Friday, July 1, 2011

Sister Beus's Birthday

Dear Fam and Friends,
First and foremost, thank you ALLLL so much for all the Birthday wishes!!!! The emails were fun to read. Though I must say, this weeks email will not be as long as the last two because I got on and had 63 emails to try and quickly read through. So now my time is almost up and I have to write fast.
This week has been really good. Really busy, but really good. Gah, I have so much to say but no time....what to say....
First, today was my companions 11 month Mission birthday...meaning she has been out on her mission 11 months today. So to celebrate her 11 month mission bday and my 22nd bday on thats coming up on wednesday, we decided to hop in the back of a pick up taxi and went 20 minutes over to Santa Maria, one of the prettiest beaches in all of Cabo Verde (thats at least what everyone says). I decided, if anyone were to look up Sal on google or sometime, all you would likely see would be pictures of Santa Maria. It is pretty indeed and VERY touristy. Im not gonna lie, I felt out of place with how many white people there were over there (mainly europeans). We work in the poorest area on all of the island in the city of Espargos, and today was the first time I have scene another white person. So it was interesting. We had a lot of fun though walking around the beach. Are area is about a 40 minute walk to the closest beach so other then seeing the ocean miles away from our back porch of our apartment, we never see beaches here much.
This week we taught 27 lessons. Like I said before, we were SUPER busy. The great thing is, this next week we have marked 34 lessons as of right now. We are at the point where we wont know what to do if we get any new investigators or any new ANYONE. Sister Walker said she has never run into this problem ever in her mission until now. We have begun marking people for the following week because we just do not have time. It is really good that we are so busy and having so much success...but it can also be really exhausting. I am loving it though. We walk almost more then I ever have before in my life. The only other time I can think that Ive probably walked about the same if not a little more was when backpacking Europe.
So I wanted to write about all these great people that we are teaching but seeing that my time is almost up, I will just tell you about yesterday. We had marked for 12 investigators to come to church yesterday. Usually we make sure to pass by at least half of their homes on our way to church and walk with them so that we make sure they actually come. But last week Sister Walker was asked to teach Relief Society for this week and it is the first hour block of our meetings. So we had to get to church early so that she could get set up for the lesson she had to teach and we had no time to walk by our investigators homes. After Relief Society was over however, we decided to walk around at the beginning of the second hour which was Sunday School and see which of our investigaros had actually come. By the time we went around to all the different classes, we realized that only ONE of our investigaros had even shown up. We could not believe it because there were at least 5 that we thought for sure would be there and who actually needed to be there cause they are suppose to get baptized soon and cant if they dont attend church. So we dumped are backpackes in one of the rooms and hiked/power walked to the zone where most of our stronger investigators live to guilt trip them and tell them to come to sacrament. We were hoping to get 6 to come with us, but we could only get 4. That is because the other two are a mother and daughter. When we stopped by there to see why they didnt come to church and to see if they wanted to walk with us to sacrament, the mother answered and looked in baaad shape. She had obviously been crying for sometime. We had asked what was wrong, and she said that her daughter, the one who we are teaching and who is 19 years old, had been missing for a day and a half. For one, I would not have gone to church either. But it is a pretty scary thing that she is missing. We have not passed by today yet to see if there is any news yet but we are going to in about 2 hours before Family Home Evening tonight. We have been praying hard the last day that everything will turn out fine and that it is nothing serious. But this place is pretty crazy...especially are area, so who knows.
Anyways, by the time our 4 investigators were finally ready who came to sacrament, we had about 5 minutes before it began. Of course we were 15 minutes away so we were late. But we HAD  to be there on time because I had to give a talk in church. Yes, my 3rd Sunday in the field and already I had to give a talk. Our Branch is not very reverant so the Branch President last week asked me to speek in chruch this week for 15 minutes and chastize our branch on Revereance. Over all, I thought it went descent for the fact that I have only been our here for not even 3 weeks int he mission and my Portuguese is still not super great.
Well, the internet place is closing now so I better wrap this up. I love you all and thanks again for all your love and support!! Until next week!
Love,
Sister Beus

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