Hello Everyone!
I feel like it has been forever since I have talked to you
all! I have made it to my first area Guará 2. It is a city proximal to the city
of Brasília and about 20 or 30 minutes from the mission home. I am going to
recap my life in order hopefully quick ish. So my last week at the CTM was
great. We had a lot of non-study time which was excellent and we got to go and
proselyte on a major street in São Paulo. I think the neighborhood is called
Barriga. We went as a district with a Brazillian district on the omnibus. The
first person that I talked to came up to me and she knew English really well so
it was a pretty awesome. It felt like people came up to me more than I
approached them which really helped build my confidence leaving the ctm. One lady
on the omnibus on our way back to the CTM grabbed my arm and stopped me to sit
by her. She didnt know anything about our religion so I talked to her about it
and gave her a Book of Mormon. She was super happy to receive it and she wound
up giving me some sort of nutrigrain sort of bar before I left. That was a
little weird, but still good. On our trip our instructors took us to McDonalds
and got us all icecream which was super delicious.
We left the CTM early on Tuesday morning. The flight to
Brasília was maybe an hour and a half. super fast. I think 10 or 12 of us
travelled there together. There were a lot of us arriving that day. Maybe half
of us were North Americans and the rest were Brazillians. President and Sister
Gaertner were at the airport with the APs to meet us. They are both super nice
and fortunately both bilingual. We ate lunch at the mission home which is huge
and beautiful, got interviewed and were assigned our areas during the
interviews. I was the last sister to be interviewed so I dont know if President
Gaertner would have put me someone different had he realized I am retarded in
the most literal sense with Portuguese. But, all is well! My first area is
Guará 2 as I mentioned before. It is the same area Sister Sargeant (she is a sister
from Tamies home ward) served in for her first area I think. The members here
liked her alot. Anyway my companion is Sister Victorio... a Bolivian. This is
significant in many ways. First, I will say that she is awesome. Legitimately a
sincerely happy and energetic person. I really like that. The only difficulties
we have is that her native language is Spanish. Mine is English. We are both
still learning Portuguese. And she doesnt speak any English. I mean 0 percent.
CRAZY. Somehow we can still communicate. Her Portuguese is pretty good though
but she has a strong accent. She has been in the field for 5 months and I am
her first Junior companion and also the first person she gets to train! Asside
from a slight language barrier... we are both brand new to Guará. We didnt know
any people here and only had a list of the investigators the last sisters had
and a list of inactive members. We have walked around a ton figuring out where
places are and meeting ward members and trying to find our investigators. We have
also got to knock doors... which means clap at the gates to these peoples
houses. I dont know how they can possibly hear us! It is cleaner here than São
Paulo and greener too. It has rained the last 3 days straight which means I
have spent most of my afternoons quite wet from the rain!
Things are going well. My Portuguese is terrible still, but
I am working really hard even though a lot of people kind of laugh at me when I
try to say things that I havent said before. The ward mission leader and another
girl in the ward know English so luckily they can help me understand some
things better if I have questions! This is all for now, next week I will
send pictures for you all!
Love you all,
Sister Hoopes
PS Send mail to the mission home for me now!
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