Cleanliness is next to Godliness

It is so funny to me that I bought stickers and silly bandz and all these fun things to give to kids here, but all they really want is hand sanitizer. And since we usually find them playing with old tires or garbage - turned treasure (they're very creative), I am more than happy to share and usually I don't have a choice. I have a hand sanitizer clipped high on my bag and when the kids see us coming they run yelling and tug on you until you give them some hand sanitizer. They're obsessed! They giggle at each other and smell their hands over and over. It's hilarious, I love it.  As an Exercise and Wellness major, their temporarily clean hands make my heart happy too.

D&C 88:86, "Abide ye in the liberty wherewith ye are made free, entangle not yourselves in sin, but let your hands be clean, until the Lord comes."

I spoke in church this past Sunday for my first time on the mission, and can I just say trying to be engaging in Portuguese is a challenge! Luckily my accent keeps people engaged enough. I spoke on the importance of Seminary and it made me miss all the great times I had when I was in Seminary (shoutout to all the awesome teachers at Westlake!). My punchline was that Seminary wasn't just a class my friends and I took, but Seminary was an extension of church and our testimonies. 

I was in charge of a Family Night lesson this past week with a cute little family (mom and four kids) that live way on the outskirts of our area in Cidadela. All the kids are so bright and intelligent, they have so much potential in the church and life, they've just had a rough past year and have had to move a lot, but now they are here to stay in our ward boundaries and so we've been working with our ward mission leader (a recently returned missionary from Brazil) to help them get to church. The lesson was on the importance of prayer and I started out with a little activity where I had the girls pretend to answer a phone call from me - I rattled off a list of pretend problems in Portuguese (I was so proud of myself!) and then I hung up before they had a chance to respond. I related the phone call to prayer and how God isn't just a repair man or a number to call and place an order, but he's our Father and wants us to have a conversation with him. This little example is nothing new for us life-long members, but these kids loved it and we had a lot of fun. That's one thing I am definitely going to miss when the mission is over, how easy it is to laugh and be crazy with the families here.

Ate mais logo!

Com amor,

Sister Hanzel

Celebrating my birthday

When in Africa...

Feliz segunda-feira!

We had a fun missionary experience this week. We were teaching with a member who recently returned from his mission in Mozambique. It was roughly 7:30 PM and all of our lessons had fallen through for the evening. He told us of a night on his mission where the same thing happened; he and his companion prayed and were lead to a family of six or eight that were eventually baptized. So we put it to the test. We prayed and then turned around and started ringing the buzzers of the apartment building right behind us. The top floor answered and we explained we were missionaries and asked if we could share our message. The voice said yes and so we headed up, and when the voice answered the door, it was a young woman named Lara who we had actually been trying to find all week. She came to church but left before we could get her contact information we didn´t know how we were going to find her again. I´m sure she was just as surprised to see us as we were to see her. But there she was, inviting us in to share the message of the Restoration. And what was even greater was her house was full of friends, who all sat in with us. The power of prayer.

Well, I hope you all have a great week. Love you!

Love,
Sister Hanzel

Attending Women´s Conference at the chapel in Achada Santa Antonio

Making cous couse with the Sisters who live just up the street

The One Where Chickens Sleep in Trees

Hey Ya´ll,

Nothing really crazy happened this week. Thusday and Friday I was on Divisions with one of our Sister Training Leaders Sister Johnson. She´s from Alabama and played college basketball, plus she´s a really good missionary and teacher. We had a lot of fun. While we were walking and talking in the street, I asked her what was her favorite thing about serving in Cabo Verde, she said that Sister Matthews (our Mission President´s wife) had once said that Cabo Verde was like our missionary group´s secret, you can´t really picture life on these islands unless you´ve lived it. I thought that was kind of a fun thought. It´s so true. This week I literally watched chickens climb trees and nest in the top. We also had days this week where lessons were impossible because of soccer games on the radio  - and if there´s not a soccer game on the media, there´s a soccer game going on in the street. I saw the cutest little toddler play goalie this week in the street and yell commands to his team between two cinder blocks, he couldn´t have been older than three.

Sometimes the secret of the Cabo Verde mission is being able to serve with força on little sleep. We were teaching a lesson this week and after giving my part about when Jesus Christ was on the earth and how he established his church, I thought to myself about my Portuguese, `Wow, that went really well today!` until I caught my companion´s quizzical eye and realized I had just taught the same lesson we taught them the day before. Whoops! Sometimes the lessons just blend together, but luckily the couple we were teaching didn´t seem to mind and a little review never hurt anyone!

Yesterday for P-Day we had a Sister´s hike and climbed to the top of Mount Vermelho behind our area. You could see all of Praia from the top, it was quite the view.

Until next week, fica fixe!

Sister Hanzel

Sisters' hike to top of Mt. Vermelho

It´s a Razzle Dazzle Day

Well one thing is for certain, you can´t beat the heat here in Praia, oh mama it is hot! But I love the people here and the area can´t be beat either, so I´ll sweat my insides out preaching the gospel and love it.

I am still getting to know our members and area this week. There´s quite a lot of space to cover. It´s both overwhelming and exciting, there are just so many apartment buildings to knock and people to contact. I love the investigators we already have and we have the ability to find so many more. Now if only we could get them to come to church - it´s air conditioned in the chapel, it´s fine if I throw that in the list of reasons they should come, right?

Dona Maria Pia Lighthouse

This morning we went and visited the oldest lighthouse in Cabo Verde for a district activity. It´s lighthouse Dona Maria Pia, built in 1880, and it reminded me of visiting lighthouses in Oregon. It also reminded me of Elder Boyd K. Packer´s talk about the importance of the lower light of a lighthouse and how with two lights boats can align themselves to safely arrive in the harbor. He said, 

“There is in our hymnbook a very old and seldom-sung hymn that has very special meaning to me.

Brightly beams our Father’s mercy

From his lighthouse evermore,
But to us he gives the keeping
Of the lights along the shore.

Let the lower lights be burning;
Send a gleam across the wave.
Some poor fainting, struggling seaman
You may rescue, you may save.

Dark the night of sin has settled;

Loud the angry billows roar.
Eager eyes are watching, longing,
For the lights along the shore.

Trim your feeble lamp, my brother;
Some poor sailor, tempest-tossed,
Trying now to make the harbor,
In the darkness may be lost.”

We will all make mistakes and feel lost at times in this life, but if we continue forward, never doubting our faith or God´s plan, we can always find that light to `guide us safely home` - that was another talk by President Monson, and I bet studying those two talks together would be a great study block. Before the mission I had no idea how anyone studied the scriptures for more than an hour, but now I wish I had more time!

I also wish I had more email but for this week, that´s all folks!

Have a Razzle Dazzle Day (you can bet I sang that at the top of the lighthouse, along with `Candle on the Water`).

Love,
Sister Hanzel

Cidadela, Praia

My new companion, Sister Cerqueira

Oh my goodness, I cannot even tell you how in love I am with this new area. Sister Cerqueira is just darling and Cidadela has so much potential.

I am once again being called Sister Turner. Haha. This is another area in which she served and I´m receiving the confused faces all over again. 

My new apartment is so little and cute. It´s just Sister Cerqueira and I who live there and I like just having two sisters, probably because I love Sister Cerqueira. It´s two bedrooms plus the bathroom so our kitchen is also our study room which makes it hard not to just snack all day long. But I love it, it´s bright, located in the center of our area, and it´s easy to clean.... blessings. 

My new apartment

Sister Cerqueira is a doll. I love this girl! As I said last week, she´s from Portugal so she can help me with Portuguese (whoop whoop!) but she speaks perfect English. She´s been out for one more transfer than I have but two in the field because she was only in the Brazil MTC for two weeks (her MTC companion was my mission mamma Sister Friaça). Both Sister Cerqueira and I have birthday´s in the beginning of October and so we have decked out our apartment with Happy Birthday banners and such and we´ll just celebrate all month long! She´s also a foodie so we´re going to be best friends, and we´re also in deep trouble with that fridge in eyesight at all times and so many good pastry shops in the heart of Praia.

We both have October birthdays

Praia has literally everything. I walked into the grocery store here and didn´t know where to start. There´s fruit lojas (shops) and makeup lojas and paper lojas (happy day) and everything in between. We´re also right on the ocean. I can´t see the Atlantic from my apartment but I can see it when we´re out in our area and in the mornings.... boardwalk runs!!! Yes, we can run right on the edge of the island and stare at the ocean the entire time. It´s heavenly until about 1 PM when you´re drenched in sweat and breathing in more water than air, but besides the heat and humidity Praia is the place to be. We are also only a ten minute walk away from the mission office, so if we need more Livro de Mormons or hand sanitizer, it´s just a few minutes away.



Running by the ocean

Even though Praia is only an hour Hiace (Yas) ride away, I feel like it´s a completely different island. I feel like the people here are more eager and willing to talk to us which makes contacting and finding new investigators fun. People in Praia also speak Portuguese more than in Assomada, which is a blessing because I can actually talk to people. How cool is that (insert question mark here because I can´t find it on this keyboard), I can talk with people in Portuguese! Getting to know members (we´re Palmarejo ward 2) and investigators this week were so much fun because I could actually get to know them. We´ve also traded Assomada´s cockroaches for Praia´s flies and mosquitos, my legs are constantly itchy from bites. One morning this week I was washing my face in the bathroom and felt a tingle on my ankle, I thought it was just another mosquito bite so I let it be until I finished washing my face... only to look down and see a giant cockroach the size of a golf ball on my ankle. That was really fun.

Well I hope you all just love your air conditioning, and have a great week!

 

Love,

Sister Hanzel

Praia Zone

It's Raining, It's Pouring....

But these Sisters are not snoring! Nope, we are tromping through the rain and the puddles in our Chacos to share the sunny message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It has been a weeklong storm here, I love it! Our area is green as can be with all the planting, or "cimenteira" that has been happening this month. Achada Gomes looks like the jungles of Jurassic Park now. 

The rain also brings out the flies, I'm flicking and typing at the same time here. They swarm the Mango pits in the streets and all the vending ladies have pom-pom looking things they wave back and forth over their fish or fruit to keep the flies away.

This week we stopped to help a Senhora whisk flies away from her batch of "friskinia" as she scooped spoonfuls of the sticky sweet treat into little bags to freeze and vend the next day. I asked her if she had ever heard of our church, to which she responded in Creole, "Yes, but I cannot switch to your religion even if I wanted to. Jesus will be annoyed with me." 

All the buildings have flat roofs, and so to keep the water from pooling they're slightly angled and the water pours out of the roof spouts jutting out at different lengths and angles over the sidewalks. So if you're not careful, you'll walk right under a waterfall.

The work is hard with the rainfall, but it's also easier to find people in their houses, which is a blessing. 

 

One day this week I was reading several of the General Conference addresses from last April. I was feeling really down in my little area and four brown walls - I needed to know God was aware of my bad day and when I flipped open my Conference Liahona this talk was staring me in the face, "The Cost, and the Blessings, or Discipleship" by Elder Holland. The talk was a direct answer to my prayer, I especially loved when he said, "Sadly enough young friends, it is a characteristic of our age that if people want gods at all, they want them to be gods who do not demand much, comfortable gods, smooth gods who not only don’t rock the boat, but don't even row it... Christ like love is the greatest need we have on this planet because righteousness was always supposed to accompany it. Friends, take heart. Pure Christ like love flowing from true righteousness can change the world."

This is missionary work. We're just kids, out here trying to teach pastors and preachers, children and elderly, singles and families, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Sometimes, that seems like a pretty daunting task; but if we choose to be obedient and we choose to love, we can change the world.

Have a happy (and dry) week.

Sister Hanzel

Subir Still

This past week was Zone Conference, and this Zone Conference was so much better than my first one. I came with questions and I understand Portuguese now so blessings! 

President talked about how we are out here to baptize X number of people, but also to climb the spiritual ladder found in the third lesson (faith, repentance, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost, persevere <--- I don't remember this word in English)  faster and farther than we would if we were at home; and this past week in church one of the speakers who is also a return missionary said that while he was on his mission, his Mission President told him that he was doing things of far greater worth on his mission than any other thing he could be doing at home. Both these points reaffirmed that I'm right where I'm supposed to be - in the center of God's plan for me and how grateful I am that THIS is God's plan for me. His plans were definitely greater than mine, but I'm working on living up to my potential (shout out to Sister Bocanegra's email this week) both on the mission and in life in general, you only get one of each! 

I had a teaching moment this week I thought would be kind of fun to share. We've been trying to teach one of our recent convert's brothers for several weeks now, but whenever we find him at home, he's always playing war video games and can't pull his attention away from the screen long enough to hear what church we are from. This week though as he was absorbed in his game, I conversationally said, "Did you know I could help you beat this game with the Book of Mormon?" He paused the game (cheer!). I then showed him some strategies war heroes like Moroni and Helaman used in the war chapters of the Book of Mormon. He was genuinely intrigued! I then bore testimony of the Book of Mormon and how cool it was that God decided to give us his word through action stories and war scenes. He thought that was pretty cool too, and I think this week we're going to see some real progression with him. You have to teach how you would want to be taught, and if that means teach to beat video games than on men, on to victory!

Signing out,

Sister Hanzel

District Activity

with Vera, our member in Achada Gomes who helps us with lessons out there