More Pictures...

For the Whole Gang...

I love that your ward choir is getting ready for Christmas, so is our branch choir. They sing ´´Christmas Carols´´ in the middle of the city here December 8th. I guess it is a real crowd pleaser. They really do call it ´´Christmas Carols´´ which is funny to hear them speak in porguese from the pulpit on Sunday:

``Então Irmãos, vamos preparar pela actividade das Christmas Carols, vai ser divertido e a uma boa oportunidade para compartilhar O Evangelho....`` 

   So great. I was telling Bil in my response to his email that this Branch is uniquein a lot of ways. For one they have a lot of people who speak english perfectly and they love to celebrate American holidays. It is a riot. The halloween party we threw was a big hit and then for Thanksgiving they threw a dinner. The missioanries ate for free! There was turkey and potatoes and ´´stuffing´´ and chocolate mouse for dessert. I don´t know who remembers how much I LOVE Thanksgiving, but it was a huge blessing to have this cozy branch dinner.

   After everyone ate their dinner, the branch president got up to talk a bit about the importance of the dinner. He said that this was a tradition in the branch for years. He explained that in the United States Thanksgiving is comparable to Christmas in it´s importance and that they have always had this dinner for the missionaries sake. Because they are far from home and the branch wants to take care of them.... It was so tender. They gave the four of us (the elders and us) keychains to always remember the Island. It was so great. So Thanksgiving was really special.

    Also the city of Ponta Delgada is decked out in full blown Christmas cheer!!!! There are christmas lights lining every cobblestone street and ally. The mian part of the city is in the Elder´s area which is probably a good thing because Imra morrison and I would get easily distracted by the spectacular displays. My favorite part is how no one here holds back with saying ´´Feliz Natal´´. or ´´Merry Christmas´´. ´´Happy holidays´´ or ´´boas festas´´ is rarely seen in the store windows. It ALL about Christmas. It´s different than back home. Kinda cool. Kinda different.

   The weather is absolutely nuts now. flash floods one minute, beautiful clear skies the next. The ocean is out of this world. I can easily say it is the most beautiful sight I´ve ever seen. We walk to our appointments and gaze out across this vast ocean right by our side...its so humbling.

   Sorry it´s short this week. I love you all.

Irma McCrery

Ok i´m trying to attach photos

 

1st- Me loving my food at Thanksgiving...Eldr Mateer thinks he loves Thanksgiving more than me...not possible.

 2nd- Turkey!!

 

Hello and Greetings

Hello and greetings,

 

It has been a few weeks since I have written anything substantial... It is not really because nothing happens but because by Monday so much happens that I forget when I sit down to write. So this week, I took a couple notes to remind myself of what happened.

 

I´m learning a lot. Even when I don´t think I am. Even when I feel like I´m in a rut or things aren´t going as well as I had hoped. The Lord is merciful. I am weak and he knows it, but instead of making me feel bad for it, he carries me. In the beginning of the Book of Mormon, Nephi tells us that as we read we will be shown all of the many tender mercies of the Lord. My mission seems to be a long string of tender mercies. It is humbling.

 

Carlos was baptized this weekend!!!!!! Carlos´s wife and daughter have been members of the Church for a little over a year. Carlos is a fisherman, he works six months on ocean and then is home for six months. He has been taught by many missionaries, many times. He has problems with drinking. But to make a very long story short, the Lord had prepared a way. Carlos was finally ready to make the step, to commit. To change. After we set the date we went back over and talked about addictions, and the importance of obeying God´s commandments, and the blessings we receive by avoiding things that harm our bodies (alcohol). I was able to talk about my experience with my Dad and how harmful alcohol is for the whole well being of the family.

SIDE NOTE:There is a battle raging on this Island. The battle is against Tabaco and alcohol. It is consuming these people´s lives, it is keeping them in poverty, it is dragging them down to despair. They are not happy, they are stuck in chains and I want to bust em all out! I wanna climb into their prison walls of addictions dig a tunnel and show them how to escape. With the Gospel, it´s possible. But don´t take my word for it....

1. 2 Ne. 9: 10
     10 O how great the ^agoodness of our God, who prepareth a way for our ^bescape from the grasp of this awful monster; yea, that monster, ^cdeath and ^dhell, which I call the death of the body, and also the death of the spirit.

So, Carlos has made the step. He was baptized and he will continue forward with his great faith. He can´t read, but he now has the Book of Mormon on CD and he loves to say family prayers. It is incredible to see this family all on their way back to Heavenly Father...Tender Mercy

 

Our branch has changed presidencies. The Branch president is new. So to show us how excited he is about the missionary work here in the branch, he came to a lesson with us this week. It was awesome. We taught one of our investigators named Bruno. Bruno can´t leave his house. He is on house arrest. We don´t know why. But he is awesome. I can´t describe Bruno in a short little paragraph and do him justice. But let me just say, he is repentant. He gets it. He is learning about sincere prayer. He is loving learning about the restored Gospel, and I know that Heavenly Father has a plan for him too. (disclaimer: we don´t go in any house without another female adult present at all times... he lives with his mom and dad....Totally safe.) Teaching him has been a huge blessing to see someone so ready to change, so willing to follow Jesus Christ...Tender Mercy.

 

Sometimes I step back and look at my situation. I look at my giant purpose here on this mission, I look at what the Lord expects of me and I feel like a little fish in a big pond, a little lost, a little in over my head. Just a little fish in a big pond. But then there are moments like last night when we had an incredible lesson with this new couple we are teaching (ruben and nelia), when the right words come to my mind, the spirit testifies and all of a sudden they are learning about Heavenly Father and can´t wait to know for themselves if these things are true.... It all becomes clear and pure and not so scary. I still feel like a little fish but the pond isn´t so big and I´m not so over my head....Tender Mercy.

 

 

Today imra morrison told me a cool description of our faith. She likened it to a nightlight, a flashlight, and a lighthouse. She was evaluating our ``light``(3 Nephi 12:16) and how it is based on our faith. Sometimes the light of our faith is just enough to keep away the bad stuff (nightlight), and at times it becomes strong enough to light your own way (flashlight), and when its strongest we become a lighthouse, we can show others the way. I thought that was great. Really great.

 

Ok well time is up, I´ve written too much. I love you all and hope all is well. Until next week...

 

Sister Liz

When it's hot in the poor places tonight...

Dear family and friends,

Sorry about last week, I just didn´t have much to say. This week I do. We had an interesting week. I´m emailing today because yesterday was a holiday and everything was closed. We do our email in a little copy shop and right now the air is filled with smoke, something is burning in the back room, it smells like burnt computers...mmmhhh.

Have I told you about the Cockroaches here? They are called baratas. They are everywhere at night. We walk down the cobblestone sidewalks (shoulders width wide) and every few steps you see a big fat barata scurrying along. Also I didn´t know that cockroaches have wings, did you? Well they do, but they are the little kind of wings that don´t get them up very high (what a relief). Well luckily they are not in our apartment as far as a I know. But they rules the streets at night.....creepy.

This Saturday we had a busy day. Sergio was baptized in the morning. We had been working with Sergio to be baptized two weeks ago, but he has been having problems with his son. Ok let me give you a few sentence bio of sergio. He is 30 year old single guy who has a 2 year old son. He is no longer with the mother of the child. He is unemployed right now and is fighting for the well being of his son, he has been walking 45 minutes one way to go pick up his son every other day for the past few weeks. He is always late for his appointments because of everything with his son. Finally he made it to his own baptism on Saturday. He has a testimony of the Gospel and has been ready to get baptized.

When the baptism started the elders had already filled up the baptismal font, and the service needed to be quick because he had to walk to pick up his son right after. As they walked into the baptismal font, elder blair went in the water first. One step in and he looks up with shock... the water was cold. The heater didn´t heat up the water like it was supposed to. The water must have felt ice cold, strait from the hose on a brisk fall morning. But the show needed to go on, so sergio went into the water, was baptized and they both quickly exited the font. The rest of us waited for them to get into dry cloths and when they came back we sang hymns. Sergio sat back down next to me and I apologized for the cold water. I looked at his hands as he held the hymn book, they were white. I immediately looked up at the branch president, he had already noticed the alarming sign himself and was getting down from the stand, he took sergio to the kitchen faucet and they ran his hands under the warm water. I walked into the kitchen and asked if everything was alright, the branch president looked at me and said, our brother sergio is gonna need some help. I knew exactly what he meant. Sergio probably weighs 115 pounds. He is skinny. Friday night before his baptism he informed us that he didn´t have food in his house, so we grabbed him a bag of groceries and realized that he was in a harder situation than we thought. After the white hands on Saturday we knew that he actually was not getting enough to eat. His body has no meat on it. skin and bones.

For the first time in my little sheltered life, I saw someone who was hungry. Just plain not getting enough to eat. He lives in a house that is shared with a bunch of other people, and he has a 2 year old son that he is trying to save from a rough life at his mother´s house, and he doesn´t have food enough to live. It hit hard. So for the past few days we have been gathering up food, and our branch president is on the case, luckily Sergio is in good hands. He has changed his life, and is living the commandments, he has made promises with Heavenly Father and in return I know that Heavenly Father will bless him. It is a beautiful thing. He´s gonna be just fine. His little son Rorigo came to church and is the cutest little kid. So happy, just stickin with his dad.

Later that night we had our Halloween party. Not as spiritually uplifting our profound, but it was fun. Sergio came and made friends with the members so that was great. The elders from the other side of Ponta Delgada  and Irma Morrison and I dressed up from the wizard of OZ. I was the cowardly lion. I. Morrison was Dorthy and the elders were the tin man, and scarecrow. It was hilarious. We also had Hocus Pocus playing in the background, what a treat. The Branch loved it. Halloween night we had to go in early from knocking doors because no one was taking us seriously. hahahahahha. They thought we were trick or treaters. So it turns out they really do celebrate Halloween here. Weird.

The Gospel is true. Heavenly Father is literally our eternal father. He knows us. He knows Sergio. The Savior has felt his pain and knows how to comfort him. As we live worthy, we get to be instruments in His hands to help Sergio and everyone else along their way to eternal progression. neat.

Love you all.

Sister Liz


Stepper, here! I thought I'd include a picture of a Barata for your enjoyment. So...enjoy!