A Week of Miracles

Hey everyone!

This week has been amazing! I LOVE Marlborough!

We have seen so many miracles this week! It's incredible!

On Tuesday Morning we went to do service for this old man who's not a member of the church. One of the members of our ward knows him and told him that we could do service for him. So we went over there and raked the leaves in his yard. It was a lot of work so we brought the Framingham Elders along too. At one point we were all working hard, raking the leaves, and the man came out (his name is Joe) and he started talking to all of us about how his wife died in February and he is still having a really hard time with it. It was so sad. He said "she wasn't just my wife, she was my best friend". It was heartbreaking. But the four of us took that opportunity to teach him the Plan of Salvation. We helped him to understand and know that he can be with her again and they can be together forever. He was so grateful! He said "that's beautiful!" It was amazing. Also, the Elders gave him a blessing. Afterwards, Joe said that he could feel the warmth of the spirit filling him as they laid their hands on his head. It was such an incredible experience. It was a huge miracle of our week!

On Wednesday, our miracle of the day was AMAZING! We stopped by to see this inactive family. It's a Dad and four kids. His wife also died this year and we wanted to stop by and see if he needed help with anything and if he'd like some Home Teachers to come over. Well, he wasn't there, but the nanny and all the kids were. We talked to their nanny and she is so sweet! Her name is Lisa. She told us that she wasn't brought up with religion but she's been going to a church for years and she loves Jesus Christ. We told her what we do as missionaries and asked her if she'd like to learn more about the gospel. She said "absolutely!". She told us that even though she's been going to her church, she doesn't know if it's the right church. She said that whatever church she joins she will be 100% committed to it. She said "I don't just want to go to church. I want to LIVE my religion!' We were like "YES!!". Also, we gave her a Book of Mormon and invited her to read 3 Nephi 11. She said that she would, and she said that she wanted to read more to be prepared for when we come back! It was incredible!

Then on Thursday our miracle of the day was also amazing! We went to see a less active woman, Michelle. She invited us in and we got to know her a little bit. Then we asked her what her spiritual goals are so we could see where she's at and how we can help her. She told us that she wants to get into a habit of reading her scriptures every day because she's not doing that right now. We suggested that we could come over and read with her once a week to get her into the habit of it. So she agreed to that, and she was really grateful that we came :) We're really excited to work with her more. We were so glad that we stopped by to see her. We know that the Lord led us there.

This week we found a caterpillar in our car, so Sister Saito put him into a water bottle. We hate bugs!

The caterpillar himself.

On Friday we had an awesome Zone meeting! It was crazy though. I've never seen so many individuals at a Zone meting before. This Zone is HUGE! There were 30 missionaries in that room! It was slightly overwhelming but it was a fantastic Zone Meeting! 

This weekend was amazing! Saturday was such a great day! I'm getting a hang of this Portuguese thing...well kinda. I can bear my testimony, introduce myself and talk about food. That's all I need! Right?

Speaking of food...Saturday was rough with the food. We had a breakfast appointment, a lunch appointment, another lunch appointment and a dinner appointment. Then at our appointment after our dinner appointment, the family tried to give us food and I was like "nooooooooo!". I felt ill. I have eaten more food in the past 2 days than I did the past 6 months! And all we eat here is rice!!!! Not complaining though. I LOVE rice! 

A Brazilian soda called Guarana! It's so good!

Sunday was such an amazing day. I love this ward so much. The people here are the sweetest! We had the Primary Program and it was SO cute! The kids did such an amazing job :) Then we went to the Portuguese Sunday school and I didn't really know what was going on, and then we went to the English Relief Society. It was so great!  We had a lesson on missionary work and it was amazing. At the end, one of the Brazilian Sisters walked in and handed us an envelope. We opened it and it had notes from all the Relief society Sisters in the Portuguese group telling us how much they love and appreciate us and how grateful they are for the work we do. Myself and Sister Saito just cried! It was SO sweet!

The sky after church yesterday! Church finishes at 4pm here.

Also, we found out something awesome yesterday! The Boston Stake is piloting a new Sabbath day observance program starting in January. So what's happening is, they're cutting down the time of church from 3 hours to 2 hrs and 15 minutes. Sacrament meeting will be 45 minutes and each class will be 35 minutes with 10 minutes of break time in between. Sacrament meeting will be totally different. We're not going to have announcements in Sacrament meeting..they'll just be on the program. It'll be opening hymn, opening prayer, youth speaker for 5 minutes, adult speaker for 15 minutes and then sacrament hymn and administering of the sacrament is at the very end. After the sacrament there'll be a closing prayer and that's it. It's TOTALLY different! Also, there will be no meetings throughout the Stake on Sundays after church. No choir, no firesides, nothing. They want people to be able to go home and spend time with their families after church. This is all coming about because Elder Holland challenged our Stake President to find out what they need to do as a Stake to improve their Sabbath Day observance. So this is what's happening! I'm excited to see what it'll be like!

I love you all! I hope you've all had an equally amazing week! :)

Just a quick selfie!

Love always,

Sister Rebekah Barrett