"Missionaries and Monkeys!"

A painting in our mission home

It's been quite a week!  We arrived in Salvador and had about 3 hours to get oriented by the old mission president. When they handed us their phones and drove off, David and I felt just like we did the first time we were left by ourselves with a new baby!  90 sets of twins!  The phones were filled with emails and text messages that we didn't recognize. The phone started ringing showing names we didn't know and people speaking in words I did not understand!  Needless to say it's been quite an adjustment.  There were a few times in the first couple of days that I shed some tears and wondered how could I do this? I wondered if I was going to be the first missionary President Lisonbee would have to send home! But it seems like every time I would get to that point I would be blessed with something to encourage me.  Isn't that the way faith works - "There is no witness until after the trial of our faith."  (Ether 12:6) )  We are so grateful for our mission to Italy which helped prepare us in so many ways for this. 

We have almost completed our mission tour to meet all our missionaries. David interviewed 70 missionaries in two days.  We fly to the outlying area of our mission in Petrolina for the last of these conferences tomorrow.  These missionaries are amazing!  It's been great to watch President Lisonbee with them.  He's been magnificent.  I have seen the mantle of this calling on him as he has taken charge in such a loving and gentle, but powerful way.  And several Brazilian missionaries thought he has been speaking Portuguese all of his life.

And I have felt the enabling power of the Lord's grace in my role also. At our first conference with the missionaries, I felt really good about the comments I had prepared in Portuguese and shared with them.  But during the meeting, I felt so impressed to share other things that I had not prepared in Portuguese.  President Lisonbee, must have known my heart, because he kept calling on me to share certain things from my life.  One of the assistants interpreted for me and I was so grateful to be free to share whatever I felt impressed to with them.  I don't know that I have ever felt such clear and powerful guidance in a teaching situation as I have in these meetings.   At each of the two conferences we have had so far, I had a missionary come up to me and tell me that I didn't even need to have my words translated because they felt the Spirit so strong when I spoke regardless of what language it was in.  I do not share this to give myself any credit, but to testify that the Lord values His missionaries so much that He will go to great lengths to bless those who need to bless them!  I have even felt the Lord's help in speaking with them about some of their health issues.

We feel so much love for all the missionaries and are so impressed with their level of testimony and understanding.  Many of them have such powerful conversion stories of their own.  I am grateful to have felt moments of doubt, fear, and homesickness this past week, so that I can put into practice the advice we give to missionaries when they are feeling the same things!

Here's a sample of some of the things we dealt with the first two days here.

President Lisonbee:
A missionary that wanted to go home (Besides me)
An elder that wants to know if he can baptize someone who has killed four people
A sister that needs to go home a week earlier than the schedule planned for
An elder that needs a Patriarchal blessing
A missionary with Epilepsy that doesn't have enough meds to last his whole mission

Sister Lisonbee:  Missionaries with::
A torn meniscus (knee injury)
Bad calf pain (after a 12 hour bus ride - which I worried was Thrombosis)
vomiting and diarrhea
An ovarian cyst
Yeast infection
Depression

But undergirding all the challenges is the joy of this work!  We went to our first baptism of a beautiful, impressive Brazilian woman, Jaqueline. Her husband, who is not a member, just dropped her off at the Church and would not come in.  I marveled at her faith in following the witness that she has had of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.  We are hoping and praying that her husband will see what this means in her life and be willing to open his heart also.
She is pictured below with us and the Elders that taught her. (Elder Hollingsworth, and Elder Fatori, our awesome assistants. ) Many people I meet here, like Elder Fatori have Italian ancestors, so my connection with Italy has been an asset.

7 THINGS I WON'T/WILL HAVE FOR THE NEXT THREE YEARS

I WON'T HAVE:

*STRAIGHT HAIR
*DRY SKIN
*DRY ANYTHING
*TO WEAR COATS, HATS OR GLOVES
*A VIEW OF MOUNT TIMPANOGOS
*A BATH
*HARMONS OR MACEYS

I WILL HAVE:

* CURLY HAIR
*A CHANCE TO PLAY ANIMAL, VEGETABLE OR MINERAL EVERY TIME I GO TO THE GROCERY STORE
*MANY WONDERFUL FRUITS, SOME I DON'T EVEN RECOGNIZE
*MONKEYS THAT COME TO MY WINDOW
*A CHANCE TO LEARN A BEAUTIFUL LANGUAGE THAT SOUNDS LIKE A COMBINATION OF ITALIAN AND FRENCH
*SUCH GRATITUDE FOR WHOEVER INVENTED THE "I TRANSLATE" AP!
*AN INCREDIBLE OPPORTUNITY TO LOSE MY LIFE IN THE SERVICE OF OTHERS

Some difficult adjustments have been:

* Having to soak all produce with a special solution before eating
*Dealing with people at the grocery stores that ask you to pay for their groceries for them. ( I'm glad we were warned about them.)
*The absolutely insane traffic.  With the World Cup Games here its been really crazy!  As we were driving home in the dark from a conference after Brazil had a win on July 4,  everyone was celebrating with fireworks and revelry.  We were on the Freeway and out of nowhere a black man in white shorts ran across the freeway right in front of us!   President had to swerve to miss him.  I think his white shorts saved him! Our first night we got lost in the dark and were trapped in a favella ( a slum area on the hillsides of the city.)  We were driving through a maze of very narrow streets filled with garbage and scary looking people staring at us).  We couldn't get the GPS in the car to work and I was frantically trying to get my Maps on my phone to kick in. A few yards before a crossroads it started to work and I yelled for David to turn left just in time to get us out of that menacing maze!
*At the Church, They can't flush their dirty toilet paper down the toilet, so they put it in wastebaskets.  (I have a really hard time with this one.)

Some of you have asked for pics of our place so I've posted some below the following photos.  Next time I'll try to post more of Salvador.  Salvador seems like a mixture of the Caribbean, Africa, a touch of Europe and all to the tune of a Samba or Bossa Nova.

Thanks for coming on this adventure with us.  We can feel your prayers. We love you!

Monkeys that come to our window to eat the bananas I feed them

Being welcomed by our great office elders

 Some of our great Elders singing Come Thou Font of Every Blessing at the Baptism.  Beautiful!

With a Brazilian sister missionary, Sister Leite whose name is also Bianca on the right and a great American, Sister Belmonte from Illinois on the left. 

Eating with some of our great sister missionaries at one of the Conferences

I'm so grateful for the local ladies that fix the food for these conferences.  Such a blessing to me!

Our great assistant Elder Hollingsworth from California in the center. The Elder on the left, Elder Correia is from Cape Verde, Africa. I nicknamed him Will Smith. He has a powerful conversion story.  

Brazilians watching World Cup Game

Our Apartment:

Kitchen 

President Lisonbee has an office in our home

Nice to  have a piano

Exercise/tv room

Nice dining room for meetings and dinners

A guest room with its own bathroom for when you visit

Another Guest room also used when sisters sometimes need to stay over on Transfers

Our bedroom with bathroom

Living Room - love the balcony

We have four bedrooms and bathrooms and there is a laundry room with work areas and maids quarters and a nice pantry and two fridges and freezers.  Its a great place. It's on the third floor of a gated high rise building surrounded by lush vegetation - hence the monkeys. It is our refuge!