Summer is over!

Hello,
Well summer is over and the kids are back in school. Winter will be starting here around April. Ha this means more rain and more heat. Is there a lot of snow back home? I fear my emails are starting to get boring. In fact this email might be the shortest email I have ever sent! This week has been very slow. We don’t have any new investigators that are progressing at the moment so that is depressing. Sister Boyack is way stressed, but I just keep telling her to have faith and we WILL find those people ready to accept our message.

So things with Jonara are not going so well. Her sons couldn’t be baptized on Saturday because of some legal issues. She doesn’t want to leave her boyfriend even though he doesn’t want to get married. She basically said goodbye to us on Monday. She said she would continue to read the Book of Mormon and attend church when she had time. She says she doesn’t feel the need to smoke anymore so that is good. My heart aches for her. I was really sad when we left her house on Monday, but I just keep telling myself we can’t force people to get baptized. Everyone has the right to choose for themselves what they want to believe. Yes, it is heart breaking when our investigators don’t accept our message, but maybe in a few years they will change their minds. I know Heavenly Father loves her because I love her and I’ve only known her for a few weeks. I will continue to pray for her and I hope she changes her mind. We will continue to try to teach her and help her understand the importance of keeping the commandments. Thank you for your prayers for her. I know they have helped her!

We said goodbye to another investigator this week too. Her name is Stefany. We have been teaching her since November. She lives with her boyfriend who is a member. We set a baptism date for her, but they didn’t have enough money to get married. So we were trying to figure out how to get money for them. Well things started happening with her family and she had to move back to Manaus this week. I really enjoyed teaching her. Who knows maybe I will see her again in Manaus someday. She said she would go to the temple dedication in 2012 so hopefully I will see her!

Karleany is doing great! We made a cake for her mom’s birthday. It was our 4-hour service project for the week. We made a double layer vanilla and chocolate cake. I made the cake and sister Boyack made the frosting. It turned out really good. We are still struggling to find members to befriend Karleany. We took her to seminary last night. I felt like a parent dropping of my 17 year-old daughter at school. I kept looking at Sister Boyack like “we are just going to leave our daughter here? What if the kids are mean to her? What if she doesn’t make friends?” We kept joking about it the rest of the night. So hopefully when we see her today she will tell us how it went. I like her a lot and I really hope we can find more friends for her.

We did divisions again this week. I went with Laiani again. I will send you a picture of her. I taught three short lessons all by myself. It went pretty good and I had more confidence. I like going on divisions and being responsible for things. We only have three more weeks in this transfer. It is going by pretty fast. We have switched back to talking only Portuguêse again. I remember praying last week about what I could be doing to help my Portuguese improve faster and the thought came to me… you need to stop speaking English and talk to more people. So I listened this time and my Portuguese has gotten a lot better. I can even talk on the phone now! I still have a long ways to go, but I think my new study plan is working. I read the Book of Mormon in English then in Portuguese every day. I have a goal to finish the Book of Mormon in Portuguese by May 18th my birthday! I read it all the way through in the CTM but that was in English.

Anyway dad I liked your Quote of the day: “God will not do anything for us that we can do for ourselves.” Joseph Smith. It is so true!

If we really want something in this life, we need to work for it. We can’t just sit around and wait for God to bless us and wait for our prayers to be answered. We have to do our part!

Have a fabulous week! Love you both so much!
The Church is true!
Sister Crystal

p.s
Ok, here is a funny slightly inappropriate language story for the week… so Karleany’s aunt asked us if we were virgins the other day. Sister Boyack responded “Sim”. Then they looked at me. I hesitated because I was trying to figure out in my brain what she asked. So I responded “I think so”. Hahaha oops. Sister Boyack was like “what?” so we all had a good laugh at that one.