4.04.2016

Week 58: For the Love of Praia

Dear Family and Friends,

OH MY GOODNESS! You wouldnt believe the hurricane that we went though this week. Our zone is quite the piece of work, but thats another letter way too long for me to write right now. lets just say that we are all BRAND NEW, and have no idea what we are doing. I jsut basically had to play zone leader during council and zone training meeting. Our training went really well, but the rest kinda was lacking energy, but sister burke and i brought it back at the end to make sure our zone didnt think we were robots.

We had a lot of fun at conference, eating snacks as usually and trying to understand the translaters as they switched from brazilian to portugual portuguese. Thats always fun. We had a good turn out of recent converts, less actives, and investigators. We saw a miracle when the boyfriend of a less active let us talk to him, and it went really well! Our ward is just full of pregnant people right now, not to mention that two of our 10 investigators with baptismal date marks are pregnant, one who will be giving birth any day now!

We had a great time with all the american candy that sister burke got in those three packages that were on my head in the picture that i sent. We may have eaten too much at times and made our selves sick, but we knew we had to get rid of it as fast as we could, so we gave a bunch to the missionaries at conference (bribing the secretaries to always bring us our packages and letters first haha).




But i´m loving it here in Praia, never thought id say that to be completely honest. The people are amazing and I love them to death! I love teaching them the gospel and seeing the change in their lives. They know its true. I learned the power of bearing testimony of eternal families this week, because I talked about it with every taxi driver that took us all over Praia this week. They really start to listen because they have never though about the principle of having a family forever. I know that the keys were restored to seal families. I am so grateful for temples here on earth and the chance that I have to share this knowledge with the families I have been blessed to know here in Cabo Verde.

Love you all! Till next week,
Síster Kohlert

Week 57: Transfers

Dear Family and Friends,

So ya know, of course im still here in Tira Chapéu,but my new comp is sister Burke, who lives like right down the road from us in Lindon, and she was friends with Nicole and I knew her in high school, and we were in the MTC together. SO ITS GONNA BE AN AWESOME TRANSFER! Super excited. But also SUPER sad to say bye to sister dorgan, love her to death. But ya know, its life on the mission.


This week was Jo´s baptism. So cute. She´s a model, no big deal. She´ll probably go to NY to model soon too. But she is amazing! We Finally finished divisions. Happy thats over, and ready to start again, first with leadership council tomorrow, then zone meeting, and then the divisions begin! haha but i really do love it even though i complain. The sisters here are just awesome. 


We had a great time at womens conference, and at church that morning we thought that our investigator jacquelina was going to go into labor at any minute in relief society, but she didnt. But that baby is coming soon!

We had a lovely family night with our vovo fatima. Shes our cabo verdean grandma. She takes care of us when we are sick, like when i had a sore throat on thursday and she made us tea. What a sweetheart. But what i talked about last week and leaving these people forever is so hard. Because we knew that sister dorgan would be transferred, so we had to say goodbye to everyone, and you cant help but cry. You just LOVE THESE PEOPLE SOOO MUCH!
Water in Our Apartment
Anyways, Congrats to Tanner and Kristy! Hope your marriage will be full of ... all i can think of is to promise blessings like a missionary, so maybe ill just stop there, CONGRATS! I love you guys!

Dont forget about the purpose of easter too fast! When Christ was born, there were 3 days with out darkness, and when he died, there were 3 without light, but when He was ressurrected, the light returned to the earth, just as it will pour into our lives as we come unto Him. As we shared our message about Christ at the family night, there was another woman there that we did not know, who started talking, just about her beliefs in christ, but you could feel the spirit leave the room. It was a reminder to me of the Spirit that we bring in to our investigators homes. A lot of the time I forget because you get used to the feeling, but as I felt the Holy Ghost leave and then return as we continued to testify, I was amazed. Dont ever doubt the power of the spirit when you testify of the life of the Savior.

I love you all! Have a divine week!
Sister Kohlert

Week 56: Cop Cars and Divisions

Dear Family and Friends,

Yeah, my life is basically divisions these last two weeks, but we only have one more on Wednesday and then we're done! woot woot! then itll be transfers and counsel and zone meeting and the life just keeps on going. But MAN! The time flies! Hit one year in Cabo Verde this week. So we went to the American store here and considered buying pancake mix and syrup, but we decided against it. We decided that we would just make the peacan pie that Sister Dorgan got for her birthday, because she also made 500 days on the mission. But she also got some new clothes and they smelled like america. You dont realize how good america smells. Like walking into a house and actually having it smell clean. That'll be weird. For now we just work with the air freshners and dirty bleach water. 

But this week, other than running around like crazy on divisions, we got a ride home in a cop car! They we're worried that we'd get mugged, so we got to skip the 15 minute walk home and chill out with the cops for a while and invite them to church!

Another crazy thing that happened this week, was that our investigator, who was epilepsy, had a seizure at the end of our lesson. Luckily her son was there (because he works ALL the time), so he helped her, well kinda just held her hand and talked to her because you cant really do anything. But it was just crazy to think that she is usually at home by herself and she could have a seisure at any moment and no one is there to help her. So we arent really sure if she can even come to church, because she could start having a seisure in the middle of church, but thats why we also need to start teaching her son! But it was so hard to watch her suffer and not be able to do anything to help. But her son is awesome, he takes such good care of her.

Anyways, we had to move the baptism of the family (Jacquelina and her kids) to the end of april because she wants to wait till she has her baby, because she's literally about to pop. But we do have one investigator who will be getting baptized on Saturday, her names Jo, and she's 22. Shes aborable and knows EVERYTHING, she just had to make the disicion to go to church! She had some problems with her family and she found a stronger testimony of the Book of Mormon and she decided to come to church! Gotta love that book.


Oh and today we went to probably one of the only chinese restaurants in all of cabo verde and it was super good! Dang! ive missed chinese food. Almost as much as i miss american ice cream. All i gotta say is that i want a container of chocolate covered raisens and a chocolate banana shake waiting for me at the airport when i get home haha.
Lunch at Chinese Restaurant
Lo Mein Noodles - Cabo Verdean Style
I love being here. I love the people, more than i could ever imagine before coming here. At the beginning of our mission as missionaries, we say goodbye to our families for a year and a half, but when we leave we find out that we are leaving a family forever, one that we will probably never see again, and it breaks your heart, and it changes it, forever. Every once in a while, Heavenly Father reminds us how precious this time truly is. I love you all, and I love this mission.

Till next week,
Sister Kohlert