The World Needs Your Light

so this week was better and..... not so better for me. 

I'll start out with the more solemn, pensive experience first and end with the good news/funny stuff.

1. Had an experience this week that changed me, again. Me & Sister M are working in an area called Antares. I thought it would be pretty much the same as Centro Civico since its in the same area, same zone, same city but Antares looks like a completely different place from my last area. To start off with, there are more bars here than grocey stores. You think Im exaggerating, but oooooh Im not. This is just the beginning. The other day, me and Sister M were tracting and came across a little 9 yr old boy with a cooler strapped to the front of his body. He told us his name was Joao Vitor and that he was working selling chocolate truffles his mother made for ,50R$. He had one red eye, and he had been working in the street since he got back from school in the suffocating heat. As I looked at this little boy, exhausted, thirsty and hot I felt like my heart broke into a million pieces. I saw my nephews in the eyes of this little boy & I realized I had nothing to give him. I left my water bottle in our house, so I couldnt even give him a sip of water he mustve been longing for. As I watched him walk away I felt incredibly guilty for not telling him to wait for a few minutes so I could buy him a bottle of water at least. 

This leads me to my invite for you, my dear friends and family. Be grateful. We are so blessed. Your childhood, the childhood of my neices and nephews did not consist of them working in the streets in order to help their single mother buy bread and milk. This little boy shouldve been playing or reading not working. So remember to be grateful. And to give more. Serve more. Look for opportunities to bring hope to the hopeless and to give rays of light to those afraid and sitting in darkness. 

Now to the little happy news! Valdemar got baptized this sunday! Really Sis M was working with him with her other comp, Im just enjoying the fruits of their labors but still wonderful news! 

We also passed by a less active members house this week, and these are some of the things that happened:

1.) Leonardo (the crazy brother) told me that "Eu estou MUITO APAXIANADO PARA VOCÊ!" which translates to: "Im madly in love with you." 

2.) Teodor (the OTHER crazy brother) told me that this sunday hes going to come to church and ask me for my hand in marriage. i thought he was kidding until I started busted a gut laughing but looking at his face he was being completely serious.

That makes 2 marriage proposals in the same day! By 2 men who could be my father.... ohhh yayy!!! Just what I always wanted!!!! -_-

and thus ends the adventures of an gringa in brazil.... 

peace out! love yall!

xoxo

beijos abraços

Sister VerHoef

City of Crazies

So this week has gotten a little better. First off Im in Antares with Sis M! Shes from Sao Paulo & shes hilarious. (to let yall know Antares is seriously 20 minutes away from Centro Civico. So happy to be so close to my first area!) Were also with another dupla of Sisters. Theres four of us in total. Sister R & Sister S & Sister M & me. 

And todays my birthday which ya know.... its there hahaha. Wow already a quarter of a century! the 2-5... yeesh. Yet its kinda nice to hear that I dont look 25. I havent told many people its my bday but somehow my Zone Leader Elder D found out & hes pretty mad at me for not telling him. Zone Conference is this wednesday so well see what he does.... 

In other regards, I kind of wanted to share something to make yall laugh this week since last weeks email was pretty gloomy. These are just a FEW of the things we experienced this week in Antares....

Sister M started talking with a "witch" on the bus on the way home from zone meeting. They had already contacted him a few weeks ago so she knew him a little bit. Apparently hes a "Spiritualist" but Sister M says hes a witch. She started talking to him on the bus & making him laugh, but the best thing she said was this:

"Irmao, could you do us a favor? We walk every day & its super tiring on our feet. Could you get us 4 brooms please? Its so much easier flying than walking!"

Heres another one for ya too. 

We passed by an inactive this week named Leonardo whos seriously insane. REally, his entire familys batty. He lives with his brother & mother and father.... and hes in his 40s..... he showed us his airplanes that hes creating along with designs for hovercrafts, space ships, space shuttles and other aircraft that will never fly even if you blessed it with the priesthood a thousand times. He then told me that his life long dream is to marry an American & proceeded to show me his passport as if this will somehow convince me that hes serious. Then he gave me a CD with a recording of a song he did at a friends house thats 12 minutes long... a cover of about 3 ACDC songs I think. I played it for Sister M but she couldnt make it pass 2 minutes a 48 seconds. 

Anyways, this was just a taste of what happened to us this week. But to end on a spiritual note, we watched Together Forever for a family home evening activity. Never felt the spirit so strong testify that through the Gospel every family can find happiness in this life, and that happiness can last forever. Ive seen so many families screwed up because of drugs, alcohol & abuse. But last night I felt the calming assurity that the Gospel can heal any physical or emotional wound no matter how deep or how profound. 

Love yall so much!

this first foto is what sister m did for me this morning :) 

the second is me with the new sisters at centro civico. from left to right, sister m, sister f, sister j and me.

love yall!!

Homeward Bound

Alright yall, so this email is gonna be kind of a downer, just to warn everyone. This week was definitely the hardest of my mission BY FAR. hands down. This week is transfers (which ill talk more on at the end of this email) but to sum up what happened this week, yall remember Joelma & Jr right? Our baptisms 3 weeks ago? the woman & her incredible family & her 9 yr old who asked us the first sunday when he could be baptized? the beautiful story/experience we experienced?

Well, to share with you what happened, me & sister s went over to their house saturday night to teach them one last time & tell them that we were being transferred BUT leaving them with the assurity that the other sisters that would take our place will love & take care of them too & that we'll continue to write them etc etc.

Well, we get there & Joelma looks me in the eye directly & says in Portuguese severly, "VerHoef, if you leave, I will never go to church again." At first I didnt take her seriously, I mean this womans awesome, but shes super dramatic & blows things wayyyy out of proportion. However, as she continued to talk to us she told us that we were "abandoning her" that "our mission with her wasnt over" "its not fair, God wouldnt do this to her" and that she went back to drinking and smoking because she "either finishes the path with us or she stops here."

As if transfers wasnt hard enough she pulls that card on us. Its true, she hasnt been to church in 2 weeks because one week she was very sick & the other she had to work, but we still did family home evening with her, Irma Eliane, who lives 2 streets behind her visits her on a regular basis, Marcelo who baptized Jr helps Joelmas other children with house maintenance on a regular basis and we tried so hard to visit them at least every other day.

Anyway, she continued to talk severly to us & I could see she was different. Sister S & I just listened. Actually sister s listened, while I cried silently beside her.

At the end, after trying for an hour telling her we dont have a choice, this isnt our decision, its the Lords etc etc etc we just ended by singing the song we sung at her baptism from Primary, "I like to look for rainbows"

Through our broken voices and our tear stained faces we sang,

I like to look for rainbows whenever there is rain

& ponder on the beauty of an earth made clean again

I want my life to be as clean as earth right after rain

I want to be the best I can

& live with God again

at the end, Larissa (Joelmas daughter) was crying, we were all crying minus Joelma. We left and went back yesterday. (Jr promised us that hed go to church but after almost an hour of yelling, knocking on their doors & calling no one answered the door)

Yesterday the woman we talked to was not Joelma. That was not the woman we baptized. The woman we talked to was bitter, angry & full of darkness, with an open beer and a mountain of cigarettes by her side.

Every time she talked it wasnt her talking. As I looked into her eyes, Joelma wasnt there.

"VerHoef, talk. Is this fair? Its not your fault, but its someones and it isnt God. If you leave I wont go to church. I'll face God on the day of Judgement & answer for my actions but if you leave I wont go to church. You are abandoning me, like a child thats learning to walk you both entered my life to teach me to walk on the path & now when I still need you youre leaving me."

As if with every word she was chipping a little away at an open wound.
Well, you can imagine how Im feeling now. Ive never wept as much as I wept the past two days. I couldnt stop weeping. For the past two days I havent slept, I havent been able to, thinking of all the things I couldve done to save this woman and thinking how I can fix it.

But the most painful part, the most bitter part of all of this is Junior whos still young. Junior, who I see all of my nephews combined inside him. Without the support of his mother, what will become of him? What will keep him from getting into drugs & organized crime that runs rampant here in Brazil? What will keep him from sleeping around and getting 15 yr old girls pregnant which ALSO runs rampant here?

My greatest dream for him is to serve a mission, to be an example to his family, and now his mother is sitting in darkness with a can of pinga & a pack of cigarros.

Ive never felt like such a failure as a missionary before this time. It was as if  she was trying to make us feel horrible, well she succeeded.

Of course, theres nothing I can do. The Lord knows what Hes doing & I know that Im needed in another area. Theres nothing more I can do for them, but the pain, the sheer grandeur of the pain and hurt that I feel.;.. it cant be put into words at seeing this woman that was so full of light & hope & true happiness fall so hard and so far because of 2 sundays missed.

So my dear friends & family, my counsel I give & my request for you are these:

1.) NEVER NEVER MISS A SINGLE SUNDAY AT CHURCH. I dont give a crap whats going on. If youre sick, if you have to work, if youre tired or if its raining or snowing. NOTHING is a good enough excuse. If youre in a coma or youre dying, maybe, but even that could be argued. I NEVER want any of you to miss a single sunday at church. There is power and protection that is found there. Heavenly Father CANT bless you with forces & strength to enfront the evils and temptations of this world IF YOU DONT GO TO CHURCH. And if any of you ( you know who you are) are NOT going to church. GO THIS SUNDAY. Im completely serious. Ive seen the face of darkness & bitterness WITHOUT church. You cannot afford to put your spiritual safety at risk missing a SINGLE SACRAMENT MEETING. so GO. GO THIS SUNDAY. 

2.) I would ask all of you to include Joelma, and especially Junior in your personal & family prayers. They mean so much to me, and Im suffering watching them turn away from the light and enter into forbidden paths. 

moving on...
Okay, so transfers is today and Im being transfered to Antares (which is seriously 20 minutes away in a car from centro civico hahaha) Im literally going right around the corner from my 1st area! My new comp is Sister M (a brasilera from sao paulo) & shes FANTASTIC. Went on splits with her once & shes honestly just as crazy as me! Whichll be pretty fun :)

and on the bright side, we won a contest in our zone! Mom-->"Its a major award!" bahaha, but yah me & sister s won a contest a trophy (that wasnt ours that we had to get back, that was actually for motocross... dont ask me how our zone leaders acquired it...) and açaí which is the BEST stuff ever! its a fruit that i prefer in juice form with strawberry or other deliciousness inside. anyway, yayyyyyy!

em fim, I love you all. and there is NO real happiness that can be found in what the world offers nor is there any LASTING happiness that can be found in any other church other than the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. No other church can families be together forever and the promises of eternity. No other church than the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints

Sister VerHoef

Happy Woman's Day!

oooh louco cara! já março??? que que isso???  

haha anyway, this week was interesting on mannyyyy levels. it was dia das mulheres, or womans day, on saturday. yeah, apparently they have a "womans day" & you wanna know how we spent the majority of it? 

1. our "bar friends" (yes we have bar friends, our house is on the corner across the street from a bar, & the bartender guy ALWAYS shouts at us) yelled "feliz dia das mulheres" for us. awwww thanks bar guy! Oi! "vamos la para igreja no domingo??"

2. some random dude we invited to church in the street asked us if we were married & if we would be at church, he'd come. yeahh... pretty sure your salvation is not based on marrying americans... jussayin

3. a married man we contacted with his wife pulled over in his car to talk to us completely hammered. he looked at me & told me I "needed a lot of attention" that we "showed up on his doorstep, beautiful, wanting to talk about the word of God" and that I "needed to get a boyfriend quick." followed by "do you have a boyfriend? is he brazilian?"

-_-

Em fim.... thats how we spent our Womans Day in brazil with bastante stares & oggling. 

I was, as you can imagine, a bit put off by all of it & got so annoyed taht I could feel myself start to slip into extremist feminist thought- when I remembered something I read in Jesus the Christ by James E Talmage about Christ being the Great Ennobler of Women.

"In our Lords day the prevailing laxity of marital obligation had produced an appalling corruption in Israel; & WOMAN, who had by the law of God been made a companion & partner with man, had become his slave. The worlds greatest champion of woman & womanhood is Jesus the Christ." 

Apparently back in the epoca of Christ, men could divorce their wives if they found a woman more handsomer or if his wife cooked his meal poorly by oversalting it. These were grounds reasonable to "put away ones wife" 

Christs reply was far deeper than the mere silencing of malignant spies. It was designed to set forth for all the ages the law of His Kingdom in the supreme matter of family life. It swept forever from His Society, the conception of woman as a mere toy or slave of man & based true relations of the sexes on the eternal foundation of truth, right, honor & love. To ennoble the House and Family by raising Woman to her true position was essention to the future stability of His Kingdom as one of  purity & spiritual worth. By making marriage indissoluble He proclaimed the equal rights of women & man within the limits of family & in this, gave their charter of nobility to the mothers of the world. For her nobler position in the Christian era, compared with that granted her in antiquity, woman is indebted to Jesus the Christ."

And in regards to men, Christ is also the ennobler of Man. With the priesthood of God, man is required & expected to be worthy of his priesthood, to exercise this power in righteousness, temperance, humility & love. The priesthood of God raises Man to his nobler station, being a son of God & in blessing the lives of his children & his family. 

In seeing the way some men here, who have endless, limitless eternal potential, I KNOW what the Gosepl of Jesus Christ can bring to these men lost in the confusion & subtle lies of the world. the Gospel of Jesus Christ brings purpose, brings nobility, brings true love.

I love you all so much!

Remember "you are not a drop in the ocean, you are the entire ocean in a single drop"

xo

Sister VerHoef 

Show Me Your War Face

Okay, so this week was CRAZY!!!  I mean its brazil, so thats just normal right? anyway, Im just gonna share one of the insane things that happened to me & sis s this week. Actually last night....

Remember Joelma? the woman we baptized last sunday? Remember her daughter Larissa? and Jr who was also baptized? K, well we seriously LOVE them. Theyre hilarious! The salt of the earth. And they absolutely adore us.

Larissa, the daughter of Joelma, is wonderful. Shes crazy, and we love her, but shes a bit irreverant & shes got a bit of a wild streak. Well last night sis s & I went over to their place to see how they were doing to find Larissa & Joelma with a "cat in the cream" or "cat ate the canary" look. 

We sit down & Larissa gives me & Sis S something wrapped in wrapping paper. Then Larissa says something like:

"We know you cant use these now but after your missions we expect you to use these!"

Okay.... a lil scared now.... so we open up these presents that these recent converts/investigators bought us.... aaaaaaaaaaaannddd....

-_-

Lets just say they were under the definition of "unmentionables"

Thats right. No Im not kidding. Before my mission I had absolutely no shame when it came to "unmentionables" but it would appear that as a missionary I get easily embarrassed... 

BRIGHT RED! me & poor Sis S! Had absolutely no words! It was a mixture of hilarity & humiliation. 

We obviously didnt take a picture inspite of the fact that it was pretty funny, in the fear that after the mission, Im pretty sure that if Pres. G were to find those pics on facebook... I would die.

But yeah, first words out of my mouth were:

"How in the heck am I supposed to explain these to my next companions????"

Any ideas guys? Oh the shame!!! Is nothing sacred??? 

Anyway, but lets go to something more spiritual now, shall we? 

id like to share with you a story that Marcello, the 18 yr old who is seriously amazing who baptized Jr. 

Marcelo is preparing to go on a mission & he literally has only 2 ties, one set of pants, one set of dress shoes, one white shirt. The other week a homeless man came clapping at his front gate, as is normal here in Brazil, asking for a pair of shoes & a shirt. Marcelo tells him he literally has nothing to give him, but then gives this man the flip flops off his own feet. As Marcelo hands his only pair of flip flops to this man, the man raises his hands up to the sky and with a loud voice says, "God in Heaven, thank you for Marcelo and bless him."

The man then thanks Marcelo again and walks away, shoes now placed on his swollen & cut feet. 

As Marcelo recounted this story he became emotional, tears streaming down his face & my heart literally swelled within me. 

Truly, family & friends, there is always always something more we can do. We can give more, we can do more, we can serve more.

Every day I see the want and needs of people, like Marcelo, who literally has nothing to give, and yet he gives the shoes off his own feet to a man who has nothing.

Being charitable and having charity is not giving of our abundance, but giving of our wants. It is giving of the things we love most, giving of the things we dont have a lot of, to those who have less than we do.

Love you all! Miss yall!

xoxo

for your viewing pleasure, this is how hardcore us sisters are. show me your war face!! haha