A few days before Mother's Day I received a wonderful note from Elder Gaden's mother. It was written in Portuguese and I was able to understand all of it... I was so happy. She had crocheted these beautiful towels and embroidered my name on them. I was so touched. Her son is one of those wonderful missionaries that you wish you could duplicate 100 times.
At temple we ran into Elder Gaden's grandma and Aunt....what are the chances...it's a small world!
Then on the weekend we had 20 new members come to the temple to do baptisms for those family members of theirs who have passed on and didn't get a chance to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ in this life...and didn't have a chance to be baptized. What a special day!
This is going to be a monthly event at the temple for all the recent converts in the Brazil Campinas Mission. Afterwards we met in the cafeteria and ate brownies and some ice-cream. It was great to hear their stories of how they found the church and how each gained their testimonies. One of the ladies that went to the temple did the baptism for her mother who had passed away. It was a tender experience for her.
After Elder Holland and Elder Maynes visited our mission and missionaries, we had our biannual Mission Presidents conference in Sao Paulo. We were privileged to have Elder Holland, Elder Maynes and their wives at our conference as well. It was a special experience to be taught by them. I have pages and pages of notes. Elder Holland gave the most beautiful and in depth lesson on the atonement I have ever heard. I will never think of the atonement the same again.
Sao Paulo is a huge city with over 13 million people. Driving in the city was a bit scary.
Sis. Holland spoke to the wives and told us of some very personal experiences that their family has had in the past year. Sis. Holland is the most elegant, kind, and spiritual woman. What a wonderful example for us all.
I had a funny experience.... in between the priesthood session and the dinner (with Elder Holland, Elder Maynes and their wives). We had about 45 minutes while we were waiting for the men to finish their priesthood meeting. Sis. Holland and Sis. Maynes were waiting in the room together with some of the portuguese speaking women and myself. Sis. Holland really wanted to talk with the Portuguese speaking wives but she didn't know any Portuguese. I was the only one that could speak English and a little portuguese so I was the "translator" for sister Holland and Maynes. When the men finally joined us Sis. Holland told Bruce that they were having a delightful time visiting and that I was the translator for them. I wish I had a picture of Bruce's face when she said this....he was totally shocked. He said "Kathy is translating?"....in a very surprised voice.....I couldn't help but laught :) I have to admit it was really really bad translating....but we did communicate :)
*************
This is a picture of the set up at the conference. They had translators for all the wives.
They gave each of the Presidents and their wives the new set of Portuguese scriptures with our names engraved on them. Bruce was so touched seeing "President Bruce Hill" engraved on his scriptures.
No comments:
Post a Comment