Weekly letter from Sam!!

So this week was rather an eventful week! No baptisms for us.. Not for anyone in Sao Filipe actually. Really sad.. But I did get to go on divisions with Sister Serdar! Sister Serdar is seriously.. MAN! I just love her. She has the greatest spirit about her. I learned so much from her! On how to evaluate situations and stuff like that. And we laughed alot.
At one point in our divisions, she told me that she felt like there was somebody in the street we had just walked past that she needed to talk to. So we turned our tushies around and went to go find them. She kept saying we didn't have to, but we do have to! So we went down that street to find them. And well... No one was outside of their house. (It was a short road) But we started walking down the road and we see a house FULL of bananas. So what do we do to get conversation going? We each buy a banana. Hahaha. It was perfect! Turns out her husband is in America and he's a member and he served a mission! I don't know if things are ever going to go anywhere,.. but that was definitely the tastiest contact I've ever made. And the biggest bananas we ever ate. Hahaha.
Something I learned about myself this week is that I'm relatively good at making street contacts. Which is something I was really scared of before the mission. It's so stinking cool to learn and meet all of these people though!
So we had 2 investigators Carla and Suzi. They are sisters, 19 and 13 (I'm pretty sure). From what it looked like their whole family is Catholic. (Like everyone here) And everytime we talked to their mom.. she was really scary. Anyways, So we go to their house this Saturday, and we are screaming Suzi's name to the 2nd floor window because no one can hear us beating on the door. Well, Who answers? Their mom. Poop. We were really sweet and missionary like to her. hahaha. ANd anyways we enter and end up offering to help her to deshell her beans with her. We talked alot with her and ended up finding out that she has talked to missionaries in the past! And after we got deshelling beans we had a great lesson on the Gospel of Jesus Christ! And.. She gave us a bag of fresh picked corn! MMMMM! And we had been looking all week for corn on the cob, but no one was picking to sell! Just to keep for themselves. Heavenly Father is so nice.
We have a real problem with people going to church. Satan is just the worst, you know? It's football season and everyone has games on the weekend or goes out of town.. But we did have a man named Adao go to church and the mom of Raul (Fatinha). :) Makes me so happy that they came and enjoyed themselves! Well, at least we hope Adao enjoyed himself, we havent talked to him yet. We'll talk to him tonight.
Um. We also taught in a drug house this week. Didn't know that until afterwards. But we went in, everything looked fine. It looked like a nice house. So we go to talk about the restoration with this girl and it becomes SO difficult to focus. It was like between 5-6 in the day and it was the first day being back in my area from divisions. I thought "Man! The sun has really pulled the energy out of me! I've been away from all of the hills in my area for too long!" My companion would say something and my brain would not let me focus on her. She was pass it to me I would say something that I thought would go along with what she MAYBE said, and pass it right back after a few sentences. It was terrible! Then we got out and she was like "That girl was on drugs." Me, "She was WHAT?!" her, "Yeah, at one point her eyes rolled back into her head." Me, ".. I definitely didn't see that. If I had known I would have gotten out." Moral of the Story is: I don't know when people are on drugs, including myself. After that I bought a Pepsi and I was 100%. No worries folks. No worries.
This past week Sister Robinson and I were in charge of lunches. We definitely had sandwiches every day! HOLLA! It was pretty much the best week ever. Tuna sandwiches, tuna melts, melva patties, hamburgers, wraps, BBQ chicken, & grilled chicken. MMMM! This next week is Thanksgiving themed. We are going to try to find a whole chicken. Plan A was kill a chicken... But since our house will be full of the other sisters and cleaning is a lot of work... Probably not. :/ If I get my package this week, then we'll make greenbean cassarole.. MMM. I love GBcassarole!
Everyone is supposed to have a special training this week. So President and Sister Oliveira will be in town. And rumor has it that an Area 70 will be here too! He's supposed to speak at District Conference. I'm super excited. The Chorus is doing so good! We are so proud of them! We made them cinnimon bread for their last practice. Well, Sister Robinson did. I buttered the pans. She's just modest so she wanted to split the credit. Silly Sister Robinson. :)
The mission is seriously the best decision I've made in my whole life. I learn so much everyday. I can't imagine having lived a life without the benefits of having served a mission. I'm so grateful Heavenly Father smacked me in the spiritual rear-end so many times so I could have these blessings in my life. I know there are people waiting for the gospel and the fight against Satan is real. And that Heavenly Father really does love us! A WHOLE LOT!
Love Sister Buhler

Hope this works?

So this past week was rather disappointing. Our two girls that we LOVE that we were preparing to be baptized this week, didn't feel they were ready yet. So, we are obviously doing something wrong. What? I'm not sure. But I'd like to know so I can fix it. We think part of the problem is that Isa studied with Jehovah's Witnesses for like a year and decided in the process that she didn't want to get baptized. We think because they have such a long process for baptism that maybe she doesn't feel prepared because it's only been a month... but I know there is something else. We just don't know what yet.

This week we also celebrated Sister Serdar's 22nd birthday! CRAZY! She's old! Haha. Sister R and I went out and got stuff for cake and icecream Thursday.. then they came home with stuff for cake and icecream an hour after us.. Sooo... This weekend we had lots of yummy treats. :)

Today for Pday we went to the OTHER cemetery. The one people get buried in now. It was huge! Well.. Not really but really packed full. You could see in the outside wall where they had originally had the cemetery walls, it got full, then they extended 2 times. The visiting hours weren't until 11.. But the man at the gate was super nice and let us in.

Starting today I will be companions with Sister Serdar for 4 days. 4day long divisions is a little strange... Especially when you live in the same house with the peope you are doing divisions with. But it should be good. I'll be going into Serdar's area and Sister Robinson will take the lead on all of our investigators in our area. I'm pretty excited about it. I think Sister Robinson is going to do awesome. No problems at all. She came pre-trained. ;)

So can I just say that I LOVE our branch president? He's the bomb. He is always so concerned about the activity in our branch. He does visits every Saturday afternoon to inactives. Is that enough? No. He makes invites to church.. for the next upcoming 8 weeks until Christmas and kicks off this Sunday with a Christmas program and hymns! It was awesome. He did a visit to our recent convert's mom (who we struggled with) and she showed up to church the next day in a skirt and her son was in a white shirt, tie, and slacks and she told him to go buy a bible. She was SO HAPPY to be at church. When we told her how pretty she looked in her skirt, she turned to us and said, "Sister, I've never wear skirts.. This is the first skirt I have, I bought it yesterday after President passed by my house." MAN! What a blessing!

Also, we are directing the District Chorus. I'll be directing all of the musical numbers at District Conference and Sister Robinson will accompany the Chorus on the piano. An Area Seventy will be here. We're pretty excited about that. :)

Hope all is well on that end!
Sister Buhler

Robbsun e Booler

So I'm sending pictures. Of Luis' baptism. (He's the whiter kid in the picture where I'm wearing a Cabo Verde skirt.) Of our baptism this week, Jorgin. (I'm wearing blue) Us with our branch mission leader going to Brazil on his mission. (My comp is wearing grey and I'm wearing pink) Another picture from the beach last week. Us at the Cemetery today. and Halloween.

Well, this week has been alot of fun! And interesting... haha. Our baptism Jorgin FINALLY got baptized. Oh. It was a miracle. He's been ready for baptism for like a month, but with his mom being sick, him losing work and having to move out of town.. its been delayed alot. FINALLY this week we found him. With the Elders' help, we marked the baptism date for this week and BAM! Baptism! Buuuut. He didn't get confirmed because he had a bad headache the next day and didn't go to church. But Luis from last week got confirmed. So I guess it all will work out.

We had a zone conference tuesday, on Halloween and it was super good! My comp and I coordinated colors for the occasion. hahah. It was good to see the sisters and elders from the other half of the island. They challenged everyone to talk to 10 new people a day. Well, that has been working out really well! Our numbers definitely went up! We had 19 new investigators last week and we have 13 baptism dates marked currently. We have a transfer goal of 12 baptisms. I'm confident we'll meet that goal if we stay close to the spirit.

My arm fungus is going away. I'm really happy about that. :)

In other news, we did divisions with members this week. Sister Robinson's first time being away from me! It went so, so, so well! She's an awesome missionary! I'm really so proud to have her as my comp. I'm glad she had a good time. This week is already PACKED with appointments, We are probably going to do divisions with the other sisters this week.

We also have been teaching a half hour of music to the Primary in our branch, since no one knows the Primary songs. They just LOVE it! We are also teaching 4 other members of the branch how to read music, direct songs, and play the piano. It's going really well! We really love our branch. :)

Some of the days from this week, I've been so tired I've went to bed at 9:50 and then woke up to do prayers at 10:20. I'm telling you. The work is so tiring. Emotionally and Phyically! BUT I do have some pretty sweet looking calves because of all the uphill walking! :)

Today for pday we went to the beach today. Our district had a crab catching activity. hahaha. We caught one! When I say we, I mean they because I basically just watched. But it was cool! Took awhile, but success! Sister R and I also went to the cemetery. It was super cool and old. Very catholic. There was a sign that someone wrote "Jesus, forgive us of our sins" But it was spelled wrong in portuguese. haha.

Oh and a German man told me I had a german chin... I hope that was a compliment? Haha.

Ok, well... Until next week!
Sister Buhler