Oi familia!

Oi familia! 

Today for pday we had a little party with our district and played volleyball outside at the church and had breakfast!  It was so fun but I think I will definitely be sore tomorrow...  Who knew that jeans and sports could make a person so happy!?  At least now I know that I have one thing to look forward to in 9 months!  I made chocolate pancakes for the district and all of the brazilians were loving them haha, they may have good fruit but America pretty much has got them beat with everything else. ;)

Funny story... last night we were getting ready for bed and getting our clothes ready to leave in the morning to play volleyball after our studies.  Everyone was trying on jeans because it´s been ages since anyone used them (other than my companion who is new haha) and we wanted to be sure they fit. My companion went to grab a bag of clothes that she had a she started screaming and jumping up and down screaming ´´rat!´´  Oh my gosh I like totally freaked out... it is impossible for a rat to get into our house so I didn´t believe here but still...  Anyway everyone went to stand on chairs or on the staircase and she grabbed the umbrella to carefully (and with enough distance) move the sack of clothes anddddd it totally was a rat!!!  You can imagine how our little condo was jumping with four missionaries freaking out!  There also happened to be a turantula living in front of the house so we called the neighbor to take care of that little guy, he was showering so while we waited for him we stopped the man delivering pizza at the neighbors to find the rat and take him out.  All of the neighbors were peaking out of the windows to figure out what was going on.  The good news is the guy who was delivering pizza reminded me a ton of Robbie (who I need to email back!) and he was totally interested and gave us his address so we will pass this week!  woo hoo!

This week was fun!  My companion is getting the hang of things and we found a bunch of really cool people this week to start teaching!  We are really working to find families so if you could pray for this that would be awesome!  This last week I met the coolest girl!!  She is has 13 years and reminds me a lot of me (but that´s not why she is cool haha).  Her name is Nicole and she is like way mature and was so excited to talk to us about our message. She had the best questions that were like perfect for the lesson and while we were talking I could totally see her serving a mission!  So pray for her too please :)

This is my week!  I love you all tons!!!  

Sister Westover

"What my mom taught me"

It was SO GOOD to see the fam!!! Sheesh, que saudades!  If I could skype every couple of weeks I think I would stay on my mission forever!  It was so great to talk to you guys (Sky I missed you tons!!) and to see everyone and at the same time it reminded me why I am here, what I am doing, and that I wouldn´t rather be anywhere else in the world right now!  It was a good little  boost that I was needing :)

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY MOM!!  I was thinking a lot about you this week and everything that you taught me over the years to allow me to be the person, and missionary that I am now!  Here are some of the things that help me each and every day:

1. Be happy.  Life is better when you are smiling, when you are laughing, when  you are genuinely happy!  Yes, we all face trials and difficulties in life, but life is to be enjoyed!  I have so many moments when I could choose to be sad and tired and give up a little, but I remember that I am the daughter of Kimberli Westover, and I am extremely blessed, I have absolutely no reason in the world not to be happy, and this lets me keep going strong!

2. Count your blessings.  In everything we do there will be opposition so life is clearly better when you choose to find the good.  Many times we create the challenges in our lives because of weakness, or mistakes, but even then, we can learn and move forward and turn it into a good thing! 

3. Don´t worry about what you can´t change, and what you can change... change!  I have to admit that I am no less stressed out here on the mission... but on the upside, I am working hard to change what I can!  Our purpose here is to learn and grow and so sometimes we have to learn to let go and other times we have to learn to push through.  Learn to recognize the difference.

4. Serve.  I think that I may be one of the few missionaries who has been blessed with the greatest companions ever!  I don´t think that it is because my companions have all been exceptionally more miraculous than the other missionaries (although they have all been amazing) but rather because we learn to love when we serve!  We are all a part of God´s family, we are his children and so when we do good to his other children (our brothers and sisters) we naturally feel God´s love for them!  This also help us forget ourselves and be changed! Service is magic!

5. Sing... and dance when no one is looking (in the case you are on a mission).  Music sets the tone for everything!  There are only two things that we remember in this life naturally: music and smell.  This must be why I wake up some mornings hearing moms voice singing me to get up.  I have learned that to invite the spirit, to lift hearts, to express or insite happiness music is key much of the time!  If you are feeling a little down try singing at the top of your lungs... I don´t think it´s possible to stay that way for long!

6.  Put God first.  I have learned a ton of things from my mom over the years.  A TON... like I would have a list in the thousands if I had the time but of everything that I have learned the most important is that no matter what we go through in life, who is in our life, what is happening, the key is to always put God first.  He gave us life, He gave us these moments of happiness, of opportunity, of growth, of love and he is always rooting us on.  He is a loving, perfect father in heaven who gives us all that we are needing if we only seek him.  If we put God first in all we do we will be smarter, we will be prettier, we will be more blessed (in ALL things, spiritually and temporally), we will be happier, we will reach our true limitless potential.

I love you Mom! Thanks for all that you do!

Sister Westover

                                                :) woo hoo! and new hair! Thanks mom!

        Aurenir... LOVE HER!  She made me the dress that I used today for the conference with Elder Andersen!

                                             Larissa... at stake conference with Elder Andersen!

                                Sister Palacios and I today at the conference!  My hispanic daughter!

                                            I look so white next to Sister Ferreira... but love her!!

                     

Sister Hart!  My love <3 We decided we will live together after the mission woo hoo!

Woo Hoo!

Woo hoo! Finally here!!!  We get to skype!!!  I will call you during the week to figure out what day and time works best, I am soo excited!!  And can you believe already at 9 months here in two weeks!!  So weird. 

News:

Unfortunately my dear companion Sister Ferreira left me :(.  Fortunately I am still here in Pajuçara!  and not really sure if it is unfortunately or fortunately but I am training! a sister from Ecuador!  What? haha It makes me laugh a little thinking we have an american and ecuadoriana walking the streets in Brazil, but it´s fun.  A learning experience for everyone, that´s for sure.

Other news:

I have lice.... The good news in this is that I get to go to the salon to remove the lice and they will do my hair :) Pretty much everyone here has lice in Pajuçara (at least all of the little kids) and all of the sisters who already served here had it at one point too) also... mom if you could put money in my acount so that I can pay that would be great :) ha if you can... THANK YOU!!!

This week was a little rough because Sister Mometto finished her mission and went home (I already miss her like crazy!) and Sister Ferreira left me in Pajuçara, and I started training someone who speaks spanish, and I hadn´t been sleeping well the last week, and my head started spinning because I was going crazy.  Fortunately, I have the best companions in the whole world and Sister Morais visited me yesterday to help with our Sunday and we got to sleep in our hammocks last night and talk in the other room.  It was a blessing that she came to help because Sunday is always the most hectic day ever! My poor companion I think had no idea what was going on and I sent her with a member the take some investigators to church while I waited with Sister Morais for our investigators who would be baptized to get back home after their trip!  We waited 3 hours and finally (in literally the last possible minutes) Henrique got home and we all went to the stake center for the baptisms!  They are our first young men that we have baptized here and I am so excited!  Seriously Pajuçara is growing so much and I love working so hard and watching our little group grow!  On the other topic I have seriously been blessed with the best companions ever so I have no doubt Sister Palacios (my new companion) won´t be an exception.  But I am already planning my future visits to Brazil to visit Sister Mometto (Sao Paulo) Sister Ferreira (campinas) and Sister Morais (Maceio).  

My email this week is kind of a mess of thoughts, as normal, and is reflecting my state of mind.  But I sent a bunch of pictures so hopefully that makes up for it!  

I am so excited to skype you guys!  I am so grateful for this work, for the opportunity I have to be a missionary, for my companions, for my family, for my Savior.  I pray that everyone and everything is well at home!  

Sister Westover

Wesley and Henrique.. they are so awesome!  I love them!

                                                             When we got to eat mac! 

                 
                                     My district when I was with SIster Ferreira! I love these people!

 
                                             Socorro's baptism! (I think almost 2 months ago)

                                                      Pajucara baptismo da Aurenir :)

                                                  Baptisms of Mauri and José Mesenga            

                                   SIster Lima (absolutely LOVE her!) One of the sisters that lives with me.

                                             Our last day together with Sister Ferreira

Short Update

One of my favorite converts (Mauri) he makes tea to give us every time we visit!  and he works with fruits so he leaves like pounds and pounds of fruits at the front of our condo!  He is sooo great and has the biggest heart ever.

We have transfers today and I don´t know if we will stay together but my lovely companion Sister Ferreira!  She is so great!  This was my birthday on our way to district meeting

April 21, 2014: What is a Missionary?

Hey everyone!  I never know how to address these emails anymore because it´s been a lot of weeks and I think I´ve used just about every greeting I can. So hey there!

I realized that probably every week I say I´m tired because we´ve been running around like crazy- but there are a lot of people who have absolutely no idea what this ´´running around like crazy´´ really means!  So I wanted to explain this week.  My purpose as a missionary is to invite others to come unto Christ by helping them recieve the restored gospel throught faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement, repentance, baptism, recieving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end. So what exactly am I doing to invite the dear people of Ceará, Brasil to come unto Christ by taking these essential steps in their lives? What exactly is a missionary? 

First, I am a seeker.  Every week I am seeking to find at least 20 new people who are willing to hear a message of Christ and let it change them for the better!  I am seeking the humble: those who recognize our need for God, the teachable: those who desire to grow clower to Him, the needy: those who recognize they cannot pass their trials and difficulties without our Savior, the elect: those who love God with all their heart and recognize his constant voice in their lives. 

Next I am a teacher.  I try to teach in every opportunity given during my day about what our Savior did for us when he was here on the earth!  Second, that he died for us and paid for our sins.  That he not only felt the immense wait of guilt and remorse for our sins but also all of our difficulties and burdens that we experience in life in order to help us overcome all of these things to find happiness in this life and eventually to return to live with our Heavenly Father and families for eternity. Finally and most importantly that Christ was ressurected, that he lives and that his gospel was restored to us through the prophet Joseph Smith after years of darkness and confusion.  Through His gospel and church here on the earth we can obtain all of the blessings that he has planned for us to have.

I am an inviter.  I allow other to feel the truthfulness of this message by inviting them to apply it in their lives and see the blessings for themselves!  I invite people to pray to their Heavenly Father and seek out an answer about whether or not this message is real!  I invite them to read the account of the people here in the America´s that was written during the same time as the Bible and includes the record of Christ´s visit after his ressurection to the people here (called the Book of Mormon).  I invite them to come to church and to witness the power of God here on earth, the priesthood, through the ordinance of blessing the sacrament.  I invite them to apply the suffering of Christ in their lives, to overcome all that sets them back and start a new life following our Savior through the waters of baptism and recieving the gift of the Holy Ghost.  I invite them to continue growing closer to God and helping those around them recognize his hand in our lives as well.

I am a representative of Jesus Christ.  I give everything I have to love the people, to help them, to serve them, to invite them, to allow them to feel the love of God in their lives.  I walk all day long in the sun, in the heat, in the rain, on unpaved roads, through spiders and cockroaches and lizards and backyards- that I don´t want to know what else lives there- and bring the restored gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to bless them.  And even when I get to their homes, sweating, and hungry, and exhausted, and a little depressed, and sometimes sad, and they tell me ´´no, [they] don´t want to pray, or read, or go to church, or be baptized, or do anything to feel better´´ I just keeping walking, and seeking, and teaching and inviting.

This is my life as a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and I love it more than anything in the whole world.  I have never felt so blessed, so grateful, so happy, so loved, so protected, so valued in my entire life!  

Matthew 11:28 ´´come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavyladen and I will give you rest´´

Sister Westover

Missionary work is serious business... ;)

February 10, 2014: Pajucara

Oi gente! 

One week down in Pajuçara! Sister Morais is way awesome and I already love working with her!  Our area is insane, I seriously just walk around all day saying ´´gosh our area is so cool!´´  because it is.  There is one other set of Sisters working in Pajuçara, who live with us, but our area is big enough for ten sets of missionaries!  It´s seriously HUGE!  Also, the church just barely started here so we only have a little group of members (not even a branch yet) and we meet in a school! HOW SWEET! I dreamed of opening an area and just getting to talk to everyone in the street and tell them how awesome the gospel is and then just watch it grow from ten people to a stake one day... well now is my chance! Haha seriously no one here is familiar with the church so it´s way cool because we are literally laying the ground work and finding all of these people who have just been waiting and preparing to recieve the gospel.  Pajuçara is only like 20 minutes from my last area so I´m still in the same zone and get to see the same missionaries and all so it´s great :). Also everyone here calls Pajuçara, Pajubala because it´s dangerous and there are lots of assaults with guns (I know it´s just getting even cooler).  Sister Morais and I heard gun shots the other day and later when we walked by everyone was out in the street!  It´s crazy!  We also don´t have water a lot of the time because of some problem in the city so we have to shower with a bucket of water and a cup. Pretty much this area is like way exciting and I´m getting the full Ceará experience!  

Okay so it´s hard for me to write names of people for two reasons: 1. they have the strangest names here in Ceará and half the time I can´t remember them 2. we meet with a million people every week and people turn over really fast because there is so much work!  But I will do my very best to discern those who need your prayers and include them in my emails :). This week I would say it is Dina and Erils.  They are way awesome!  They have been together for 11 years and have three kids and he has some drug addiction that they really want help with.  They are seriously like so adorable and just want to be a happy family! and this is when I just absolutely love that I get to be a missionary!  Families are so much more likely to be happy, healthy and loving when founded on the teachings of Christ and right now I get to help found these families in Christ. GAH HOW GREAT!  

My thoughts this week are how awesome that we have a loving Heavenly Father who turns our weaknesses into strengths!  Seriously it amazes me that my mistakes and shortcomings, or challenges and difficulties can be the best learning and growing experiences as I turn to the Lord.  I don´t have to dwell on the negative but can really grow and turn these things into strengths!  How amazing is that?  How wonderful and merciful is our God!

Okay love love

Sister Brittany Westover

Jan.27th, 2014 : All is well in Brazil

Hi hi!  Wow! I feel like this week was ages long and also flew by at the same time!  I guess that what happens when your mind is being totally and completely consumed by something!  And right now my mind is in Brazil, in Portuguese, in the lives of the people living here, in the gospel and it´s just very very busy!  Needless to say I never am on short supply of thoughts haha, I feel like I don´t have enough time to think all of my thoughts! and who ever said that?

So funny story I forgot: a couple weeks ago we had a family in church that we were teaching and the dad is a crack addict.  So it was like a miracle to get them to church.  Was.  We got a call during the second hour saying that Melquesedec (ironic name I know) left church.  Well obviously it was for drugs!  So what do we do? Chase him!  HA!  We literally were running through our little town trying to catch our drug addict investigator!  By the time we got to his house we totally lost him but his aunt was standing outside and told us that he had already come and gone and that when he showed up to the house he didn´t have any pants because he had sold them for money on the street! WHAT??  haha seriously Sister Mometto and I were laughing at that for so long, it´s sad but a little funny.

Yesterday we had a baptism of 5 people!! It was so great!  The miracle family that we found last week was baptized and another member of a recent convert family.  It was so awesome!!  This family that was all baptized yesterday is seriously so dang funny.  They love that I´m from the US and are always asking me stuff about it.  The funny thing is they made the comment one of our fist lessons how crazy that I came all the way from the United States to this tiny little town that we are living in (not even Fortaleza)!  I was thinking about that and how it truly is crazy!  God knew exactly where I needed to come, when I needed to come, and who I needed to have in my path.  So the fact that I am here in Novo Oriente, Ceará, Brasil all the way from West Linn, OR, United States is no coincidence!  I love that.

I think I recieved the rest of the new years letter this last week!  I opened letters today from Uncle Chad, Aunt Cathy, Weslee, Hailey, Blake, Mom and Brooklynn, and the Biancardi´s!  All the other missionaries were like gasping at my giant stack of letters! haha I told them I have really awesome people in my life, I´m so blessed :)

Funny thing, Sister Mometto and I are laughing a lot of the time in the street because we get so dang exhausted from walking in the hot hot sun every day and then we get a little crazy!  Anyway, EVERYONE eats literally the EXACT same thing EVERY day!! haha Everyday we have lunch with members and we have spaghetti noodles, rice, beans, chicken, soda, and maybe potatoes with radishs.  Well Sister Mometto is always saying how she will never eat rice and chicken again because that is all she has eaten for 1 year and 3 months haha.  Earlier this week we had pork with rice at one of our lunch appointments!! Sister Mometto was so happy about the pork that she started yelling in the street ´´hey!  I ate pork today!´´.  Oh my gosh I was dying I was laughing so hard, it made me think of a commercial and really it was just so dang funny that eating pork with rice made us so much more happy than chicken and rice.

My favorite thing is mango!  Everyone knows that I am ´´doida por manga´´  Crazy for mango! So we have mangos, mango juice, mango mousse at our appointments haha I love it!  It´s seriously so good! 

Anway we´ve been trying to focus this week on Christ.  Helaman 5:12 says that we WILL go through trials and we WILL have difficulties, but when we are centered in Christ, when we allow him to be the rock or foundation of our lives, we CANNOT fall!  How amazing!  Of course we will have trials and problems and they will be harder than anyone else knows (they are personal, for our personal growth).  But, when we have a foundation of Christ, we will not fall because we cannot fall.  We will overcome these challenges, these difficulties, the tragedies of life with the one person who overcame all of it, our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

I´m so grateful for the opportunity I have to share this message with the people right here in Novo Orient, Ceará, Brasil.

Sister Brittany Westover