welp I'm not a kid anymore

9/4/17
WHOOOOOO okay so I'm 20 now which means I'm old lol.

Buuut this week was incredible! We found so many awesome peeople to teach and one of them is a man named Marcello who had the missionaries visit his family when he was a kid and about a year ago, a missionary gave him a Book of Mormon which he's kept in his car this whole time. He's super interested and it's super awesome. We're also teaching an atheist who's reading the Book of Mormon and he asks us a bunch of questions and everytime he asks a question we're like HELLO there is an answer for that in the book so read it.

Not a whole lot more to say this week except that this past Sunday was great because it was Fast Sunday and everybody in church gets to share their testimony if they would like and I love feeling the Spirit testify to me that this is all true! 

Sorry this is email is so short but I hope you all have a wonderful week!!!!!

Todo o meu amor,

Sister Morata

Fotos:

Whoooooooo surprise bday party with the other sisters :)

BRASIL

miracles miracles miracles

8/28/17
Basically I got a very good answer to many, many prayers this week:

Quit whining and look for the blessings.

This week started out a little rough because we were scrambling to plan things because we didn't have a whole lot of people but after lots of praying and studying, we found a ton of awesome people this week.

But spiritual thought this week, everybody go read "Don

OKAY this computer is weird and didn't let me finish the email lol

anyways,

"Don't Look Around, Look Up!" from Elder Choi in the April 2017 General Conference because literally this talk helped me through my week. When we're struggling, we need to stop looking around for help when the One who can help us the most is above! We need to remember that the people around us and ourselves included will never be perfect and that we shouldn't get too distressed over that because we are all here to learn and grow and that it's best to look up, see the Lord's hand in all things, and have the courage to keep going. 

I love you guys and have a great week!

ps. this is my last pday as a 19 year old hahahhahaha aka I've been ridiculously excited for my birthday LOL

Todo o meu amor,

Sister Morata

pictures:

a cool lil pic my companion took

me and my new companion, Sister Oliveira!!

anotha one

8/21/17
Alright okay so semana 6 of the transfer is usually the longest or the shortest or the craziest week of the transfer and this past week has been all 3 and has included 

a couple of sister missionaries running around in the rain at night without umbrella or apartment keys or cell phone trying to find somebody who could call the other sisters to bring the apartment keys hahaha. 

but I'm super excited to start this new transfer because we are going to find some awesome people to teach!!! I've got a new companion, Sister Oliveira, and she's great and it's her last transfer and I'm killing another one but I'm excited! We've got a ton of cool stuff/lessons planned this week and I'm excited. 

Spiritual thought of the week: So lately I've been thinking a lot about how Satan gets to us, gets us to weaken our faith and not want to keep going. And after a lot of scripture/general conference talk reading and studying, the remedy that I discovered is nothing different than what I was taught as a kid, the basic recipe that you hear all the time:

read the scriptures

go to church

pray daily

because these are the concrete building blocks, the small and simple things, that make up our testimony and bedrock our faith in Christ. Satan tries to get us in these things - to skip a prayer or not come to church - because he knows that when we don't do these things, it's fatal. We lose our grip and our faith. So my invitation is to keep praying every day, read a couple of verses (in the Book of Mormon preferrably :), and go to church every week and through these small and simple things, the Lord makes us stronger. We don't realize it, but it happens. 

Life is good in Ribeirão and the weather this past week was all cloudy and cool aka heaven and I hope you all have a great week!!!

LOVE YOU

todo o meu amor,

Sister Morata

ps. seriously, i'm such a bum with taking pictures SORRY MOM

can't think of a title lol sorry

8/14/17

hello so things are heating up in ribeirão because it went from slightly chilly/cold to super hot, like, overnight hahaha

BUUUUT I learned some really great lessons this week. I've been slightly super discouraged lately since this is my first transfer without a progressing investigator and without anybody progressing missionary life is like, "Well what do I do now?" And my poor, absolutely wonderful companion has been more patient than ever with me and seriously I love her. Anyways, so one particularly day I was feeling super down and I wanted to just leave the neighborhood we had planned for the day but I felt the urge to try just one more door. So we went to that one more door and a woman, named Edna, answered and said that she had met the missionaries a year ago but they stopped visiting her and that she wants to keep learning and basically the Lord answered her prayers and mine. Really, our Father in Heaven's timing is much more perfect than our own and I have to be more patient. 

Basically this week has been a very humbling one and we continue to learn every day :)

Thanks so much for all the love and prayers and HAVE A GREAT WEEK 

Todo o meu amor,

Sister Morata

Pictures:

PIZZA

alright so our lunch appointment fell and literally nobody could give us lunch so we decided to call the mission president, Pres. Scholz, and ask to have lunch there and so they let us and it was great :)