Hola!
This week was really hard for me. For the past few weeks I have been doing my best to get along, work with, and learn from my companion. She is a good missionary with a lot of faith, however, she has no patience and is extremely rude. She lectures me for no apparent reason about things I already know and am already doing daily. She also has a tendancy to snap over the smallest things and then procedes to not talk to me for long periods of time. She then gets mad at me for not being happy or not managing to hide the fact that I am not at all in a good mood because she just spent the last 30 minutes yelling at me or several hours not talking to me and then we arrive at an investigators house and I can´t suddenly flip a switch and be peppy. I don´t understand her at all. The times I have tried to talk to me about it she just tells me that she knows its a problem and its just that she is stressed and she can´t do anything about that... however, ward members and investigators have started asking questions about it and what am I to do. I can´t very well say I am sorry I am not jumping up and down from excitement right now as my companion decided to chew me out for 30 minutes because of something that all she needed to do was politely tell me that there is a better way to do whatever it was i was attempting to do or that I did something incorrectly and show me how to do it correctly so it doesn´t happen again... no instead she snaps and yells (no I am not exagerating) and then expects me to be jolly afterwards. I quite frankly am sick of it. I have done a ton of praying and tried everything I can to remain happy and smiling when she is being like that. The only thing that really was helping was singing hymns only this week she snapped at me for singing hymns and told me not to do it anymore as it gives her a headache. So instead I tried humming hymns to myself to which she had the same reaction. I then took to finding a quite place wherever we were to ask her to stop so I could say a quite prayer sitting on a park bench or something but she doesn´t like this either. For a while I was able to cheer her up when she was doing that by playing slug bug with her only here its called fusca azul and you call only do it with beetles that are blue as there are a ton of them here but this has begun to annoy her and aggravate the situation as well. I have quite frankly run out of ideas. If any of you have any additional suggestions I am open to them. I have been trying to figure out what I need to change to help this but all attempts to do so only make things worse.
In addition to all this we had a lot of cancelled appointments this week and spent a ton of time walking up giant hills many times a good 4 or 5 miles inbetween appointments only to not have anyone there when we arrived and no one willing to let us in to talk with them when we go to our alternate plan of knocking doors. Quite frankly I am positive it is the Lord protecting them from us as we are not in a state to be teaching people. It is a testament to the fact that you have to be worthy and the Lord will guide your paths to the people he has prepared and if you are not he will steer you away from them. Due to all the walking my leg once again started being a problem but not so bad as the first week. Although I have had a lot of blisters this week.
One good thing in all of this is that I have really learned of the love of the Lord. I have had a hard time not feeling worthless every day when my companion takes to yelling at me. She lacks the ability to show love to anyone.. .this is not me saying this she came right out and told me that. So I have found myself in a foreign country spending all day speaking a language that isn´t my own, walking on a leg that at times would prefer that I could sit, talking to people I don´t know, and spending all day with a companion who I either greatly enjoy talking to or is making me feel like I am the scum of the earth and the worlds worse person. However, amongst all that I have felt the love of the Lord encircling me. One day when I was having a particularily hard time and was about ready to call up the mission president and beg to be transferred or sent home pretty much anything to get away from my companion I sincerely felt about 40 people encircling me in a huge hug. I have found small things to keep me happy and finding joy in them. I am grateful that I am no longer in Sao paulo and that I can see the countryside here. I am thankful that I can see the stars at night. I am thankful for the cool breeze as I get to the top of the huge hills. I am thankful for the bits of songs that I hear on the streets that make me feel as though I am not so far away from home. I am thankful for flowers. I am thankful that I am alive, that I can walk, that I have a family who loves me and who is strong in the gospel and that I can depend on. I am thankful for the gospel, for the scriptures, for all that I have.
Sister Taylor
A Week Later!
Hola!
I don´t have a whole ton of time to write today due to reading all of your letters. That is not to say I think I received too many emails this week. They were greatly needed and thank each and every one of you for writing. I shall quickly relate this last week.
Last monday after writing you all continued to be horrible. Tuesday was no different. Pretty much from the time she woke up she was in a horrible mood and was being a jerk (for lack of a better way to describe it). I once again tried talking to her or to have companionship inventory and she dismissed the idea and we went out to work... we taugh no one of course as Heavenly Father was protecting the people of Leme from us. About 5 in the afternoon she proceeded once again to yell at me... this time for walking in the shade instead of the middle of the street and the sun right next to her... I was maybe 3 feet away. I had had it at this point and decided to just continue walking and say nothing. She continued to yell and follow me.. I walked faster... she has a problem with her knees and thus got mad at me for walking faster. She then tried to grab me and continued to yell at which point I lost it and yelled back (not proud of this but its what happened) . I told her in no uncertain terms that she was never to touch me again and that she needed to be quiet and we needed to go back to the house. She then proceeded to yell like I have never seen anyone yell before in my entire life. I wouldn´t have it and wanted to call the mission president only her being the trainer she had the phone so I just turned my back to her and started walking towards our house hoping she would follow. About 30 seconds passed and I realized the yelling had stopped and I turned around to see her collapsed in the street having a seizure. We were on a deserted street with no houses and no people around. I ran to her and did what I knew to do from the little first aid and emergency training I have (thankfully I have some). I then proceeded to try to call the hospital or emergency numbers only I don´t know what they are here in brazil and are phone didn´t have them. So I proceeded to call everyone... the mission president, district leader, zone leader, branch president, quorum president, and no one answered. She was still having a seizure (thankfully not puking at the same time) when I finally saw a woman close by and yelled to her for help. She came but didn´t have a phone to call anyone but ran to get help. I am not sure what happened next. I finally got a hold of a member in our branch here in Leme when a car showed up... at this point the seizure stopped but she was unresponsive but had a pulse and was breathing. We put her in the car and I went with her. A man was in the car driving. I never even saw his face and he never spoke. We got to the hospital after about 25 minutes (we were in the furthest part of the city from the hospital when it happened.). When we arrived at the hospital the questions began. Starting with what is her full name... like I knew that it was Sister de Oliveira... I only remembered that her first name was something strange (Kaiwanie). Then they asked what happened... like I knew how to explain that... (I now know the word for seizure in portuguese!). They asked if this had happened before, if she had allergies, medical conditions... after saying nao sei (I don´t know) many times I finally just said look I have only known her for 3 weeks and I am learning portuguese still. I don´t know how to answer your questions! Luckily about this point in time the wife of the member I managed to reach showed up (she used to be a nurse) and did everything. I managed mostly through actions to explain what happened and she told the hospital personel. I also managed to get ahold of the mission president about then and he started driving immediately to where we were. The rest of that evening is a blur but after many hours both of us were in the car with the mission president headed to ribeirao. (Before this I had explained to him exactly what happened... or rather I told the AP by phone as I no longer had the capacity to speak in foreign languages and he told the mission president). We arrived around midnight and they stopped to get subway! yay for familiar food. We slept in the mission home that night and didn´t have to get up on schedule the next day. The next day we rested.. I took a very long shower as it was like a normal bathroom there and was a great treat. I did a lot of reading the scriptures and listening to music and my companion was with the mission presidents wife all morning talking. In the end. She was transferred and I now have a new companion Sister Pereira who is awesome. She is very nice, organized, funny, and we get along well.
We returned back to Leme late wednesday night. Thursday we pretty much started from ground zero and organized the work here. The rest of the week was great. We have tons of lessons pretty much every day. Finally had the very first meeting with the branch president in the entire time I have been here (though it was very short). And we are going to have a baptism (hopefully) this saturday and two more the following (if all goes well). We are teaching about 4 families right now one that has 8 people and is way awesome. We shall see how things go. I am low on time but if I finish my letter to the mission president quickly I shall send pictures.
Thanks again for all the emails!
Sister Taylor
