may 12, 2014 feliz dia das mães!!‏

"how great shall be your joy..."

this beautiful girl is paloma and she is a member of 

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

good

●ringback tones hahahha. #imissmusic

●writing down where every single sister in the mission is serving to try and guess transfers 

●on sister william’s and my  9 month anniversary both of our comps were sick… so we went on a little division haha. 

sister william's and i getting it done... despite the sick comps

don't freak out... it's just what we sisters do at the 9 month on the mission mark, hahahaha

●not getting transferred… sister silva and I still have work to do here in santiago, brasil

sister silva & i at the end of a long day...

bad

●4:30 am wake up call for zone conference saying the van is picking us up a little earlier than expected #shootme

a realllllllly long day on tues at the tri ward zone conference

●a failure of a district pday… basically it just consisted of us trying to make 8 pizzas (to feed 4 elders and 4 sisters) with one oven and so when pday ended is we finally finished the pizzas. #fail

i think like 10% of our transfers guesses were right. probably less..

awk

●technical difficulties and ending up riding to lunch with president and sister parrella and the assistants… 

●on our way home from zone conference there was an accident on the highway so we had to stop for a while so we all got out on the side of the road. there was a long line of cars and there was some guys way far away with white shirts and maybe ties that got out of their car so naturally we assumed it was other missionaries and started yelling at them... yeah it wasn’t.

took a moment to take some snaps of us before sister williams is transferred

awesome

●PALOMA GOT BAPTIZED! 

●TALKING TO THE FAM ON MOTHERS DAY!!!!!

so the big news of this week is the baptism of paloma!! this week was CRAZY. my goodness our little nemesis Satan did not make this easy on me. Heavenly Father saw that i really wanted this more than anything else. so long story short it was a battle just to make sure paloma could get baptized saturday. but when everything happened the way it needed to i was literally on top of the world. it all started wednesday, my 9 month anniversary of the mish. the best present i could ever receive. 

paloma decided to be baptized

but it didn’t get any easier...

saturday came. i was so excited.. we told her to come to the church at 5 and we would get her all ready… hair and make-up. we made a cake for her. everything was all set. we got to the church and waited. nothing. the font was all ready. nothing. so finally at about 5:15 or so i called her sister. there was a bunch of confusion on the phone but then she gave it to her husband, he told me paloma would not be getting baptized today. he said she didn’t want to and she wanted to get baptized in his church. i kept asking if i could talk to her. finally he gave her the phone. i asked her what was up? she said she wasn’t getting baptized. my heart broke and i asked what happened. she said he wouldn’t let her leave the house to go to the church. so, i just asked her if she wanted to get baptized.... the phone hung up. i’m not going to lie. i started bawling like maggie dru during one of her tantrums. at the church many members totally saw or heard me. my companion tried to tell me everything was going to be okay but she wasn’t on the phone, she didn’t hear how her brother-in-law  talked to me. i was convinced this man was ruining paloma’s baptism. i finally calmed down. we said a prayer. then we went to work. the elders were getting to the church and still probably way confused what was going on but came with us. we went to paloma’s house. on the way there things were almost completely silent... other than us awkwardly asking each other what we were planning on saying to him. we all had nothing in our heads… just the Spirit. we got there and i had a second before we went in to talk to her alone and i quickly asked her if she wanted to get baptized in her brother-in-law’s church. she said no. i asked her if she wanted to get baptized today in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. she said yes. we awkwardly entered. he (the man.. sister’s hasband) tried to act like everything was normal and made small talk about the weather (gag me). half of me wanted to start screaming half of me wanted to cry.  finally, one of the elders asked him if he would be going to paloma’s baptism today. he said no. so people, at this point it is not really necessary to give you a play by play on the conversation, but he told us his pastor doesn’t let him go to other baptisms, he only believes in one baptism… during all this i saw paloma behind him getting ready in a dress and i almost started crying again because i knew what she truly wanted. at the end, one of the elders basically straight up called him to repentance, and we went to the baptism :) 

so you can see... my eyes are a bit teary after what we have been through

it was so great. there were other youth there, the talks were great. i walked with her to the door of the baptismal font and she said “i think sister is happier than i am.” it’s could be true,  let’s be real. i was so happy. then after we had treats and she got to know some of the youth of our ward better, which also made me so happy. then yesterday at church she received the gift of the holy ghost. life is so perfect!

and then just a few hours after that…. i met the families on skype of my companion and elders that i work with and then I TALKED WITH MY FAMILY! life is so good. things are changing but luckily they are changing for the better. i can’t be sad people are going on missions. dad is the new WML!! aka LMA here. what upppp???  what i wouldn’t give to have dr dave for my ward mission leader. isaac is graduating so that’s just straight up weird. and everyone else is just cute as ever. 

anyways.  Our Heavenly Father has sent lots of trials my way this week but it made the success of this week that much sweeter. i’m lucky lucky blessed blessed to be here, to be serving, and to have met paloma. on to the next challenge...

have a good week! i love and miss you all!

beijos, sister faldmo

here is our zone at the tri zone conference on tuesday

and here's a bunch of random pics from all the people i saw on tuesday