3.30.2015

Week 8: First Full Week in the Field



Oi! First week in the field!

Too bad it feels like I´ve been here for like a year. I´m sure every transfer will feel shorter and shorter. So... super excited for conference this week! 4 hours of the best thing since the last time i ate nutella.
So this week, we taught a ton of lessons, and we have 17 new investigators. Its crazy. We run around this city like crazy! Im getting to know all the names of the members and their friends. We mainly know the younger teenagers because they are the coolest. Everyone is always so friendly here!

So on Saturday we had 2 baptisms, Antonia (mother, 37) and Jocelene (daughter, 13). It was beautiful. You can really see the change in people, and also in their homes. Antonia´s home is so much cleaner and brighter, it just feels like a happy place! Ah! I love it!

We almost only had one baptism, but it´s a long story and I´m running a bit short on time today. Lets just say that Sister Johnson and I had to run across Porto Novo at 6:45 (from the chapel to a house about 10 minutes walking, back to the chapel) and the baptism was at 7. It was insane. That was my exercise for the day. Not to mention that there is a MASSIVE hill and like 3 flights of stairs to go up\down since we had to return. At least our pictures still looked good!

Other crazy stuff:
There are a TON of dogs here. Most of them are okay, but some I really don´t like. 
The food is pretty good, but there is only one flavor. Salty. We eat rice, fish, potatoes, carrots, plantains, and sometimes lettuce if we are lucky (for lunch/dinner).

Every night I make steamed milk with sugar and vanilla, and I got my comp hooked on it too. So good.
Boulashes(?) are the best thing ever. I don´t even know how to describe them.
My companion and I sing disney songs and english hymns everywhere we go, except for in lessons when we sing Portuguese hymns!

The youth here are so willing and ready to accept the gospel. and they dont care how crappy my portuguese is.
I almost fall down the the dirt paths like everyday. you get used to it, and also get used to having a ton of rocks in your sandals.

The wind was insane this week. No one tells you that Cabo Verde can be extremely windy! All they say is how hot! It did get cold in the evening this week! We had to start carrying cardigans with us because it got so cold! I wanted another blanket on my bed other than the sheet!

Next week I´ll try to think of more things to write, but I didn´t bring my list I write stuff down on today! Sorry!
But we almost got to go to a buffett because president visited, but the sisters had already had the lady in our ward that makes us lunch, make food for everyone so we didnt go... sad day. Hopefully we will go when they come back next month!

I love Cabo Verde! I love these people!
Have a great week and remember that I love you all!
Fica fisch!(? sorry dont know how to spell anything in Portuguese)

Sister Kohlert

3.23.2015

Week 7: So This is Africa

Oi! Bom dia!

So this week was crazy. We left the MTC on Tuesday at 3 am and then arrived in Cape Verde Wednesday night. I felt like I was in airports for days... I never want to go on a plane again. On the way there we had a few problems... my companion got sick because the planes hit some turbulence, and so she lost all the food she hadn´t eaten for the last 24 hours. I think it would have helped if she would have had some food at at least one of the layovers or ate a meal that they had on the plane. Anyways, I also lost my camera on one of the flights... oops. Worst thing ever... so I no longer have any MTC pictures and I can´t send any for the next few weeks till I get a new one. Sorry.

So Cabo Verde... where do I begin... this place is CRAZY! but I love it! There are literally no white people here. The only ones are the missionaries, and maybe a few tourists on the other islands. Our second day, thursday, we found out who our companions are and what area we would be serving in. My companion is sister johnson, from Alabama and she started her mission in porto novo and has been here for 6 months, and I am serving in the city of Porto Novo on the island of Santo Antao. My island is known for its crazy creole, which i definitely do not understand, and its hot weather. Luckily the weather hasn´t been too bad, but the langauge though... oh my goodness. This is not the language i learned in the mtc. Seriously. People will ask me my name and I can´t pick out any words, and they are speaking Portuguese and not Creole. Or they will just say welcome and I won´t understand. its rough. but I am working really hard, i just have to get used to how they talk, they just slur all the words together. All the people tell me I will understand in one month, but I think it will take a bit longer, but i hope that it will only take a month.

So to describe Porto Novo since I don´t have any pictures, its beautiful! The houses are all made from cinderblocks, and most are very small, usually just have one front room with a queen sized bed, and then a back room with a kitchen and maybe some chairs. Most houses have chairs, most have stools, and some, the really poor people, just have beds, so we just give the lessons sitting on the edge of their bed. Some people have electricity, most dont. Most have cement floors, and only a few pairs of clothes. We teach a ton of people! We have like 10 investigators right now that have dates, and we have 3 who we are trying to get baptized on Saturday (Adilson, Antonia, and Josilyn). They have crazy names here, and I have no clue how to spell them, we just guess based on how they sound.

Everyone here is very friendly, we talk to everybody and my companion knows like all of their names. There isn´t really a lot of diversity like I have heard about. The skin colors differ in shade, some very dark, and some look like african americans. Everyone has black hair and brown eyes.

Sorry, I´m kinda just jumping around everywhere as thoughts come to my mind about what I can tell you about.
The main streets are cobblestone, but its very uneven, and then the other streets are all dirt. No one has addresses. Only the main streets have names, aka like 3 in our area. People describe their houses by what is around, like stores or obvious landmarks like the one bridge or big yellow house, the church, or the school. Then they say how many houses in and the color of the door or wall. So our house is the orange and blue one on Bairro street(Buy-ho).

We live with the two other sisters in Porto Novo. There are only 4 sisters and 4 elders on Santo Antao, all of the sisters are in porto novo and one set of the elders, the other elders are farther north in some other city. Our apartment is nice. We don´t have hot water so thats been fun to take showers in. I think all the other apartments that sisters stay in have hot water. Santo Antao is not the most advanced island, we are way out in the middle of no where. The port is beautiful. President Mathews said it was one the of two prettiest islands. But it is not green. Its hard to describe the city, because its so different. The city center where the stores are is like Old San Juan in Puerto Rico, but the buildings are only one story.
 
The city is small, it feels like the size of pleasant grove maybe, maybe smaller. I´m not really sure. But our area is small, my companion says they it´s a lot bigger than the one she was in before, the one that the new 2 elders took. There used to only be 2 elders and 4 sisters here until the last transfer so they came and we switched parts of the areas.

So yeah...
One funny thing that happened this week, before I run out of time. We were teaching Antonia and her daughter Josilyn, in their house on her bed, and Antonia has a probably 1 year old baby. So we were talking and the baby is standing on the ground at the edge of the bed and just starts peeing! It was really weird because we didn´t know what to do! Antonia picks her up and grabs a sheet hanging up(like a curtain) and wipes off her own legs and puts the sheet on her lap and puts the baby on her lap and just keeps listening. it was so weird. she just left the pee on the cement floor. Then later the baby decided to play in it. Yeah... at least she didn´t get any pee on us. Oh and the baby always grabs everything and sucks on it and she got a hold of my companions hymn book haha. it was covered in saliva and probably pee. So that was the crazy story for this week!
I love you all, and I love Cabo Verde!

The people are so humble and yet so happy here, they are so willing to hear the gospel and have been prepared to accept it.

Till next week!

Sister Kohlert

3.22.2015

Made it to Cape Verde!



Hey Family and Friends

Just letting you guys know that I arrived safely in Praia! Its amazing here and I already love it! It really is a third world country... but its so beautiful. The most beautiful sunsets in the world!

I found out where i am going! I will be serving on the island of Santo Antao, in Porto Novo. My companion is Sister Johnson from Alabama. Shes really nice. she told me that Santo Antao is one of the greenest and hottest. It also has the hardest creole and no one speaks portuguese there... haha so fun! It's the farthest island north and supposedly the 1st or 2nd most beautiful!
Well, I love you guys! I´ll email again on Monday, and hopefully I'll be able to send some pictures.

Love you guys!

Sister Kohlert

3.17.2015

Week 6: SLC to Altanta to Newark to Lisbon to Cape Verde



No email this week, as the missionaries left for Cape Verde Monday morning. They got up at 2:30am to be at the travel office by 3:00am, which was their designated time to leave. When they got to the travel office, they found that it didn't open until 3:30am, so they had the night security guard open the cafeteria so they could eat a bowl of cereal before they left for the airport. The flight schedule was to depart from SLC at 7:00am, arrive in Atlanta at 12:30pm, depart from Atlanta at 1:45pm, arrive in Newark at 4:10pm, depart Newark at 7:00pm, arive Lisbon on Wednesday morning at 6:00am, depart Lisbon 2:00pm, arrive in Cape Verde Wednesday night at 7:00pm.

Apparently there was quite a bit of turbulence when the plane landed and some of the missionaries got sick. 
On the Plane from Newark, New Jersey to Lindon, Portugal




Cabo Verde, Land of Light

3.10.2015

Week 5: Music and the spoken...bat?

Heyo! Tudo Bem!

So this is officially my last week at the MTC, we received our travel plans and we are departing next Tuesday! We leave at 3 a.m. on Tuesday morning, and head to the airport. We stop in Atlanta, Newark, and Lisbon, Portugal before arriving in Cape Verde on Wednesday at 7 p.m. I'm very excited to see the people and the first island that I will be serving on.

This week, Irmao Workman, who served in Mozambique, showed us pictures from his mission, and I am now so excited. The people look so happy and so humble. He told us some crazy stories, and some really funny ones. I wish I could write them all! He is writing a book about his mission, so maybe one day you can all read them... or not.

On Sunday, we were in Music and The Spoken Word, and a bat started flying around the room! No one could pay attention to the program, and every just followed the bat around haha. It swooped down toward the crowd and everyone squealed. It was very entertaining.

We are going to sing a musical number in our sacrament meeting this Sunday, so that should be good. We are singing the EFY Medley mixed with Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. It sounds really cool.

As you all know, this week was daylight savings, and so we thought we were so prepared and changed our clocks an hour earlier... yeah. So we were going to be two hours late for class instead of just one. We are so smart! luckily we caught it and changed them forward two hours before we fell asleep!

Last week I finished the Book of Mormon! 

Some funny things that happened, one of our elders accidentally spilled chocolate milk on a senior sisters head... he was so red and thoroughly embarrassed. She was really nice about it, and her husband was laughing so hard.
 
We also assigned everyone a disney character that they were most like. Mine was tinkerbell, not just because of my hair, but also my personality. it was really funny. one of the elders is just like Doug from Up, and another one was the 7 dwarves, all of them, he just has every personality. super funny. 

Anyways, I don't have any pictures to send this week, but you will definitely get some the next time I email in 
AFRICA!

I love you all!
Sister Kohlert

3.03.2015

Week 4: So... Um... 2 Weeks and I'll Be in AFRICA!

Heyo! Tudo Bem!

So this week has been quite crazy!

First, we got to host for the first time on wednesday! That was fun for a while, and then I got really cold standing at the curb not doing anything hahaha. But I did get to escort one sister! She is going to the Micronesia Guam mission. She was really nice, and didn't cry! My poor companion got a sister that was bawling her eyes out the entire time, and had her phone, and thought she could just send it home sometime... so that didn't go over well when my comp had to tell her that she had to give it to her family.

We got assigned to host again tomorrow so that will be nice, expect that it's colder... haha I'll just dress warmer this time.

We do all the usual things: class, eat, sleep, workout, go to the temple, church, TRC, and devoltionals.

Some funny things that happened this week:
The elders made paper airplanes and we had a ton of fun playing with those for a bit. It made us all so happy. My comp kept trying to hit the elder sitting directly across the room from her, but everything the plane would hit an air current or something and just barely miss him, so she started calling him Samuel the Lamanite. It was hilarious.


Speaking of my companion, during our lesson with our investigator, Camilo, we were talking about the plan of salvation. She was explaining spirit paradise and prison, "Good questions go to paradise, and bad questions go to prison." So funny! Perguntas= questions, pessoas=people. oops. Then she couldn't remember how to say easy, but knew that it sounded something like 'fish tacos' so she said 'fishcado' so funny. easy=facil(faseel). When we finished and our teacher came back into the room, he was laughing so hard. It made my day. Best Lesson Ever. Then she called him the devil when there was a supervisor watching the end of class haha.

Well I'm out of time! Love you guys!
Have a great week!

Sister Kohlert