Sister McKell Steadman: Born in Palmas!

Here in Brazil, your first area is where you are born, the last area is where you die ha. So I was born in Palmas! My mom is Sister Alves! She is the cutest! She is from Sau Paulo. She doesn’t really speak English so communicating has been fun ha! She has been out for 3 months.

We are both new to the area so we don’t have an investigators. But there are to other Sisters in this area as well, one who was here last transfer and the other came with me from the CTM, so she has showed us around and helped us get to know the members. Sister De Paula is from Brazil and has been out for 5 months. Sister Costancio is from Argentina and is new just like me! She’s super cute!

We have been working a lot with the less active members. One is Eduardo. There’s six kids in the family and he is one of the older ones. That family is so nice! The mom, Fransica is always cooking so it always smells so good! But we try to visit them a lot.

The other is Irmao Pedro. He has two kids, Paulo I think then Olivia. From what I understand his wife died of cancer a little while ago. But he is very friendly and nice! He is always giving me tons of food! Last week we went over for lunch and Olivia made the best dessert. It is called ovo duce. So it looked like a fried egg. It was a peach in the middle then she made a cream that surrounded it. It was so good!

We’ve been able to contact a few people on the street. Mostly just by asking for directions because it is so easy to get lost here ha! There maps or so confusing! So we are going to go and visit them again this week!

We’ve gotten to know some of the members really well. I have the hardest time remember their names though ha. But there’s this one family and I’ve met the mom, her two daughters and her son. I love her two daughters! One is 22 and the other is 12. They try to help me a lot with the language! There is another family we have worked a lot with as well. Its three daughters that live with their mom and grandma. One has a little girl named Marianna and she is the cutest! I think she is 5. But one of the daughters doesn’t come to church a whole lot. They feed us a lot and drive us around when we need them. They are so nice. A friend of this family had us teach one of her friends this week! It as super cool. She is super nice and interested in the church. Her name is Monica. So me and Sister Alves went and talked to her a bit, just got to know her and we talked about the book of Mormon. We are planning on talking to her again this week.

Another time this week, we weren't having any luck with finding people because no one was home. So we decided to say a prayer and just talk to whoever we could find on the street. We passed a house with the gate open so we stopped and talked to them. It was a mom and her daughter. The Sister was over but she stayed in the house with the babies. But we taught her the first lesson, all four of us Sisters, and she seemed really interested. Later this week I and Sister Alves are going to go back and teach her some more.

Church was really nice yesterday! The people are so nice and friendly! A few of the girls my age sat with me and tried to help me with everything. They were so nice! For lunch we went to Shays house, the family with a bunch of daughters. Then Rita, one of the girls in the ward went out with us. We went to talk to Emily, a girl Sister de Paula talked to last week. She is 15 and is super sweet. We talked about the book of Mormon with her and faith. She seems interested! After we went to Irmao Pedro’s house and had a little family home evening. Sister Alves talked about the brother of Jared and how he needed light for the boats. I didn’t understand all of it but I’ll try to explain what I understood. She said that when the brother of Jared went to the lord for help, the lord told Jared to come up with an idea then ask. She said that sometimes we need to do a little searching ourselves and then go to the lord. We need to be patient with the lord and stay faithful. I really liked it. Then we talked about the things that are the light in our lives... I think ha.

Well the language is slowly coming. Every day I am noticing that I understand a little more. The people are very patient with me, which is very helpful, ha. So far I've just been following my companion and Sister de Paula around. But once we get to know the area a little better, I and Sister Alves will do the work on our own.

Have a fabulous week! Love you all!!

Sister Steadman