I don~t remember if I ever told you about my name here in Brasil. Everyone thinks its the funniest thing ever. One because they can~t pronounce it. Two, because when they here me say MARSHALL, they think I say MACHO. In Portuguese, MACHO means MANLY. Someone told me this the other day,
Amo Sister Macho, Ela é o cara!!
Which means, I love Sister Manly, She~s the man!!!
It Happens.
This week, a lot of really funny things happened. First things first. Here in Goiania, we have a 3 types of busses that us missionaries use. The bus to leave the city. The city busses that travel around the city of Goiania. And the Eixo. The eixo is a bus that drives straight through the city. So we were leaving our district meeting, and we took the Eixo because we had a lunch appointment in the center. So there~s six missionaries on the bus. One of the Elders said, this is our stop, so we get off the bus, and we~re talking when one of the Elders is counting heads (like dad always did with us), and he says, oh my gosh. Where~s elder C?? All of us left, but no one told Elder C to get off the bus, so he went on to the next stop. Our zone leader called him, and we waited for him until he made it back to our stop. The problem with the Eixo is that the doors shut SO FAST, that if you are on the bus but your companion isn~t on the bus, all you can do is watch until you get to the next stop and turn around. Fortunately the busses are so frequent that it really isn~t that big of a deal. But it is a scare. But its become a joke because there have been so many times when someone says Where~s Elder C?? Because his companion always forgets him haha.
Another funny thing that happened. We were in the middle of lunch and everyone is talking when all of a sudden this 3 year old walks right through the middle of the room butt naked. No one paid attention to him. He returned, and walked through the middle of the room butt naked again, but no one was paying attention to him so he left. The third time, he walked into the middle of the room butt naked, started dancing, and walked away. And I don~t know if anyone else saw it, but no one thought it was funny. I was dying.
And there were two kids peeing on the street the other day, having a contest to see who could pee farther. Like... it was in the middle of an intersection on a highway, and their dad was just watching. Dude. People are nuts here.
Yeah, Naymar broke his back. Funny story. I heard after the game, everyone was like.....AHHH Naymar quebrou o coluno dele (neymar broke his back)!!!! My whole mission, I thought coluno meant colon. I had multiple companions who are like... I have problems with my coluno. And they would talk about how debiltating it is to have problems with their coluno. I was like.. wow.. I didn~t know that having problems with your colon is really that big of a deal. When someone said that Neymar broke his coluno the middle of the game, I was like.. wait. I don~t understand this word. I looked it up in the dictionary. It means back. Ha. I~m stupid.
So those were the funny things that happened this week. We have just been knocking a lot of doors this week, and cleaning our list of people to teach so that we can have time to find people who are interested in learning more.
Seriously, it~s amazing being a missionary. Everyone should do it. I~m so grateful for this gospel, I~m so grateful for the opportunity that I have to share this gospel with everyone! And sadly, a lot of people don~t give us the time of day. But that~s not what~s important. I~m here trying to do my best, and I know that I~m doing my best and giving my all. I~m 100% happy with how I~ve served thus far, and I will continue to serve 100% until the end! The more I serve, the more I know the importance of this gospel. I know without a doubt that Joseph Smith was a prophet. I know that Christ is our Savior. I know that he paid a LOT so that we could become better people, and have LASTING happiness. A lot of people don~t understand why we do the things we do. And I think that if I wasn~t a member of the church, I wouldn~t understand things as well. For me, if a prophet tells me to do something, whether I agree automatically or not, I~d like to think I~ll do it because he has direct revelation with God. We do what we do because we love God. We eat healthy and treat our bodies healthily because our body is a gift from God. Like any gift from any person I love, I~ll treat it with respect. We wear relatively conservative clothing- why? because I respect my body. I know my worth, and I don~t need people to see my skin to know that I~m beautiful. I already know I am. And I~m not saying that to be egoistic.. tipo I know I~m beautiful ;) but I know that one person (God) at least thinks so, so I~m cool with that. Why do we do so much service? Because we know our worth, and we also know the worth of our brothers and sisters. We want what is best for them, and we are willing to help in whatever manner so that they, too, can know that there are people who love them. Why do we read scriptures, why do we pray, why do we go to church, why do we tithe, why? why? why?
Easy, we love God. And we know that God loves us, and that~s why we share this message with everyone. It doesn~t matter who you are, you are a child of God, and he wants you to come back and live with him.
Anyways, thats my thoughts for the week.
Love you guys,
Sister Marshall
CHECK THIS VIDEO OUT (IF IT DOESN'T SHOW, JUST COPY AND PASTE IN URL OR CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW)
https://www.lds.org/prophets-and-apostles/unto-all-the-world/missionary-work-in-brazil?cid=HPFR062714283&lang=eng