#BLESSED

#BLESSED

I'M IN LOVE AND I DON'T CARE WHO KNOWS IT!!! I love everything about
this transfer, no joke. Ribeirão Pires is so fantastic, and my new comp,
Sister Bennallack, (who is almost 21, from Adelaide, Australia and has 8 months
in the mission) is the BEST. I love her so much already. She´s super
friendly and loving and very excited to be here serving the Lord and
people of Brazil. Also, it´s really weird and awesome to be able to
slip in an English word or two when I don't know how to say something
in Portuguese.

Our area here is HUGE, especially after coming from teeny tiny
Eldorado, but it´s so green and jungly and beautiful here. We live in
Centro in the middle of Ribeirão (with lots of shopping, supermercados,
and a post office!!). It takes us about an hour to walk
to the eastern edge of our area, and we have to take a bus to get to the
western part because it´s too far to walk, lol. We've only explored like a
third of our new stomping ground so far, and we get lost pretty much
every day haha, but we´re getting the hang of things here. The members
are super duper and have welcomed us with open arms and open hearts.
Pretty much every time we meet a new member they tell us how happy they
are that they have Sisters instead of Elders now, lol.

- Story of the Week: In the beginning of the week, I talked with a
lady on a random street of a neighborhood we were visiting. She was
pretty nice, but not really interested in receiving a message. A
couple of days later we happened to see her again, and she stopped us and
said she talked with her mom and that we could visit them and teach a
lesson, so of course we went. We arrived and were greeted by an 80
year old woman with one eye, bad hearing, and a see through shirt
without anything under it; AKA I knew we were in for a ride.

Basically for every 1 minute we talked she talked over us for 10
more, generally complaining and gossiping about her neighbors. After
30+ minutes of this, Sister Bennallack got fed up and called her to
repentance right then and there (basically yelling because the lady´s
practically deaf) for talking smack about other children of God.The
lady sat there for a minute, almost as surprised as I was, and then
started laughing and told us she decided she liked us after all. Moral
of the story, be bold and stand up for what you know is right because crazy
old ladies will love it and then stand up and start clapping and
swaying and singing a prayer for you, and then invite you to come back
for some juice and another lesson the next week.

Love you all and hope you are half as happy as I am this week :)

- Sister Curtis