Brianna in Brazil: Seeing Growth From the Seeds I've Planted

Hey Fam Bam! Sounds like you had a great Thanksgiving weekend. Wish I could have been there to celebrate with you all, but we had a pretty good time here too. Our Thanksgiving consisted of three banquets during three days. On Thursday, the elders in our district prepared a wonderful breakfast for us in the church. They earned brownie points! On Friday, I spent most of the morning in the kitchen and we had a Thanksgiving feast in our own house for lunch with two other sisters who´s lunch fell through. And on Saturday, Talita, an irmã in the ward, prepared another feast which was followed by a delicious torta (sorry, I´m really not remembering this word in english!) that an irmão made for dessert. All in all, it was fabulous. Our area is great. It´s the 'interior', or more rural, but not as rural as Eduardo Gomes. It´s far away from the coast. And there are mosquitoes but nothing like Eduardo! I think I´ll be finishing my mission here, but who knows. I just hope I don´t have to pack my bags again before having to pack up for the last time and heading home. I don´t really like packing my bags for transfers haha. The work is going well! To answer your question, Mom, as sister leader trainers, we have leadership councils, take care of four sister missionary companionships and go on exchanges with these sisters to help them in their areas and also to help us out :). This week, I went on my first exchanges as a sister leader trainer which was exciting. I think I was more nervous than the sisters that I was supposed to help out! But it all went super well. I love the miracles that happen during exchanges. On Thanksgiving, I worked in Sister Sleeman´s area (which is my old area here in Socorro 1) and it was a great day. They´ve been having difficulty finding people to teach and it seemed that everything went right that day. We managed to find lots of people ready to hear the gospel who were open to our message. I love being back where I already worked, one of the reasons being because I can see how the seeds that I planted have sprouted. Sometimes as a missionary, we get a little hopeless because it seems that we´re just spending the months planting seeds. Seeing the effect of these 'seeds' has been one of the greatest blessings! For example, Sister Sleeman and Sister Caetano decided to start teaching a lady that I spent a lot of time teaching when I was here before. I can´t tell you how happy I was when I found out that she´s reading the Book of Mormon and is in Helaman. Her daughter uses the CTR ring I gave her and this Sunday, they all came to church for the first time! It´s also great seeing other people that were my investigators as recent-converts now. Well, that´s my life these days. The miracles we´re seeing are wonderful. We´re working hard and hoping to have baptisms this Saturday. Pray that everything will go as planned! Tell Steven, Kendall, Jack Carroll, Kacy Johnson, Britney Spears and all my other December 2nd birthday friends Happy Birthday for me! That I love them so much and hope they have a wonderful day! There´s a birthday card in the mail for Steven, that stud of a brother of mine. I love you all bunches! Have a wonderful week and Happy December!!! 24 days until Christmas.

Com amor,

Sister Ball