July 21, 2014 Heyerryone!

Alice was baptised!

ZeZe, Isbel, and Lulu

Hope everyone´s been having a good week!

Life is just rocking and rolling here in Alecrim. It´s crazy that the week has passed by so fast. I´m actually emailing today, live from the mission office. Woohoo. So the computer is actually functioning! Hurrah for Israel!

Ok. Gotta talk about my homeboy Kyk. Pronunciation: kye-eek-ee. Not really sure how to write it. But for quite a while we were calling him kyak in Portuguese. Haha. Uhh.. Sorry. But here´s his story. Met him the first day Sister Carroll was here. AKA my birthday. We were walking down the street and he started talking to us, telling us that he went to church in a different part of the city and that he lives right next to the church now. Awesome, got his address and phone number, let´s go to his house tomorrow. But lo and behold Kyk wasn´t home. So sad. Called him up, and marked another time. Usually we only go back one or two times. Ya know, people can be kinda flakey sometimes and aren´t ready for commitment. So we basically dropped him. Buuuuuuut. Lo and behold. Some missionaries contacted him on the street and invited him to be baptized and he accepted! But of course when we went back he wasn´t home. Then I think it was last week we ran into him on the street and he asked us if his baptism still was going to happen. Uhhh! What?! Ok. At this point we haven´t even taught him the Restoration.  But then this week we were at the church waiting for someone to open the doors to what was our flop of a Book of Mormon fun time study. And whaddayaknow, Kyk passed in front of the church and Sister Carvalho and Sister Carroll started talking to him. He told us that he had just found out that his best friend had been diagnosed with lukemia. Whoa. So here we go plano de salvação. Spirit was strong, awesome discussion, marked a Livro de Mórmon for him. That was last week and we still haven´t talked to him since. The Lord is blatently telling us that we need to be helping him right now, the problem is that we can never get ahold of him. So we´re just waiting for him to come to us I guess. I´ll let you know when he gets baptized. Don´t you worry.

And then there´s Cristiani and family. Still golden. They´re practically begging us to let them pay tithing. They LOOOVE Isabelle. (I´ll send a picture of her to remind you) It´s like a match made in heaven. Except that they went to the stinkin´ beach yesterday instead of going to church. Gotta work on that. But I love this family. And we´re going to help them get married! Hurrah for weddings!

And nowwww... Mama Baker´s Q & A Time!

Next transfer: August 6th. I think I´m getting the boot once and for all. But who knows.

How´s my Portuguese? Well... It´s definitely getting better. I can communicate myself effectively and now I´m working on grammar. That´s rough. But I still have the goal in mind to forget English and to pick up a Brazillian accent. I definitely have a long way to go. You know, it´s not a really good sign when you start talking and people start laughing because of your accent. That was last week, I think. But I understand pretty much everything. 

Do people speak and understand English? Yeah some people. Pretty much every Brazillian knows the phrase in English, ´the book is on the table´. Yeah I don´t really know, it´s just a phrase that everyone knows. People like to practice English with us sometimes. Mostly drunks shout things like ´Hello!´and ´Thank you!`.

What do I write to President Soares? Pretty much all I write is how the work is going. How we´re working with the members, the difficulties we´re having, and our investigators.

STL stuff: I basically do the same thing that I did in Oregon. Except that President Soares like to send us on exchanges instead of us planning them. It´s all good in the hood. We get to call up the sisters and see how things are going. We have some companionships of sisters that are baptizing families on a weekly basis! Pretty awesome stuff!

And that´s what´s good in the hood. Lovin´ life in Alecrim! I LOVE the Book of Mormon. Oh my lanta. Please. Everyone. READ THE BOOK OF MORMON. Every day. It will change your life. Then spread it with everyone you know. Then read it with the Bible. That´s how you really know the will of the Lord. The mouth of two witnesses!

Remember who you are and what you stand for!

Do something nice for someone that they don´t expect!

Love you all!

Sister Baker