Well this is convienent.....no, I don´t know how to spell

FAMILY AND FRIENDS!!!!!

Happy Pioneer DAY!!!! Ha ha we got to watch the broadcast of the mo-tab choir, that was kinda cool....it was translated into portugues but all the music was in english still. I got to talk in church on sunday my companion said I did a good job but I don´t believe her. ha ha but while I was preparring my talk I realised something. I was trying to teach the members that they needed to share the gospel and give us referrals because knocking on doors is like the most awful thing I´ve ever experienced. ha ha and I realized that what I sould be talking about is something to stregnthen their testimony. It´s funny that if we know the church is true there is nothing that can stop us from sharring it with everyone. Just like Lehi´s dream, as soon as he tasted the fruit he wanted to share it. so my quiestion for you is are you truely converted? because if you are you should have the deepest desire and strongest urge to share the gosple. It is funny that people can always see a difference in the people who are strong members right? they always say that we have something different about us.....I want ot tell you what that is...THE HOLY GHOST!!!! ha ha SHARE IT!!!!

If you don´t have the strong conviction that you feel you should just read the book of mormon for a few minutes and say a prayer asking if it is true. The Spirit of GOd will surely testify to your heart that it is!!!!

Okay so last week we had a "sister´s trainging" at presidents house. It was really jsut an excuse to make a mess in the mission presiden´ts house. ha ha he is really the coolest guy ever besides my dad. He let us do basically whatever we wanted. It really is a different feeling to be in a dedicated home in a quiet neighborhood. ha ha You can really tell that it is a home of a loving couple. Plus they have carpet....I never knew how much I loved carpet until I came to Brasil. It is pretty humid here and it is hard to clean carpet in this climate so pratically no one has carpet in home. I laid on it.....I don´t know how long it has been since I laid on carpet and just relaxed........I´m oretty sure President thinks I am nuts but all the other sisters followed my example and enjoyed themselves too.

SO!!!! I am pretty sure there will be one more eternal family this weekend!!!! ha ha well just about. The 2nd counsilor in the bishopric in my ward his wife is not a member and we found out why. We are resolving her problems with coffee little by little ha ha it is funny we snuck into her kitchen and mixed a little cevada into her coffee grounds. Cevada has an equal scent to coffee (aka awful) and I have been told the taste is similar as well. I tried it and I think it is disgusting......ha ha. ANyways we will be going there day by day adding a little more cevada until she is only drinking cevada. I know it is sneaky and we know that she needs to make the decision to change but she doesn´t think she will like cevada and refuses to try it.....there are just some people in the world who need a little more pucsh than others ;) anyways she has 3 children who are all members (well the youngest 2 will be baptised in a month on thier birthday(twins)) and we just want to help them work towards the temple!!!! It´s sooo awe3some!!!!!

So the girl we have been teaching trying to baptise isn´t ready she randomely started studying carissma or whatever it´s called at the catholic church again. I don´t understand how people can have an answer to prayers and then throw it away. It really is interesting to watch people throw eternal life away like that, it kind of breaks my heart. ANYWAYS funny story. We were at the huse of our ward mission leader talking to him about some goals and whatnot and as we left he was telling us to be careful because the street near our house is kind of deserted at night and we might run into some scary characters. ha ha As we were getting to the corner of HIS street some random called to me, in english, "wait wait, can I talk to you!?!?!" ha ha we met Guto, he is a crazy drunkard who was baptised like 12 years ago, he has read the book of mormon and the pearl of great price and stayed active in the church for 3 years. BUT now he doesn´t go.......interesting could it be because he gets wasted saturday night? He speaks english really really well espescially for a drunk guy and he was also about to hurl and had to keep swallowing back what wanted to come out......ha ha he has a swaski...swasty.....wait is that thing called? Oh man useless words have completly given up on trying to stay in my brain andyways he has the nazi sign carved into his shoulder.....we invited him to church and told him we would wait outside for him....needless to say he didn´t show up.

Anyways I love you all!!! Stay awesome!!!! Never Regret!!!!

XOXOXOXOX

Sister Ottley

PS: you are all in BIG trouble for having a reunion without me so start planning one next year when I am there!!!! alright?!?!? I am serious...like for reals I am sad. MAinly because my toenails are attrocious and you´d better be sending some pictures because I honestly don´t have 1 picture of my parents or adam or matt or meghan......so get on it people

Gretchen: yes I finally did get your package THANKS SOOOO MUCH those shirts are way cute and the pictures are adorable too!!! You can tell Lillie that my comp and I enjoyed the starbursts ALOT!!!!

Jill and Gwen: uh hi? ha ha I love you girls!!!! I thought of you alot this week hope all is well!!!!

Yet another week....

It is soooo good to hear that you are all doing well. I am sorry it is hot there too, it´s been averaging in the mid-80´s here and I am dying. I guess this is nothing though...h aha it is winter here and it averages in the high 90´s low 100´s in the summer. Basically I am going to die. Great.

Ha ha ha as usual, this week was great. We FINALLY moved out of our apartment and into a new house. We LOVE it!!!!!! We don´t have an oven becasue we left it in the old house. It was full of rat poo soooo we never used it anyways. And if ya´ll know me at all you know that I don´t cook so there is no problem there.

umm....´we didn´t have any baptisms this week but we are working with a girl named Jucy and she is sooooo great!!! she understands everything we teach and has the sweetest heart. She lives in a house full of people who drink and yell and scream all day everyday. It breaks my heart but she is soooo awesome!!!!!! We are gonna baptise her on sunday....we we won´t but someone in the ward will ;)

Uhh.....I am super boring this week sorry, I honestly can´t think of any fun stories or adventures. ha ha let me think.

Well I am memorizing the articles of Faith in Portuguese which is pretty awesome. I have the first 9 down pretty well. I am also memorizing the scripture masteries too....I only have the first 2 Book of Mormon ones ha ha. Okay this is depressing.....there HAS to be something more exciting than this to tell you all......I AM IN BRASIL for goodness sake.

OH!!!! so the other day my companion and I were stopped outside of a house waiting for a lady to take a xerox of one of our lists. Some weirdo walked by and did a double take...I am used to this, I am super white and it is obvious that I am not brazilean, people stare at me all day everyday. Ha ha so he turned around and waslked up to me and shook my hand and started telling me how pretty I was......I invited him to church and really really wanted to walk away. But my companion is a horrible person and started talking to him some more. He told her he didn´t want to talk to her because she wasn´t american. SHe said yes I am!!!! I am from south america!!!! ha ha all this time he was still holing and stroking, my hand. I was thouroughly creeped out and when I finally got away and tried to walk off my companion decided to give him directions to the chapel. GAH!!!! I JUST WANNA GET AWAY FORM THIS GUY!!!!! ha ha thank goodness we finally got away and my comp just laughed and laughed. ha ha oh well.

I decided that this was a good time to bust out the fake ring. ha ha so I am now using the walmart ring. and it works!!!! ha ha this other guy was asking my companion if I was single and she just held up my hand and said he is on a mission too! ha ha life is funny.

anyways, we SHOULD have a baptism on sunday so if everyone could pray for that I would greatly appreciate it!!!! SHe really needs the help of the Holy Ghost in her life and she really has been preparred for us. It is sooo beautiful to find the people that the Lord honestly wants us to baptise....well he wants everyone right but it is awesome when he guides to those who he is specifically preparring. ha ha she is already trying to stop drinking coffee which is great because she is 11....yea, 11. These people have coffee flowing in their veins from birth, no joke.

ha ha I love you all!!!! I hope all is well at home, I pray fro you all daily!!!!

Stay awesome, never regret!!!!

XOXOXOXOXOOX

Sister ottley

This is a dream right?

SO lately I have been having really weird dreams. Not too out of the
ordinary for me but one morning I woke up and realized that it had
been the first time in months that I actually slept through the night.
I don´t know if I was just exhausted or what but it was beautiful.
But at the same time I could not make myself think in Portuguese. It
was kind of ridiculous. Later that morning when my companion and I
were leaving for the day she turned to me and asked "how did you sleep
last night?" Ha ha I explained that it was the best nights sleep I´ve
gotten since my mission began. SHe just laughed and sayed "I figured"
SHe explained that I had been talking all night. She has no idea
what I was saying because it was all in English and she was half
asleep too. Ha ha so ridiculous.

WE HAD A BAPTISM SATURDAY!!!!! ~Tânia who has been investigating for
1 and a half years FINALLY got baptised on saturday. She is awesome
and totally participated in Gosple Principals, like way better than
everyone else. I love it!!!!

So I have been studying ALOT about faith. I have been working on
relying on the Lord and turning to him rather than getting angry in
frusterating situations. It worked. Ha ha I have always been a
pretty happy go lucky kind of person but the mission stressed me out.
Everything is peaches now, soft and sweet. I have decided that if
there is nothing I can do about the situation just to let it slide.

On sunday my companion was really nervous becasue everyone we tried to
get that morning and take to church was either sleeping, had their old
pastors over for prayer and yelling, or had a motorcycle accident the
night before because they´d been drinking. Ha ha so we started
sacrament meeting with 0 investigators. THen our recent convert Vitor
(the kid with the hair) came in and was like "hey, where´s DAvid?" ha
ha David has been investigating for who knows how long and decided he
was going tro wait for his buddy to get home from his mission so he
could baptise him. He SHOWED up at church. This was the sunday that
Vitor was to recieve the preisthood and BAM we convinced David that he
didn´t need to wait for his other friend because THIS one could
baptise him TODAY!!! BAMM!!! 2 baptisms and I was exstatic!!!!

I am that much closer to my baptism goal. President Toledo was all
about setting goals and I set one to baptise 50 people. I have about
50-56 weeks left to meet this goal and as of today I have 5 baptisms.
I know that as long as I work hard I will meet this goal no problem.

David, Maicom, Vitor, and Caio are all in the YM and have decided (now
that they figured out they can baptise eachother) they are going to
give us more references. Ha ha I really don´t care because a majority
of them are concidered "men" which means that Bahia can have a Temple
that much faster. Look forward to more talk about our little
brothers!!!

So, yesterday was pretty awesome......not. We came home, to the same
apartment we´ve been trying to leave for weeks and found more evidence
of mouse visits. I have just about lost my patience. I started
walking around with a big stick because you can put money on the fact
that if I encounter this rat he is going DOWN!!!!! Ha ha we decided
that he is mosty likely coming in therough the bathroom that doesn´t
work. This lovely batheroom just happens to be in the master "suite"
a.k.a. our room. I am not okay with this concidering our "beds" are
mattresses laying on the floor. nope. not gonna happen. we moved
our mattresses into the other room down the hall also known as a
closet. ha ha it was slightly ridiculous. BUT this room has a door
that locks. I know very well of this because I have locked myself in
this room more than once. It really sucks when Your companion is
taking a shower at the other end of the house when you are loced in a
tiny room with an ironing board.....ha ha my life.

Anyways we slept in the closet last night and I am just praying that
the deposit goes through on the new house because as soon as it does
we are OUT of here!!!! we have been waiting for this deposit for a
week now and I am about 2 seconds away from robbing a bank and just
giving the owner of our new house cash.

I am trying really hard to remember what else happened this week and I
am coming to a blank. The rat and baptisms really were the highlight.

So I am gonna go ahead and sign off for the week!!! I love love love
love love you all!!!! THank you all soooo much!!!!!! Stay awesome
never regret!!!!

XOXOXOXOXOXO

Sister Ottley

P.S. If you are all serious about sending me packages, I really just
want american candy. Anykind will do. I am also in need of real life
repellent something that lasts a little longer than 4 hours. Also
Chacos. In our mission we can wear sandals but the options here don´t
last, I´ve already walked through 2 pairs (espensive pairs). I need
some of quality and I know that I wear a size 10 in Chacos but any
brand will do as long as it is quality. open toe is fine just not
hideous ;) imposible I know. anyways I love love love you all!!!!!
THANKS!!!!!

Family Night at a recent converts house!!!!

the toilet in our apartment broke and I am NOT a plumber......the pipes are in the wall.....this is odd to me.

I tried this disgusting beverage chimmarrao

me eatting hot dogs at family night YUMM!!!!

New Family

Oh friends and family!!!!

This week was full of fun and adventure. We have a huge teaching pool and we are really trying to get some help from members. It really is soooo much easier when they help. We should have a baptism this weekend of Tânia she has an issue with W.O.W. but only because she didn´t want to quit drinking for the holidays. ha ha what a joke. BUT she is firm firm now and her whole family is members so it is allllll good.

WE disembled our closet thing today. They don´t have regular closets it is like an armoire and it has 6 doors.....a.k.a. it is huge and we are missionaries so we don´t have real life tools.....we used a spoon. ha ha ha ha h aha I didn´t even break a nail.....THEN we had to take apart this wicked old book shelf metal that was held together with bolts......it was awful, but it is now in peices ready to be moved to our new house. I am really really excited about the move, it has taken WAY too long to move but we are FINALLY doing it. we had to wait for contracts from São Paulo and they were full of errors and blaa blaa. what a disaster, I just want to move. We pulled our oven thing out and discovered some mouse poop and what we think will be an actual mouse (dead) when we move the whole thing....ha ha we can only see the tail and we stopped moving and we are waiting for the elders to do it for us. GROSS right....I about peed my pants.

We had a visitor the other night. I was in the room we study in packing up some of my books when I say movement out of the corner of my eye. THERE WAS A GIANT BARATA in our house. I was pretty accustomed to this in Camaçari but I hadn´t seen one here in Feira. I started screaming and trying to throw my flip flops at him but he was FAST!!!!! my Companion came to my rescue with a can of raid and right at the moment we were trying to get him out form behind the bookshelf some other sisters showed up at our door. ha ha don´t worry we got him.

The other sisters were staying at our house becasue our NEW PRESIDENT came to meet us. We had a conference and I love him. President Hart and Sister Hart they are the bestest!!!! I am sooooo happy, they are like the sweetest EVER!!!! President said that he is excited to have 135 more children because it was hard to leave thier kids and grandkids behind. They´re grandkids are pretty cute (we saw photos) but I am pretty sure my neices and nephews are cuter.

This week we found a family.....I call them the jotas (j in portugues) because all of their names start with J. And I can only say 2 of htem. ha ha Its great. I am sooooo excited for them. They are a reference from a member and sooo awesome. I can´t wait to see them get baptised and start working towards an eternal family!!!! I have learned something on the mission. Satan really does have quite a few years of experience. He knows EXACTLY how to get in the way. and EVERYTIME, EVERTIME!!!!! we are telling the first vision he tries to distract our investigators because he knows that that moment is the mo0st important of our message. Anyways in the lesson with the jotas Their dumb dog tried to bite the son of our member and one of the daughters steped in front of him and took a bite to the leg RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FIRST VISION!!!! great, we got 2 crying kids, one bloody leg, and a barking dog that I now want to toss in front of a brasil bus. Not exactly what I would describe as the best evironment for the holy ghost. BUT they all excepted the invitation to be baptised. It is gonna be GREAT!!!!!!

Alright now it is question answering time.

My legs and face are doing MUCH better, I use tons and tons of repellent everyday to prevent another outbreak.

If you really feel the need to send me a package I really would love some repellent that lasts longer than 4 hours, that is the best I can find here but I KNOW i had better in the states. And peanutbutter.

No, they don´t celebrate the 4th of July here, I´m not possitive but I´m PRETTY sure that is a USA thing.

I get packages at transfers and interviews with president. So 1 or 2 times per 6 weeks. The mail actually isn´t that bad the only reason it takes a long time to get them is because I have to wait til pres comes to my area or I go to Salvador.

I think that is all I have for you guys this week. I love you all soooo much!!!!! I really do appreciate all the words of encouragement. It is sooo awesome to hear all your missionary experiences back home. I am sooo proud of all of you and I know that if we just listen to the spirit he will tell us EXACTLY what to do in situations with non-members.

Never regret, stay awesome!!!

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE

Sister Ottley

This is what I call a wall crawler....seems harmless but in the end is freaking scary!!!!!

One of the lovely bugs that lives in my apartment in Feira

Cristiane Baptism in Camaçari she is really awesome and talks REALLY fast.

Vitor Baptism in Feira 2 He has fake extensions that I REALLY REALLY want to cut off.

Ester the girl who ran from me but now loves me.

sometimes you have to clean the baptismal font before people can use it.