AFRICAAAAA

Ohhhhhhhhh minha vida! I've been here for a week now! How crazy is that?

Where do I start? Well, I spent my entire first week in Praia in the area of Tira Chapeu with two sisters. Sister Pitts from Las Vegas and Sister Muhangueno from Angola. And they are soooooo awesome! I didn't get to meet the mission President for the first couple of days because he was on a different island so I just tagged along with them until I recieved my actual first assignment and trainer.

TIRA CHAPEU oh my goodness what a culture shock! The smell is definitely not the greatest and the SUN! OH THE SUN just beats down on you for every second of every day. I totally came in thinking it was going to be dry heat but it's not! It's kinda humid here! The winds are so strong here too. 24/7 night and day I and my stuff are all covered in a layer of dirt. There are Praia dogs everywhere! EVERYWHERE. And there is a huge difference between house dogs, dogs, and Praia dogs. One of my companions literally counted 80 Praia dogs in just one hour of walking. Oh and not just dogs but there are also random goats and the occasional cow just wandering around the streets. It's pretty cool. Eu gosto. The ice cream here is comparable to gelato and the bakeries are to diiiieeeee for.

I've gotten some mosquito bites on my legs that have been swelling up like crazy (my poor delicate white skin) but the Mission President's wife gave me ointments and medicine that have all helped so much!!!

Aside from all of that though the people are AMAZING!!! Oh my goodness I love them so much! Everyone is so friendly and so open and so beautiful! There are tons of people here that have either blue or hazel eyes and it's super fixe. AAAALLLL the women kiss cheeks and it's kinda rude if you don't, so I've been like super awkward with that, but I'm trying! Something about the people here is that they all speak in Crioulo. I've only met a few that will speak in Portuguese for me and it's pretty difficult for me. I can't understand hardly anything anyone is saying ever except for the sisters because they speak in Portuguese. So during lessons, the sisters speak in Portuguese and the people will respond in Crioulo so for me I only ever understand like 1/4 of whats going on and then I'll try to teach. It all sounds so good when I say it in my head and then I start speaking and it's all broken up and mispronounced and just yuck. hahahaha. It's more about how others feel rather than how well I say it so I try to keep my head up and not be discouraged. And I'm really not discouraged! I know I'm doing the best that I can. And my Portuguese has improved so much since arriving so I know the people can at least understand me, I just can't understand them. But I love them all. They're so kind to me. I especially love the kids. Oh my gosh they're so precious!!!!!

Just a little fun fact for you all, I don't go a single day without hearing some little kid call me "China" (shee-nuh). Seriously. Sometimes I'll have little herds of children running around me yelling "chinesa chinesa chinesaaa!" IIIIIIIIIII don't even know anymore. hahaha. And then when I start speaking in Portuguese, all the adults ask me if I'm from Brazil. Hhhhaaahahah good one.

So right now I'm actually in Cova Figueira (on the island of Fogo) and I arrived just an hour ago and this is my official first area!!!! Hurray for me cause it's actually the coldest area out of all of the islands so yaaaaay! So far what I've noticed here is how clean it is compared to Praia and how GORGEOUS my view is! The ocean is on one side and the volcano on the other. So cool. My trainer's name is Sister Wilson and so far I think she's amazing! She's gonna be a good momma. I can feel it.

I love you all! Chau!!!

AHHHHHHHH

It's happening! I leave tomorrow morning for Africa! And I'm so excited and nervous and excited and oh my goodness gracious.

My faith and testimony and conversion unto the Lord have grown SO MUCH I am hardly the same person that I was on my first day here. I have felt such extreme emotions in such a short and condensed amount of time, I can't imagine how crazy it's going to be once I get out into the field.

I don't have much time but I'll share a short little experience I had this week with you all. Last week I was hosting (when you are a host and guide to newcomers on their first day), and a random elder came up to me and said, "I just want to let you know what an impact you've made on my life and on my father's life. My father doesn't like the church and didn't support me going on a mission. And one day, I was watching videos on youtube of mission letter openings when my dad decided to join me. We watched a ton, but when we got to yours, he became so excited. He said he loved your video the best and after that he didn't seem so against me serving a mission. I think your video really brought the Spirit into the room and softened his heart. So thank you for that! Goodbye!"

OTÍMO

I love you all! Seriously, all of you. ALL OF YOU.

Happy Easter!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S3TI4bYerU&feature=youtu.be

The next time you will hear from me will be when I'm in Cape Verde!

Tcháu!!!!

                                                           "be and do good"

4/8/14

Seis Dias and Counting!

Hooooly moly I only have six days left here! I can't believe it! There's a part of me that feels so ready to just GO and another part that's like "whoah whoah hold up i hardly know anything yet wait a second slow down", mas, estou pronto.

I committed one of my investigators to baptism! I was so happy I started tearing up. Ahhh. Muito otímo. I love my investigators so so much even though it's not actually them and they're actually in portugal and mozambique and i'll never get to meet the real people. 'ta bom. it's all good.

Soooo let's see, I got my itinerary! Turns out I'm flying out by myself. Hurray hurrah. I also have to report to the travel office ready to go at 2:30 tuesday morning. Super otímo hahahaha. and I fly over to Minneapolis and then to Boston and then I have a 4 and a half hour layover there and then I fly out to Cape Verde and arrive at 4:30 in the morning. I wonder how this is all gonna turn out hahahaha.

The Executives of The Boy Scouts of America came into our class the other day because they were taking a mini tour of the MTC campus. Some of them were LDS but a lot weren't so the pressure was on! It was awesome! They were so incredibly impressed with our language skills and our dedication to the Lord and the Savior. It was a really cool experience.

Ummm...so my companion calls for me in the night like every night hahahah i swear. It'll be like 2:30 in the morning and she'll start saying "hey sister murri!!! sister murri we gotta go" amongst other random things hahahaha.

General conference was amazing! I loved loved loved Holland and Uchtdorf's talk. But most of you probably watched to so I wont reiterate anything. But I will say that General Conference as a missionary is amazing. Just amazing. The Holy Spirit filled me to the brim with knowledge and insights.

Let's see, what else? I suppose I could tell you what an average day looks like for me.

6:30 wake up

7:30 breakfast

8:00 personal study

9:00 companion study

10:00 teacher will come in and teach us a lesson on whatever

11:00 teach our "investigators" we usually get about 25 minutes to teach.

12:30 lunch

1:00 language study

2:00 another professor will come in and teach us for several hours

4:30 teach more investigators

5:30 dinner

6:00 gym

7:00 additional study

9:30 return to residence halls

10:30 lights out

Yup! Lots of studying going on! And this week our professors put up a rule saying that we can no longer speak english in the classroom but that surprisingly hasn't hindered us too badly! Hurray!

Anywho, just to give you all a heads up, I'm only allowed to write emails AND physical letters on P-day (which will be on mondays) so I do receive all of your mail, it just takes me a while to write handwritten responses because i'm only permitted once a week. Desculpa! So keep sending me your wonderful letters and be patient with me!
natalie.murri@myldsmail.net

I love you all!

-Sister Murri

 April Fools Day! We switched tags. Kinda lame. I know. That's as hardcore as you can get as a missionary

                             Zone Leaders. Conference review. It was a long day.

Hi!

Sssoooooo this week has been long, but amazing! I'm such a changed person already and I haven't even gone out into the field yet! I can't imagine who I'm going to be when I return from my mission.

So this last Sunday would probably have to be my favorite Sunday in all of existence. Even though we didn't eat food until 5:30 at night. But Devo. Deeeevotional was so crazy. And I was so incredibly lucky because I was an usher for this particular devo and my district and I got amazing seats like three rows from the front.

 We had two guests. The first one was Brother Elliot. THEE BROTHER ELLIOT the man who plays the organ for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir! He played like three or four amazing songs. Just incredible. So much so it brought tears to my eyes. And I'm beginning to realize how close music can bring me to God. Ah. So amazing. And the last song that he played he played with only his feet while snapping his fingers and his feet were flying all over the place and it was such a fun and amazing song that we all stood and clapped. ON A SUNDAY. That doesn't happen on a Sunday, but it totally did.

Then the second guest ended up being Brother Archuleta! Yup, that's right, Thee David Archuleta. Who just returned from his mission in Chile about 6-7 days ago, and he talked to us a lot about missionary work. He is an amazing speaker! Almost a better speaker than a singer I'd say, but anywho, he sang a few songs and they were beautiful and ahhhhh it was such a good night.

A sister in my district was asked to say the closing prayer for the Devotional and when they were announcing it on the stand I did a mini fist pump for her and the elder sitting next to me told me that David Archuleta looked at me when I fist pumped soooooo yeah. I guess you could say I'm pretty special. Hahahahaha. After Devo when he was shaking hands with the girls in my district, I noticed how incredibly small he is. He's literally like 5'3". Not even kidding. Just a little thing I noticed.

Anywho, I'm improving with the language everyday and my "investigators" are all progressing and are all keeping their commitments and I swear I've never laughed more in my life than here at the MTC.

I love you and miss you all! I will try to respond to all of your letters as soon as I can!

Portugal Portuguese accents are insane

Como se diz Lederhosen??

Oí!!!!

First off, here's my favorite quote of the week: "If you were arrested for kindness, would there be enough evidence to convict you?"

This week I learned soooo much about the Holy Ghost and the importance of the knowledge it gives us as is mentioned in Moroni 10:3-5 (and like a billion other scriptures). And I pondered that scripture and thought, "But we can gain knowledge of things just by reading about them or hearing about them in talks" and I pondered it some more and then the Holy Ghost testified to me, right then and there, que o Espírito Santo da conhecimento a nosso mento, e a nosso coração (hopefully I said that right! They teach us how to speak Portuguese here, not write it). AGH. So awesome.

Okay, now onto bullet points because they're way easier to write out and take less time!

- Turns out the other Sister Murri and I are related!!! Our great grandpas were brothers!!! SO CRAZY!!! Woo! Yay family!

- Music and the Spoken Word is probably the thing that I look forward to the most here at the MTC besides sleeping. I cry. Every time. Probably from a mixture of both the beautiful music and lack of sleep. Hahahaha. I miss music SO MUCH. So every night before we go to bed, the sisters in my district and I sing hymns in Portuguese and it always makes me feel better.

- Thank you thank you thank you so much to everyone who has written to me. Sincerely. Emails and letters can turn my day from an "I feel like a piece of poo" day to an "I can do anything good!" day. Keep 'em coming

- I am foursquare QUEEN which is something to have pride in here at the MTC. WOO! They call me Sister Murderi. And my band of tricksy sisters. Let's see now, there's Sister Stompson, Sister Breakon, and Sister Killemmore.

- I still stink at Portuguese (who doesn't at first?) but I can teach a 30 minute lesson on basically every gospel principle (except for tithing and chastity. I'm looking forward to those!) in the language. YAAAYYY!

Story time!

So the other day, my companion and I were trying to teach our "investigator" how to pray. I told him to fold his "armas" for prayer and he said, "armas!?!??" and I'm like, "uhhhh sim. armas" and started waving my arms in the air like, "ARMAS". Then he laughed and laughed and laughed and said "armas" and then pulled up a pretend rifle and started pew pewing with it around the room. And then he pulled out a fake sword and held it up like a pirate or something which is when I realized that "armas" means weapons hahahaha. whoops! Better here than out in the field, am I right?

And another time where there was a miss communication. I was teaching a pesquisadora how to pray and I told her to tell God the things she was grateful for. So she's going through a list of things in her life that she loves and then she said, "E eu sou grato por meu cão" and I was just soo confused. I thought her family had a cow. So I said, "cão?!? MOO?!?" and my companions looking at me like i'm a nut and my investigator starts woofing in the middle of this prayer so all you could here outside of the room was mooing and woofing and it was fabulous. So apparently in Portugal, dog is "cão". Gooooood times.

Okay okay one more story. So I'm asleep snug as a bug in my bed when all of a sudden I hear my companion saying "Sister Murri. Sister Murri. SISTER MURRI!" so i wake up and i'm freaking out and I say "What's wrong Sister Thompson?!?" and she says "We have to go back to the classroom right now". What the hey. So i'm confused. So I ask her why and she replies "we're not ready to teach all three of our investigators tomorrow. we have to go prepare!!!" and then i hear her shuffle around for her clock and she looks at it and says "oh. nevermind." It was 12:00 at night you guys. She didn't even remember it the next morning. That's what the MTC does to our brains!!!

I LOVE YOU ALL!!!!

Temple run!!

Oiiiiii Oi Oi Oi!!!!

It is true what they say. The days feel like weeks and the weeks feel like days. The only days I actually have to keep track of are Tuesdays and Sundays. Speaking of which, I gave a talk last Sunday on Baptism and bore my testimony of it and of how much it means to me and how hard I had to work for it. I felt the spirit so strongly in the room and it was so sweet! Thank goodness they allowed me to give my talk in English! Because after two Sundays pass they make us write all of our talks in Portuguese and pick a random person to give the talk at the last minute. Woohoo!

Let's see, I suppose I should introduce you all to my little tiny district.

Sister Thompson - is my companion and I literally don't go two minutes without seeing her face. Every day. Every hour. We are glued! We have to be within sight and sound of eachother at all times, and it's weird. If I don't see her for about two minutes I start to worry and look around for her hahahahaha. She's from Missouri, she's super cute, blonde, and a REALLY hard worker. She's one of the most self disciplined girls I have ever met in my entire life. She follows the rules to a T and she's so obedient. Quite the opposite from myself (not that I'm a rule breaker or anything) but we are both teaching each other so much! She's teaching me how to be obedient and well disciplined and I'm teaching her how to take a step back and breath and to go with the flow. We make an excellent pair. She will be serving somewhere in Brazil.

Sister Bacon - she's the oldest one in our group. She's 22 and she's from Florida and she is learning Portuguese at the speed of LIGHT! It's amazing! She also teaches by the spirit really really well. Which is a magical combination. She's tough as nails and yet so soft! She will be serving in Portugal.

Sister Cullimore - she's this tiny little thing with icy blue eyes and she can get me to cry from laughter better than anyone here can which is saying something 'cause there are some hilarious missionaries here! She's super sweet and incredibly kind and I love her to pieces. She will also be serving in Portugal.

Elder Gilbert - is a hoot! He is a riot! He's actually better than television! One day he recited an entire episode of the office in full detail and dialog and my ribs hurt so much from laughing. Which is good cause when you're at the MTC youre either crying or laughing. He sometimes gives the impression where you don't know why he's here at the MTC and then BAM. Tear-jerking testimony! He will be serving in Portugal

Elder Sorenson - is who I like to call the "Intellectual Free Spirit". Not sure how to describe it better. Hahahaha. He's so funny and so intelligent and I learn new things from him at least every hour of the day! Whether it's doctrine related or completely out in space somewhere.  

Well, that's my family! Those are the people that I spend almost every hour of every day with!

Let's see, what else?:

- I think it's safe to say that I have officially become accustomed to MTC life (PFFFTTTt!!!)

- I had horribly horrible stomach pains on Thursday and my companion stayed behind with me and took care of me for most of the day.

- I also had a horrible stomach ache on Sunday. Stress? Or perhaps it was because those were the only two morning I actually drank milk :O

- My wrist hurts from attempting the Brazilian finger snappy thing so many times! Does anybody even know what I'm talking about?

- A huge chunk of my zone left yesterday for Brazil :'( BUT, we get three new missionaries coming in tomorrow! A sister and two elders. I'M SO EXCITED. I feel like 5 years older than them just because I've been here for two weeks hahaha

- I've never been so frustrated with myself in my entire life. Turns out I'm not as gifted with the language as I thought

- I MET THE OTHER SISTER MURRI HERE AT THE MTC!! And she says that her ancestors are from Switzerland. We MUST be related. Also, she's going to Taiwan. Mandarin speaking. What the hey. ESTA TUDO BEM porque I'm going to AFRICA!!! You can't compete with that ;)

- Please please please please pretty please I'm not begging you (okay maybe a little bit) send me emails (natalie.murri@myldsmail.net)! Or DearElders! Or handwritten letters! Or like a two sentence joke or something! You guys don't even know how much I love anything from the outside world.

- The MTC is its own country.

- Mormon 9:19-the rest.

Minha companheira!!!!

My district! From left to right its me, Sister Bacon, Sister Cullimore, Sister Thompson, Elder Sorensen, and Elder Gilbert!

My INSANE schedule. Behold.

My zone!

A candid shot of some of my favorite Elders

Oi tudos mundas!

-First off whoever said that the first day would be easy was seriously misinformed! We literally walk in, drop our suitcases, get some books, and go to class!
-It only goes uphill from there
-Every day has been like trying to drink water from a fire hydrant
-THE FOOD IS AWESOME HERE
-There's no time to miss anyone or anything. If you're not studying then you're eating or you're sleeping
-On that subject I have been getting about 5 hours of sleep every night
-"O Dom de Linguas" (gift of tongues) is real! My companion and I have already taught three lessons completely in portuguese. THREE. LESSONS (I mean think about it, I haven't even been here for a week). that lasted for about 15-30 minutes each to an "investigator" and the lessons weren't too shabby if I do say so myself! Even though we sounded like cavemen
-I spend all day in my classroom with my district. my district is comprised of two elders going to Portugal, two sisters going there too and my companion and I. my companion is going to Brazil.
-I will see them all day everyday until we all leave! which means district=family
-As of last friday i am now the only missionary in the MTC going to Cape Verde!
-The Portugal accent (the one im learning) is 100xs harder to speak and understand than the Brazilian accent. WOO!
-There's a small part of me that wants to leave RIGHT NOW and another small part that wants to stay here forever
-Having to stay right next to someone 24/7 takes some serious getting used to
-I took pictures but need a converter to upload them! Sorry!
-Also I have forgotten my notebook which has some things I really wanted to say to you guys! Dang! Maybe next tuesday
-Snow=not so fun with a wardrobe geared toward Africa hahaaaaa
-Get on the DearElder website and write me a letter! That way it gets printed out and delivered right to me on the day that you send it!
-P-day is on Tuesdays
-I only have an hour to write and do laundry so, tchau! I love you all!