WEEK 28-I Have Snails On My Head!

There was a cool festival in town! In Portuguese, jellyfish is "aguas vivas" or in direct translation, "living waters".

 This is a recent convert named Graca. She is sooso unbelievably cute! I helped her write her very first talk in Sacrament meeting and she gave it on Sunday about honesty.

 The height difference between her and me is pretty standard for the Portuguese.

Love her!

 This is cute little Daniella, she is 12. She LOVES the sister missionaries! I gave her one of my bracelets a few months ago. 

We had a fun photo shoot.

 Daniella

 Me during our companionship study. We were practicing our teaching and I was pretending to be an old lady who needs her glasses to read.

Ummm....what did we just order to eat???

 You tell me.

This is no mystery. ICECREAMMMM!

 This is my Mission President! 

Pres. Tavares has swag...

 Lunch at the last Zone Conference. It was so fun!

 On my 6 month mark my wonderful companion made me some AMAZING scrambled eggs. 

What a Georgia peach. I love her. =D

We went to a cemetery last P-Day (remember), all of my grave whispering abilities were coming back to me. ;) I fixed all of the flowers that had fallen down on this mans grave. 

We are friends now.

 We got special permission to take this girl from our ward, Carin (pronounced CAH-reen) into our apartment and make lunch for her. She was honored to be the FIRST person EVER to enter the Sisters apartment! 

We had fun making lunch for her.

 These are all of the missionaries on this island. 

Elevator selfie!

This was a beautiful baptism of Flavio. 

The spirit was so strong there.

 We had fun touring this factory today. 
I'm having a great day.

 Sweet sisters in our ward.

 Hey YOU over there! 

Do you want to be baptized?!

 Proud to be a missionary. I love this church.

This little girl is on her way to ballet class. 

We are teaching her family. <3

A Pakistan family that we taught a while ago. Such a sweet family.

My Letter Home:

In Portuguese, the word for ´´snail´´ and ´´curl´´ is the same word. It is caracóis. People are always commenting on my beautiful snails. I like to say thank you and, yes, they are natural. I really do love my snails. It makes doing my hair so very easy. I hope that the title of this email was enough to make you want to read it. You are hooked now! Curiosity killed the cat!

HELLOOO EVERYBODY! I am Sister Barron and this week I would like to introduce you to some really cute people that I have come to know and love this week. Their names are Maria, Rodrigo, Maria, and Rodrigo. Let us begin with the first pair.

The other day we were out in the boonies of our area, somewhere called Lagoa, and we were knocking doors. There was a BEAUTIFUL view of the ocean on one side and colorful doors for miles on the other. Cute little Catholic ladies were rejecting us, the usual.... Then we contact this older woman and her dear grandson Rodrigo. And they were the cutest people EVER. I will have to make a list. Here it is: 

-Marias house was FULL of random things, from ferns and random trinkets and Fatima statues. It was like playing that I Spy computer game. So much stuff to look at~

-She offered us a beer and Sister McChesney unknowingly accepted. Hahahahah luckily I knew the word for beer and said thanks but no thanks. It was a funny moment.

-Rodrigo, who was 13, was VERY smart and understood everything we taught, even with our awful American accents. He accepted the Book of Mormon and said he would read it. Hope he does!

-Maria didn't understand our accents, but she just loved us so very much.

-She fed us sweet rice.

-She cried every time Rodrigo said something smart because she was so proud. =)

-She asked us for our addresses so that when we leave the island Rodrigo could write us letters.

-She was convinced I looked just like her Canadian daughter in law.

-Rodrigo asked me if I knew ´´Brad Pitts´´ or ´´Anjolina Jolie´´ Haha! =P

It was a wonderful little visit. Funny thing about the Portuguese is that they will either want nothing to do with us, or basically adopt us on the spot.

The other Maria is this cute little old lady in our ward. She is such a trooper and comes to church every Sunday even if by herself. 

-She is so cute, a head of thick white hair.

-She bore the cutest testimony in Gospel Principles but she had to close her eyes because she was too embarrassed. =)

-She doesn't understand anything I say.

-I understand nothing she says (she has the thickest Azorean accent)

-She wore her sweats and slippers to church.<3

She also has a grandson named Rodrigo who is super cool, wants to be baptised, and is 7 years old.

We did a lot of fun things this week. We:

-Read a conference talk by President Uchtdorf. I don't care if it is wrong to say, HE IS MY FAVORITE!!!

-We bought some coloring books! Whenever we have an extra 5 minutes at lunch we like to color. YAY ART!!!

-Me and Sister McChesney are writing a book about our experience here on the Açores. its wicked cool!

-We discovered we both watched Sailor Moon as children. NERD MOMENT!

-We heart-attacked our new branch President's front door!

I love the mission so much! There are definitely hard moments and moments when I wonder if I am even a good missionary. Me and Sister McChesney were talking about it and we realized that probably EVERY MISSIONARY FROM THE DAWN OF TIME has felt that way. So I have resolved to let that go behind me, and strive to make everyday better than the last day. 

Shoutout to everyone I know on a MISSION! I love you all so much and look up to you all!

SISTER BARRON

WEEK 27- This Work Is Bigger Then Me

This is for Boston and Sarger. I thought it was so funny! I guess "Wimpy Kid" doesn't translate. =P

 This is a picture within our area. Bright colors of blue and green everywhere. We love it. 

Surprise Sister Micky! I'm taking your picture!! Haha!

 What a normal part of our area looks like.

 Today for our Prep Day we rode a TRAIN! It was a little tourist train that just basically went on all the streets we walk on everyday. But for some reason, it was WAY more beautiful from the train! Maybe because we were stuffing our faces with ice cream. =P

 OK, so there are a BAJILLION of these Chinese stores all over Portugal and the Azores and they sometimes sell some pretty sketchy merchandise. We have bought multiple things that didn't end up working. =I We had to buy a speaker because we have an investigator marked for baptism that struggles with reading and we are going to down load the Book of Mormon for them and give them a speaker so that they can listen to it. Anyway, we bought this speaker at the Chinese store and MADE SURE before we left that it worked. =D When we got home, we read the description on the box and totally cracked up! It was SOSOSOSOSO funny! Why do they feel they don't have to have native English speakers to translate this stuff? Haha

The sun is rising, view off our balcony.

 I got these cool little rings for 50 cents and have been wearing them for about a month now. 

No green fingers! Yayyy!

I also wear a little gold CTR ring on my pinky that my Mom wore on her mission. <3

 We had our names put on our scripture cases. So cool! Hey! Missionaries get excited over stuff like this! Haha

Lunch...=0 This is not normal for me to have the heads attached, but I do like fish.

 Inside a beautiful Catholic chapel.

 So Monday is our Preparation day. A day that we can go grocery shopping, write home, do something fun, etc. It is a challenge because almost everything is CLOSED on Mondays. So this week we decided to go to a cemetery! Haha I got to practice my grave whispering skills! (I'm not kidding, ask my Mom about my skillz. =D) But it was actually really fun.

 Inside a grave-house thing.

It was cool, I swear!

This is my zone. 
All of the missionaries serving on the Azores.

 A famous statue in Lisbon. 
Kind of a symbol of our mission.
Down the street from the mission home.

 My new Mission President and Mission Mom. They are from Brazil!

 Azores Zone again.

My toenails that Nuria painted. 
(See PS: at the bottom.)

My Letter Home:

Ola Bom Dia Irmãos e Irmãs! 

I have been thinking a lot this week about how we can magnify our callings as representatives of Jesus Christ. I have made a little list of things we have done in the past week that was, I felt, something that Christ would do. Maybe it didn't lead directly to a baptism, but it felt so good. That special feeling that you can only get when you do something truly as the Savior would do. 

We helped a crippled man get into his taxi. He was in his wheelchair and we helped him get his legs in the car. He was very grateful. We closed him in safe and waved goodbye. I will probably never see him again. 

We went and visited a woman from our ward in the hospital. She is dying from cancer. She looked like she was on her last leg. Really weak and thin. She didn't recognize any of us. We tried to sing a hymn for her but she didn't want it. She kept begging us to take her home. It was heartbreaking. Her mother, who was there, thanked us for coming to visit her. We gave her a picture of Christ, and she got really confused and thought we were there to convert her. She said ´´I already was baptised!´´ haha we knowww sweetie.....=) We hope in some way we brought the spirit to her and her Mom.

We helped an old woman carry her groceries. It was a BIG DEAL because we always offer people help carrying groceries but they never everrr say yes. But this time she did! We were so happy and excited to help her. I had the best feeling. She is a very nice lady, and we always say hi to her now and invite her to church. Maybe someday she will  decide to come. 

One night there was a really old woman in a window. Many times we have taught her younger daughter through the window. This old woman was always lying in a bed. She was very old and sick.  We came there one night and, wanting to surprise the old lady, began to sing ´´How Great Thou Art´´ (Grandioso És Tu) As we were singing, us two missionaries and Paulo Jorge, this dying old woman had such a look of happiness and peace on her face. She knew God was looking out for her, that He had not forgotten her. In that moment I felt the spirit so strong. In that moment, this work was a little bigger.  We touched her heart. We brought her closer to her Savior. That is our calling. I want to feel like that all the time. This work is bigger than me. 

I love you all and I hope you all have a week full of opportunities to serve. It is the best feeling! Dont let it pass you by!

SiStEr BaRrOn

PS. When we were teaching the little girl Nuira's family, I was playing with her trying to keep her busy while her parents were learning and I could not keep her calm so I had an idea! I let her paint my toenails! It was QUITE the nail job, but saved the lesson! lol Sister BARRONNNNNNN that's me!

WEEK 26- In My Father's Hands

(From the editor: The pictures were wimpy this week) 

"This is our desk." Haha

 This is a cute pic from last week of 
Sister McChesney. =) 
I will send more pics next Monday. 

Her letter home:

THIS WEEK I HIT MY 6 MONTHS!!!! One third of the way through! It's happening so fast!

Adventurous thing I ate this week: Cachupa. It is a capo verdian dish that has a bunch of different types of beans and interesting meats. You just have to close your eyes and take a bite! I actually really liked it. The member fed us a ton though! My diet went out the window lol. =P

On Sunday, me and Sister McChesney were feeling kinda stressed out. Every Sunday morning we walk before church, sometimes really far away, to try and get our investigators to come to church. It is kinda hard because a lot of the time they don't answer their phones, and nothing is worse than getting woken up early on a Sunday morning by some little American girls knocking on your door and telling you to come to church. Lol! Many a time we are not warmly welcomed =P haha. I think it is good for the soul to get a little scolding right before church from our investigators. It is really humbling. 

So we were going to try and get our investigators Clivia and Nelson to join us, but we were very nervous because we hadn't really planned with them to pass by. They have two children. So we walked there, really far, and they didn't answer the door. We were very disappointed and at a loss of what to do. One of the hardest things about being a missionary is feeling you are annoying. =) No one likes to be annoying! But not a lot of people like being told they need to change their lives and come to church either....

So we were sitting outside their apartment building, feeling frustration and doubt and basically the opposite of the spirit, and then...in that moment, we see Roberto. He is a less active member of our ward, and he has really been needing help lately.  He has been struggling. When I saw him, I knew that was why we were sent there that morning. We asked him where he was going and he said to church. He asked us how we knew he would pass there. We said we didn't know. He asked us if we had been waiting for him there. We said that we hadn't known...but that yes, we were waiting for him. When I saw Roberto walking towards us I was totally overwhelmed. I felt so strongly that we were sent there, that morning, to walk with this soldier to church. I thought of that one hymn when it talks about the light house and how we need to keep the light burning because ´´some poor fainting, struggling seaman, you may rescue, you may save.´´ I am totally in the hands of my Father. He is so good to me. I don't deserve all the love He gives me. In so many ways I am weak. I am a really inadequate instrument in my Lords hands. Like trying to hammer a nail with a toothpick. But with my inadequacy, He brings about miracles, and with my lack of knowledge, He saves souls. 

I love you all so much! This week will be better than the last! Go hike a mountain for me!

Sister Barron