Monday March 22, 2021 Email from Kaitlyn

To: Mom
From: Kaitlyn.garcia@missionary.org
Date: Monday, March 22, 2021
Subject: The Week of Firsts!

Hey mom!! How's your week been? I can't wait to hear everything! I've been loving all the pictures too! Okay before I start though, we have district pday so I'm going to call after were done with that around 2pm my time. Just a heads up :) 

- How does it feel to have the white car all fixed up? Sorry about that again... 

- I love that Brooklyn wore my Hunter boots haha! And my helmet for 20 minutes! Whatta dork! 

- Lame that the snow came back! It looked like it was so nice before

- I love the picture with Charli! I miss her so much! I didn't realize just how much until I saw her 

- How's the diet going?? 

- What about Christian? Any better this week?? 

- THANK YOU FOR THE PACKAGE!! It made my whole day and we all had a blast with it! You're seriously amazing! 

- We have appointments for the COVID vaccine on Tuesday so I'll keep you posted on that 

- I love the furniture by the fireplace! I think it'll look really good there :) 

- I'll go more in depth when I call but here's these! 

Okay I think that's all I have, now here's the weekly rundown! 

MONDAY

Mom! So I think Monday's are just gonna be a little short because you pretty much know all that's going on during the day haha! I hope you had the best birthday and you were able to do something for yourself:)  Tonight we had a lesson with Leona! She's an English student and the one that loves to talk haha! She's super sweet though and I love talking to her. We also had our weekly district call to pray together and you'll never guess who was picked to say the closing prayer? ME! I was kinda nervous but it worked out and it was fine, at least I think. I actually really like the idea of praying as a district once a week. I feel like I really know my district and am close with them:) It was a pretty uneventful day when it came time for bed haha! That's all I got for today :) 

TUESDAY 

Oh my gosh today was a day of firsts!! Okay so it started off with service! It was my first time doing service on the mission and let me just say it's totally different than anything I've ever done! We went to the Bridgeport Rescue Mission and bagged food to be delivered. It was a long day, but honestly it flew by. We also all wore our matching tiger shirts, so if that doesn't say apartment and comp unity I don't know what does! Haha! When we came back I had to throw my body into a dress to get ready for my very first President interview!!! Ahhh I was so nervous! President Mavromatis is actually the best person I've met, so I was nervous for no reason! I strive to be as spiritual as him haha! Just the Spirit he carries is incrível! :)) After my interview I had to get ready to do comp study to prep for my very first exchange! I told you, it was a big day :) In the mission when we have exchanges we do comp study with them just to prep and get to know a little better. I was with Sister Florence! She's amazing and I love her so much. We actually have the same name and it's spelled the same so it was just meant to be ;) Comp study was good! She shared a talk with me that honestly just hit real close to home and validated a lot of my feelings. It was definitely something I needed and had been looking for. Such a blessing to get to be with her:) We had a quick little 2 hour break before we got back into the exchange. Neither of us had any lessons, so it just turned into a get to know you hour honestly haha! We're very similar so it was cool to get to know her and talk to her about stuff. She was actually in Chile for 1 transfer and then has been here ever since due to COVID. I could not have asked for a better first exchange :) She actually gave me the goal to write a letter to myself to read when I'm going home from my mission. I've started, but haven't finished it yet. It's weird to write a letter to yourself haha! We talked a lot about my goals for this transfer. It was such a cool experience to do my first exchange with an STL (Sister Training Leader) She is almost at her 15 month mark too so she had a lot of tips and advice for me, so I tried my best to soak it all up:) Your package also came for me today! You're amazing let me just put that out there! Thank you so so much! I can't wait to paint my nails and toes now haha! What did Rose have to say when you shipped that?  We snagged the elders matching tiger shirts so we decided to take the extra headband and necklace up to them too. They're great, but I don't think I would have ever talked to them if it weren't for this. They low-key remind me of Jackson Hammer but only the jerky side of him. The one is from Murray and that's all I have to say about that haha! Anyways, that's all I have for today :) Lembre minha mãe, eu te amo muito muito!!

WEDNESDAY 

HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY!!! I of course had to kick the day off with some green chocolate chip pancakes! I was gonna turn the milk green, but pancakes were better;) We took some killer photos and then it was straight into the work. I actually missed the leprechaun traps haha! It was so fun to see Brooklyn all excited for that and make them all pretty, just for Christian to destroy later of course. It's sad she's growing up. We did a lot of page stuff today and created ads for Andar Na Luz. I also had to make a slight appearance in our post that will be posted soon so keep your eyes extra peeled ;) Today was actually super low key. It was just a lot of getting stuff done. We scared the literal crap out of Sister Hull today too so that made my whole day haha! I love scaring people, as you know;) We made a green dinner tonight too! We had chicken and mashed potatoes that we dyed green! So much fun! What did you do today? Did you wear green? Were the kids even phased?  We had an amazing lesson tonight too! One of our later lessons canceled so we just had the one. It was with Stephane and we were able to teach her about the Book of Mormon and how the Bible work together. She's an English student so we just share a brief message at the end and she was so sweet! Oh my gosh I just love her! :) She was really open about hearing everything and we were able to answer her questions too. I love teaching oh my gosh! It was really a great way to end the night. It was a solid first holiday on the mission too :) 

THURSDAY 

Today was such a crappy weather day! We woke up and it was so foggy. I seriously haven't seen the sun once today, muito triste! It was another daily planning day too, I know I say it a lot but the week just flies by after Pday. At lunch we decided to use today as a Language Day. That means for the rest if the day we need to talk in our mission language and if we don't know a word we need to use Google translate (a life saver let me just tell you!) As I'm typing this it's going really well but we'll see later on haha! We also got news today about the COVID 19 vaccine and I'm set to get it on Tuesday (if I did it correctly) Today was full of Facebook finding and we actually got to do the Book of Mormon Experiment adapted! We sent him the page, but he hasn't even seen it yet so that's a bummer. We did a lot of planning for District Counsel too, we're in charge of a role play or a game so we've been trying to figure out our jeproday game to play, but it's hard. Sister Wo really wants to play that game so we're trying to make it work, but I don't know how it's all gonna come together. One of my goals is to not just take over and do everything myself. I did that a lot in school and I would just do the group project by myself and turn it in, but I can't do that anymore. It's actually really hard haha! But it's a goal for me so I'm trying. We were prepping to call our homeboy Matheus and we normally text him right before just to double check. Well we send the text and we hear nothing. When we have an appointment we have to wait until we hear from the person before we move on. Needless to say, we sat there for and hour and we weren't able to have the lesson. Kinda sad because we were excited to talk to him and go over the lesson, but what can you do? We all continued to slowly loose our minds and we started mixing Spanish and Português together and the Spanish sisters were teaching us and we were teaching them, it was just a mess haha! Sister Hull actually took 6 years of German and taught us songs in German too, it was a lot going on. We all climbed into bed and where still laughing at all the words we mixed and the German songs! I can't imagine what it would be like living in only a 2 Sister apartment, probably not as fun. Anyways, I love you!

FRIDAY 

What's up mom?! I can't believe that its already Friday! Do you guys have any fun weekend plans? This week has been a little weird not gonna lie. We're already 3 weeks into the 6 week transfer so that's nuts! This week didn't go by as fast as last week but it was still pretty quick. Today was just full of prep for tomorrow, basically we worked a lot on our game for District counsel tomorrow. Normally we would have it today, but we had to move it for the zone leaders. It was kind of weird to not have it today not gonna lie, haha! Today was so lame too! We were supposed to have 2 lessons but both of them canceled so we just did a lot of Facebook finding and messaging. We're really trying to go through our area book and get that all situated. Our area book is a little messed up because of the whole Spanish ward situation. The Spanish sisters and zone leaders people show up in our area book because we're technically in the Spanish ward and our members are just part of a group. So we took some time today and really went through it. It's hard too because neither Sister Wo or me know how to use area book (she came from Cape Verde and I'm super new) so it's been a learning curve. Anyways, we spent a lot of time on our phones today, like way more than usual because of that and our district counsel thing. We're playing jeopardy so we had to make that up today.  Also funny story, we were getting dinner to give to the elders Okay? I open the cabinet to get a Tupperware and Sister Hull and I are standing in our teeny kitchen trying to divide these massive nachos. I turn around and WHACK my head on the cabinet! I go down and then Sister Hull is laughing so hard she goes down. Now we're both on the floor and we hear from the front door, "Are the nachos okay? Did you drop them?" Clearly the elders were hungry haha! It was so funny!!!! Also, how did I hit my head?! I'm so short! I have a pretty good headache and a tiny bump, but I'm good haha! I haven't been sleeping super well so I was very sleepy today and just sitting on our phones didn't help, but we try and listen to music and stuff to help keep us awake. It's weird too because I felt like I was doing so good when I first got here with sleeping and stuff. Oh well haha! I also have another new goal for myself. I wanna find my talent to develop on the mission. Sister Farnsworth did this incredible painting of the Savior's hand reaching to a woman's hand and we were just chatting and she said that her talents have increased ten fold on the mission. I don't know what I'm gonna find yet, but I definitely wanna try something. I'll keep you posted haha! Also I wanna teach you a new word in Português :) so they actually have a word for I miss you, kinda cool huh? So if I say 'Saudades!' I'm saying 'miss you!' And that's your lesson for the day haha! I love you forever mom! Saudades! ;) 

SATURDAY 

 How was your day?? How's everything going? Today we started it off right by singing happy birthday in português for one of our English students. It was her son's birthday today so of course we had to sing! Today was the fastest day this week by far too. We had THE shortest admin meeting about the General Conference campaign. I'm actually so so excited for that! District counsel was so good today too! We had the game and the Spanish sisters had the teaching. They talked a lot about prayer and it really stuck with me.  Not gonna lie I felt a little chastised by the Holy Ghost during their teaching, but just goes to show we can always, always improve. Our game went really well too, everyone really liked it and it only got slightly competitive. ;) We got to go outside today too! There's these super cool walls that we always drive past, so today for exercise time the 4 of us went and took some pictures there. There was even a wall with humming birds on them! We got to take some photos too, they aren't the best quality pictures because it was windy but it was such a nice day so we had to take advantage. Walk in the Light was also tonight! I didn't know who the guy was... but it was really cool to hear him. He is the page manager for a Facebook group/YouTube channel called 'Saints Unscripted'  It was really cool to hear him speak because his whole job revolves around the controversial topics of the gospel. He did have a cool question though, is God God because of His character or is God God because of His power and glory? It's a little hard to type out without the emphasis on the words but he basically was saying that God will always be powerful and glory filled. What truly makes Him a God is His character and actions. We're told from the beginning that we need to love one another and be kind to everyone, but do you actually do that?? And if you do, are you doing it for the right reasons? I thought it was super cool, maybe something for you to ponder? I could go on but that's a whole other thing haha! We had a lesson with Stephane tonight woot woot! I really love her and she is progressing so much with her English. She's the one that's been asking about the Book of Mormon too. We started talking about faith in Jesus Christ and then she went on this whole tangent about this church in Brazil and how they basically preform exorcisms so that kinda threw us for a loop. She had to leave so we didn't talk much about that, but we'll have to address that one at some point. Side note: my head is doing better, it is a little sore but we're all good. I also scared Sister Hull again today! Hahaha! She's so fun to scare and it's so easy! I'll have to put the video in the drive because oh my gosh it was so funny! I think you've ruined me from scaring Tyler haha! I love you mom! 

SUNDAY 

Another Sunday down! What's so crazy is I only have 2 more Sundays and then I could be transfered out. That's nuts! Church was not quite the turnout that we had hoped for, but there's always next week so that's a plus :) I have found that sometimes while I'm sitting in church I get frustrated because I can't understand anything, whether it's Spanish or Português. I don't get so mad to the point of no return or anything, but it's super frustrating. I can understand the Português for the most part and I can price together what they're saying, but still. Anyways, we had to upload our LIVE for Facebook and it took literally 900 years today! The computer must've been just taking it's own sweet time or something because Holy cow! By the time we got home it was time for our weekly meeting with Jaime. I love that man! Haha! We also got approval from Bishop today to broadcast the Português group at church! That's so exciting! That means we don't have to direct people to the Spanish ward anymore and other Português members can join our group. :) Tonight was a night full of contacts too. Great news and truly a miracle, we had a lot of responses. We even have a potential English class this coming week :) The area is slowly but surely getting there haha! We also had a super great lesson with Matheus and he's willing to help us with a member post too. He's awesome! We're super excited for this week for Facebook too because we have a lot of posts to promote General Conference. I'm so so pumped mom! It's going to be amazing I can just feel it! After prime pros we decided to start a band as well, because clearly we're all amazing singers. NOT haha! But we're gonna call it, 'I'm not oqueso' I came up with the name and it might be my proudest moment haha! It was such a good day! I can't wait to hear from you and catch up! I love you!