during the day, yet we should always return to the Lord. We will be so much happier if we do this.

The scriptures in portuguese have such beautiful translations in my mind. Not every word  translates to the words used in english, therefore my mind ponders and thinks of the significance of what is being said. It is beautiful the ways the Spirit helps us learn.

LOVE YOU ALL SO SO SO MUCH!

Have fun with the crazy Oklahoma weather! You all should go to the zoo for me and send me pictures!

Today we get to take a five hour bus ride to the other part of our zone for zone conference. Woo-hoo.

Te-amo!!!

Sister Chatwin

What a Week!

March 3, 2014

Hi mom!

I am super glad that you and Remmington are feeling better again!

SNOW! I miss snow right now. Although I am loving the weather in Vilhena. I dont have to sleep with a fan or airconditioning. IT IS PERFECT.

To answer Moms questions... I saw that huge list and thought they were all for me. My thoughts were this...Oh no what has Ryan done. lol. I am glad that only a few of them are for me!!

I now have seven months on the mission. It is a strange feeling. Time flys so quickly and I have met and learned to love so many people. It will be so hard to come home! I am not looking forward to it,but I am looking forward to being with my family again!

There are some cool really tiny moths here. I see them in our house. But otherwise I havent really seen any bugs here in Vilhena.

The new area is great! IT really is perfect. It is not hot, and there is wind here. There are not any noisy streets. It is just a cute little town. My new companion is Sister Olivera. She is a sweetheart, she got here one transfer after me, although she is Senior companion. But I know why.... Our area is Vilhena 2, we are in charge of Branch 2. Which ironically we found out the day we arrived doesnt exist. There are 3 branches here 1 and 3 are up and running, but some time ago branch two was shut down. So our job right now is to reactivate all of the old members and find new ones to baptise. Right now we are a part of branch 1 until branch two is up and running. It is the second time that Vilhena has had sisters.(the first time was 14 years ago and only for a few weeks) I have a feeling that I will be staying here for a while, seeing as we have so much to do. Right now we are living in the Elders house, and they are staying with the other set of Elders here. We just found a new apartment for us to move into, so that should be happening here in a few weeks. You can look it up on the internet. Right now we live on Avenida Parana, above a market. The apartment we will be moving to is on the same street as Park Shopping (the grocery store) the apartment is a part of the Olinda Hotel. Anyways Sister Olivera has been a member of a branch almost her whole life, so she knows how things work.

The 12 hour bus ride was a twelve hour bus ride. The bus stopped at every city, so when  you finally fell asleep you woke up again. Our zone is ji-parana. So when we have our treinamento de zona we have to take a five hour bus ride to get to them. Conferencia de Zonas will be a twelve hour bus ride to Porto Velho again.

The land is so beautiful. While we were staring the bus ride I kept thinking, mom and dad have to take this bus ride, just because it is absoulutely beautiful.

The people are great too!

Love you all so much! I am glad that all is well with you! I cant wait to hear from you again!

-Sister Chatwin

Sister Chatwin Get Transferred Again!!!

Hi Family!

Haha, it is true I am getting transfered. I leave at five p.m. today. It is a 12 hour bus ride. Its going to be fun! I am excited to be going there, everyone says that it is a really nice place. :) Vilhena was a part of the Brasil Cuiba Mission, but now it is in ours. Hahaha, my last companion (Sister Rocha) is still in Flores, so she gets to know all about transfers ahead of time. I am guessing that she told Tereza. :) It makes me laugh that you all know ahead of time that I am getting transfered. LOL.

I hope tigger has a lot of fun in Ireland. He should take lots of pictures. It will be a super fun vacation!

Hehehe. That makes me laugh dad! I can see it happening too [One funny for the week: I was sitting on the sofa with mom watching Women's Figure Skating.  During one skater's super fast spin, I said "Good thing she doesn't have a glass eye!"  I could just see the thing (or even dentures) being overcome by centrifugal force and taking out a judge or the TV camera!!!]. I miss watching the winter olympics, I am glad that there are so many great examples of good young women!

GOOD NEWS. I finished reading the Book of Mormon in Portuguese this week. It was great! I love that book so much. I remember when I first started in the CTM when I read a verse in English and then in Portuguese, then when I got to the field I was looking up words in my dictionary as I read and then I just left my dictionary behind all together (literally I left it in Manaus in one of my boxs). I loved reading it and being drawn in to the different stories. I wish that everyone of my investigators would sit down and read the entire book. If you read by the Spirit, you will know that it is true even before you are done!

I have a bunch of letters to send, but I havent had time to go to the post office yet. 

As for the flooding, it is still raining here and the river is still flooding homes. There are some parts of my area here that we couldnt visit this week because the roads were flooded. But ´people are so willing to help. We stopped by the Catholic church by our house to help sort clothes, shoes etc.. for a little bit. I would have liked to go and help more, but things just didnt work out to where that could happen. 

I really dont like packing. It seems like I gain more things every transfer. I really wish I brought a backpack like mom suggested... :P More than that, I dont like transfers ( I actually love them) just dont like leaving people and the friends I have made. But that is part of the package, learning to love people and then leave them. Brasilians are such a loving people.. It is hard to describe how much I have learned to love because of them. :D I sure will hate saying goodbye in a year. It will be the worst, yet best day in my life, because I will get to see my family again!!

LOVE YOU ALL! 

Keep reading and praying as a family every night (it does miracles).

-Sister Chatwin

Nice Weather but Cold!

Hi mom! 

Things are great, but busy as normal. My companion is actually the Senior companion. She served nine months in the states, she is good, but she just doesnt know how to relax. Therefore p-days are always really super stressfull. She knows portuguese, she just wont let her head think in portuguese. But all in all we work well together and have a lot of fun. Anyways transfers are this next week and I think that I will probably leaving. President Klein always likes to leave newbies in their first area until they are used to the way brazil works. 

Something neat, if you look on the internet the Rio Madeira ( which is right by where I live) is flooding because of all of the rain that we are having. We had a big meeting yesterday to figure out how the church can help and what we can do. SO for now we are just waiting to be told how we can better help. There are a lot of people who~s homes have flooded and the rainy season shouldnt stop until April. If it keeps raining, then by April they expect that the the river will rise twenty meters and reach the bairro where we are living right now, Sao Joao Bosco.

Our lunch yesterday drove us down to see it and I got some good pictures. In the streets that are flooded there are people who are selling boat rides. It is the new tourist attraction. It is the first time the river has flooded in 100 years like this. 

We found some cool new people this week. The Elders gave us a reference, and little did we know they accidently put the neighboors house number instead of the people we were actually trying to see. It turned out great for us. We had a really good lesson with the neighboor and are excited to go back and see them. Only thing is that it is a little bit of a walk from our house. 

Speaking of which, when I  get back we should go camping and I could go on those really long hikes with you and your students. I only need my chacos. Walking without them is just not the same. lol, my feet are so used to them, that if I walk around in flip flops it feels really weird. 

I forgot all about having people sign my bag..... yup.

Saw some cool bugs this week. Some of the ones that look like thorns, another white one that looked like a skeleton, some long horned beetles that like to fly infront of your face. Also I acidently walked into some ants and one of them released the attack pheremone so they all started biting my foot. When I got them all off we kept walking and then we stoped, because sister larson wanted to pick some star fruit. Well there were more ants there and they all started biting be again. It was funny and didnt hurt that bad. I also saw this really cool butterfly, it was black and lime green. It was really big (saw it on remmis birthday) and I almost caught it. I just didnt grab close enough to the body and it ripped a little corner off of its wing and flew away. It was sad.

But that was my week, I am going to read dads email now! I might have more to say there. 

LOVE YOU!

Sister Chatwin

It's Daddy's Turn

Oi familia, 

That is really neat that Bryce got his mission call! England is just perfect for him. 

I think it is funny that the Harpers moved back into our ward. Lol, every one is moving back it seems like. 

The Ogdens house is almost done!! That is crazy. Time flys fast here. 

Sounds like Remmington had a really fun birthday party! I celebrated his birthday by making a wendys frosty. We buy milk here in boxes so we froze one and then blended it up and put a lot of chocolate milk powder in it. It was yummy. HAPPY BIRTHDAY KID! 

So, I like to listen to music on my speaker, but my ipod wont play on the cord that I have, so we listen to a usb drive that I bought. It just has some songs from conference and also conference talks, but my companion doesnt like to listen to them at night because she cant spéak in portuguese the next day. So today I downloaded some in portuguese, kreyol, tongan, and Japanese. I am excited to listen to them. :)

This last week we were looking for an address of an old recent convert that we found in our Area book. When we finally found the apartment we were greeted by a bunch of friendly Haitians. They were really nice as always, and just learning how to speak portuguese. One of them spoke English, so we talked with him and the others listened. We were using French book of Mormons to hold up my bed so I told him that I would bring more for them to read this next week. They really are my favorite people to listen too, and to talk to. I was so happy that I almost sang head shoulders knees and toes for them in Kreyol because at the time that was the only Kreyol I remembered. lol. It was really funny. 

Sister Larson knows portuguese. She is just a little bit of a perfectionist and wont talk if she knows it is not right. She will talk to people in our lessons willingly, but she wont ever talk on the phone. Which is fine I like talking on the phone, but she is always telling me I have to do this and that and when I ask her to try she wont... But all in all we get along well!

I have noticed that I tend to just go more with the flow and will work with others well, but the missionaries that dont come from good families tend to boss everyone around. It is amazing the influence parents have on the ways that we work with others. Thank you mom and dad for being such good examples! I will love you forever for the things you have taught me!

The ward is great, their are a lot of great families here. We are just looking for new ways to include them in the work, and also work better with the bishop and his desires for our ward. We had lunch with him on Saturday and he gave us a whole new viewpoint on the life of a bishop here in Brazil. It was very helpful. :) 

We also had zone conference on Friday. It was really good and really fun! We all were at the Stake Center waiting and then the electricity went out. They were going to be working on the lines next to the chapel all day. So all of the missionaries in Porto Velho and Ji Parana went to catch a bus to the other chapel near by. It was crazy. Conference was good and I got to recieve a lot of letters! I was very happy to recieve them. 

My companion has the weirdest laugh ever, and at all of the ward activities it is the goal of the youth to make her laugh. It is the best :) She gets so annoyed, but its so funny. Especially when someone has not heard her laugh before. It is the loudest thing ever and every one turns around and just stares at her. lol. A yound woman in our ward got it on it on camera.

Anyways, better go and email Presidente Klein! 

Vos-ama! :) :)

Sister Chatwin

I am sending a letter this week, their is something for mom, dad, and each of the two boys.

Snow

I am sad to hear of the passing of Mr. Waters, he was a great guy! I will be sure to send them a letter as soon as I can. 

I loved reading Ryans letter last week. It was very funny!! I am glad that he is doing really well! 

Too bad about Tiberius, he sure was a good dog, but was deffinitlely getting violent. 

So, today I bought a hammock to sleep in. It was about 55 reals. My bed in our apartment finished breaking all of the way this last week and is kind of hard to sleep in. The matteress always slips off, it is kind of funny because I always wake up with half of the mattress on the  bed and me sleeping at the top edge. I should sleep better tonight. :) 

So this last week we had the most stressful baptism ever, but the thing is WE HAD IT.  We had this young man who had been taught by the sisters before call us up and say that he wanted to be baptized. He is a really good person, but also really roudy. AND he speaks really really fast. So the family he is staying with are members, but they are crazy hard to get a hold of during the week. It was a week of back and forth phone calls... etc.. We finally got to teach him all of the lessons, and set up his baptism date. I dont have time to write all of the detail, but I am just glad that it is done. :) Who knew a baptism could be stressful! We went to see him again yesterday and teach him the fifth lesson, afterwards he and the family he is staying with took us to a part of our area that is pretty far away and dangerous to find a reference that we recieved who said that they are only avaliable on Saturdays and Sundays. The young man we baptized would make an excellent missionary, HE WAS SO HELPFUL. But he has a girlfriend... but he would be an excellent missionary. After we found the persons house, she wasnt home, we drove around and they showed of some of their friends houses and some places were there were old investigators they thought we should teach again. It was great and we plan on going to visit these families with them again. 

This was the last sunday of two youth in our ward, one is leaving to serve a mission and the other, she is going to be studying in Bolivia. Sacrament meeting brought back a lot of memories and emotions. I learned so much in church yesterday! I am sending you all a letter this week, so I will write more about it there. As usual here, we dont really get a lot of time to email, so I will try and come to the internet place a little earlier next week.

Here they dont make you eat! It is so nice, some of the irmas will, but most of them dont. I like it a lot!

Sounds like mom is having the time of her life! I am glad that she is so close to her students! :) They sure to love her!!!!!!

Game night was a blast, but no new people for us to teach. 

Dad is great, I am glad that he is doing well. Wish he wasnt so busy, but I am glad that at least he has a job.

YAY Warren and Ivy! I sure do love those two. YOU CAN DO IT!

I really do have so much to tell you, just not enough time! :(

Love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sister CHatwin