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

August 4, 2014

Hi mom and dad! ( and brothers)

I sure do love you guys! :)

I am staying here in Noel Nutells, probably for the next two transfers. My comp Sister Crane was transfered, and I am now with Sister Jensen. This will be her last transfer, so of course I will probably stay next transfer in this area too. It sure is weird staying. I got used to moving around, but it was nice not having to pack. 

I am excited for next sunday. Our ward is going to be having a big devotional about missionary work. My comp and I are going to speak along with the ward mission leaders. I hope that is will be very spiritual and that lots of people will come!

It sounds like you all had a lot of fun on your cruise. You will have so send some pictures. Sounds like life is moving on for all of you.  You guys are such  missionaries. Parabens na sua trabalho.  :)

Okay so we like to Disney music when we get home at night. Some of the girls have music from Frozen. I am going to have to get that CD when I come home. Those songs are just so cute! 

Our ward mission leader is the best. Sunday he took two of the young men out to do visits and they marked two baptism dates with some of our old investigators that their mom didnt sign the baptism form. Hopefully we will baptize them this week. It would be a great animator for the ward before this big devotional!! We have a lot of potential baptisms, just that either the moms arent signing the form or they have to get married. So this transfer we should have a lot of weddings and baptisms. I am super excited. Also this area is really huge. I walked so much last week from one side to the other doing visits, and I still havent seen every part of our area. 

I´ll be a Sister Training Leader again. I hope that I stay one for the rest of my mission. I really like doing splits with the other Sisters. :) It is fun to see their areas, know their problems, give trainings and still have an area of my own to work in.

Okay, well I love you all a lot!

I hope you have a week full of missionary experiences and lots of joy!

 :) :) :) :) :)

Sister Chatwin

July 28, 2014

It sounds like you guys are going to have a lot of fun! Be safe on the boat!

I am excited to have lots of experiences like that with people speaking portuguese. It will be super fun to see their faces. :)

I am glad that warrens prayers were answered. I am not looking forward to taking calculus when i get back, it is going to be a lot of work. I am happy that they are going to be starting ar Notre Dame. Have they already moved?

It is neat to see that so many people are going on missions! It really will be the best decision they will ever do. :) I would trade the experiences I have had for anything. 

I am jealous that you are going on a cruise, but I wouldnt want to go because it should be hott. Spending summer here in Manaus makes you greatful that air conditioning exists. I know that you two will have so much fun! 

My week was good. :) Transfers are next week, so we will see what will happen. I want to stay with my comp because I like her so much, but then it is all up to the Lord. 

ANYWAYS, I love you all and am so glad that you are my parents. 

Sorry I didnt have much to say today, but I have sent some pictures and included the stories behind them. :) Those should be fun for people to read. :)

Sister Chatwin

July 21, 2014

So this week was really great! It didn´t go at all how we planned it, but exactly as the Lord wanted it to go. Somehow in the midst of our travels, we were able to still work a lot in our area. But the members are helping a lot and we have a lot of new ideas to help them understand how they are missionaries and help share the gospel.

YES. The time is flying by so super fast. July 31st is around the corner. 1 year on the mission, the day of transfers. We will see if I stay here again or not. My companion will be going home next transfer, so she´ll probably stay in this area, I could stay with her too. I don´t know what will happen. 

Sunday I had a great suprise!! Halfway through Sacrament meeting a yound women walked in. I about screamed I was so happy! She was a member of our branch in Parintins, she was here in Manaus visiting family and decided to come visit me at church! It was so good to see her again. I really do miss Parintins. I think that has to have been my favorite area by far.

Before it I will be at home in your loving arms again!  I wrote Bruce today. I told him that I would really like to see and spend some time with him and the family after the mission. I also thanked him for helping out with school. I really do love your family mom. I have some of the best childhood memories with them. They have taught me so much! They really are a great example.

As for bringing home parasites, I hope that I don´t bring any. But, who knows? I remember how Remmi loved those shows! Maybe I will be one of those real life examples... :P

Ryan does have a good point to make. We just eat a whole lot more on the mission than we did before. We don´t have a choice to be lazy because mom won´t make us food. Here they make us food when we don´t even want it. lol. 

You guys are growing up so much.. I wont recognize you when I get home. But then again, you wont probably recognize me either I´ll be so tan.

This week, we hope to set a few more baptismal dates. Some of the Elders made a dvd for us with some mormon messages. We sat down and watched them for awhile with an investigator of ours. She is really stubborn, but just watching these movies she felt the spirit so strongly and started asking about baptism. Which was a miracle, because when we try to talk about baptism she just shuts down completely. Then while we were walking home (gosh, just thinking about how much we walk makes me tired) another miracle happened. This car pulled off to the side of the road and rolled down the window. We were fully expecting it to be some weird guy asking us if we wanted a ride again, but this time was different. It was one of my old investigators that I had in Gloria. The week we were transfered was supposed to be his baptism. It never happened. He was a perfect investigator! I asked him if he had been to church, and he said that he went one time, I asked him if he would go sunday. I hope he went. He took down our number. So I am hoping that he calls so that we can teach him and get him baptized. 

Well anyways, I love you guys!!! Before you know it we will be home laughing  and having so much fun. My companion always laughs at how blong I am. I am not that blond when I speak portuguese, but I am still the same dumb old me. lol. It gives us lots of reasons to laugh. :) 

Ciao, 

Sister Chatwin

July 14, 2014

I am so excited that youth conference will be in Nauvoo. We were watching some of the church history movies, and I really just love all of the learning experiences the saints had in Nauvoo. :) It really is a wonderful place!

Sterling driving? I hope he has improved a lot since that time he drove me around the parking lot in the jeep... Maybe he can drive me home from the airport in 6 months. That´s how it was when Warren got home from his mission, I got to drive him somewhere because I hadnt been driving before he left for his mission.

I bet mom and Remmi just had the time of their lives. I always loved my adventures with mom. :) She is a good travel buddy.

Send some rain our way! Once again it is summer time here, and it´s the worst. The sun can be so stinking hot. Like it is super super super hot during the summers here. It really stinks walking outside all day in this heat.

So this week we got to do some divisions. I feel like I spent more time on the bus than I did walking around on my feet. One of the sisters had to go to the hospital to pick up her x-rays and then talk about the results. Her area was so super far from the hospital. When we finally got back, I never wanted to step foot on a bus again. The bus we took was packed full of people, like sardines in a can. Sweaty gross people. Think about crowd surfing, and then doing that in a bus. Trying to get through the center aisle was death. Everytime someone moved I got squished and I only had one hand to try and hold on and not fall on the man that was sitting on the step beside me. I covered my arm in germ-x after we got off because of all the sweaty people that we squished against me. I am so glad that we have cars, and that the mass transportation is not by bus in the states.

The other area where we did divisions if full of hills. Not tame lame sauce hills,but calf killing hills. My legs were sore the next morning. There is a hill in our area that is huge and we call it death hill, but after visiting santa marta, death hill is tiny. In santa marta there is a hill where they had to cut of the top and re-level it, because the cars couldn't make it to the top. 

Our baptism this week fell through. His mom didn´t let him be baptized. It was really sad and we tried to do everything. This little boy was so excited, the only problem is that the mom is not letting him right now. We even brought our amazing ward mission leader, who still teaches like he is a missionary and we couldnt get the form signed. His mom just didnt want to come out of her room and talk to us.  We are going to be creative in trying to talk to her this week and see if we can´t help her understand a little more about the gospel. 

I am loving my mission and the things that I am learning. I love teaching the gospel, to the members and investigators. I love giving talks in church and sharing my testimony every fast sunday. I love playing the piano, conductiong, helping out in classes and what ever I am asked to do. I love being here in Brasil! 

Love you all! 

Sister Chatwin 

July 7, 2014

First of all, loved all of the pictures that you guys sent! Estou com muito saudades de suas adventuras. Mas tudo bom, sei que vamos ter bastante quando volta.

Looking at the family reunion, I felt like there were people there that I dont even know. It has been such a long time that everyone is growing up and I dont recognize them anymore. Especially my brothers. Eles são gato. :) Cuidado com as meninas gente!

That car [parade Jeep] is amazing. I feel like it could be moms car.

Soo you might have gotten a picture from Manuel again. We saw him at the temple and took a picture together. Out of the blue we decided to dye our hair last p-day. It was meant to only have the tips dyed blonde, but I guess the lady doing my hair changed her mind about that and put a lot more blond in my hair. Dont worry though, it looks good... Just that in the picture youll see from Manuel,, well that was a bad hair day. My hair was super dry and it looked like Hermoines, but I didnt really care because we were just going to the temple. I promise it looks a lot better when I straighten it. I actually have a picture of it, but my camera has a virus so I cant send any pictures until I find someone to take it off. 

So there is this family that I just adore here. Mainly because the two little boys are super rowdy and their mom is always yelling at them to settle home. Saudades, kkk. Anyways I just adore their son Lucas. Everytime we go to there house he yells, OÌ SISTER CHATA! Its so great. This sunday I was conducting again and I saw his dad tell him to go up and bear his testimony. He went up to the front and back to where he was sitting three times before he finally stayed and sat down. When it was his turn he just stood there and breathed into the microphone and started to shrug his shoulders. He mumbled something along the lines of.. I dont even know why I go to church! Then he said something about baptism, and ran back to his seat. No one could hold it in, we were all laughing! I just love little kids. :)

This last week was super busy. We had a bunch of meetings in Alvorada and we also went to the temple. So we hardly stayed in our area. This week and next we are going to doing divisions with the sisters that we take care of, so we will be doing some traveling. Our ward is great and they are going to help take care of our investigators. 

Anyways, things are going great here. I really love serving a mission, and my time here is running out. But 6 months is still a long time. :) I was talking this week with a young woman who was debating serving a mission because she didnt want to be far away from her family. I told her that you have to be far away from your family to serve a mission. Because you find parts of your family in the members and people you teach. That is what makes you love doing missionary work. 

I got a letter from Brother Halsey this week. I always like getting his letters! There is not a post office in my area, so I cant respond to any of them yet. 

I know i´m getting fat, but its not my fault I promise. These members, its like you dont have a choice! At lunches you have to eat until they are content. There are some Irmas, that want you to eat everything they make. They also have desserts at almost every meal. They seem to only drink soda. And there is always someone giving you snacks after lessons or having you come to dinner. They also get sad, de verdade, if you dont eat a lot. Every activity has food. All we do is eat. It´s just part of the culture with the missionaries They always say, COME MAIS SISTER. Its kind of funny actually. We were doing visits with an irmao, and when we were offered food, he just said that he didnt want any and the irma shrugged it off. We were kind of jealous, she even gave us the rest of the cookies walking out the door. I really do love brasil.

Anyways I love you guys a lot! :) :) I hope that you have a great week!

ENJOY THE SUMMER. 

Sister Chatwin