Guess what?! I'm staying in Leiria and I'm training a new sister. Craziness, huh? Tuesday Sister Jumua headed back down to Santarém to pack all the rest of her stuff up and I stayed in the apartment all alone for 8 hours...... 8..... eight..... oito..... sozinha...... It was a really long time. I now understand why we have companions. The first two hours were okay.... the last six I started to go crazy. The house is spotless, I caught up on all of my little craft projects, and I listened to almost 3 million EFY songs. When I started talking to myself I got a little nervous, but I decided to be positive about the situation and have a good little self-evaluation time. I went a little doidinha, but not too much. It was a very good incentive to talk to everyone when I was able to work again.
It was good reminder of why Heavenly Father's plan is NOT for us to stay alone for all eternity. :)
I finally left the house at 18h to go and catch a bus up to Porto to get my new companion. It was so nice to be out of the house and to see people again. I had the biggest smile on my face and I'm pretty sure people thought I was a little strange, but hey, I got some people to smile back at me so I think I did pretty well. When I got to the bus stop I was really surprised to see an elder sitting on a bench hunched over and looking pretty nervous. It was Elder Zanni from Caldas da Rainha. He's from Argentina and he's one of the best missionaries I have ever met. He was headed up to Porto as well and as soon as he saw me he stood up and said, "Prayers get answered!" He said that he had no idea how to get to the mission office in Porto and that he had been praying at that moment that Heavenly Father would send someone to help him find his way to the missin office in Porto... and then I walked out of the ticket office into the bus stop. We ended up talking the whole way up to Porto (turns out that his dad is Kristin Gneiting's mission presidente in Argentina... niftiness) and I was really impressed by him. I'm not normally very impressed by many elders, but his parents raised a very good missionary. Anyway, we got up to Porto at about 20h00 and we walked around old Porto until we got to the metro stop in São Bento and then we went up to the mission office and the executives took us to some really nice hotel and Sister Jumua and I met up at the hotel. It was a nifty little adventure.
On Wednesday we had a meeting with all the trainers and all the new missionaries and then at the very end Presidente Amorim told us who our new companions are. My new companion is Síster Dalley Lyman from Las Vegas. :) She is really cute. She is so excited to be here and she loves the work here and te people. Presidente Amorim told me that he put the two of us together for a very specific reason... he didn't tell me what that reason was but in his carta to me this week that he has a lot of trust in us and that he knows that Heavenly Father put us together to do a very important work. During the whole meeting Presidente Amorim was talking about how being a trainer is a sacred responsibility and that of all the companions a missionary has, the trainer will probably have the biggest impact. Well, being the wonderful calm person that I am, started to get a little bit overwhelmed as Presidente Amorim was talking. I was starting to think "Oh no... I'm responsible for someone else's mission now... oh no, oh no, oh no. I'm not qualified for this.. somebody else should be training right now" but Presidente Amorim told me this week that he chose me to be a trainer because he trusts me and he knows that I will help Síster Lyman have a good start to her mission. It's nice to know that he trusts me, and I'm not feeling overwhelmed anymore. I realized that to train a new missionary is actually not any different from what I was already doing. Sometimes I have to stop and explain what some things mean in English, but all I have to do is just work hard and be obedient and that's the best way to teach.
Presidente Amorim always says that "O que você faz fala tão alto que eu não consigo ouvir o que você diz." Which in English means, "What you do speaks so loudly that I ca't hear what you say." It's true. If we just do what we're supposed to do, we avoid almost all of the problems and we make the biggest difference.
So, yup. We're having fun here in Leiria. Sister Lyman is great. She just jumped right into missionary work and she has no fear of doing anything I ask her to do. It is incredible to see how different she is than I was at the beginning of my mission. It's been very nice for me to look back and see how much I have grown and changed... (thank goodness). :)
Eu vos amo! Eu sei que a mensagem que nós temos é verdadeira e que tem o poder de mudar nossas vidas. Nosso Salvador fez tudo para que nós possamos mudar nos e tornar nos mais como nosso Pai Celestial. :) Também minha escritura da semana é Alma 7:23-24. A Síster Lyman a encontrou hoje da manhã e eu gostei muito. Uma boa semana para vocês!
Síster Kendra Smith... em Leiria por mais uma transferência. :)
P.S. As fotos são da reunião de treinamento no Porto. Me and Sister Lyman, and then us with Presidente e Síster Amorim.
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