A happy missionary!

Another great week at the CTM! I love it here and am sad that I~ll be leaving this place in 4 weeks! SCARY...not really. I~m excited to hit the streets of Joao Pessoa and preach the gospel. I loved the gospel before the mission, but since I~ve been in the CTM I~ve come to think of it as a precious gem that is sacred and brings so much meaning to my life. Without it I would be lost....but luckily I know about what God and Jesus Christ did for me. I know exactly why I am here on earth and where I am going after I die. What peace that brings to my soul!

Elder Scott came last Friday Elder Jensen came last Friday to speak to all the missionaries and I got to shake his hand....ok ok...all the missionaries got to shake his hand, but I still feel special. He taught us some hard lessons and after it was over I felt like I needed to change A LOT in my life. It was amazing though.

So Mom I forgot to tell you something! You know those two jumpers you made for me??!! Well you~ll never guess, but all the sisters here adore them! Everytime I wear them I get SOOOOO many compliments and people tell me I am so lucky I have a mother who sews for me and they are right! Also another thing that will make you happy....I~ve been playing the piano in sacrament meeting and next week I~m going to be playing prelude music for the devotional with a member of the seventy....pray that I don~t faint from fear!

You will both be happy to know I am still your sunshine. Every day we go around our district and gives compliment to someone. Every time I~ve been complimented it is always something like: you are so happy, you love life, I think it is impossible for you to frown, etc. Ha ha....I~m trying to stay as happy as possible and it is easy since I study the gospel and portuguese everyday.

Today we went to the temple again, but today was a little different. On my way into the session, I grabbed a pair of headphones so I could listen to the session in portuguese. When I walked in with them I could just see all the missionaries kicking themselves for not thinking of doing that before. After the session, which was AMAZING, I had so many missionaries come up to me and tell me that next week they were going to do the same thing. They were very thankful for the idea!

THis past weekend we had TRC (training resource center) where we had to teach members the first lesson. When we got to the door of the classroom where our members were, sister gricius said....I~ve heard that they sometimes put investigators in these. Well that made me so nervous, but I put a smile on my face and wished for the best. We went in and taught the first lesson and it went so great! After we taught the lesson we had to get feedback from a teacher and he said we did fantastic...but everyone has to do it two times...so the second time we went in to teach the same lesson and then one of the investigators asked about the plan of salvation...I looked at sister gricius and then at the investigator and went straight into the second lesson. It was amazing. 30 minutes of straight portuguese...with few mistakes. Our instructor was over the moon! TOday we are going to pass out a book of Mormon hopefully!


30 seconds....gotta go. thanks for the emails. LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!

I'm [glad] they called me on a mission!

E ai Belezas?!!!! (that means; whats up beautifuls?)

Another great week in Sao Paulo!!!! This last week we had a record number of strange food choices. I don~t even know what half of them were, but most of them were good. We ate some orange stuff today at lunch that one person thought was carrots, another thought was squash, and my companion was positive they were plantains. I thought they were potatoes with cheese....but who knows what they were....it will always be a mystery. Last weekend I was so excited to see they had popsicles for our dessert. When I sat down I realized they were corn flavored popsicles. the variety of food down here is endless. Luckily the corn popsicle was fabulous and I wish we had them in the U.S.!

So guess who is coming to the CTM on Friday??!!! ELDER SCOTT and a member of the presidency of the 70....I forgot who. Anyway, an apostle only comes once a year and I feel so privileged to be here when he comes! Better yet, Friday is also Sister Gricius's birthday!!! I~m so glad she is going to shake hands with an apostle on her special day. I'll tell you all about it next week!!So tomorrow it will be officially one month since I left the U.S.A! Crazy how time flies! I have a month left from this Saturday....which excites and scares me. Thanks for all the letters and support. I LOVE getting letters and every letter I get I cherish...so thanks for sending them regularly. I~m trying to answer back as quickly as possible...so be patient with me!!!So mom you~ll be happy to know I joined the CTM choir....I actually joined it about 2 weeks ago and it is way fun! It really helps out with the portuguese pronounciation!

This last week has been so much fun mostly due to the fact I have made friends with a Brazilian sister from Fortaleza who is a SPITFIRE! Oh my goodness we have so much fun together. Don~t worry, we aren't irreverant or break rules, but we definitely have the loudest table at all the meals. She will try to joke with me in english and I joke with her in portuguese. As a result the languages are coming a long great for both of us. I absolutely love portuguese. last night I talked with this sister for a good 20 minutes without messing up too much.

Since I'm away from my family for 18 months, my district has become my family...and boy do I love them! We have the BEST district in the CTM and I~m not just saying that. Several people (missionaries and teachers) have told us that it is true. So this past Monday our district was teaching the 1st lesson in portuguese and one elder (Elder Omer) quoted the first vision. One part says: pairando no ar....which means above me in the air. Elder Omer accidentally said parirando no ar...which means freaking out in the air....then another person said ´parirando no ar....which means to give birth in the air...which is bad enough by itself, but considering the next words are: behold this is my beloved son...it could be taken wrong. Every day something like that happens and we get quite an ab workout laughing until we cry. My district is great though...we all help each other out with the language and work as a team on everything...its awesome.So I set a CTM record for the most flashcards any teacher has EVER seen. I have about 1800 flashcards and hope to have 2500 by the time I leave the CTM. I carry them around everywhere and constantly am studying them. They~ve really helped out quite a lot!!

My first week here I was given this quote that I thought you might enjoy: Many young women are serving missions. Many are preparing to serve. Not because they aren't married or have nothing else to do; but because they have a desire to serve and therefore are being called to the work. The reason so many are going is because in the next generation, Heavenly Father will be sending His Priesthood Army to earth and wants to send them to mothers who have been properly trained and taught in the gospel. What better training can a young woman have than that of serving a mission.~~Pres. Hinkley. Cool quote huh?!! This mission is definitely shaping me into a better woman and person!

Oh and just a suggestion. If you are out of ideas for what to do on monday nights for FHE....maybe you guys should start doing the Preach My Gospel lessons! They are simple, yet awesome!!!

K, my time is up. I love you guys so much and miss you, but I am so happy I'm hear. Last night at the devotional the member of the 70 who was speaking had us all sing: i hope they call me on a mission. I remember when I used to sing that in primary and can't believe I'm here. What a dream come true. The Lord truly answers prayers, the gospel is true. Have a wonderful week and keep the letters coming!!!

Love y'all,

Sister wood

This weeks email is going to be SUPER short because I have only 20 minutes today. Sometimes I think P-day the busiest day of the week! This morning we went to Policia Federal to get IDed and fingerprinted. It was quite an experience. While I was waiting I talked to a guy from Costa Rica. Unfortuntely my number was called before I could tell him anything about the gospel. Life as a missionary continues to go well. I can~t believe I~ve already been here 3 weeks. People say time flies when you are having fun, but I disagree....time just flies all the time. I~ve never worked this hard in my life and can already tell what a difference it is making in my life. This past monday I taught my first solo lesson in Portuguese. It was stressful, but as soon as I started talking the words just flowed. It is amazing how quickly the language comes. With the Lords help all things are possible! When I finished the lesson my teacher told me I did a terrific job on it compared to most of the other missionaries! I was so relieved. I~ve been feeling under the weather for the past week and I think it is due to the constantly changing weather. One day it is sunny, the next it is cold and stormy. The thunderstorms down here are so severe sometimes I wonder if the CTM will just get blow away! Anyway...I think the constant change in pressure is to blame for all these headaches I~m getting. Dang it, only 12 minutes until I get kicked off this thing! There are so many things I want to tell you about, but just don~t have the time. I have honestly grown so much in these past 3 weeks. Everyday I just wonder what I~m going to learn next. Sometimes I feel like I can~t be stretched anymore, but somehow I manage to with the Lord~s help. Last night we got to watched a talk that Elder Scott gave in the Provo MTC in August. It was awesome. It was mostly about obedience and listening to the spirit. He shared some absolutely wonderful stories and made me realize that I am going to be so safe in Joao Pessoa...as long as I follow the promptings I get. Let me tell you a little more about my companion Sister Gricius. She knows French and German, has an MBA, and is a professional celloist. She is ambitious and extremely driven and I absolutely love her to death. She tones down my craziness and I help her loosen up every once in a while. I still see sister dunn around. She and I definitely have a lot of fun together...sometimes too much fun, which makes me thankful we aren~t companions. Well I know I haven~t said much, but my time is up. I~ll try to exclude more details in next weeks email. In the meantime keep sending letters. I seriously almost cry from happiness when I get letters in the mailbox. I~m trying to write back letters, but i only have about 2 hours a week to write so many people! Thanks for all the emails and prayers. It is nice to know there are so many people praying for me!Love you,Sister Wood

CTM week 2

was so happy to get an email from you!!!! I tell you letters and emails are everything to me! Everyday when the mail comes all the missionaries crowd around the mailboxes just hoping that they received a letter. Life in the CTM goes on as usual. I love it here, but it is so hard. I would definitely say it is harder than college. I wake up at 5:30 or 6:00 everyday and go to bed around 10:30. By the end of the day I am so physically, emotionally, and spiritally exhausted that I fall asleep as soon as I hit the bed. The past two weeks have had their ups and downs. The first couple days I loved it, then I hated it,...now I love it again. Last week I was so frustrated that I broke down and cried in my classroom. Luckily my district had already left the room to go to other meetings so I didn´t embarass myself, but my teacher Sister Filhao was there. She comforted and told gave me some really sound advice about the mission. I absolutely love my teachers. They both served missions in Brazil and luckily Sister Filhao served in Joao Pessoa so she and I have been chatting it up constantly. I found out a few interesting things about Joao Pessoa this week: 1. that there are rats the size of dogs up there... no joke. rumor is cats and dogs get attacked by these rats all the time...and the get into people´s houses a lot!!!! 2. Joao Pessoa is tied with Belem and Manaus for the poorest mission in Brazil. 3. Joao Pessoa is CURRENTLY the highest baptizing mission in the WORLD!!! Crazy huh?!!! I~m so excited to go there!!So last night a member of the 70 came to speak at our devotional. In the beginning he was searching the audience for a person to bear their testimony about the first vision. He pointed in my direction and said ^you sister!` I kept looking around for who he was pointing at and to my utmost dismay he was pointing at me! Serves me right for wearing a hot pink shirt when I am surround by a sea of black suits! Anyway..he asked `how do you know first vision happened? were you there?` I told him very matter-of-factly that I wasn´t there and frankly that I didn~t need to be. I said it so matter-of-factly that now everyone thinks of me as the sassy sister missionary. Anyway Ive been getting nonstop compliments on my comments since then. Even though it played out well I~m going to wear a black shirt at the next devotional! So my companion and I have 3 pet dogs...named Pato, Gusho, and...well we haven~t named the last one. They live in an alley outside our window. Everyday I whistle at them and they affectionately bark back...actually they just bark at me...but it makes me happy. Today I got to go to the temple again. It was awesome. It takes about an hour to get there and on the way there I saw a lot of interesting things. The poverty here is amazing. We passed by a trashy park and I was amazed when I saw a large family sleeping on sheets of cardboard with a hardcart parked next to them all. The crazy thing is...Sao Paulo is sooo rich compared to Joao Pessoa....which is kind of scary. The smell in the air here is soooooo weird. Everyday the air has a different smell. Since today was P-day I was able to walk around the city a little bit and I got stared at everywhere. Honestly....i should dye my hair. The attention is getting a little ridiculous. We got to watch conference in english this past week and it was awesome!!! We also got to watch the Relief Society broadcast. It was all so inspiring and uplifting. The language is coming along very well. My companion and I study so hard and are really seeing a lot of progress. This past weekend we taught a lesson in portuguese which most people don~t do until their 4th or 5th week! We have quite a reputation for being studious....and oddly enough I also have a reputation for being crazy and a spitfire. I love it here though. Everyone is so nice and I love the portuguese language....so beautiful. My district is awesome. Last night we just decided to use some free time to sing hymns and it was so neat. They are seriously like my family!The food finally caught up with me. It tastes wonderful but does some weird stuff when it hits my stomach. I~m hoping that it will eventually stop making me sick. Oh dad will appreciate this...I~ve had a ton of exotic fruit since I~ve been here....papaya, mango, passion fruit, and a type of pineapple that is white and tastes 10X better than the pineapple we have in the states. The Brazilians at the CTM are so cool, but tend to get a little flirtatious. This past week a BRazilian elder wrote me a letter telling me how cool I was and then he said he didn~t have a girlfriend....yeah not really sure how to answer that one. The BRazilians and Americans have such a great time together though. The brazilians try to learn english for the 3 weeks they are here and some of them can form complete sentence. This last week one brazilian guy walk by me in the hall and said, ´Hi sister. I like your eye´. I was so confused for about 5 seconds and realized he wasn~t just talking about my one eye, but both....I had a good laugh over that one. Well I´m out of time. 30 minutes a week is such a small amount of time to tell you very much about my life. Oh please excuse any grammar mistakes or spelling errors. I~m losing my ability to write in english..and to speak it. So sad. yet. Also post my email on my blog so people can write me. People can email me at this email, but I can only email you from it. Well I just love you guys and miss you! Being a missionary is super tough, but so awesome! I love the gospel and absolutely 100% know it is true!!! Talk to you next week!!!Love ya,Sister Ariel Wood!!!!