Hallelujah​!

"HALLELUJAH!!! Can I get a AMEN!?!"  Yep that's right, Sister Richards and I got the wonderful opportunity to visit a different Church last night. Well more like I felt tricked into going to one of our Pesquisadore's church. So here is what happened Saturday night Our Pesquisadore was really really nervous to come visit our church like super nervous because in his faith visiting other churches is a SIN. But we talked him in to going. The whole time he was there though he looked so nervous and as Sacrament meeting ended he quickly got up and told "Be at my house at 7:00, We need to talk" And you know the optimistic sister missionaries we are, we are like "Yeah he is going to want to be baptized woot woot" um..No.


What happens is we get to his house and he is all dressed up nice and fancy and asks us to walk with him and talk with him. And my Portuguese isn't super great so I'm only kinda understanding the conversation but he starts listing off all of these rules and everything and I'm like where are we going what are we doing. We get to this Other Church and he brings some nice ladies over to us and tells us to Enter. I just look at Sister Richards and I'm like "Are we going to to this church?" And She just looks at me and is like "I guess so" And I'm like okay this will be good, its good to learn to about other religions right? I mean as a missionary we ask people to take a chance with us everyday so this will be good. We walk in and everyone just stares at us because of our name tags and because we are the only women wearing make-up, with hair that hasn't been cut, and legs that are shaved and ect..

There were probably about 300 people in the congregation and they made us sit in the very front row! (which actually was good because I didn't understand any of the pastors Portuguese but they had an interpreter for the deaf members in the congregation and I understood almost everything she was signing). Anyway this whole experience was interesting.. So interesting. Its interesting because our Pesquisadore was trying to convert us to his religion when really this experience strengthened my own testimony that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is Restored. And that the spirit testifies of Truth.

I respect other people and their beliefs. I think its awesome that other people want to worship God. But I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint has the Authority to act in Gods name. I am so grateful that we have a Prophet that leads us and guides us and that there doesn't have to any confusion to follow the will of God. So Grateful for this knowledge!!

♥ Sister Roberts

Last P-day we went to Walmart! It was fabulous!

We also went to Subway it was so American it was fabulous

Haha we wanted to copy the picture that Junior had sent me last week.. so funny

What a great Pillow

Sunsets in Sumaré

Carnaval!

So this past weekend was Carnaval! FESTA FESTA! Actually we are missionaries so no festa but here in the Brazil the youth all the single adults all go to Youth camp. So it was really hard this week to try to find people to teach with us. But other than that Carnaval didn't really have an affect on us this week. Although while we were walking home at night my innocent eyes saw things that I wish they hadn't.. its fine.

I love Açai

So here in Sumaré My companion and I live with two other lovely Sisters. Sister Richardson and Sister Cordeiro. Sister Richardson is from Scotland and she rocks. Haha she is so funny. I love her! And Sister Cordeiro, Recife Brazil She is the funniest Brazilian that I have ever met.

 Sister Cordeiro is Crazy and insane But I love her

Sister Richardson and Sister Cordeiro Also live with us and I love them!

We have a such a good time together. But Unfortunatly as usual we all got really sick this week.. Yep that's right another visit to the Hospital!!! Woot Woot..Not.. I am so sick of hospitals its not even funny. Its so frustrating because we want to go out and work and baptize but instead we spend like the whole day at the hospital trying to figure out problems and then we spend the next day "recovering" Its awful and I hate it but whatever. We are all praying that this week we don't have any health problems so we don't have to visit the hospital.

After vistiting the hospital for what feels like the thousandth time Sister Richards and I went and got FroYo!

On the bright side, my Portuguese is getting so much better. I am feeling way more confident in my speaking ability even though I still don't speak very well. And I think we have found some solid people to teach so we are hoping that we will be able to commit a few people to baptism this week!

Things are looking up :)

Love, Sister Roberts

P.S. YAY Photos this week. Finally found a computer that could handle the uploading of pictures!!

The streets of Sumaré

The "Pretty" Part of my Area here in Sumaré

After a LOOONG Day of work

So We have this really long planning session that we have to do every week and its "Planajamento Semanal" So when we passed this on the street we though it was funny.

My old Companion gave me this Futebol Jersery. Its Awesome

We may or may not have gotten into a frosting fight..its fine.

Pictures below are from Piracicaba that wouldn't load earlier

My bedroom in Piracicaba

Our name tags

  Haha As I was packing all of my stuff to leave Piracicaba Sister Bispo and Sister Pamela found all my tampons and they started freaking out because in Brazil they don't have them. So I gave them some..So funny

 The Last dinner I had in Piracicaba with my favorite family. Love them!

Cool looking Church in Piracicaba.

 My zone made me a cake for my Birthday!

Our Broken sink in Piracicaba

Piracicaba

De Novo??

First of All Shout out to my irmão Logan for getting into BYU!!! FESTA!!!!!!

I love Sumaré. The ward mission leader is awesome. He helps us out so much. Unfortunately we don't have any solid investigators that we are preparing for baptism (fun fact: 2 of my investigators got baptized this week in Piracicaba super exciting) which means that we have a lot of work to do. So Sister Richards and I were super pumped to start the week But for the first two days that we were here All of our lessons fell through! All of them! And we were feeling super discouraged and everything until the Assistants had called us and told us that we had a referral from the Campinas Mission. Right after we got off the phone the Bishop called and gave us a referral for the same person! So we were super excited. We went over to this guys house you know all pumped and everything but when we got there...well lets just say that we were not welcomed and the guy ended up calling the police...not exactly how we had pictured it but its fine.

Towards the end of the day Sis Richards wasn't feeling so hot. She was so sick so we had to stay in our casa on Friday. But on Saturday she was feeling worse so the Ward Mission leaders wife called and took us to the Hospital.. Yep I went to the Hospital De Nono! I think I have now officially been to the hospital more times these past couple of months than I have my entire life... its fine. My companion had to get some blood work done and unfortunately her body couldn't handle the IV So she started shaking uncontrollably and I'm sitting here freaking out thinking that my companion is about to die and I'm like "AJUDA Ela!!" So she got rushed to the emergency room which was super fun. Luckily everything turned out fine and all is well..but man I am so over hospitals.

Despite all of that this week was awesome. Because it was the first week since being in Brazil that I haven't felt lost or confused, frustrated, unhappy and all those other negative emotions that I have been feeling for the past 3 months Honestly being a missionary is Soooo HARD! It can be so emotionally and mentally draining. Not being able to communicate your thoughts and desires, not being able to understand the needs of the investigators. Constantly being with someone that doesn't know how to communicate with you. Its rough. So many times I have thought "Why am I here? Why Brazil? Why Portuguese?" But Heavenly Father knows exactly what and where we need to be. I love my companion. Haha I love that she is American and that we can help each other. Its great. Being a missionary is Hard, but at the same time its so incredibly awesome!

Tchau!

-Sister Roberts

Broken Hearts

This week..gahh..I dont even know what to say its been crazy. For reals I wake up like everyday thinking how I know how exactly today is going to turn out and every night before I go to sleep I think about how so many unexpected things happened today.

For example I broke a 46 year old mans heart this week.... OH MY GOSH!!! CRAZY... just Crazy! So Marcos has been our investigator for the past month or so and he finally decided that he wanted to be baptized. So you know we were super pumped of course. The next day we get a phone call from his friend Cida who is like 60years old and also a former investigator telling us that she wants to talk with us. So were excited of course cause we think "Oh maybe she wants to be baptized too" umm..no. We go over to her house and she is like "Sister Roberts come sit next to me, We need to talk" and I'm like um okay. She starts asking me about Marcos and my feelings about Marcos.

"Sister Roberts Você gosta Marcos"

"Yes I like marcos"

"Você Ama Marcos" 

"Um I love him as an investigator"

The conversation continued like this for a while and finally she was like 

"If marcos ask you to marry him will you say Yes?"  

OH MY GOSH!!! My companion just looked at me and was trying so hard to laugh and I was just sat there and was like: 

"Cida Eu Tenho o NAMORADO!"

"But your boyfriend is in Argentina and you are in Brazil so you can marry marcos now and when you go back to the United States you can marry your boyfriend!

"No Cida I'm a missionary right now I cant marry Marcos"

"But you want to marry someone in your church right?"

"Yes Cida I want to marry someone in my Church"

"Marcos will get baptized so you can marry him"

"No Cida Missionaries cant get married while they are on their missions"

"But you dont have to be a missionary right now if you dont want to"

"Cida Marcos is 46 years old!! He is older than my parents!!!!!"

"That's not a problem"

And of course right in the middle of the conversation Marcos walked in and my companion turned white and quickly explained to me that in Brazil if a man asks you to marry him and you say no really really bad things can happen.

And I'm just like crap. They didn''t teach me how to deal with these kinds of situations in the MTC.

So I said a silent prayer and immediately the words that I need to say to get myself out of this situation came to me. 

Prayer works.

Fortunately I am never going to see marcos again. Unfortunately I am never going to see anyone in Piracicaba 4 again.

Yep I am no longer in Piracicaba I'm in Sumaré, with a new companion Sister Richards.

Last Night at 11:00pm the assistants called us telling me that there was an Emergency Transfer (I didnt get Emergency Transferred because of Marcos or anything that I did some other sisters were having problems and needed to be separated) and that I was to leave for Sumaré at 10:00 this morning.

So I stayed up till like 1:00 this morning packing all of my stuff...not fun.

I was so sad to leave Piracicaba because we had 2 baptisms this Saturday, and I loved my companion. But after traveling all day and being in Sumaré for the past couple of hours I have already fallen in love with the people here. They are awesome and I am so excited to work in this area.

Being a missionary is crazy, but at the same time its so awesome!

Love you all!!

-Sister Roberts

Its 6:00 not 7:00

We have two new sisters living with us for this transfer. Sister Bispo and Sister Marins. They are the sister training leaders for our part of the mission and they rock. Also the speak English so they help me a lot with my Portuguese and explaining things to me. But basically its been a non stop party this week with 4 sisters in one house. Unfortunately we only have one bathroom so you can see the obvious challenges that come from that, and our beds barely fit in our tiny little bedroom, but its been a blast.

Our kitchen sink also had a little accident. So I'm sitting at my desk reading my scriptures like a good little missionary when all of the sudden I hear this huge crash and my companion screaming in the kitchen. Naturally I run in to the kitchen to see what the problem was, and as my companion was cleaning our water jug our sink caved in and broke. My companion was soaked with water from the sink and the water jug and I just stood there and laughed haha I thought it was so funny.

On another note, We DID NOT visit the hospital this week! Woot Woot. We worked super hard this! We have 5 investigators that are waiting for baptism! 2 will be baptised by the end of this month 1 will be baptised after he marries his girlfriend in the Beginning of April and 2 14year old girls will be baptised in the beginning of may after they attended church of 3 months (the rule is here that if we have an investigator under the age of 15 they have to frequently be attending church for 3 months before they can be baptised) I'm super excited but at the same time I'm kinda sad because I'm sure I will probably be transferred before 3 of our investigators can be baptised. But its all good.

We had a very terrible thing happen. Our alarms went off at 6:30 Sunday morning like normal we were getting ready to go to church and we were about to leave at 7:00 when the Irmã that we live with came in and told us that it was only 6:00 in the morning!!!! Apparently it was the Brazil daylight saving time or something and we gained an extra hour. I was so mad! I could have gotten an extra hour of sleep!!!!!!...its fine..I'm over it.

In General we had a pretty good week. I'm hoping that this week is just as good!

-Love Sister Roberts
Having problems uploading my pictures.  Hopefully next week it will work.

Go Fish

The only thing worse than being sick is having a sick companion. Yes Mom, we visited the Hospital yet again. This time though it wasn't for me. My companion has some kind of blood infection in her leg or something and she is in so much pain. Gosh I feel so bad for her, we have been to the hospital three different times this week and because walking is extremely painful for her we have been stuck inside our house for the entire week. She pretty much spends the day sleeping off the pain and I try to keep myself busy. I've studied so much Portuguese. Hopefully my grammar is a little bit better because that is basically all that I have been doing. But finally on Friday I was so sick of my grammar books and everything else that I decided to get creative. So I made "Go Fish" cards out of old Liahona pictures we had lying around. Haha my companion loves "Go Fish" she thinks its the greatest game. Basically this week consisted of studying Portuguese and playing "Go Fish". Hoping she feels better this week so we can go out and work :)

love you all

Sister Roberts

Parabéns!

 Woot I'm 20!

Well I'm 20!! Woot Woot. I had a fantastic Birthday. Most of which was spent on the bus traveling to the far out places of my area. We had to travel on the bus for an hour and half to get to lunch and then we had to travel back and travel to Central Piracicaba to catch another bus to travel the farthest part of our area its called Charquada, and it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. Its my favorite place to go so I was super excited that we got to go there for my Birthday.

 Charqueada my favorite place

 
 Once we had arrived in Central Piracicaba we discovered that we had barely missed the bus to Charquada so we had a whole whopping 2 hours to wait for the next one. And because Centeral Piracicaba isn't in our area we weren't allowed to go contacting. So we went to MCDONALDS!!! I cant express to you how awesome it was to have McDonalds. I don't even like McDonalds that much but after having rice and beans everyday for the past month its was so nice to have American Food. That right there may have been the best part of my Birthday.

 McDonalds

Friday I had my first "splits" I was freaking out! But it was one of the best experiences that I have had so far. It was just me and one of the 18year old ward members and the empty streets of Piracicaba. I was so nervous because My Portuguese is still awful and the girl I was with doesn't speak much, But in 3 short hours I was able to teach the Restoration 7 different time!!! and I was able to understand what people were saying. IT was truly a miracle. We got 5 new pesquisador! Defiantly the highlight of my week!

I also got the wonderful opportunity to visit the hospital again. This time because I have something wrong with my eye I think I have some kind of spreadable infection or something (not really sure cant understand Portuguese speaking doctors... go figure) But I have to wear glasses for the next couple of weeks (which I not excited about) and When we walk outside I have to wear sun glasses because the sun is bad for my eye or something. Also President has asked us to stay in the house for the next couple of days so I can get better.. We will see how that goes.

Me and my not so sexy glasses

Piracicaba river

Zone Confereance (please notice that my companion and I decided to wear matching outfits)

Thanks for the Birthday emails everyone! You Rock

Love, Sister Roberts