It's not really like teaching English class, it´s more like playing and making a fool of myself and having a lot of laughs.

Thank You Again to all of those who sent me Birthday Wishes! You made my day!

On my Birthday:

This is the after photo from last week's hair incident and a happy
birthday from Sister Andrade! It almost looks cute in this photo,
but don´t let that deceive you. It´s quite terrible, but
"because I have been given much, I too must give."
Haha. I've still never had mine cut in a salon
...companion, ward member, mother, cousin, aunt.... 
oh, Shannon cut it once in the Wal-Mart salon. I guess that counts.

Some members took us to a restaurant for
 lunch. Sometimes life in Santos is very hard.
 Wait, just kidding. This was sooooo good!
 The steak was perfect! Thick, juicy, pink
 in the middle, a little bloody and incredibly
 tender. I don´t know if I've ever eaten pork
 loin before, but if I did, I don´t remember,
 because it was nothing like this. SO GOOD!

Brother Moraes, ward mission leader, surprised me with a cake after English class! All of my students were like "Why didn't you tell us it was your birthday?" The next day one of the students gave me a fancy mug full of super fancy truffles! It was pretty awesome! The guy in the red shirt worked construction in Framingham, and I was like "You probably met my mom! or my aunt! or my uncle!" haha. Our English class is sooo cool! We've really gotten away from teaching normally and moved to doing as much application as possible. I taught them how to say hard th and soft th last week. I think they felt a little more comfortable practicing in front of me when I told them how I got to make the German r sound by practicing my list of r words and making horribly disgusting sounds until it came out right. I gave them a list of words for each sound and pretty much all of them can already do it! I´m glad I didn´t tell them it took me four years to be able to say it right in German. They are so cool and I´m so bummed to be leaving them to another teacher. It´s weird to say, but it's not really like teaching English class. It´s more like playing and making a fool of myself and having a lot of laughs and small insignificant misunderstandings that lead to more laughs.


I am in a new area! It´s called Embare and it´s the neighboring area to my old area. Guess what ? I am living together with Sister Sweet and SIster Medrano again! My companion is Sister Trabaj. I will send you a picture next week. Sister Sweet is gigantic and the rest of us are shorties! It´ll be funny!


Share your light!
Love, Sister Arthur

Marina's Baptism. She's so awesome!

Thank you for all of the birthday wishes!!!

The coast on our morning run

HI!

Thank you for all of the birthday wishes!

I am so happy today! Why? Well, sometimes in the emails you hear things that are cool, things that are sad and things that you just have to laugh at, but today I heard so many good things about/ from the people I love that it´s not even possible to not have an amazing day!

      To celebrate 21 years of life...a little early, I just had to do something crazy! SO I cut my hair...a lot, but not too much. Well, it´s too much for me, but I will get over it. The Relief Socitey had an event for everyone to donate their hair to make wigs for kids with cancer. It´s  a worthy cause and Natalia who was cutting the hair was like "Sister Arthur, you have a lot of hair. The minimum is 10 cm, but that´s nothing compared to the length of your hair. Go with 20." I was like. "Okay. Just do it." and so it was done. No going back, but it´s all good, becuase no one will see how ugly it is, because it´s too hot to leave my hair down. Problem solved.

     We had an amazing experience with one of our investigators, Marina the other day. It was a testimony builder of how the Lord really does use the Book of Mormon to answer our prayers. She wasn´t sure if it was the right time for her to be baptised. She has some family problems and her grandson, who is very rebellious is secretly living with her. When we went to visit her we asked her to pray and ask if now was the right time and then open the Book of Mormon and read what it says. She did it and opened up to Alma 18:27, which says "and he responded: yes." We were all quite astonished, not that it worked, but at how direct the answer was. We then asked her if she would be baptised on September 20, and she accepted. It is amazing to see the many ways that the Lord works in our lives. Sometimes it´s subtle. Sometimes it´s as obvious as this, but when we ask His help in sincere prayer, having faith that He will answer our prayers, He always answers.

      I know that God is our loving Heavenly Father and that He didn´t send us here to wander in 

darkness. When we seek Him, we will find answers. When we need His comfort, he will console us. He will never abandon us.

     I hope everyone is having a great week! Happy Monday! Happy September 15! Make the best of every day!

Love,

Sister Arthur

He really talked with us and asked us what we thought and looked us in the eye.

Elder Holland and our mission

 HELLO! IN ENGLISH! OI! EM PORTUGUÊS! Sometimes I like to just say everything in two languages. Maybe someday I will be a good translator. It´s the small steps that get us there. Oh my goodness! Elder Holland´s translator was INCREDIBLE! Some of the words I was like "Now there´s no way he knows how to say that." BUT HE KNEW! I wonder if he tells him the hard words ahead of time. Anyways, it was impressive, if you´ve ever tried to translate before.

    BUT Elder Holland´s visit to us was so great! We all got to shake hands with him and then he talked with us. I thought he would give a talk, but it was very different. He came down from the pulpit and really talked with us and asked us what we thought and looked us in the eye, like a normal person. I could really feel that he is concerned with the well-being of each of us, that he really does love us. Most importantly, he is an apostle called of God to take care of His children here on the earth. If this is the talk I think it is, he talked a bit about this, among other things, but I really love this talk about what it means to be a representative of Jesus Christ:

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2012-12-1270-mission-preparation-track-23-jeffrey-r-holland?lang=eng

      I learned a lot of things that I needed to hear and I really liked when he said "We have to do what we do because of the fire [inside us]." He was talking about our work as messengers of the true gospel of Christ.

      Thought of the Day from João Batista (John the Baptist), one of our english students:

     "We want to build a new world of God. Come on let´s go all of us together. We are children of God."

English class! John the Baptist is the grandpa.

      We had family home evening as an English class and John the Baptist (that´s his real name) gave the thought at the beginning. We were so proud of him! He was too, because when I asked if I could keep the paper, he offered to autograph it for us. How cute.

I hope everyone is having a great week! Don´t hate Mondays please! That´s one day you´ll live less happy and we are here to be happy! 2 Nefi 2:25

Love,

Sister Arthur

TORTOISE. It's someone's pet.
He was licking me during lunch!