Drugs in my backpack!

Ola Everyone!!
I hope you all had as good a week as I did! This week was Crazy! We started out the week by taking one of our recent converts to the temple, man it was so good to visit the temple! But while we were there I FOUND ONE OF MY BEST FRIENDS from Leeds! Sister Blake! We had a nice little reunion in front of the temple, I think it’s way up there with the top 10 best experiences of my life. But wait, theres more…So the day we went to the temple was the day all the Americans in the CTM went so as I was talking with all my American buds I here, “Kayla?” which was way weird to hear my first name and I look over to find one of my good friends from up north that I met at an EFY. Good ole Elder Westra, so that was data-original-height="480" /> It was nice to talk in English and I translated for my companion and our recent convert. I think my brain broke a little bit switching back and forth between languages! But none the less it felt so good to talk with people in English. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see one of my best friends and talk to a bunch of Americans! After they all left we got to do some baptisms, watching our recent converts face as she saw and went in the temple for the very first time just made me so dang happy to be a missionary! After that we went to get some lunch! We were walking to the shopping center and I saw a lady carrying a bunch of stuff in to a church for a leadership training in the Sao Paulo West mission! So when I went in the church the first person I saw was my good ole friend from high school, Elder Smith! There was also a bunch of other elders from Utah! My companion said, “you know you’re from Utah when you visit a temple on the other side of the world and find people you know,” haha! But it was way cool to see my friends!! We also had zone conference this week which was amazing as always! It was the last time we will have zone conference with President Silcox so that was a little sad. I have learned so much from him and sister Silcox, I will miss them a lot. Our new president, President Miller and his wife will get here June 29. They are from Canada and I’m excited to meet them! This week we made a lot of new investigators, one of their names is Manuel! He’s awesome, he’s already been to church twice. Yesterday we taught him and all of his grandchildren! They live in a different city but they said they want us to send the missionaries in that area to their house and we are going to teach them with their grandpa, Manuel again this week! They are all about 18-22 years old! They even know a little English so they like to practice with me and then teach me slang in Portuguese. They always get a good laugh out of my slang in Portuguese! We also are teaching another man named Joseph. We have been working with him a lot with the word of wisdom! Our last lesson with him he gave us all of his drugs and cigarettes and said he’s down to only smoking 2 cigarettes per day! We are really excited for him! Funny story…so when he gave us all his drugs I put them in my backpack and forgot about them! The next day we had zone conference and they asked us to do something with our scriptures so when I was searching for my scriptures I set all the drugs and cigarettes on the floor and just as I find my scriptures I hear, “um sister Peine” and look up to see all of the missionaries staring at me and what appeared to be my pile of drugs! Hahaha, it was so funny, it was all good though because I explained what happened and everyone got a good laugh! But people have started calling me “the plug” which means drug dealer as a joke so that’s a bummer but I’m sure everyone will forget it soon enough! Then for p-day today we went to a park in Mogi Centro with 4 other sisters, ate cake, searched for monkeys (we weren’t successful) and took a bunch of pictures, it was a lot of fun! This week was amazing and I love it here in Brazil! I hope you all had an amazing week and I challenge you all to make it to the temple this week and be a missionary for those on the other side of the veil. I love you all! Ate proxima Semana .

Love, sister Peine
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The World Cup

Hello Everyone,

Sorry my email was pretty lame last week. It was transfer day and my companion got transferred so I spent almost my whole day at the train station waiting with all the elders to receive our new companions and then didn't have very much time to write so this week I'm gonna step my email game up. This week was SO good! I was actually really nervous to show my area because Brasil is kinda like a GIANT maze but this week went a lot better than I thought it would. My new companion's name is sister Peres. She is from Mahaws (the amazon.) When I first met her she seemed super shy and told me how she was a ballerina but within a day I saw her true self haha, she's crazy, but a good crazy....she's hilarious! She told me she's going to help me become a true Brazilian so every night she teaches me the music of Brasil and Brazilian cha-chas that go along with them! She's so funny and we are pretty much already best friends and have already made plans for her to come to Utah to meet my dog and go to Lake Powell (her life goal is to go to Lake Powell because all her American companions told her about it) her name is Kamylla Peres and I'm super excited for this transfer. We have lots of work to do! She has 13 months in the mission so she's way close to going home! I miss sister Enout a lot because we were super good friends too. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard than when I was with her. She is now companions with my CTM companion, sister Adams! Anyways, this week with sister Peres and my last week with sister Enout were full of miracles! The Lord really is always helping us so much! This week we taught a lot of people and worked really hard! We are still teaching Penha and trying to help her mom Zilda get her answer for baptism. She is all ready but she's just a little nervous to leave her other church so we are going to work with her a lot this week. I love visiting them though. They are so funny. We taught them yesterday and I invited them to share their testimony and a little about the church with a friend and Penha jumped up and ran to get her Book of Mormon because she wanted to share her testimony with us first! She told us how the night before her baptism she was super nervous about her decision so she took the Book of Mormon, said a prayer that God could confirm her answer then opened to a random page and the first scripture she saw was Mosiah 26:14-15 that says, "And it came to pass that after he had poured out his whole soul to God, the voice of the Lord came to him saying; (and this is how she read it) blessed art thou, Penha and blessed are they who were baptized in the waters of mormon. Thou art blessed because of thy exceeding faith in the worlds alone of my servants sister Peine and sister Enout" And then went on to tell us that's when she knew she needed to be baptized in the waters of mormon and the rest of her testimony and let me tell ya I have never been so happy to be a servant of the Lord! The Lord is so amazing and is helping us so much. We also made some cool new investigators this week who came to church! Jose who is 19 came to a baptism with us (our elders had a baptism) and he really liked it and told us he was going to need to stop smoking because he wants to be baptized and we hadn't even taught the word of wisdom yet! And then Manuel, he's in his 60's, we met him on the street making contacts and we gave him a pass along card and invited him to church like we do with everyone but he didn't seem to be interested so we weren't expecting to see him at church! But he showed up Sunday morning all by himself so that was a miracle and we are really excited to work with him! He called us this morning to see how we were doing and to let us know he considers us as children now so if we need anything to give him a call lol! Well those are some of the highlights this week! Oh yeah the world cup started this week and everyone is pretty excited down here! The streets are all decorated and painted. The people of Brasil have got some serious team spirit! Yesterday Brasil had their first game so sister Peres, Elder Villqcreses, Elder Juarez and I all wore our Brasil jerseys under our button up shirts to church lol. I'll attach the picture! We saw a lot of the game at a members house at lunch, they tied so that was anticlimactic! We still work during the world cup but that will change depending on how crazy the people get haha! Everyone is always watching the games so we get to watch a lot just by being on the streets! Well that's all for this week. Oh yeah, I hit 4 months in the mission on the 13th so that was nice! My companion surprised me with a piece of cake. She cut up a bunch of papers to make confetti and then right as I woke up she threw them at me (it actually scared me really bad, haha) and serenaded me with all 6 verses of some anniversary song that she knew and performed a birthday dance hahaha. It was a nice way to wake up at 6:30 a.m. Ha! Well that's about all that I can think of for this week! A mission is the best thing ever and I'm just a happy camper to be here in Brasil and be a small part of the Lord's work. I hope you are all reading the Book of Mormon with a question in mind every single day. I love you all and I hope you have a fabulous week! Ate proxima semana.

Love, Sister Peine
p.s. I hope you are all rooting for Brasil VAI BRASIL...kkk, eu amor todos votes

New companion

Kayla didn't have time to write a group email this week so I'm just posting the one she wrote me (her mom)

Today sister Enout was transferred and I have a new companion, I only met her 30 minutes ago and I'm super nervous what will happen without sister Enout because now I have to show my new companion the area! today I traveled on the train all by my self and it was the weirdest feeling ever and I cried because I was so scared. hahaha but my leader of the district came to wait with me at the train station for my new companion!! He is my "dad" in the mission and he is very kind! I'm really nervous to not have sister Enout but I think everything will be okay and I know the area good enough to show my companion! this week was really good and we have a lot of people to teach! Sorry I didn't write a group email I didn't have very much time, we stayed up really late packing sister Enout's things because a lot of things changed last minute and she ended up being transferred, we didn't think she would be, she will be companions with sister Adams, sister Adams was my companion in the CTM so thats cool!! I promise my email next week will be better, I will have more time to write!! I love you sooooo much momma!
I will send pictures in a little!! Love you momma!!!! Have the best week ever!!
love, Bay

Marriage Proposal, Baptism's and Miracles

Hello Everyone!!!

I hope you all had an AMAZING week! My week was WILD, I do not even know where to begin.... I will start with the weird and end with the good! So our investigator Rogerio asked me to marry him using an app on his phone that turns Portuguese into English and speaks with an electronic robot voice...I always pictured the first time someone would ask me to marry them would be in the mountains or at a temple or some place real nice....but I mean the voice of some strange version of siri from a cell phone sitting in the young womens room with my companion was a close 2nd!!!Ha ha ha! He assured us that it was just a joke but that if I said yes he was down! So that was weird and long story short he is no longer our investigator and his neighborhood is no longer included in our area. But the good news is this next week is the last week of my training and the GREAT news is... We had 2 baptisms this week!!!! Penha was one of the baptisms so a little back story on her and how we found her...It was my first or second week in the field when sister Enout and I were walking to an appointment from lunch. We took a little dirt road as a short cut and as we were walking a car started to pass us and just as it got in front of us it died so jokingly I turned to sister Enout saying how God killed the car for us so we could make another contact. We walked to the car to ask if he needed help. He told us no because he needed men to push his car to a house or somewhere where he could get gas, (little does he know we do push-ups now) so we told him we were going to try anyway and ended up pushing his car a good 8 blocks while he steered! Then when we were about to leave I gave him a pass along card and with the help of sister Enout we got his information and scheduled a day we could teach him a lesson and when we went to teach him his entire family was waiting and that is how we met Penha! For almost the past month and a half we have been teaching Penha and Zilda (Penha's mom) and the rest of the family. The rest said they will go to church someday when they feel they are ready but they still sometimes join in and listen to our messages so maybe one day! Two weeks ago we found out that Zilda's brother is a member of the church, he served a mission and everything so we kept telling them they should call him and tell him how they were taking the missionary lessons but they told us how they hadn't talked to him in over 2 years so they weren't going to. Then on Friday night (the day before Penha's baptism out of nowhere Penha's uncle (the member) sent her a message asking if they could stop by and say hello (after 2 years without communication) they ended up talking with him for 2 hours and inviting him to the baptism!! It was truly such a miracle! Me and sister Enout were both shocked when they told us the story. The baptism was AMAZING and Penha's aunt bore her testimony about baptism and how the gospel brings families together. The spirit was soooo strong. It was a bit of an eye opener for sister Enout and I of how much God is helping us in His amazing work! Then on Sunday we had Laura's baptism which was another miracle because she could have been baptized a month ago but she needed the permission of her mom and for almost 4 months her mom has said no, but her mom came to church for the first time last Sunday and after church the I asked her thoughts on Laura being baptized and she FINALLY said yes! Saturday night when we went to prepare the font with our zone leaders we found that the water was no longer draining because the pump that sucks the water out was broken! But the water was all dirty because when the pump broke it pushed a bunch of dirt into the system so we all stayed there very late that night emptying the font by buckets, cleaning the fount and then filling it for Laura's baptism at 8 a.m. the next morning! That was a little stressful but a member that lives right next to the church, Irma Gilmara saw us and told us to come to her house to eat food while we waited for the font to fill because it takes almost 3 hours but we all had a pretty good time and the baptism made it all worth it! data-original-height="640" /> We still haven't figured out the font problem so I think we will be emptying the font by bucket again tonight and then hopefully fixing it! This week was the best week in the mission yet! Next week we will have transfers again on Monday and we are almost positive sister Enout will be transferred considering she has almost 7 months in this area (her first area) so I will keep you posted on what happens! I love you all and I hope you are taking time to purposefully read the Book of Mormon every single day! Have an amazing week and ate proxima semana.

Con amor, Sister Peine

Upcoming baptisms

This week was amazing! We started out the week with divisions in Mogi Centro which is the interior of Sao Paulo. It is SO beautiful there and I was super pumped to see mountains! I was companions with sister Ohgutuama for the day. She is from Cape Verde Africa so it was fun to hear about whee she lives. She's way cool and told me I have to come visit her in a couple of years and she'll give me a tour of her island. She's hilarious and we are pretty much best friends now! Their apartment complex has a tennis court (which is the first tennis court I've found here) so one of these p-days they want me to teach them tennis and I'm stoked! Some other things that happened this week, we taught SO many lessons! We are still teaching Penha and Zilda, they came to church for the 4th time this week. Their baptismal date is this Saturday so keep them in your prayers! I'll let you know what happens next week! We have also been teaching a 9 year old named Laura since I got here. She has been going to church the past 4 months and has wanted to be baptized since her first Sunday but her mom doesn't want her to be baptized! So we have been trying to teach her mom and get her to come to church and after 4 months of missionaries inviting her she finally came yesterday! She and I are buddies now so we are hoping she will say yes and Laura can be baptized Saturday as well! We had 6 investigators at church yesterday so that was amazing and a couple less active families that showed up as well! We are visiting a lot of less actives and helping reactivate them! This week we made a bunch of new investigators but one of them is a lot more interested than the others, her name is Maria! We gave her the Book of Mormon lesson yesterday and it went really well, she's super excited for her next lesson AND she has 2 stinking cute dogs that sat on my lap the whole lesson and slept! I'm excited to teach her again and play with her dogs LOL! Another thing that happened is the trucks that transport gasoline here in Brazil decided they aren't going to transport gasoline until the prices go down, this has been going on for almost a week now so the buses have stopped running and now everyone is walking but its starting to affect mail systems because the people who deliver it all don't have gas and even some airports.... I hope they figure it out before I need to come home in 15 months or I might just have to stay here and eat churros forever! It's also starting to get pretty cold sometimes so today for P-day we went shopping with our Sister training leaders to buy some warmer clothes so that as a ton of fun! This week we were also told that we were invited to a devotional with Quentin L. Cook for all the missionaries in the Sao Paulo East Mission on Wednesday but then today we got a call saying it was cancelled, so that was super anti-climatic. We think it has something to do with the gas problem. Well that's all I can think of that happened this week! It was a really good week and we worked really hard, the language is coming along, still far from perfect but I'm starting to be able to talk a lot more! I love this gospel and I love watching people's lives change because of it! Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are truly perfect and I'm honored to represent them and be a part of this amazing work. I love you all and I hope you are taking time to read the Book of Mormon every single day! Hope you all have an amazing week. I'll see you all in about 14 months, haha. Ate Proxima semana, Beijo!

Love, sister Peine