Editor's note: We were able to speak on the phone to Sister Tyson for 30 minutes on Christmas. She sounds amazing! She is loving the MTC, her companions and most of all the gospel and the people of Brazil. She leaves the MTC on January 10 for Londrina!
HI FAMILY!!!
Merry almost Christmas!!!!
THANK
YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL OF THE EMAILS, CARDS, AND WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT
EVERY WEEK! I HAVE SERIOUSLY RECIEVED DOZENS AND DOZENS OF EMAILS FROM
MOM, DAD, AUNTS, COUSINS, GRANDPARENTS, SIBLINGS, FRIENDS, WARD MEMBERS,
AND MY USU FAMILY ALREADY! ITS SOOOO KIND AND I WISH I HAD TIME TO
WRITE BACK TO EVERYONE INDIVIDUALLY BUT PLEASE KNOW THAT YOUR NOTES MEAN
THE WORLD TO ME!!!!! I hope you all have an amazing Christmas!!!!
So,
this week was another awesome week in Brazil! so much to say with such
limited time but I will do my best to share as much as possible!
This
week was my first week out in the streets of Sao Paulo proselyting for
real! We were each given 3 Livros de Mormon to hand out and a handful of
papers to gather references---- we were literally sent out in a
big/busy shopping area and told to go to work and meet back up at
1030am--- thats the only instructions we were given! hahaha so my
companion and I went and started talking to everyone who would listen--- I started most of the
conversations-- it was sooooooo scary and sooooo fun! Everyone was super
friendly and willing to talk with us. I saw one lady standing at the
bus stop and knew her bus would be coming any minute but felt like we
really should talk to her about the Book of Mormon. After making some
small talk for a few minutes- I handed her the book of mormon and told
her that I knew it was true and that Christ is the best gift during Christmas time and encouraged her to read it! It was soooo awesome! even
in my little Portuguese I said all of that with little trouble! It was
incredible! mom, dad, Zach, and Kade---- how come no one told me how
awesome this is!!!???? hahaha jk-- Once we had walked away, we talk to
some other people and when we had come back to where the lady was- we
watched the bus come up, and drive away, and she was still standing
there reading the Book of Mormon that we had handed her!!! I was
literally freaking out with excitement! it was such a rush and I knew Heavenly Father was watching us and helped me know who I should go up
to!!! AMAZING!
Then I had a feeling that we needed to move off the main street a little bit
and go into a store front- my companion didn't like that idea because
she felt like we were going to get lost or something but I reassured her
that I wasn't afraid and so she didn't need to be either- Heavenly Father
protects his missionaries after all... lol--- and so we went in- we saw
a man right off the bat who was sitting on a bench alone and smiled at
us as we passed him. Immediately after we had passed him, I felt bad
about passing him without talking to him. I didnt say anything to my
comp and we kept walking. after we had talked to a few other people, my
comp said that she felt like we needed to go back to that man and talk
to him! We didn't think that he would be there after 30 minutes had
passed, but we both felt a strong prompting to go back and so we did. When we got back over to the store- HE WAS STILL SITTING THERE by
himself!!!!!!!!!!!! We talked to him about himself and found out that
his sister is a member of the church and that he had been talking to her
about it a lot recently and said that he would be interested in
learning more from the missionaries!!!!!!!!!! TENDER MERCIES FOR DAYZZZ
FOLKS! LIKE SERIOUSLY?!!!!!!!! We happily took down his info and shared
the Book of Mormon with him. AMAZING!
Then
the encounter with the sketchy man..... so right when I started
thinking missionary work was too easy and too good to be true.... the
Lord humbled me and reminded me of his humor... hahaha. We only had one
more Book of Mormon to give out and so the elders were really trying to
get us to hurry and give it out.... (elders think they know everything
sometimes...well like all the time), and so we were like okay- no
problem, we've already placed 5 in like 40 minutes! haha but then we were
humbled and a homeless man (shirtless) stopped us and grabbed my arm.
we started talking to him and he quickly got angry and started yelling
at us in Portuguese. he rubbed some oil on my hands and tried taking our
name tags off our shirts. in Portuguese- he asked us what our real names
were because we both couldn't be sister so and so and that we have no
place to be talking about Jesus Christ. he grabbed the Book of Mormon
out of our hands and told us that we need to read it ourselves before we
try to preach about it in a country that isn't ours. I realized very
quickly that we needed to keep moving and get away from him hahaha and
right then, two elders came up and told him to leave us alone. hahaha The instructors scolded us for talking to crazy people and we told them
that we didn't try to talk to him in the first place. hahahaha
surprisingly, i wasnt scared or traumatized as i usually am about stuff
like that hahaha- I knew that Heavenly Father is always watching us and
that it was just a humbling experience! SUCH A
RUSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So many other amazing experiences to share but little time!
The church is true and I love you allllll sooooooo much! Talk to you on Sunday!
- Sister Tyson
No comments:
Post a Comment