Merry Christmas! Almost! Sister Warburton and I are probably way more excited for Christmas than we should be. We have all our little presents laid out by our fireplace (that we´re not allowed to use) and have a counter on the wall. Just two more days!
This week was full of surprises! My rainboots started leaking, which I didn´t even know was possible. If I calculated correctly I walked about 400 miles in them. But I got new ones today that are a lot cuter, so it all worked out.
So one of the fun things about Braga is the university. There are always poor little freshmen trying to get into sororities and fraternities being paraded around by the seniors. This week we saw a parade of them dressed up like Santa Claus. One of the Santas ran over to us and said "Merry Christmas!" in English and then hugged us. I froze and then awkwardly tried to escape. It was awkward.
On Thursday, one of our recent converts, Cristina, called us. She was really quite sick and needed our help. We went out with the Elders so she could get a blessing, and then we went with her daughter to the pharmacy. Turns out the medication she needed was prescription-only, so we went back empty-handed. When we arrived, Cristina started crying because she didn´t think she would be able to get any sleep without it. We prayed with her and told her everything would be okay and just to trust in the Lord. We left after doing some of her dishes. We called the next day and talked to her daughter who said everything had turned out okay. Turns out that almost right after we left, her stomach pains went away. She still wasn´t able to sleep but she finally thought "Maybe it´s because I don´t have enough faith" so she said a prayer and right after fell asleep and sleep longer and better than she has in weeks. She told us that she realized that sometimes we will have a battle, but after we make it through, Christ will take it all and we will have huge miracles.
Speaking of miracles, on Friday we got to teach with Margarita, our awesome recent convert who is 13 and more than 6 feet tall. Everytime she shared her testimony in our lessons, it was the perfect thing said in the perfect way with such strong faith that we ended up seeing a huge difference in our investigators. It is amazing how one little girl is already changing lives.
So in case you didn´t know, Heavenly Father has the biggest sense of humor. On Saturday we had a bunch of compromissos, and then we found out we had a meeting as well, so we were running around all day. Then we couldn´t find one of our investigators´houses, so we stopped in a few cafes to ask directions and ended up finding an amazing new investigator. We finally went home for jantar when we realized we had an appointment in 15 minutes, so we headed right back out the door. Sister Warburton said, "That´s too bad, I really wanted to make soup for dinner". We went to our next appointment with Marta (the brazilian). We walked in and she said "Oh I made you soup!" and gave us a couple of bowls of noodle soup. We went to our next (and last appointment) and THEY had made us soup as well. So we ended up having about 4 bowls of soup. So I learned two things. 1. Sometimes it is better not to ask, because you will recieve. (D&C 4:6. haha) 2. Heavenly Father really does give us "an hundredfold". When we do one little thing, like skipping dinner to go help His kids, He will bless us more times than we can count. But thankfully this time it wasn´t one hundredfold, but just fourfold :)
Yesterday Sister Warburton and I got to translate for an investigator. Michael is one of the elders´ investigators and he only speaks English so in church and the baptism after church we got to help them translate. It was hard.
Yesterday afternoon one of the little boys in the ward got baptized! It was so awesome. A bunch of non-member family members were there and the family gave them all Book of Mormons. And Bispo said after the baptism "So who´s next?"
CHRISTMAS in two days! It will be weird to talk to you... Because everyone will look different. But it will be awesome! Get your questions ready so it´s not awkward :)
Oh here´s a picture--we found the Road of Restoration!
Com muitíssimo amor,
Sister Gidney
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