Katie's Feb 4 Letter

Boa tarde, familia! Tudo bem?

Can you believe it´s already been a week? I can´t! Holy cow it went fast. So great to hear from you all! Thank you all for your emails and love and support! And to the friends that emailed, thank you!! I love to hear from you as well. You are welcome to email me as often as you´d like, I just can´t reply. I´ll do my best to get letters sent back in reply when I can! I´m horribly behind on letters... there´s just not enough time in the day, I tell ya what. But I´m working on it, so be patient with me :)

Okay, Bentley is the cutest thing in the world!!!! Oh, I´m gonna die he´s so darling!!!!! I just wanna squeeze him!!!!! Oh, so so so darling. I love all the stories and pictures!! Please keep them coming! Ahhh so cute! I´m just gushing on the inside right now. Take all the pictures you can! And Kels, just go ahead and plan on having another baby in about a year and half when I get home, okay? :) 

Glad it´s warming up for you guys! Oh how I envy the fact that you have winter right now... I am beyond excited for the day when it cools down here! Skiing sounds like it was a blast! 

I have to admit, I miss the CTM for one reason and that´s I miss getting letters from my cute family throughout the week! It was the best! But, I´m learning to be patient with letters I suppose :) Mom, after emailing yesterday, I got a letter from you!!! We ran into the Elders on the street and it was the best surprise to get a letter! Thank you!!!! I sent one to Missionties today so hopefully you´ll get that through your email in about a week when it arrives there.  Watch for it to come through! 

Okay, my turn I guess? This week has been good! Really good. It went so fast! But things are definitely getting better. Each day it gets better, I feel more comfortable, I understand more, I speak a little more. Each day gets better. It is definitely still a rollercoaster, and there´s ups and downs throughout every single day. My emotions are very much so closer to the surface here in the field haha :) But it´s great. Everything is going really well. 

It´s hot hot hot hot hot here. There were a few days this week where it had to be close to 100 degrees, zero wind, and a blazing sun. Carumba. ´Ta loco. We were a little concerned about fast sunday to say the least, because walking around in that kind of heat all day without water is not safe.... so we prayed for rain, multiple times leading up to the weekend. Let´s just say, Heavenly Father answers prayers! Saturday it rained almost all day and cooled everything down which was the biggest blessing. But it wasn´t a ton of rain, just rained a little here and there throughout the day. Sunday we woke up and everything was still wet and overcast but it wasn´t raining. I figured we were just going to be walking a few houses to make sure our investigators were going to come to church, to the chapel and back and we´d be fine without an umbrella........ Oops! We got to our first investigators house and it started to sprinkle.. we stood under a tree and thought we´d be fine... then we started walking to the next house when I swear the heavens opened and dumped down every drop of rain they had. It was out of control. We rain to a member´s house and were literally dripping when we got there after just a couple of minutes. But, we had work to do, so we braved it, linked arms, and ran back outside to the next house! After talking to all the people and ensuring a way for everyone to get to church we were soaked from head to toe. Literally as if we had jumped in a pool. Everything was wet. So, we laughed our way through the streets back to our house, quickly changed into dry clothes, and went on our merry way to church with wet hair, no makeup, and a big smile on our faces because all of our investigators came to church :) What a day! So just remember, if you ask Heavenly Father for something, be prepared to receive it :) 

We are trying hard to turn things around here. And the ward is finally jumping on board and helping us! I think they finally saw that we are actually here to work and want to help this ward, and so we´ve finally received support and enthusiasm from them which is going to help tremendously. 

We´ve found some great people here who are ready for the gospel in their lives! We´ve got a good group of people to teach now, which makes the days much better. Still always looking for more though. It´s been great to teach more and see people really start to open up to the gospel. 

Dad, you had mentioned something to me in a letter a while back about missionaries in some areas knocking on doors and asking to leave a blessing on their home and just saying a prayer with them. It´s a great way to work because people are more willing to listen to something like that! We do something similar here, just me and my companion, I don´t think many others do this. But we both were blessed with half way decent singing abilities, so we knock (or rather clap outside the gate) and explain we´re missionaries and what we´re doing, and that we would like to sing a hymn for them. So we go in sing a hymn, say a prayer blessing their family, and ask to return another day to share a message. It seems to be really effective and has helped us talk to a lot of people! Any fear I had of singing in front of people is gone now haha. 

Other news.... we´re excited to finally have money to be food! Haha we were waiting for our funds to come through forever and the bank is forever away and can only be used on P Day, so we´ve been scrounging to get by. But we have money now so we´re excited about that :) 

All is well here in Brazil. It´s all starting to feel a little more normal and a little more like home :) Day by day, that´s the key. 

I am grateful and excited to be here. It´s not easy, I promise you that. But it´s worth it. That´s the promise, right? I can already feel things changing within me and I´m excited for this time in my life. There´s some very special people here. I know Heavenly Father is a part of every detail of our lives and He watches over each of us very closely. 

I love you, family! With all my heart! I pray for you everyday. I pray you are well and happy and being blessed with all the things you need :)

All my love, 

Sister Kane