Our potential is much greater than any of us could understand.          June 2, 2014

This week, I got a lot of emails from people saying "I hope you´re happy and having a good time." I am for sure! This week was pretty cool! Last Monday I tried straight up passionfruit (maracujá) for the first time. They don´t eat it straight up here, but I don´t know why. It´s pretty good. It´s definitely strange too.

straight up passion-fruit

     Funny sidenote: I went to open the folder where the guy from the internet house put the pictures from my card and the folder is named "meninas lindas" or in english, "pretty girls." Yup, pretty much everyone hits on the missionaries here. Kinda weird, just sayin.

      Also, my family consists of the coolest, funniest people on our little planet. I really like it when people tell me jokes in English, because I understand them! Before my mission, for pretty much my whole life, I have heard things wrong, but it was never a problem in Portuguese. I had a funny experience at lunch yesterday. Someone was talking about the flour there in the north and said it´s more granular or has bigger pieces (grosso),but I understood that it´s made from bone (osso). I thought, well Elder Macedo (from the North) does seem like the kind of person that would eat flour made from bone. Well, everyone got a kick out of that. Now that I have a bigger vocabulary in Portuguese, there´s much more opportunity to confuse the words. YAY!

us with  Sister Cabral (Mission President's wife)

     We had a great experience this week! Well, more than one, but this one´s our favorite. We were looking for a house that doesn´t exist. We later found out we were looking in the wrong neighborhood. Haha. So, we ask this guy if he knows where the house is, and he doesn´t. Then we asked if we could come back and teach him and his family and he said of course! So, we went back the next day and taught him and some of his family and everyone had the most amazing feeling! It was like the room was just filled with peace and nothing bad could get to us. They are excited to learn more and come to church. It was a nice change after meeting many others who felt the same way, but didn´t want to act on what they had felt. 

      Some people think that a life with Jesus Christ is an easy life and get discouraged when they continue to have difficulties in their life even after they´ve accepted Christ and are following Him. It´s not easy. I always joke with the other missionaries and say in an annoying voice "Life is so hard." It is a joke, but it is also true. Life is hard for everyone and having Jesus Christ in your life doesn´t mean that you won´t have trials. It means that you know the one person who has experienced all of these things, the one person who knows you better than anyone. It means that when it seems like everything here is falling through or there´s nowhere to turn, you know that our potential is much greater than any of us could understand. Ends in this world are not eternal ends. Life goes on.

      I hope everyone is having a great week! HAPPY MONDAY!

Love,

Sister Arthur