Brazil--Transfer 3, Week 3--Santa Tereza

More Experiences Never to Be Forgotten: 

• After sleeping through Carnaval for two days straight I'm convinced I don't really sleep anymore--I die every night and get resurrected on a daily basis.
• Realization: The cockroaches fly, and the pigeons do not--rather, they walk up the hill on the way to district meeting as if it wasn't the most absurd thing in the world.
• I went to the doctor's last week to have some blood work done. For the first time since I was about 6 years old, I was willing to kill someone for a Happy Meal. 
• "Minha mãe fez PIPOCAAAA!!!" Crazy little boy in the Primary during our message about missionary work. (Translated: My mom made popcorn.)
• Purple house. Green walls. Red Curtains. Black and White tile floor. Brazil.
• "Let's go put some sweat on the altar."--To be said before knocking doors for 6 hours after the rest of your baptisms for the month fall through.

After about four months of being here in Brazil, my conversational skills are really beginning to take off. This is exemplified in my riveting almoço (lunch) conversation like the following:

"So why is it called an orange if it's green?"

Also, a recent conversation roughly translated

Companion: Qual é o nome do bichinio la? (What do you guys call that critter over there?)
Member's response: Hamster
(This was one of those exhausted, end-of-the-day moments where the responses to most questions more funny than they should be. And the fact that these moments continue to be funny for days afterwards--and are the memories you treasure--is one of the hallmarks of mission life.)

• When you're in the middle of teaching the Plan of Salvation and someone starts telling you in Portuguese that a bug just went down your shirt, all you want to do is scream. 

• When you get into the shower at the end of the day and you find a dead bug in your belly button, all you want to do is scream louder. 

• Plastic bags from the grocery store are now illegal in São Paulo because, roughly translated, they "suffocate the planet." But after the first trash day when everyone threw their trash into the streets without a plastic bag, you can now buy them for 19 centavos if they mean that much to you. 

• Meanwhile, we're running out of plastic bags. 

Missions are not easy. And I never imagined in my life that mine would be as difficult as it is on a day-to-day basis. But I've learned things here about the Lord and His life that I never could have learned in any other way. How much He put others before Himself, even in moments of immense pain and personal suffering--that is something you will never understand it until you've done it in His name.

Every day here is a struggle. Every moment of every day is a choice to be faithful to the Lord. I never knew I could struggle as I'm currently struggling to have faith and trust the Lord, but I know that every day I get stronger than I was when I got here. In that way, the mission is worth everything I'm doing right now.

--
I am, as ever, your humble servant and never-deviating friend,
Sister Doyle