May 31, 2010

Oi!!how´s everyone doing? And mom not to get you worried, i´m way ahead of you. Haha my ankles are fine now, Last week i elevated them for a little bit one night and after that they´ve been fine. And yeah, the make-up all i wear is mascara and eyeliner. THe other stuff is sitting in my suitcase, but i´ll pull it out for zone conference haha That´s so exciting that whitney and marissa were baptized! Sounds like there was a huge turnout, that´s good. Oh and the pictures that you´re sending in the photo album, can you send a few of rochelle. I´ve shared her story many times when we teach about the plan of salvation and how families can be together for eternity. I can feel the spirit work through me so much whenever i share that experience. We were teaching this father and her daughter the other day adn we were teaching that lesson. I shared the story about rochelle and showed them our family picture. I started crying and testified that i know we can be a forever family. Adn afterwards the father said he felt something when i was telling my story adn knows that it´s true. So i thought that was really neat.Thanks for sending me brett´s email :) That´s interesting what the president said about the priesthood, maybe i´ll ask brett in my next letter ;) THat´s too bad about jennifer, i really hope she starts to get better. I´ll be fasting for her though!As for the computer, we come to a little internet place and we have to pay. It´s not much, and we use it for one hour. but during that hour we have to email our mission president about our week adn everything. So that takes some time. And guess what?! We got a washing machine!!!!!! We installed it today adn we got to use it. We were so excited cuz washing all our clothes by hand takes quite awhile. And we got new mattresses too. Our others were so worn out. You lay down and it´s like a trampoline. You sink in the middle haha but our others our nice, not too soft, but i can´t complain, we have things pretty good considering our area. Oh and i told you i was going to send pictures but my comp was doing that last week and she sat there for 13 minutes waiting for only one picture to load. So i think i´ll just put a ton on a disc and send it to you.K i have story for you, you all are gonna laugh. So the other night i was getting in the shower and i turn around and there´s a massive cockroach behind the door. How i didn´t see when i first came in the bathroom, i don´t know cuz it was huge. I ran out and told my companion to kill it, but she didn´t want to kill it either haha neither of us had the courage to do it. Haha and we wouldn´t go to sleep until this thing was dead. By the way, these things are so stinkin fast! So after deciding neither of us were going to kill it, we call our branch president to see if he´s busy. Lol he was at the church adn was just about to leave so he stopped by really quick adn killed it for us. Haha i might be a farm girl but i hate bugs, especially ones that are larger than my fingers. Wow, i took a picture of it, but it doesn´t do it justice.The beans and rice are so good! We ate at our branch pres. house yesterday after church and it was sooo good. It was rice, beans, this pork sausage stuff adn this crumb looking stuff. It almost looks liek corn meal, ahh i can´t remember the name of it, it starts with an F though Farinha or somethign like that. Oh and my comp made this amazing dessert the otehr night, oh my heavens. you haven´t lived until you try this, it´s a brasilian thing, it´s called bricadeira. Not sure if i spelled it right, but holy cow is it amazing. It´s this chocolate stuff and then she mixed it with cookies. Mmm im making myself hungry now haha. I´ll get the recipe from her and send it to you next week. I know it has sweet and condensed milk, sugar, butter, cocoa and im not sure what else. But it´s amazing trust me!Oh before i forget, karl and kathi eppich sent me cookies back when i was in the mtc in provo. And everytime i forget to ask you for their address, can i get that please so i can send them a thank you card. Wow, time goes by so fast adn i feel like i can´t get everything done.Well i gotta wrap this up. I hope everyone else is doing well adn school is goign good for the boys. Good luck with spring ball adn keep working hard! The hard work will pay off when you boys come out on your mission. I was just thinking that if i wasn´t used to doing a lot of work on the farm and staying busy, a mission would be a lot harder. So be grateful you boys that you know how to work. I am so grateful for this gospel and all the blessings we receive from it. I have seen the help ffrom the lord so many times already and am so grateful for the gift of the Holy Ghost. We always need to be receptive and listening for the spirit. Otherwise we´re goign to miss opportunities to share the gospel with otehrs or even a simple testimony. Always be worthy of the spirit and you will be blessed throughout your life. The church is true and i love it! I miss and love ALL of you so much!!!!! love,arianaps. can you maybe take some pictures of the farm and send them in that album also, thanks!!

Oi

Oi, from Baturité!!!!!And before i forget. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!!!!!!!!!! I hope you had a great day! :) Holy cow is it hot here!!! It was 102 the other day and its really humid, but.....im loving the COLD showers!!! And im not being sarcastic, i really do love them haha i don´t even get to look cute here, it´s too hot to wear make-up and i just pull my hair back cuz its so HOT! Lol its ok though im not here to impress anyone haha me and my comp were actually talking the other day about how when we get home we´ll get to look like girls. I love my area. Im about 2 hours from Fortaleza in a little town...in the mountains. I´m loving it here, although it´s a lot of walking and there´s LOTS of hills. I love my companion. Her name is Sister Gonzaga and she´s from Parana, Brasil. She speaks english, so i was really happy about that. Otherwise i think it would be a lot harder for me on my first transfer. I would go crazy not being able to speak english to anyone. Oh I wish you could all experience this! The people don´t have much here and it makes me so grateful for all that we have. The people are so nice and welcoming. They´re all nervous to talk to me though. My comp has to tell them to ask me questions and talk to me haha. I had my first baptism yesterday, it was so neat and I had to give a talk on baptism in portuguese...but yeah we had been teaching this boy, Wesley, he´s 14 and such a nice kid and he was so excited to get baptized. His older sister is already baptized and we´re working on their mom. She came to church yesterday though, so we were pretty excited about that! So the church here is just a little building and it´s actually a branch out here not a ward. There´s about 50 members and the branch president is so amazing! Haha sunday morning he picks everybody up for church. He has this white, hippy looking van, they call it a combi. Haha its awesome!! He makes about 4-5 trips around the town to get everyone. The church has a font though, so that´s good. It´s just like a massive water trough. But it looks really nice. There´s 4 classrooms and we have a podium for sacrament meeting. I´ll have to take pictures of it so you can see. We are also teaching this couple and they are so sweet. They will be baptized the last sunday of my transfer cuz they have to get married first, but we have that already scheduled for tomorrow! :) We´re working with quite a few people right now and this week we´re going to be really busy with investigators! So i was a little sore from walking, about the second day i was here, but im doing good now. The only thing that gets me are my feet. They are so swollen, just from being so hot! They don´t hurt, just at the end of the day im ready to just lay down. Haha i took pictures of my feet last night, it looks like i dont have ankles. They look like clubs lol not really, but they look chubby. I´ll send pictures next week. The clothes i have are fine and the sandals are working great. The meals here are good...cuz we cook. And since i´ve been here i´ve only had beans and rice once! And that´s cuz we ate at a restuarant with two elders(they had to come out and interview wesley for the baptism). But yeah, for breakfast we have toast with juice or milk. Lunch is our bigger meal, we cook chicken and rice, pasta or something like that. And for dinner we have a sandwich or something. Oh and for dessert...we have these crackers and we put Dolce de leite(with goiaba) it is the most amazing creation on the earth. It is delicious!!! Oh and last night we watched the restoration with a mother and her son. And her son had made this one stuff, i can´t remember what it´s called but it tasted like funnel cakes, but better. Oh my heavens they were good. I think im losing weight though, so don´t worry haha :) Hmm lets see what else...oh our house. We live above a store. So you walk up the stairs and there´s a big room with two tables in the center. THat´s where we study. THen you walk down the hall and to the right is our bedroom, a bathroom, and another room where we keep our suitcases and a rack for our clothes. Then you go to the end of the hall and there´s our kitchen. We have a fridge, a gas stove, a sink and a little cupboard to keep things in. All our food stays in the fridge. We´ve only had one cockroach that was in our room. My comp had to kill it haha There´s no spiders though...yet. There´s ants but it´s not too bad. Umm, oh we don´t have a washing machine so we do everything by hand. There´s a door outside the kitchen and there´s a big patio are with a a big sink and that´s where we do our laundry adn there´s a clothesline out there too. THat´s pretty much it. Oh get this, the taxi´s here are motorcyles. I thought that was a little strange. THere´s a lot of motorcylces here though. And they have cars too. The language is coming, slowly. I can teach lessons, but the frustrating part is not being able to completly understand the people and not carry on a normal conversation. This week me and my companion made a goal to speak more portuguese with each other, and even that is frustrating. She helps me though adn thats good, i just need to have patience with the language and that´s the hardest part. A lot of the missionaries that i´ve talked to have said that the language didn´t come til they´d been out about 6-8 months so that was a little comforting. Alright, well i better get going. Sounds like things are goign good with you guys. I heard about Brian, is he doing ok now? Is jen improving at all? And yes, i´ll ask pres Batt about grandpa. We go to fortaleza this week for a district meeting, i don´t know if he´ll be there for sure. But i´ll ask him next time i see him. Tell Tom and Glenda hi for me. And i´ll be sending them a letter soon. I think i have their address, but just in case can you get it for me please. Good with everything everyone...school is almost out adn that means Working Time!!!! ALthough you guys have already done a ton! I gotta go, love and miss you guys!love ariana

ps. everyone here loves the family pictures!

I'm HERE!

Hey everyone I´m finally in Fortaleza!!!!! It is absolutely beautiful here. And I love my mission president and his wife, they are great. Just letting you know i arrived here safe and all is well. It´s very hot. When i got here this afternoon it was 85 degrees with the sun shining!!! I love it. Well i gotta go, i´ll email you again as soon as i can. Love you!

love, sister salisbury

May 12, 2010

Hey!Yeah we were all pretty bummed that we weren´t gonna be able to call on mother´s day and then sunday morning in relief society SIster Clark got up and said she would call all the sisters´ mothers for us. I guess she tried calling but you guys were in portland i think she said a brother in law answered or somethign so i figured it was brian or chad. BUt yeah the one you talked to was sister litster. She was in our district meeting on sunday adn got all of our phone numbers. And i talked to her adn she had a premature baby too and his lungs hadn´t fully developed and the doctors had told them that he wouldn´t be normal. BUt he´s 32 now and is doing great! SO that was pretty neat to hear her experience and i told her about joseph. Well, we went proselyting again this past week and we went down town Sao paulo. It was crazy there were soo many people. We didn´t know what to do at first, but once we talked to our first person we got going and i loved it! Well the work is going good adn im learning a lot. I had an interview with my branch president a couple weeks ago and we were talking and he pulled out a bookmark from his scriptures and gave it to me. It was so good, it was a quote from President Hinckley: "Many young women are serving missions. Many are preparing to serve. Not because they aren´t married or have nothing else to do; but because they have a desire to serve and therefore are being called to the work. The reason so many are going is because in the next generation, Heavenly Father will be sending His Priesthood Army to the earth and wants to send them to mothers who have been properly trained and taught in the gospel. What better training can a young woman have than that of serving a mission." I love that quote! Brett is doing really good, i got a letter from him last week and the work is going great he said. :) I don´t have much time, but i love you all and i can´t believe im already goign out into the field on tuesday. Im so excited adn can´t wait to get going. It´ll be hard to get used to at first i think to having a companion, but im thinking it´ll make teaching a little easier. haha That´s so neat that you guys were able to go to stacey´s baptism. Oh and hey, im having chandler get some pics adn if you get a chance can you or jennifer get them developed and send them to me in a little photo album or somethign cuz i didn´t bring enough pics. THank you. I love you guys!love, sister ariana salisbury p.s. 30 minutes is not enough time for email!!!!

May 5, 2010

Hey! No i don´t get to call on mother´s day :( and im not sure if i´ll get to call when i go to fortaleza. I haven´t heard anything about it though. I can´t believe im gone in two weeks, time has literally flown by! K boys you all better get practicing the piano because i usually have to play at the firesides, devotionals and usually every sunday for sacrament meeting. And i was talking to my teacher Irmao petente and he said most likely if the church building has a piano the missionaries will play for church. So get playing! And thing is, for devotionals and firesides you get asked hours before and sometimes you have to do prelude where they give you an arrangement and you have to accompany someone that is singing. But it´s a great opportunity. THat is so exciting that Shay is expecting! Tell them congrats for me!!! DO they know what they´re having? I went to the temple today and I actually put Jennifer´s name on the prayer list, but is she doing better?? And thanks mom for sending those rings, that´s a great idea! Um i can´t really think of anything that you could send. If i knew exactly what the weather was going to be like in fortaleza i´d probably tell you to send a few different shirts. My clothes are fine here, but im worried it´s gonna be really hot once i get there. But we´ll see how things play out. Oh something you could maybe send, some contact solution. Its very expensive down here. One of the elders in my district had to buy some and it cost around 30 reais for one bottle. That´s awesome that stacey got baptized, i didn´t even know she was planning on getting baptized. Well we go out proselyting again this week. THis time we go down town sao paulo. SO it´s going to be way more busy! I´m excited though! :) That´s so cool Travis had training with Elder Ballard, and no we didn´t see elder Holland. We were hoping we woudl cuz he was in sao paulo, but he was too busy. Well i gotta send out some more letters, but i hope all is goign well! Oh and guess what i had for the past two days?!?! Cucumbers and vinegar!! They were so good! and today for lunch they had some delicious tomatoes!! i was in heaven :) and i was thinking, man back home they´re just barely starting to plant the garden. Tell joseph that i ate a lot of cucmbers for him ;) Anyways i better go, i love you guys! Tchau! Love Sister ariana salisbury

April 28, 2010

Hey everybody!How´s evrything going?! Sounds like you´re all staying busy on the farm putting in circles and all the wiring. Keep up the hard work boys and keep helping mom and dad out! That´s so awesome that you called into the relief society presidency! You will do great! I always loved listening to you give lessons in RS. You always had great stories to share with the lessons. You will do a fantastic job on your first lesson as a second counselor :) Chandler is going to PROM?!?!? WHat?! that is so cool! YOu´ll have to send me pictures....he didn´t even email me to tell me the news. HOw did he ask her? That´ll be fun. And i hope he does well playing the piano for the choir, you´ll do great bud you always do! Good luck :) Garrett, sounds like you´re quite the hitter! THat´s awesome you got a Triple!! And it was against othello?! Nice job dude, wish i could be there to see you play, but i´ll be there when you´re in high school and you´ll be 10 times better!! :) Joey...you´re so cute!!! haha i miss saying that to you bud. Sounds like you´re doing really good in baseball too! Keep up the great pitching, i hear you strike out a lot of guys! That´s my boy! And the high school baseball team qualified for districts?? wow, didn´t see that one coming, but good job chandler! HOpefully you guys get a little farther this year than you did last year. Do you think you have any chances? Well I got to shake Elder Russell M. Nelson´s hand and he spoke to all of us missionaries here at the CTM. It was the neatest experience! although when i played called to serve, i totally messed up, i was so stinkin nervous! My hands have never shook so much in my life!!! But the talk he gave was awesome. He talked about missioary work and what we need to be teaching. And he made a great quote, he said, "The Lord uses the unlikely to accomplish the impossible." I thought that was so cool because it made me think that the Lord is using me in a way that someone else maybe couldn´t have done it. I sometimes wonder why i was called to Brasil, but as i keep thinking about it, it just makes me that much more excited to get out to the field and start serving to see the people im going to be serving and the lives that will change because of this gospel. We went proselyting last friday and i just have to say that was one of the best experiences i´ve ever had! OUr district went out around town and i went with two other elders so i wasn´t by myself. The first two ladies we contact seemed really interested, but didn´t take a BoM. I thought for sure they would, we were kind of bummed when they said no, but we kept going. Then about 10 minutes later we´re walking down another street and we see the same two ladies again. They waved at us and we waved back. And then we hear, "sister! elders!" we turn around and it´s the lady we talked to. We went back to talk to her and she said she changed her mind and wanted the BoM. We were so excited! SO we told her a little more about it and how it can bless her and family and to read and pray about it. She was really excited and so were we!! We each got 2 BoM and we all got to give them out. The last one i gave out was really neat. The entire time i was praying that we would find people to give them to and the last one i had to give away we had already been everywhere and i was thinking of where we should go. We were walking through the park and i see these two ladies sitting on a bench adn i said, "i want to go talk to them" So we head over there and we noticed that they had kids too! It was perfect! I started talking to them and told them about the BoM and how it has blessed my life as well as my family´s. They seemed pretty touched and i just bore my testimony that if they read it their lives will be blessed greatly adn that it helps families so mcuh. It was one of the greatest experiences i had and i love it! We go once more before we leave. I have less than 3 weeks here, can you believe it?! i can´t! It has gone by so fast. oh, and i got this worked out now. There´s a bakery across the street and we can print off our emails there so i do that and read my emails that way and then email you so i don´t waste my 30 minutes reading and i can already know what i want to type :) But i have 2 minutes left so i better go. Keep up with everything and sorry jen, chad and trevor i didn´t get an email out to you. BUt i will next week. I wanted to get as much as i could to the email that gets sent out to everyone. I love you all!

love, sister ariana salisbury

Pictures

Hey! haha mom you crack me up! I just misspelled "the" and i didn´t correct it. Everything is going great and this week is gonna be tight! We´re going proselyting this friday and Elder Russell M. Nelson is coming to the CTM to speak to us! I got asked to play the piano for the opening and closing song so that´ll be cool. And we´re also singing in the choir, we´re singing 3 songs. It´s gonna be amazing! I´ve played the piano already for one of the firesides and once for the choir. SO that´s fun :) And yes, i got a letter from Brett a couple weeks ago i think it was and i got the letter from you and joseph. THanks so much! Oh last week was so much fun on P-Day, we went to this brasilian buffet place with one of our teachers and it was amazing! THey had fried bananas which were delicious and all these different types of meats. And i had Frango coroçao (chicken heart) it was SOOO good! I have a new roommate, sister andrews from moses lake! And she knows the bergesons, madie, brian, tanae, the whole family! Crazy huh?! I´ve also met some elders from the tri-cities, i remember one from cbc. THere´s an elder stock and an elder mitchell. THere´s quite a few others from tri-cities too and some from spokane and yakima. It´s been so much fun and this week has been a lot better! THe language is starting to come a little easier now and i can understand it and carry on a conversation a little better. We had our zone leader come in talk to us about pronunciation. This was back a couple weeks ago, but he was saying that portugues is so much easier to learn over having to go from portugues to english and he wrote this word and the board and asked us how to say it...Ghoti....we pronounced it the way it looks. But he said it´s pronounced "fish". Gh as in rouGH, o as in wOmen, ti as is naTIon. IF that makes any sense, but it was pretty crazy the stuff that he taught us. Anyways, thanks so much for all you love and support. I love you guys so much! I´m gonna try to attach some pics so hopefully you get them. I´m so grateful for this gospel and the blessings that we can receive. And the Book of Mormon is such a blessing to us. We can learn so much from it, i´ve started reading it again and i want to finish before i leave the CTM. I´m only in mosiah, but im gonna make it! Well i gotta get going, the church is true!

love sister ariana salisbury

alright so the pics....some are from provo and the others are here in brasil. I think you can tell which ones are which. Oh and the one of me eating is me eating chicken heart :) And the one with me and the elders at the table is at the brasilian buffet place i was telling you about. And the one at the buffet with me and two elders, their names are Elder Perez and Elder Bills...we´re great buddies :) haha But the whole district is awesome, we all get along really well.