Week 21 Happy Thanksgiving

Hello! Hola!  Oi!

This week was wonderful and went by SUPER fast!!!!! I´ve got some funny stories to tell and also some really cool more spiritual experiences to tell yall :)

Starting with funny... I think the majority of you know my water bottle, right?  It´s a bit different XD (for those of you who don´t know, it´s like a book)  Well lot´s of people here in Brasil, and in my mission here now refer to me as " the Sister with the crazy waterbottle") It´s super funny because every time we have district meeting, my Zone leader mentions something about the word of wisdom, because it does kind of loook like a whisky flask, but it´s 100% not I PROMISE :D haha anyways I thought that was pretty funny

This week we finally got around to installing our CO2 and smoke detector.  The instructions were in English, so I was the only one who really understood what to do. Well I was in the other room doing something, and I walk into the room where the detector was installed, and the other sisters literally had a piece of paper on fire to "test" the alarm 😱 I freaked out and was like, " NO YOU CANT DO THAT" because obviously that´s not how you test the detector! So they threw the paper on the ground, and I stomped on it. So this week we couldve had a really serious problem, but thankfully no 😂😌

For all of  you who are at college, or at BYU, or for all of you in general! I found a super funny scritpure that describes perfectly what happens at BYU when you have freinds that get married.  Look it up!!!! Luke 14:20 XD SUPER FUNNY.

Okay, now for the spiritual part :)

This week I had two experiences that I´d like to share with you all :)

So every transfer (every 6 weeks) every companionship of sisters has an "exchange" with the Sister Training Leader, who happens to be my companion. So lucky me getso to go on more exchanges than normal :P  This week we had exchanges with the Sisters in Irati- about two hours from Guarapuava. Because it was a little far away I ended up spending 2 nights there this week! Wednesday night until Friday morning! Irati is a suppppper super super super cute town . I didn´t take any pics of the city, but you can take my word for it or google Irati, Parana, Brasil :)  The two sisters in Irati are Sister Cotinho and Sister Soares! Sister Soares is in her training, which means she is in her first 12 weeks on the mission, or in her case, the first 3 weeks! I had been praying and praying that it could be a wonderful, good and learning experience for both of us (because I didnt know her area, and she is a new missionary).  I really wanted to learn from this exchange, because both of my companions have been leaders in the mission, so I havent really ahd the opportunity to really put into practice what ive learned from them, WITHOUT them. I prayed a lottt.  

And God heard my prayers :)  The exchange was wonderful, we were able to visit a bunch of people and found 2 new people to teach :)  Another miracle is that Sister Soares is from the north east part of Brasil where there is a COMPLETELY different accent, and I was able to understand most of what she said! I hope that sometime on my mission I have the opportunity to be a companion with a new missionary. It was a totally different experience, but I really enjoyed it!

My other experience.. I prayed this week that I could have a spiritual experience at church, because the last few sundays I havent really been feeling very spiritually uplifted. However, this week my companion and I ended up in Nursury (the class for babies and young children).  We were with Paulo- the son of our recent converts!!! He was distrupting the sunday school class, so we left with him so that his parents could have a good experience in Sunday school.  So not exactly the spiritual experience I was hoping for in church...

BUT at lunch one of the members ended up sharing with us her life story, wich was incredible and reallly made me realize HOW easy my life has been. Her story was very spiritual and all 5 of us (us 4 sisters and her) were in tears at one point.  I realized afterwards that that was the answer to my prayers. I didn´t have an extremelly spiritual experience in church, but I did afterwards.

I know that Heavenly Father always hears our prayers, and He will always answer them, in His own TIME and WAY. In my first experience my prayer was answered how I expected and wanted, but in my second, it was different.  BUT both experiences were wonderful.

This week I also have been studying and pondering about faith. How faith is a principle of action and power. And how the more we act and pray in faith, the more blessings we receive, and the more influence from God we receive in our lives.  This week I found one of my new favorite scriptures, "if ye will have faith in me, ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me." (Moroni 7:33)  

Think about the significance of that scripture. I testify that faith IS a principle of action and power and as we exercise our faith in Christ and God, our lives will be better.

xo Sister Councill