week 30 I can't believe I'm turning 20!

So next week is transfers, this week is the last week of this transfer! I can’t believe that I’m turning 20...ridiculous! I still feel so young...how can this be happening haha!! Yeah...I’m all good with my health! dad...fica tranquilo!! We didn’t even let sister Soares know that I went to the hospital until after the fact because it was all rushed and what not...me literally throwing up my insides hahah...but yeah all is good!!! I got a priesthood blessing and got better bem rapidão!!! This week was great...a little stressed cause we were planning a surprise birthday party for her on Friday...IT TURNED OUT GREAT!!! but it was really stressful! So since we were planning and doing things for the surprise party and also one day we spent the day in the area of the other sisters to help them since their area is a little bit more difficult, we had to work super hard this week to get people to church and to cloe our goals this week! But all went well. This week a lot of trials happened...I’m learning a lot of patience and love and humility! I LOVE chapter 6 of Preach my Gospel!! LOVE LOVE LOVE...also 5 about the power of the Book of Mormon! I´ve been studying these chapters a lot lately! More about the power of the book of Mormon and Trying to be more like Jesus!! (singing that primary hymn ahah) 

but yeah with one investigator, Normando, I have a lot of stress! haha he´s really great but he has some problems with the Word of Wisdom...like serious problems!!!! So yeah it´s just really hard cause I can tell it´s hard for him but at the same time I just feel like TRY HARDER!!!! ha-ha (patience) and I just feel so much love for him and the struggles that he has had in his life because of the decision that he´s made and now he wants to change things around and he really has been improving but minha nossa it´s hard!! We had it planned for him to be baptized Sunday, but didn’t turn out! Our plan is to talk with him today and see if he´s ready for Wednesday or probably next Sunday!! AHHHHH stress...but good stress, cause it´s out of love for some of these people!!!

Sunday Jorge was confirmed, and received the Holy Ghost!! I love this rapaz...I feel like a mom with him haha, always saying be careful, and do the right things and what not! Ugh love him...Future missionary!!!!! wahhooo...his mom almost didn’t let him go to church cause most of his clothes were wet and he didn’t have any clean clothes. She said ´what´s he gonna do, go to church nude...?`hahah I was like ummm no, put on some dirty clothes who cares hahah lets goooo!! haha  But yeah all went well.

So yeah my time is up to write, but just know that I love you mom and I’m excited for this week of hard work and for our birthdays this month!! I LOVE MARCH...best month of the year!!!

Oh Shout out to my best friend Virg for her birthday yesterday!!! :)

I’m so grateful to be a missionary and to feel my Savior's love everyday!!

I´m so grateful for my parents...literally THE COOLEST and MOST LEGIT parents ever...thank you mom and dad for your example to me and for just being the best!!!

xeiro, beijo, abração

-Sister Natalie Talentino

week 29 Your family may be far, but we're your family too!

Sister Barbosa and I

 (Mom Note: A shout out to all the missionaries and ward family members who took care of Natalie while she was sick and far from home.  Obrigada!)

So this week was cray! it started out like any week should.... on Tuesday we worked all day! we had some of the elders in our district come to help us with our area, and we also did some splits with the sisters in our area too...it helped sooooo much!!! but yeah anyway at the end of this day all was good...when I woke up at 2 in the morning I started to throw up!!...about every 20 minutes I got up and started throwing up. And every time it got worse and worse...like more intense and painful! and then about 6 o clock I started to have diarrhea (forget how to spell it??) and I was like Sister Lerner I think we should go to the hospital! but yeah so we went to he hospital and I threw up about 3-4 more times there! I even threw up in the member’s car that took us to the hospital...luckily he had a little plastic bag in the back of his car hahah!!! (now I can laugh about it) but yeah mom remember when you had that nasty virus when you came home from Utah that one time and you went to the hospital...yeah I had something really similar to that!! It was just the worst!! I started to cry too because I just wanted my mom...how pitiful is that ha-ha oh well!!! So one of the first things that I said when I got to the hospital and in the hospital bed was that I wanted a priesthood blessing!!! I´m just solo grateful for the power of the priesthood and the opportunity that the men have in the church to bless so many lives!!! I feel so blessed to have the priesthood power in my life!! but yeah at about 9 the Elders came to give me a blessing (at this point I was a little drugged up and a little loopy lol) It was Elder Agular and Elder Nhanthole who came and gave me a blessing!! After that I left the hospital and went home...ugh I still felt like crap!! my stomach hurt, my body hurt, and I still had diarrhea and I felt dizzy when I would walk or stand up. so I laid down and slept a lot! Sister Barbosa stayed with me this day! I was just a mess! At night I still had diarrhea and I still felt sick, and on top of that I had a fever! So we went back to the hospital. Got a couple injections in the arm and went on our way! I was just so tired and weak, it was ridiculous! I went home and fell asleep! The next day I stayed in house too...

so I don’t have a lot of time left but I will try to summarize! Wednesday I stayed in house, and also Thursday...Friday I thought I would be able to leave. we had our weekly planning and then lunch. after lunch I threw up lunch and was out of breath and tired from just walking up 3 flights of stairs. so sister Lerner didn’t let me leave. and sister antunes had some pain in her foot so sister barbosa and sister lerner left and sister antunes and I stayed together in house! BUT WAIT FOR IT...he he he...when sister Lerner and sister barbosa left I started to cry, like really cry because I didn’t want to stay in house one more day because we had a lot of investigators and people that were progressing and just doing great, but I really just wanted to help and talk with people! I seriously never felt that kind of sadness in my life!! It made me realize how much I love being a missionary and spreading the gospel:) So sister antunes and I left the house...and let me just tell you that everyone that we met that day we were supposed to meet!! It was like Everyone and everything that happened was perfectly timed so that the next person that we would meet or the next thing to happen needed to happen!! Like dominos. If we didn’t stop to talk to this one person we wouldn’t have met the the other person!! it was just incredible ha-ha. It was like Hunger Games when the game keeper is just messing with the arena and put things in place so others things would happen...haha cray! but yeah I started to feel sick again so we returned home at like 7 and we just relaxed, did our nails, wrote in our journal and everything was all good!! Saturday I stayed again in house because I still had a fever and had a sore throat!! SUNDAY I FINALLY GOT TO LEAVE THE HOUSE!!! WAHHOOOOO and WE HAD A BAPTISM OF JORGE!!!!! THE SWEETEST LITTLE BOY EVER!!!!! AHHHHHH I LOVE HIM SOOO MUCH!!!! 

oh and Normand is doing great...he´s stopping with all the drugs and alcohol and coffee that he´s been addicted to. He´s reading the book of Mormon everyday and he´s coming to church all by himself!!! ugh it´s just so amazing to see the Atonement work for people and the changes in their lives for the better!!! AHHHH I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!!! I already have 6 months...time is flying by!!!!

so yeah I have to go...but love you all sooooo much!!! Be strong and stay firm...stand up for what is right!! EU AMO VOCÊS

Sister Natalie Talentino

-oh when I got to church on Sunday literally EVERYONE was like oh you were the sister that was sick...everyone was like we are here for you; your family may be far but we´re your family too!! hahah such sweet love!!! So grateful for that :) Love you mom and dad thanks for being the greatest

Elder Orozimbo is a cavs/lebron fan!!! WAHHOOO

Week 28 - Lost email

this is from last week (15/2/16):

How awesome that Sister Asuena came and visited!! CRAZY that it was 7 years ago already hahah seems like yesterday!!! ugh...our family is so awesome! Everybody hanging out with everybody haha!!! HOW PRECIOUS Robyn and shane's baby...send me some pics!!!!! Baby g is looking older...STOP IT!!!!!! put a brick on her head por favor haha, how tall is my baby now?  I forgot about valentines’ day until the day before and at church someone reminded me and I was like AWWW HAPPY VALENTINES DAY haha hugging and kissing everyone (not on the lips but on the cheek lol)!!

So this week was a little busy and corrida (I don’t remember this word...I think its similar to busy) but yeah! So Tuesday was Carnival and literally NO ONE was in the street...just the drunk people at the bars! There´s a beach about 45 min-1 hours from us so everyone goes there to travel!! So yeah Tuesday started out good! In the morning we had our district meeting and Elder Azevedo asked me to give the treinamento!! I also made cookies for our little breakfast treats haha!! So yeah I really had a strong impression to talk about the attributes of Christ!!! I focused on 3 attributes because we didn’t have a lot of time, but I focused on the ones that I thought were important for our district and also ones that I have struggled to develop!! Love, obedience, and patience....I´m not going to lie but it was a really good treinamento haha!!1 I felt the spirit and I bore my testimony in the end of our Savior, the Atonement and about missionary work and how everyone needs to develop these attributes so that we can be more like our Savior so that we can have more success in the mission and more happiness in our lives!! It was really spiritual and everyone said that I was a great training! I challenged everyone to pick an attribute to develop and to study this week...so yeah it was a really good treinamento! I am really proud of myself to be honest haha...I really felt that I followed the spirit and gave a good treinamento that will help me but also the district so that we can be better missionaries so that we can help more people!!! so yeah, that was our morning...for lunch an irmá celma gave us lunch (miracle) cause we received money for lunch and we were planning to just go looking for some store or restaurant to be open (literally everything was closed cause of carnival) but yeah Irmá celma saved the day!!!! She prepared a FEAST!!! sooo much food!!! The end of the first round of eating, she started to say, sisters coma mais (eat more sisters) you guys only ate a little bit (LIES!!!!! WE ATE SO MUCH ALREADY) haha but yeah I was trying to figure out what I would eat more of because I really wasn’t hungry at all but I didn’t want to hurt irmás feelings! So as I was deciding, Sister Lerner gave her plate to Sister Barbosa to put some food on her plate...and guess what happened...hahahahah Irmá celma grabbed the spoon and plate from sister Barbosa ( she already picked up some food to put it on the plate) and so irma scooped up a giant serving of this food (pasta with chicken and other stuff) and she plopped it on Sister Lerner´s plate.....hahahahha I started to giggle and to laugh a little bit at the situation hahahah and while I was laughing Irmá came out of nowhere and put an even bigger serving of this food on my plate!!! I DIDNT EVEN ASK FOR MORE!!! hahah remember in the Series of Unfortunate Events when Count Olaf is laughing cause the train was coming to hit the car that had the Bouldelairs where in!! hahah he was laughing and laughing and when the train passed by without hitting the car he was like ummmmmm what....that was my reaction to this situation!! hahah (I can laugh now cause the suffering is over) So I started to eat...little by little...I literally was suffering demais!!!!! I couldn’t finish the food! DISCULPA IRMÀ MAIOS NÂO VAI DAR CERTO NÃO!!! And after that irmá brought out dessert.....HAHAH NOOOOOO MORE PLEASE!!!!! but the dessert was sooooooooooooo good...this coconut type of cheese cake with a dark chocolate cobertura (frosting?) (and the coconut was fresh off of the tree in their backyard!!!!!!!!!)  but I couldn’t finish it!! so sad....em fim, we walked back home and when we got there I laid in the hammock cause I was not feeling well...about 20 minutes after I started throwing up...já era...I threw up everything!!...thank you so much irma..the food was sooo good..better going down than coming up for sure!! but yeah...this day I stayed in house all day with sister Barbosa who wasn’t feeling too good either (she has a cold/ gripe?) we slept and we woke up at 9;30-10  just to go to bed again! but yeah what’s worse is that the next day we had lunch there again hahah on Wednesday...I sat as far away from irma as possible hahahah!!!!

This week was filled with a lot of work. Running around to get people to go to church Sunday, to help them really cumprir os compromissos (to do their promisses?) sometimes the phrases that we use in Portuguese don’t make sense or translate perfectly to ingles...sorry!!

This week, our batisms that we planned to happen didn’t...with a family Ceiça, Bento and their children! we ask and invite them to pray about baptism and about to really know if this church is true and it´s like yeah it´s great but no not now...lets wait a little bit and if it works out then yeah that´ll be good!1 ughhhh...we testify of all the blessing that they can receive (not just ceiça and bento but everyone) if they just go to church if they just say their prayers if they just read this little part of the book of Mormon and pray about it and majority of the people are like nahhhh só deixa nahh all is well!!! it´s frustrating and exhausting!!! But like gram said in her email this week to me and Scott and Rhett...repetition is important and that we are never alone. keep on teaching what is true and working hard!!! 

the days most stressful for me are Saturday and Sunday morning!!!! You are running around Saturday to get everyone firme to go to church and then Sunday morning we have to run around again to wake people up, to get the ready for church and majority of the people flake out!!! I swear I bear my testimony a bazillion times Sunday morning of the importance of keeping the Sabbath day holy and the blessings they can receive when they go to church.

but yeah this week we had 6 people go to church with us!! WAHHOOO...the hard work pays off!!!!! Jorge (10 yrs old), Normando, Edineide(mom and sister to a member), Marluce( mom to a member), Kaio(10 yrs old), Cibele(wife to a member)!! the other sisters had 2 baptisms yesterday too..and little Jorge asked me if he can be baptized! OFFF COURSE, next Sunday will be your baptism, okay? hahah he told everyone and all the missionaries yeah I’ll be baptized next week!!! UGH IT WAS JUST SOOO PRESHH  I LOVE THIS LITTLE RAPAZ!!!!

just the little things make me so happy sometimes...to see he growth of the people we teach and bring to church and the see the changes in their lives!! it´s amazing!!!

oh Saturday morning I taught an English class...IT WAS SOOOO HARD TO TALK IN INGLES!!!!! UGHHHHI DONT LIKE IT!!!!! we have a member here that served in brazil and married a brasileira and he lives here and has an English school, so sometimes he asks the Americans to help him teach some classes!! it´s really cool cause we can talk about the mission and the church and just about the united states!! it´s awesome, but really hard to talk in English sometimes!!! I forget words and my grammar in English is horrible!!! oh well haha

I´m really excited for this week and I am so grateful for the power of the priesthood!! In times of need I know that I can read my patriarchal blessing or I can ask for priesthood blessing and I can receive the guidance and comfort that I need!!! I know that if we look up in faith and not down in discouragement, we can overcome all trials!! WE are never alone...we have angles at our side and our Heavenly Father looking out for us!!! Always look to share the gospel...it doesn’t matter if someone doesn’t accept it right away, just be strong and confident in your testimony that you know that this church is true and they will see and feel that this gospel is true too!!! I am soooo grateful to be on a mission, serving for the people here in Brazil and to grow closer to my Savior with each day!!!

LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!!

ether 12:27

moroni 8:3