aka sister faldmo: first christmas thousands of miles from home.... december 30, 2013

GOOD
●the facetime with my family was awesome and somehow we managed to go without tears until the end.

my view before good-bye

●saying goodbye was hard, but as soon as i left the room where i was skyping my family, the cutest little girl ever named ruth, was waiting to talk to me and gave me a big hug. i couldn’t help but be so grateful i’m here this christmas.

I couldn't have tears for long because of these amazing people waiting for me with open arms

BAD

●it’s. flipping. HOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i don’t know how I’m going to do this. january is hottest month

UMBRELLAS ARE NOT JUST FOR RAIN...

●minutes before leaving the house to go visit our families on christmas day… i got the bloody nose of a lifetime so i looked realllll good for facetime with my fam. (mother’s qualifier… she’s never looked more beautiful)

AWK
●one night i was the last one in bed… i turned off the light and walked to my bed in the dark like i’ve done many times before... except this time i guess i was confused and completely missed my bed and bifffed it on the floor. oops.

●remembering that last year my goal for 2013 was to pray every morning after i woke up... well it might have taken a mission to help but I think i accomplished that one!!

AWESOME

●rose (who we have been teaching for quite some time) was baptized!!

●giving christmas eve dinner to some elders... (details below)

●investigators with LOTS of questions that make us study our stuff lots.

this family loves us in camobi & gave us chocolates... their little girl loves me... of course:)

awwww christmas. it was awesome. we spent christmas eve all together, us four sisters of camobi, with adriana and her family. we got a call before dinner started from one of the members of our ward saying he had dinner for us... he didn’t know that we could stay out a little later and eat with a member so they had prepared it and were going to deliver it to our apartment… but, we were already eating dinner with adriana, so he asked if we knew of any missionaries that were without. we didn’t, but we said we would call. we called our zone leader and he said there were some elders in centro that were without on christmas eve. we called him back, but he had already given it away to someone on the street. we felt so bad that these missionaries were spending christmas eve alone in their apartment and probably eating who knows what.... so we asked adriana if we could share what she was serving with them? we told her if there wasn’t enough they could have ours. of course… adriana being adriana she was completely down with our idea. we prepared a helping of everything for the missionaries, and also gave up a panettone (a special dessert of bread with chocolate chips! a special christmas thing here) and guarana (their special pop drink of brazil) and we loaded up the car and were on our way. we sang christmas carols in the car in our 3 languages (it was interesting) but the Spirit was soooo strong.

christmas eve recipients from the sisters & adriana in camobi

i am soooo grateful we had an opportunity to help someone else on christmas eve... especially thinking about what it would be like for me to spend christmas eve alone in our apartment far away from our family. but really, i feel bad because really i didn’t sacrifice anything but it still made christmas extra special.

so this is my zone... can you find me?

we also had rose’s baptism this week. i LOVE rose. she is amazing. she is a single mother of 4 teenagers and you can just see she is trying sooo hard to do everything for them and be a good mom.

rose in center in white on baptism day

two incredible women i have rose & daughters

had the privilege of teaching...

rose & adriana

i really can’t put into words how much respect i have for rose. she was ready for this change in her life, but it wasn’t easy! family members weren’t happy with her decision but she stood strong and true to what she knew was right and now you can tell she is just so happy and knows that things are different now. through baptism she was forgiven of all of her sins and she has made a promise or a covenant with God to follow him and keep His commandments. she also has the gift of the Holy Ghost... so she will always have his guidance in her life when she lives worthy. she knows this will help her and her family. it’s a different happiness from the world... a happiness that can only be found through the true principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

adriana read the christmas story to us out of the bible on christmas eve and she talked about how we need to think about if joseph and mary were knocking on our door if we would let them? also, how we can know when Christ is knocking. it was really awesome to for her to now be teaching us!

this week starts 2014… how crazy is that? i’m excited about the fact that this year-- in 2014, i will completely be in the service of Jesus Christ. every single day this year i will be a full time missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and thus a representative of Jesus Christ. it will be a year different than any other for the rest of my life and i hope i can be worthy of this title and this calling and make a difference in my life but also for others.

happy new year!! i hope christmas was great and everyone spent time with lots of family and friends. i hope 2014 will be extra special for all of us :) during your time off this holiday season take some time to check out mormon.org and learn more about why the restored gospel of Jesus Christ is so special to millions of people all over the world.

xoxo sister faldmo