4.21.2014

hotties.

HELLO AGAIN! 

Yet another week has gone by in the beautiful Portugal. And i guess everywhere else too. hah

Sister Juilfs is supes awesome. But all of a sudden we have been eating lunches and dinners with lots of members´ families which like never happened before now and it´s awesome for me but poor sister Juilfs has always had a really bad stomach problem that doctors have not been able to find out what causes it but pretty much she can´t eat anything outside of most fruits and veggetables. If she eats anything else she gets terrible stomach pains. The members wonder how she is still alive even though she can´t eat meat (which is basically included in every meal and snack in some way here.) But we just go to the store and buy a salad for her to take incase they didn´t make one. Needless to say she´s super healthy. She can eat rice, but she hasn´t really liked it before until she tried mine! WHABAM! can i say pronta para casar? #no. But anyway i kinda want to try her diet while i´m with her. So i´ll live on oatmeal, apples, salad, spinach, cucumbers, carrots, rice cakes, and whatever else she can eat for the next 5 weeks at least. (i´m going to try  to do it... this week i´ll just buy what she can eat but there are still a few more things in the house i´ll finish up but after that... vegan diet on sterioids baby.) 

Like two and a half months ago when i was with Sister Lybbert it was the end of the day and "super" late, like 9 o´clock and pitch black outside (other missionaires--we go in at 9:30pm and the lattest we can be out is 10pm, we wake up at 7 hah) when we decided to do what we don´t normally like to do under those circumstances: try to enter apartment buildings and knock doors. But on the first doorbell we rang of the first building we tried (the building of a less active member we had just talked earlier in the day) (they have all the doorbells on a little panel by the main entrance to the apartment building) with outsomeone even coming over the intercom to ask who we were they unlocked the door from their house and let us into the building. We were surprised but headed up to the top (third) floor where we had rung) and knocked on thier door. This cute about 37 year old lady we found out to be named Mara, a brazilian opened the door and to our surprise and delight invited us to come in. (this never happens with normal portuguese people... the assume we are there to steal their souls or something right of the bat usually hah) We kind of stood there for a second apologizing for the late time we passed by and that we didn´t really need to come in and bother them etc but she insisted and we went in and when we asked if we could just say a quick prayer and come back another day she agreed and so we said a prayer and included her little kids in the prayer cuz they were sick and then planned with her to come back the day after next to teach about the plano de salvação which we left a panflet for. So we show up two days later and she didn´t answer the door so we wented and visited our less-active member and she said that the lady on the third floor moved yesterday back to brazil. We were pretty shocked and surprised (at first we didn´t really believe her, sometimes people make up stories for their neighboors so we won´t go bother them too haha) but when we kept trying and for a week or two after that no one ever answered the door so we assumed that that was true. We sadly gave up and moved on. 
So this Tuesday with Sister Juilfs and I this lady with sunglasses walks by and we recognize each other and we start talking. (i'm playing along pretending I know who she is--happens all the time) but she says hey you'll have to come by and say another prayer for my daughter and niece... we moved up the street here's my addresss.. blah blah awesomeness and then as we were saying goodbye I said I was sorry I don't remember your name, MARA! Okay sweet, bye! DING! it all came flash flooding back. So to make a long story short we go back there and she was baptized when she was 12 and we'll go back and reactivate her haha! sorry if that doesn't make sense I was going to write more but I have to be done like NOW heh
Love you all!!
Sister shumway

4.14.2014

bittersweet goodbye


Bye Sister Lybbert! I love you with all my heart! Have fun in Maia! And we´ll miss you Carregado Elders! We´ll just have the zone leaders  here in Santarém from now on. I love my new comp Sister Juilfs! 
Sorry! Time is short! 
Sister Shumway

4.07.2014

SO SICK!

Literally :)

Sister Lybbert has been sick this whole week and I felt fine (which it´s always been the other way around for me on my mission until now) but then last night right as she´s feeling almost all the way better besides a cough is when I got sick. The Elders gave me a blessing so that was nice. I got my essential oils out this time though and I know I don´t feel as bad as I would have right now because of those two things. We are hoping I´ll feel 100% soon so we can get back to the plow and make our last week together AWESOME. I´d just like to bear my testimony of eternal marrige, I´m thankful I´ll get married to my best friend for time and all eternity so that it´s longer than two transfers BUAHahha.  Love you sister Lybbert. (she gets tired of me telling her that.) #awkwardlove #I´llmarryaman

Well someone had a "great" idea to watch all the general conference sessions on Sunday, So that´s what we did. We showed up at the church at like 11:30 as they were ending the priesthood session (BYU-IDAHO´S MEN´S CHOIR HOLLAAA i saw like 5 people i know hah) and then had a lunch break and then watched the Saturday sessions and then the sunday morning session live all in a row... 6.25 HOURS OF SPIRITUAL FEAST! we didn´t get permission to watch the sunday "afternoon" session here this time, (in october we did) it starts at 9pm and goes till 11pm portugal time, and that was too late for us missionaries so we still haven´t seen it. I am hoping we can watch it later today. It was in the last hour of the sunday "morning" session (that started at 5pm here live) that i started getting the hot and cold chills and body aches and a sore throat sickness. I am thankful for my DoTerra lemon oil, (for my b-day could you send me another one of those mother dear? i´m almost out .. Ü)  (with a spoonful of honey helpes the lemon oil go down) that helped my throat not hurt as much. 

Well as for spiritual experiences this week we didn´t have many outside our own house (as we were inside it most of the week) But i love personal study time. I WILL ALWAYS MAKE TIME FOR THIS FOR MY WHOLE LIFE it´s so worth it and so necessary... everyone TAKE and MAKE TIME TO READ THE SCRIPTURES and Ensigns and Liahonas and PREACH MY GOSPEL (holla Elder Ballard, you continue to be my favorite #notbiased) 

OLIVIA IS AWESOME she´s the one who got baptized on the 18th of March and she´s already being a missionary to her brother (who was actually a contact of ours before we even met her) and helping him gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon. Also an AWESOME family in our ward is helping her and her two sons integrate into the branch faster, they went over and visited them and their son João Pedro took Bruno (olivia´s son) to seminary (where it was just them two there haha but it´s probably better that way. private religion classes! haha)

I LOVED learning what the word Religion meant in General conference! DUH Knowing portuguese i should have noticed that so much earlier! Re-connecting with God. LOVE that. The word for connection in portuguese is ligação, so re-ligação--» religião. WHAT. STELLAR. I´m gonna share that with the people we meet on the street sometime. 

K WELL my time is up in this library but not for my alotted p-day time, we´ll see if we can get on again later heh heh but for now TTFN :)
Sister Shiney Shumway