Yes!!! I was transferred! I am now in Osório. Osorio is a city that is close to the beach!!!! There isn't beach in our area, but the weather is super beachy! A ton of sea breeze!

I am training again! I am training the first and only 19 year old sister in Porto Alegre Norte! Her name is Sister Loss and she is from Espírito Santo, a state here in Brasil. Sister Zeller (my comp from the MTC) served in Sister Loss's ward! Small world! I can tell you one thing, these sisters entering the mission field right now are entering super prepared. Sister Loss is amazing!

This area is completely different from Santa Cruz! The people are receptive! I about dropped to the floor dead when people asked ME to visit THEM in their houses. In Santa Cruz it was almost impossible to enter into houses! The field is super white and ready to harvest here in Osorio!!! I am also living with another companionship of sisters again, and we all get along fabulously.

I realized yesterday that my English is amazing. There is a man from my branch that wanted to practice speaking English with me. He asked me how long I have been here on the mission. I replied, "One year and cinco months." You will have to bear with me when I get home. It will be tough, the transition back into English!

Love you all! Being a missionary is sooooo amazing.

Sister Aut Barnes

TRANSFERRED!!!

I was transferred from Santa Cruz do Sul!!!! I don't even know what to think! The thought didn't even cross my mind that there was a chance that I would be transferred......I only have 5 weeks of mission left!.....and I haven't finished training Sister Carneiro! But yes....I really was transferred. At times I love being transferred because after a long time in one area, I lose steam. But after only 6 weeks in this area with my amazing companion Sister Carneiro, I will be leaving. I wasn't prepared for this and am actually a little bit bummed. But, I know that President Wright and the Lord have something in store for me and that I did my part here in this area.

 

I think my part was finding Nicoli. Last Sunday, we were on our way to an investigator's house and we passed a street. You know that little feeling that says go back and knock the doors of that street? Yeah, I felt that feeling. I suggested that we turn back and knock the doors there. We knocked on the first door and the people hid from us and didn't come to the door. We knocked the second door and out came a 14 year old girl who opened the gate and invited us into her house without even giving us enough time to introduce ourselves. Her name is Nicoli and she has had a super tough life. When she was a newborn, her dad beat her mom. He beat her so much that her mom suffered trauma and became mentally ill. Now her mom has the mentality of a baby. Her older sister, who was old enough to see and experience all of this abuse, became depressed and schizophrenic. Nicoli's dad left them of course, so Nicoli doesn't even remember him. She has been raised by her aunt who also takes care of Nicoli's mom who can't care for herself anymore. One day, Nicoli's sister had an episode. She locked her mom and her aunt out of the apartment, grabbed a knife and started destroying everything in the house. After destroying everything, she cut her wrists. A neighbor called the police and they showed up soon after and tried to get her to leave the house. She threatened to kill herself if they tried to enter. I guess she was in tanto histerics that the police were forced to shoot her with a rubber bullet. She was knocked on her back from the impact and fell onto some sort of metal thing that punctured her back. She was taken to the hospital and from a mixture of her mental illness and this wound, died a couple weeks later. This happened about 6 months ago, so it is still pretty fresh in Nicoli's mind. She will be baptized in a week. Looks like I won't be here to see it, but maybe my transfer here in Santa Cruz was to find and teach Nicoli.

 

Sister Carneiro.......I am super sad to leave her. I don't know if I will ever see her again and she is sooo amazing. However, I am at the Lord's service.

 

Lisa, stay strong girl! I know you are doing great work! Just remember that our success or efficiency as missionaries isn't measured by our number of investigators or baptisms but by our desire to do the Lord's will! I love you!

 

I love you all as well! Pray that my last area will be the best of them all!

 

Sister Barnes Sr.

SURPRISE!!

Wow.....I was under the impression that I would get home June 5! I got onto email today and found my "email trunky" (as everyone likes to call the travel itinerary here) in my inbox! I was super surprised to see that I will be going home a week earlier than I thought! Dia 29 de Maio e eu vou estar em casa! Tão logo!! Não acredito! 

This week was good. Hard, but good. It is such a blessing to have such a funny, positive companion because as hard as the week is.......it is still full of tons of laughs. Sister Carneiro has been such a strength. It was hard because we hardly taught at all this week. No one let us teach. We have been talking to everyone, knocking doors, trying to get the members to work with us......gah! 

But....the FEW people that we found this week are super special. We met a man named Valério. We saw him out on the lawn and stopped to talk to him. He let us in and we were able to talk with him a bit. We discovered that he separated from his wife a month ago. He has been suffering a lot because he knows that his wife left because he is an alcoholic. He started crying during our lesson and accepted to leave alcohol and be baptized. I am praying that all will go well! 

This week Sister Wright proscelyted with us. It was so cute to see Sister Wright with a backpack using the little portuguese she knows to talk to the people. She is soooo amazing. It was definitely a privilege to be able to work with her. She said she wanted to work with me for a day before I go home. 

I was talking with Sister Carneiro the other day how it is hard to be hated at times. It is definitely very hard to see people do everything they can just to avoid you. (The other day we almost saw someone get hit by a car because she tried to cross the street super quickly after seeing us walking in her direction!!!!!) It is hard to have people be super rude to you.....especially because I just want to bless their lives with the gospel! I don't feel like I deserve that treatment! But I have learned one thing through all of this treatment......that all of the no's in the world, the dirty looks, the laughs, the rude comments will never take my testimony from me. If I didn't have a testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel, I would have quit a long time ago. I am so grateful for the capacity that we have to exercise faith! I am so grateful for opportunities to test my faith!!!!!! 

I love you all!!!!! Até semana que vem!

Sister Autumn Barnes

Easter!!!

Sister Carneiro and I at the mission home!

The four of us that live in our apartment!

Autumn's plane ticket is purchased and she will be arriving home on May 29th!

This week Sister Carneiro and I were walking to an appointment. I got the feeling that I should knock the door of a house. No one was home. We started walking again. I got the feeling again in front of another house. No one answered. We went on our way. I got the feeling AGAIN in front of a house. We knocked and the owner didn't want anything to do with us. I started to think, "Why in the world is the spirit prompting me so strongly to knock here at these houses if nothing is happening?" Right then, a man was passing on the sidewalk. I made contact with him. Super curious and super receptive. I feel like he really has been prepared by the Lord. Moral of the story: At times we don't understand the Spirit's promptings. I was questioning the Spirit's promptings after a few failed attempts of trying to teach the people that lived in these houses. BUT....that wasn't the Lord's objective. He wanted me to knock these doors so I could be in the right place at the right time to meet this man, William. Funny how that works out, huh?

 

Conference was awesome! An answer to one of my recent prayers came to me in just about the first sentence of the first talk of the first session. WOW.......

 

I love you all! This gospel is true and is meant to be shared with everyone!!!

 

Sister Autumn Rae Barnes

I am super offended. It is my half birthday and no one gave me good wishes. April Fool's Day! Ha but seriously...it really is my half birthday...................

 

I am super grateful for my companion. Sister Carneiro is amazing. Besides being super hilarious, she is a power house! She is a testimony to me everyday that there are prepared and elect people out there just waiting to be presented with the truth. She was baptized about 4 years ago. She has always loved reading and always asked for any kind of free book that was offered on the internet. She doesn't even know how she ended up on this site, but she requested the booklet "40 Ways to Make Your Family Happier" or whatever it is called. A couple weeks later, Elders knocked on her door. She was Catholic, but also visited other churches trying to find a doctrine that actually made sense to her. She said that the first time she heard about the Restoration and The Book of Mormon, everything finally made sense. She bears powerful testimony because she can really relate to our investigators.

 

This week we taught Angelica, a nine year old daughter of a member. She absolutely loves us and will be baptized on April 13. She is super smart and loves to learn. She even wanted to take notes during our lesson! Haha but She really is a slave driver as far as my accent goes. After teaching her, I will be talking like a real life Brazilian!

 

Can't wait for General Conference this week! Next General Conference I am determined to be there at the Conference Center to watch! I love you all and thank you for the prayers! I feel them strengthening me everyday!

 

Love,

Sister Autumn Rae Barnes