Parabens para mim!!!!

Sister Shell and her newbie Sister Ferril

And lots of other people too- like Derrick Sister Kyles, Amanda Hedrick, and Amanda Miller for coming home!
And me!! For my birthday!!! Woohoo!!!

Last week was just a week full of miracles.
We had a ride to transfers!! When a week starts off with a car ride, you know its gonna be a fabulous week.

Monday: We ran around like crazy trying to say goodbye to everyone and their mom for Sister Rice and somehow managed to do it.

Tuesday: We got a ride from the amazing Pamela to transfers. We walked in and talked and got to see lots of people because apparently the whole world got transferred.

Sister Shell and Sister Goimerac (Original MTC companions)

Everybody was super nervous, but I was just happy. It was weird because everyone somehow knows that this is my last transfer. Elder Lago was walking around waving at everyone with two hands and 6 fingers- because he is going home with us and we only have 6 weeks. So that was pretty funny. Then, we all sat down and got settled for the big transfers. They made the tiny group of newbies stand up and we all cheered and yelled like nothing you have ever heard. And thats when I saw and knew who my companion was for the first time, because we only got one new sister in the mission. And all the people who knew I was training nudged me hard with their elbows and winked and stuff.

Then transfers started and everyone cheered a lot more, and Sister Rice got transfered to my old zona, and then they called my name and next to my picture they had a cartoon picture of a sister- as if the whole world had no idea who I would be training. And I walked up and hugged her and the Assistentes were all, "NO, NO YOU CAN'T SIT WITH HER NOOOO!" Like that would ruin the huge surprise or something. But I'm obedient so I didn't sit with her and everyone laughed because it was hilarious.
Then everybody left, we took some more pictures with Sister Rice and then we had an awesome lunch for the trainers, the newbies, and all of the people who were leaving- including Sister Duncan! So it was fun to see her again right before she left :)

Goodbye Sister Rice

Then we had a long training meeting, and practiced contacting. Thats when I knew I had a good companion, because she jumped right in and spoke up, whereas all of the other newbies were pretty silent.
President gave us a ride home, and found out more about her. She is a convert of just 3 years and 9 months. She is 28 years old, and she likes to cook. She is an absolute sweetheart.

Sister Shell, Sister Ferril, Sister and President Broadbent

We had a lesson first thing with Larissa and Laysa (apparently I have no idea how to spell Brasileiro nomes yet..) and Denise, the wife of Bispo, came with us. That went well! Even if little Pedro was being impossible. Sister Ferril spoke right up. She is powerful!!

Wednesday: We went to see Sueli, who is, as they say, a "dry mormon." Her "husband" doesn't feel like getting married, so she can't get baptized. But she's been coming to church for years and is basically a member.
Then we taught Janete, who still doesn't feel like getting baptized, but is trying to keep the word of wisdom!!
Then, we talked to a lot of people at Dea and Ana's house.
Lia dumped us. Temporarily.
But!! That night, we stopped a woman right before going home, and talked to her. She's 19 and has a little 1 year old. We asked if we could visit her and she was all "yeah, of course, I'll show you my house, when are y'all coming by, what time is church?" So we marked an appointment for Saturday. She commented to us, "I usually just come home from work, take a shower and go to bed. But for some reason, I decided to go outside and walk around tonight. When I got to the street, I had no idea where I was going. And then y'all talked to me. I know that God set this up."
MILAGRE.

Thursday: We taught Larissa and Laysa again, and their friend Pedro was there. His grandma passed away recently- Monday. And Monday we prayed with him and Larissa and Laysa. In our other lesson, we taught him to pray and promised him that he'd feel better. Thursday, we asked if he'd been praying and he said yes. We asked how he'd been feeling and he said, "MUCH better!"
Prayer works.
That night, Dea and Ana couldn't come to our Noite Familiar like we'd planned with some awesome members. We thought of Leidiane, that contact, last minute with an hour to spare and ran by to invite her. She said yes!!! We marked to swing back and pick her up at 7:40. But I knew it was a little long, and that she'd bring her baby, and its night.. So we ran to our LMA (ward mission leader) and asked him to give us a lift. He did! And she loved the Noite Familiar!!

Friday: Lots of stuff fell through!!! But we had our interviews with President, and that went super well. I'm gonna miss Presidente Broadbent a lot.

Saturday: Lots of things fell through!! But we taught Leidiane and.....
DRUMROLLL....
She accepted baptism for the 2 of November!!!! And she came with us for the RS activity!

Sunday: She came to church!!!!! And loved it!!!

So yeah, I guess all you need to do to find an eleita is to have an awesome new greenie, talk to everyone, and have some miracles.

com amor,
Sister Shell

The New Zone

Sister Shell drinking Coconut Milk (Who is this girl and what have you done with Kirsten) 

6 weeks, 6 weeks, 6 weeks left better get it done!!!

Scary Bridge in Sister Shell's area

6 weeks, 6 weeks, 6 weeks left, get ready, GAME ON!
Yeah, I'm a dork and just mission-ified high school musical 3.
Deal with it!!

As they say, my friends, it is the finaly countdown, and what a strange thing it is. Who knew months could turn into seconds so fast?

Segunda-feira: Well, I emailed y'all! That was pretty fun!!
We tried to teach some people, and then went to District Meeting! It actually turned out to be a zone meeting, and that was really cool. They told us to go home that night, and during planning, pray and determine a goal for baptisms for the month of October.
We stopped by a member's house, and they are just so awesome. Carol e Marcos and their cute little kids. I just love them :)
Then, at planning that night. We got done praying about what our goal should be for baptisms for October. When the prayer ended, we both stayed kneeling for a moment. After a few moments of just silence, we sat in our chairs and it basically went like this:
SS: So, what number do you have in mind?
SR: No, you first, what number do YOU have?
SS: No, no. You can go first.
SR: Well, my number is a little high, so you.
SS: My number is also high.
After a few minutes of beating around the bush, we said our numbers and set our goal.
6.
SIX.
Thats pretty high, considering this area hasn't had a baptism since February.
But there are definitely six people here that we can baptize.
We are definitely going to need lots of prayers this transfer :)

Tuesday: P-DAY DA MISSÃO!!! Yupp, thats right folks. We had a MISSION P-DAY at the Jardim Botânico! It was so fun! I saw a tucan, and monkeys swung through the trees, and people sang and played guitars, and Elder Morgan did his cool beatboxing thing and I caught it on video. Booyah! It was so fun!!

Our zone, even though its the smallest, won our first round of tug-o-war, but then lost the second... My old zona, Santo Andre came in second overall. It was pretty fun :)
And the weird/super cool part? We were given permission to leave and be in jeans for P-day!! It was such a weird feeling. being in jeans in public. How do you people do this??
It was super fun, and amazing and I just love my mission. I got to lay on the grass with Sister Goimarac, Sister Jacobsen (my MTC peeps) and Sister Flannery (who is going home with us) for like 40 minutes during some free time. That was so fun. Then Presidente came by and made us into a human table. Good ab workout, that. I love Presidente!
Then, our appointments fell through!!!

Wednesday: The moment everyone has been waiting for since I finally got here to São Paulo Sul... Sister Wilcox and I got to be companions for the day on divisions!! It was awesome. We kicked booty, if I do say so myself.

We taught Janete, and started her baptism ficha. We just have to get her interviewed. I'm hoping that lesson really helped her understand how important baptism is!
And! Miracle of miracles!! We finally caught Dea and Ana at home!! At first, it was only Ana so we taught her outside. But then Dea showed up and we had another lesson!! We are going back again today. After no contact (o inimigo está trabalhando bastante contra elas) for a while, that was awesome!
Then we went to our atividade that didn't happen.. awkward. But oh well!

Thursday: We saw Rita and Ramily!! I am really so sad. They are moving this week. :(
We also taught Larissa and Liza. We had gotten some really good tips from Sister Wilcox and Sister Gustafson during divisions about how to deal with moms- apparently Sister Wilcox is really good at it. Because, gente, I am so darn tired of Larissa and Liza not being baptized. Heck, this Sunday, Larissa was being a missionary at church and helping out a menos ativa. They are so ready to be baptized. So we planned to talk to their mom after our lesson with them that day. But, of course, this guy came by and started talking to her. We decided to wait. After waiting for like 40 minutes, we had to sprint to another appointment.
We also finally touched based with Oscar!! That was fun!

Friday: Everything fell through!! yay! But thats okay, because I still did my contatos.

Saturday: Literally everything fell through again!! But we still did our contatos. And, randomly we got transfer calls that night. I know, super early right?
They walked through our zona names, and got to us....
"Sister Rice e Sister Shell, no Jardim Clímax.... vão ficar juntas mais uma transferência!!"
So we were pretty confused, because Sister Rice has been feeling for about 2 weeks now that she was getting transfered. So we were all "Whaaat? Thats cool.." And then Sister Rice sat up and goes, "OH MY GOODNESS I GET TO KILL YOU!!!! :D" I was not terrified, I promise.

Sunday: Got a ride to church!! And good thing too, because it is hot, hot, hot! Its great :) I'm gonna get the best tan of my life.
We ate lunch with the RS president, did contatos, and went to a ward council meeting. That was a super productive meeting, and I am excited. I challenged them to read chapter 13 in Pregar Meu Evangelho, and they are praying for each one of our investigators now. Booyah!
Then!! We finally got to teach Ana Cristina!! When we got to her house, we noticed we had 2 missed calls from the Assistentes. Say whaaat? So I walked out onto her balcony and called them back.
Thats when Elder Myers asked me if I would be willing to train this transfer.
Surprise! I told him of course I'd be willing to train.
Then he asked me to hand the phone to Sister Rice.
Yeah, turns out she is being transferred after all.
Biggest shock of my life right there.
Then we used President Uchtdorf's talk and had an awesome lesson with Cris.

So yeah, thats my week!! I love y'all!! Wish me luck! And by luck, I mean, pray for me.

Love y'all tons! Sorry the pictures still aren't working...

com amor,
Sister Shell

Can you find Sister Shell? :)

Spirit of Elijah, BIRTHDAY MONTH (almost) and 16 Months (almost)!!

Well, its almost my BIRTHDAY MONTH!! Thats right, folks, I'll be 21!! Super old, right?
Oh, and this week, I'll hit 16 months on the mission. How in the world does time go by so fast??
Oh, and this is week 5 of the transfer.
Don't worry, I am totally NOT PANICKING.

Sister Shell showing how mature she has become!! :) 

Yummy Treats!!

The District!

Monday: Well, we had a Noite Familiar with Bispo and his family and our investigators, Dea and Ana. It was perfect! Bispo prepared a church video, but at the last second, pressed play for the wrong one. He almost changed it back, but Sister Rice, Pamela and I all felt prompted to be like "Noo, its okay Bispo, just let this one play out!" And it was so perfect for Dea. It was about repentance, and how God's love for us will never change. Dea really liked it!! It was just amazing.

Tuesday: We had a lesson with Lia, which went really well. She's about 60 years old, and for some reason, at the beginning of our lesson, she started talking about a very neat experience that she had when she was younger. At the end, she just said, "I don't even know why I'm telling y'all this." We knew why. We testified to her about temples, because she had been talking about her mother who passed away before she ever really got to know her. I've never felt so strongly the Spirit of Elijah in a lesson. The whole time I was just thinking "No, she HAS to get baptized!! Her mom is right here waiting for her!" The lesson was completely led by the Spirit, and while she didn't agree to baptism, she did say that she would pray about it.
We also taught Ana Cristina that night! Thats always hilarious. It was a good lesson. Its been hard for her the past couple of weeks to come to church, with how much she works and how tired she is, and the fact that her husband is the pastor of another church. But we love her and she just loves the gospel!

Wednesday: We had a lesson with cute little Janete! We planned, for some unkown reason, to teach her about templos. When we got there, she too started talking about her mom and parents, and how much she misses them and her other relatives that have passed away. It was another lesson where the Spirit of Elijah was just so strong. The Spirit was once again tangible, and she promised to pray about baptism.
Then, Denise (the wife of Bispo) to a lesson we had planned with Larissa e Lysa, but Lysa wasn't home yet. Denise asked where else we wanted to go, and we got the impression to go visit Oscar. We stopped him in the street a little while ago, nine days after his wife passed away, and hadn't been able to contact him since. We got there, and he didn't have much time, but we left a scripture and the Spirit was there. He told us to come back, so we definitely will!
That night we had an atividade at the church to start off our Ontis competition, just like the one that we were doing back in Utinga. For every thing that the members do to help the work, they get little "ontis" the money in the Book of Mormon. After a month, we're going to have an auction where they can buy cake, cookies, etc. with their ontis. I'm super excited to get this thing started!!

Thursday: We had weekly planning and then Zone Conference, which was amazing!! I almost don't remember anything because I GOT A PACKAGE AND I WAS SO HAPPY!!!! :D Thanks mom :)

It was a really good Zone Conference. I escaped bearing what is nicknamed a "dying testimony" because Presidente said that he wants everybody to do that at the P-Day for the whole mission. Maybe I'll escape that one too and there will be another smaller zone conference or something.
Eep!
Anyways. Zone Conference was all about working more with members, and capturing the true "vision" of this mission. As they were talking I had a thought- our vision is not doing 500764 contatos every day, or baptizing everyone so we can boost our numbers, or even having 70 Noite Familiares every week. The true vision, really, is the Savior, kneeling in that garden, paying for every single one of us. The vision is to get everyone to feel and accept that sacrifice, and to change because of it. THAT is the vision.

Friday: We taught Dea about the Restoration of the Gospel at 10 in the morning. We'd already marked with her, but we ended up waking her and Ana up because they forgot haha. But it was good, the Spirit was there, and they are just so cute :) I love them!!
We were also finally able to have a lesson with Larissa and Lysa about the importance of reading scriptures, because Lysa has been struggling a bit with reading every day. Hey, its tough when you are 11!
We went and visited Rita and found out that she is moving. Like to another part of the country. I'm so sad. Ramily is staying here, but I don't think she will be living in our area. It was sad :( I love them so much!
Then, we were super excited to have an appointment with Viviane, a woman we stopped to talk to in the street the other day. She's a mom with 3 kids, and we were super excited when she told us to come by at 8 o'clock on Friday night. We just really want to teach a family! So we got there, rang the doorbell 4 times, called her name until we were hoarse. Nothing. I was pretty sad about that one. But, we prayed to know what else to do and we were like "Well, we still need some contatos for today." So we walked off to do contatos. Randomly, Sister Rice decides to call this less active named Cicero that they met in the street forever ago, who is rarely ever in Jardim Climax. He answered! And told us he was in Climax!! We met up with him at this little park.
Y'all. He is the Brasileiro, older version of Frank!!! Its hilarious. It just makes me so happy.
Anyways.
That lesson was totally led by the Spirit. He tells us he doesn't want to come back, but then he asks us for scriptures and for talks to read. And he does everything we ask him to do. The Spirit was so strong. I might have seen a few tears leave his eyes. We kept inviting him, and testifying to him, and I knew he was feeling the Spirit because he kept saying "No, stop, please, don't..." But we told him we wouldn't stop. This is our job, and its important. At one point, I told him to stop denying the fact that Heavenly Father is calling him back, and to stop denying the Spirit. He acknowledged that thats exactly what he is doing, and told us he doesn't want to come back. I told him that its not about what he wants, its about what the Lord wants. He ended up thanking us, still telling us that he didn't want to come back, but promising to read all the scriptures and talks.
It was such a miracle. Thats why our lesson fell through.

Saturday:Lots of things fell through, but! We had a meeting with our LMA that was really productive. That night, as I was doing a contact at an onibus and Sister Rice was trying to help even though her voice is totally gone (for the first time EVER in her life) who would get off the onibus other than Cicero! He didn't see us. I finished talking to the guy (who's name also happened to be Cicero) and we called Cicero. Sister Rice tried to talk to him first but he had no idea what was going on, so she shoved the phone at me. I said hello, and the first thing he said was, "WHO was that? That was horrible!" It was so funny. We told him we saw him get off the onibus, and he was like "WHAT???" So he came back and we had another little lesson with him.
The Lord is really trying to pull him back. Its amazing how much Heavenly Father loves each of his children.

Sunday: We were super excited because Pamela said she would go get Dea and Ana again for church. We sat through all of Relief Society looking through the door and wondering where they were. Towards the end, Pamela's head pops up in the door window, and she motioned for us to come out. She explained that she went, woke them up, and was waiting for them to get ready. Then, Dea's mom showed up and told Pamela that Dea and Ana would go to HER church instead, and talked and talked to Dea and told her she had to come. Pamela pleaded, like a true returned missionary, with Dea, telling her that she could visit the next week at her mom's church, that she needed to go. But, Dea's mom must have really put on the pressure because Dea finally told Pamela to go ahead and go to church, that they would go to her mom's church, and that they would come the next week.
It was so sad.
And Ana Cristina didn't come. But! Lysa and Larissa were there, and so was a less active we met and talked to and invited once on the street! So that was good.
We ate lunch with alllll of the Primary kids because it was the Day of the Children here. It was so fun.
Then, our lessons fell through. We walked to the Women's Conference, and I did 34 contatos. I felt pretty good about that :)
The Women's Conference was amazing. As soon as the first musical number started, the Spirit overwhelmed me, and I almost started crying. It was incredible. I got this feeling during it that Heavenly Father is very happy with me. It was a good feeling. It was fun to hear in Portuguese, but I also can't wait to read it in English haha.
I am so excited for General Conference!!! Every single person who reads this needs to watch it.

I love you all!!!!!

com amor,
Sister Shell