CTM Arrival!

HEY HEY HEY 

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT

I'M FINALLY HERE

ALRIGHT so life in the CTM (MTC in English/Missionary Training Center) is pretty rad. And by that I mean we spend like 16 hours a day in a classroom learning Portuguese and fighting over the thermostat. It's what we're going to be doing for the next 5ish weeks until we actually get to head out to the various parts of Brazil where we've been assigned to serve as missionaries in and I'm so excited!! My district (group of about 4 pairs of missionaries; we have half Sisters and half Elders) are all so nice and so fun. My companion (fellow sister missionary that I'm with 24/7) is super sweet and reminds me so much of my friend Sis. Mickelson!!! She's hilarious and so willing to talk to everyone in Portuguese and I love her! 

haha okay so here's a funny thing somebody said to me this week: "Sister Morata...your eyes...Chinese??" Most Brazilians think I'm either Chinese or Japanese and don't believe me when I say I'm American!! (all the other American missionaries are pretty branco)

Aaaand another thing is that we have to call people here by their titles, like "Elder" and "Sister" and we have to avoid inappropriately casual language AKA we can't refer to people as "dude." Let's just say that I'm still getting used to that hahaha

Okay sorry this email is so jumbled; we get less time to email in the CTM than we do when out in the field (outside the CTM). 

So learning Portuguese has been capital R O U G H. When people tell you that you have to practice teaching missionary lessons in a foreign language on the second day in the CTM, they are (alert) NOT KIDDING. Let's just say the first couple days I wanted to cry my eyes out because it's total immersion and I understood about -5% of what anybody is saying to me. In fact, I actually cried during choir practice on one of my first days here because I was so overwhelmed (I wanted to go home), feeling like I could never get the language down. But I know that missionaries are blessed with the gift of tongues, to speak and understand languages when they're on the Lord's work, so I had faith that if I just stuck with it, I'd get enough of the language to accomplish what the Lord wants me to accomplish. So here's where the miracle comes in: my companion and I were in our first lesson with our "investigator" (person who is interested in learning about the church, but this investigator was a practice one/was really our professor but he never breaks the 4th wall) and we were struggling to teach about eternal families and God's love and I remember just looking at my companion, speaking broken portugues, and you could just feel it. Like, the Spirit of God was SO STRONG. That is the gift of tongues. Not necessarily magically learning all of portugues in 24 hours, but speaking what you can and having God take care of the rest. We may not have said in words what we wanted to say, but you could feel the truth of what we were saying. It was absolutely amazing. I testify to you that these gifts from God are real and AMAZING. 

Also, we got to see a recorded broadcast of a missionary devotional (spiritual speech type thing) given by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland at the MTC in Provo, UT. It was FANTASTICO (my companion's favorite portugues word). I don't have time to share all I learned, but I'll share this gem: "Missionary work is hard because salvation is not a cheap experience. It is not easy for you because it was NEVER easy for Him. The road to eternal life always goes through Gethsemane." 

Holy muffins. Arrow to my soul.

I'd like to leave that thought with my testimony that Jesus Christ has felt everything we have felt and more. He can comfort us because He knows us. Christmas isn't Christmas without Easter. He came and because He came and lived and sacrificed and died and lived again, we can overcome all and live again. Christ died for us and now He lives for us. And I am so BEYOND happy to be able to share that message, share the love and the peace and the joy I feel from this restored gospel to the people here. 

I love you all! Thank you so much for all your support and love and prayers. 

Todo meu amor,

Sister Morata

PS. I wish I could send pictures but the computers in the CTM don't process memory card readers or whatever :( 

PPS. GREEN GREEN GREEN, all of São Paulo is SO GREEN (at the least the part that I've seen). I didn't know this much green existed in one place naturally (hahaha @ desert rat lyfe)

PPPS. 8 years of French classes have come in so handy. The grammar is really similar in Romantic languages so that's a huge blessing. Except when I accidentally say something French to my instructor instead of in Portuguese. Oops hahaha

a girl with a mission (call)

When I was 10 years old, I wrote myself a "time capsule letter" that I vowed not to open for 10 years. On the cover I wrote:

There's a couple ironic things that come to mind when I think of this letter:

1) At the time I wrote this, the missionary age for girls was still 21 and wouldn't be changed to 19 for another five years. If I had researched a little more before writing this letter, I would've realized that 10 years from then, I still wouldn't be old enough to go on a mission; luckily, President Monson dropped the missionary age a couple years to save kid-me some embarrassment about miscalculating when I could be on a mission. (OK, that's probably not why he changed it, but it still would make kid-me feel better.) 

2) This point is a little more interesting. I like how it says "college or mission," like I hadn't concretely decided what I would be doing at the age of 20. I had left myself a couple options.

And this brings me to well, me, about eleven months ago. I was sitting in Sunday School in the Provo 150-something singles ward, listening to another lesson that somehow evolved into mission prep. I can't tell you the exact "when" or "why," but at some point, I realized that I wanted to serve a mission. So I prayed about it. I prayed about whether I should stay in school or start my mission papers. I prayed and prayed.

And prayed.

And...either option felt like the right choice.

It didn't make sense to me. All these other girls were talking about how they had felt such a strong prompting that a mission is what they needed to do. They got concrete answers and I wanted one, too. I wanted trumpets heralding, I wanted the clouds to clear and a plane to loop the words in the sky in bold white smoke: "CAMI YOU NEED TO DO THIS ______." I wanted a definite answer. But every time I fasted and prayed about staying in school, it seemed like the right move. And then every time I fasted and prayed about going on a mission, it felt equally right.

Eventually, I understood. 

God trusted me. He trusted me enough to let me make this decision on my own. He trusted me to use my Divinely-gifted agency to pick my path for the next year and half. 

I didn't realize how hard that could be. In some ways, it's difficult to do what you know the Lord needs you to do, but at least there's a surety behind it. There's the 1 Nephi 3:7 promise that whatever He asks of you, He will provide a means for. But being able to choose for myself meant that I kept second-guessing. What if I would make the wrong choice? What if I was just forcing myself into the mission field, taking the spot of another girl that the Lord actually needed? Or what if I was missing specific opportunities in school that would lead me to my future job? Or what if I met my future husband? What if, what if, what if?

After even more praying, I finally got the courage and made my choice. I decided that I would do what I wanted to do and believed the Lord believed I could do.

In March of 2016, I started my mission papers. I decided that, since this is what I wanted to do, I would hit the ground running, have my papers in as soon as the 120-day mark hit, and be on my mission the week after I turned 19. If the Lord really believed that I could do it, then the road to get there would be straightforward, right?

Well, I was wrong. Medical problems came up and I thought I would never be able to go on a mission. I remember crying in my car after my physical at the doctor's office, asking Heavenly Father why this had to be so hard. If it's His will, why does it seem so out of reach and impossible? I cried and felt hopeless until a phone call from my mom pulled me out of my murmuring, to put it in Book of Mormon terms. "Trust Heavenly Father," she told me. "Don't lose hope." And so I started praying to have hope every time the despair kicked in again. Eventually, months went by and, by a God-sent miracle, I had my papers in that July, a little under two months after I'd planned.

And though I hit a few road blocks, I was still sure that I'd be out in the field come October. Whenever people asked me where I wanted to go, I told them "anywhere that I don't have to Visa-wait for." I didn't have forever. My availability date was in early September, and I was 110% positive that the Lord knew how much I wanted to just get out there and serve so He'd send me as soon as possible. I was 115% positive He wouldn't send me somewhere that would make me wait. I'd already struggled enough in this process, surely He thought my patience had been tested enough.

And so pretty much every day for the next couple weeks, I was checking the mail five times a day to see if my call came. And then, on the one day that I happened not be home, I was meeting with the missionaries at my best friend's house and I joked that my mission call was probably sitting in my mail box. Well, the ironic thing was, when I came home that night, I went straight to the mailbox. 

And there it was:

a big white envelope with my name on it.

And so on a roasting July night, I was standing in my living room with half the ward and then some, holding this packet, these words that would tell me where I would be for the next 18 months of my life. I opened it.

"Dear Sister Morata,

You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You are assigned to labor in the Brazil Ribeirão Preto Mission ... You should report to the Brazil Missionary Training Center on Tuesday, December 13, 2016."

December?

I had to wait more?

It was a bit of a hard pill to swallow at first. I thought that the Lord knew how much I wanted to serve and how soon I wanted to leave. But after much prayer, I realized that had made the choice to serve--the choice to be the Lord's hands whenever He needed me. And while I wouldn't report to the MTC for nearly five months after I got my call, I knew that this assignment was given by priesthood holders who held the keys to send missionaries where they would be able to reach those were ready for the message of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

With that, I promised my Heavenly Father that I would love the Brazilian people with all my heart. I would serve them. I would be patient and wait all those months for my Visa. I would go and do.

 And while it has been a long wait, I'm officially down to one day until I fly out to the São Paulo MTC. One day until I get to go on my long-awaited mission. And I couldn't be more excited.