We're not in Kansas anymore

More like we aren't in nyc anymore and are actually in Kansas. But then I've never been to Kansas, so I really couldn't tell you. But where's the favelas? The poop on the street? The constant stream of music coming from who knows where? This area is very different from my last area. I actually know now why people say Brazil is so green. There are actually trees here along with cows, horses, goats, you name it.

highlights :)
- I had my first churrasco!! Saturday our ward celebrated Father's Day (which is apparently in august here) and what's a better way to celebrate fathers than having all the fathers grill a bunch of different types of meat (the women who planned this were quite smart). And who knew that all this meat being grilled on some makeshift grills in a patch of undeveloped land behind the chapel would be sooo good!

- Our area has 2 main areas of ward members: the area where we live, and an area about 30 minutes north. We get there by paying 5R for a carro pequeno. Literally little car. Which is exactly what it sounds like. 5 strangers shoved into basically the toyota corolla zipping down the Brazilian roads.

- While in this northern area (Mata), we were trying to find one of our investigators in a park. We found him talking to this old man. We introduce ourselves, and then the old man starts talking. We can hardly get a word in, and then I hear him say, "Did you know that there is a prophet today? Ya, (points at himself) I'm the prophet of God." He then told us that he has seen God too. The best part was that we learned later that he was the father of another one of our investigators. So this will be interesting if we run into him again.

- The house I'm living in right now houses 4 sisters! 1 Brazilian, 2 Peruvians, and me (American in case you forgot). And sometimes I forget that 3 of us are trying to speak a 2nd language. Saturday while we were just talking, the Brazilian said something, and, as I do quite often due to confusion, I go "como?". And the 2 Peruvians go "ya we didn't understand that either". And we all started laughing to the fact that really sometimes no one knows what's going on. I wonder exactly how much stuff gets lost in translation.

- This week I've been focusing a lot on love and charity. I've had many aged missionaries here tell me that if I can learn to love the people, really love them like Christ does, everything else regarding missionary work will come. Which I thought the loving part would be easy. But it turns out, learning to love people who I have a hard time communicating with, or who I've known for such little time, or investigators who aren't keeping commitments, or members who constantly ask what happened to the missionary I replaced, is harder than it seems. And I refuse to type out all these scriptures, so go look up Moroni 7:45-48. But if there were 1 word to describe Jesus Christ, I think it would be love. And as I try to be His representative and be like Him, I'm trying to love as He did: unconditionally and perfectly. 

life is good :)
love you all
sister maxfield















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