Week 12 - April 24, 2017

Zonas moinhos, Cachoeira e POA
(Mills, Waterfall and POA areas)

This picture was posted on the Mission Presidents FB page.

This week was super busy; we had a zone conference in Porto Alegre, and afterwards had splits with sister training leaders for about a day and a half. I stayed in an area in the outskirts of Porto Alegre with Sister Ferreira. It was super cool to see a different area and work with different people for a little bit. As much as I love Jacuí, I learned that a lot of things make my area harder than most. For one, you can visit a lot more people when your area is closer to the city because the houses are closer together. Here, it sometimes takes 45 minutes to walk between different areas in town, which makes it harder to teach more people and makes us more tired. Also, I could understand people's Portuguese much better in the city. Apparently, the people in my area are just a little harder to understand; the sister that served here with Sister Suárez before I arrived said that it would have been really hard for her to start her mission here because, even after a year in the field, she still struggled to understand some people here. So, hopefully that means my Portuguese will improve a lot faster since I'm starting out with the hard stuff. One thing that is definitely an upside about Jacuí, though: our house it so nice. I didn't realize how nice until I stayed in Sister Ferreira's apartment. So, I'm counting my blessings, guys.

Other than that, not much happened this week. The cold and the rain is starting to pick up, which isn't so fun, but it means less sweating. So again, counting my blessings. I hope everyone is doing great, especially because summer is almost there for you guys. Vacations are super nice; trust me, enjoy it while you can. I'll leave you with just a short spiritual thought. I don't have it here with me in English, but a really cool verse in the Book of Mormon is Alma 30:44, which is about how all things denote that there is a God. It talks about how the Earth and the movement of the planets and everything show that there must be a supreme Creator, which is definitely true, but I think the little things in our lives show that there's a Divine Creator too. Flowers and clouds and birds. Families and friends. How could we be so blessed to live this life if there were no God? Life is hard, for sure, but we have so much to be grateful for.

Love you all!

Sister Coleman