Eyeball Soup and Peep Pudding

Congratulations to Rachel and JC! The wedding sounds like it was beautiful! I woke up on the morning of and felt like I was missing out on something, but I couldn't think if what that could possibly be. All day I felt like my heart was off somewhere else in the world, having a party without me. Then, towards the evening, I suddenly realized with a start, "My sister's wedding is today!"

     All of the Elders in my district gave a collective, sympathetic, "Awww!" And then came the questions, "Why didn't she do it while you were home?!"

     That's ok, though. At least my heart was there to experience it all. It grudgingly returned to me at the end of the day and the two of us went to bed.

 

    First off, I just want to clear something up that's been haunting me all week.  In my last email, I wrote that my Instructor sometimes has me interpret what he's saying to the rest of the class. I did NOT mean to be boastful when I wrote that! I realized after the fact that it might have come off that way. I am not learning any faster than anyone else in my district, and I have a LONG way to go before I can really communicate in Portugues. I just meant that I'm glad I'm actually catching on to Portugues a little bit now, enough to understand my instructor, at least. We all have our good days and our bad days, though. Sometimes I stare at Irmao Ricardo while he's speaking and I have no idea what he's talking about. Then I have to massage my temples for a while and try again. It's not easy, learning a new language, but I am amazed at how possible it is! 

     I have two Brazilian roommates now. Sister Oliver and I LOVE them! One of them speaks fluent English, and she has been most helpful as we try to understand the language. Her name is Sister Carvalho. I wish I could take her home with me, she's so funny and spunky.  She talks a mile a minute in English, and even faster in Portugues, making crazy faces and gesticulating wildly as she goes.  Sister Leite Silva, her companheira, is possibly one of the most hilrious girls I've ever met, and I don't even know what she's saying 99% of the time! They're both gorgeous, of course.

 

     Mom, you thought I was too prissy to come to Brazil. But let me tell you... these Brazilian girls are the most classy, feminine creatures I've ever encountered, They're always dressed to the nines, in heals and jewelry with perfect hair and makeup, and lots and lots of perfume. All we US girls feel like a bunch of bumpkins next to them. I'm sure I won't envy those heals once I'm out tracking every day, but here in the CTM... I often find myself lost in a daydream about my purple pumps back home.....

 

     There's a wonderful black bean soup/mush here called Vesuara (not sure how to spell that-- you'll have to ask Ryan). It's basically all the ingredients of a hotdog before they reach the blender, stewed in black beans. Cartilaginous sockets surrounded by blubber fat, chunks of meat, a few random hairs. The vesuara here at the CTM is supposedly very mild, but one Elder claims he found an eyeball in his once. Yum!

    There's also a dessert here Reana would go nout over-- it's like a coconut peep that was whipped up and squeezed into a bowl. Very sweet. Very marshmallowey.

 

    The time for emails simply goes by too quickly!

 

     I'm really learning about trust here. Trust in the Lord, trust in myself, trust in my companion.... It's a very beautiful and humbling journey I'm on, and every day I'm more grateful to be on it. When making descisions, I'm learning not to aks myself, "What do I want?" but instead, "Who will I become as a result of this choice?"  Most of the time, it turns out that to become who I want to ultimately become, I have to make the harder choices and do things that I don't want to do, and I'm always happier for it in the end.

    I am so grateful to be on a mission right now. I wouldn't trade what I'm learning here for any luxury in the world! And girls out there who are contemplating a mission:  DO IT!  It will be the hardest thing you've ever done, but it will be so worth it! Just push through the hard times with faith, trusting that the Lord knows what's best, and you will be happy.

 

     --Sister Whitaker

Crazy Brazilians

     This has been an awesome second week here at the CTM. I can't believe it's only been two weeks. I've learned so much and grown so close to the people in my district. My love for Brazil grows every day (thank goodness I get to see outside these CTM walls every P-day and interact with the locals). I'm still muito far from speaking Portugues, but I'm already saying my prayers (personal and public) in 100% Portugues and I can bear my testimony, and communicate very simple things with the Brazilheiros.

     Speaking of the Brazilheiros..... They. Are. Insane. !!! And I absolutely adore them! They really like cologne. Walking down the stairwell every morning for breakfast is akin to entering a gas chamber. Sister Oliver and I beearly make it out alive every day. I know it's a tender mercy of the Lord.  The Brazilians also really like to NOT sleep, and to sing U.S. songs and laugh and laugh and laugh until Sister Whitaker is about to roll over dead from laughter. Even when you don't understand what they're saying, they are hilarious. They like climbing the trees around here, like packs of laughing monkeys. They are just way too fun. One day, one of the Brazilian Elders ate 10 bowls of rice and beans, just to see if he could, and then he and all his fellow Brazilheiros ran out to the scale to see how much he weighed, laughing and laughing all the way.

    

The Elders in my district are absoluetly amazing. I adore them to pieces. Never in my life has it been so painful to not hug someone. They crack me up, and they inspire me to be better, and they let me mother them, and sometimes they mother me. We take good care of each other.

    Funny moments of the week (actually, there are waaaay too many to tell them all, but these are the ones I can think of at the moment):

       -- Elder Johnson, the smallest Elder of my district, has dry humor down to the T. By all appearence, he is always lost in his own world, sitting with a frown on his face and eyes that stare very intesely at nothing. Then, when you least expect it, he opens his mouth and in his quiet monotone says something hilarious that makes it very clear he heard every word of the conversation. One such time, everyone was talking about the new Batman movie and how Anne Hathaway didn't make a very good Catwoman. They were all trying to come up with actresses who would have done a better job. Elder Johnson, with perfect timing, said, "Whoopie Goldberg would have made a better Catwoman."

   His companion, Elder Hermansen (another master of dry humor), agreed with, "She would certainly blend into the night better."

      

       -- There's always some church movie that they play in the auditorium every sunday, and they set up chairs and turn out the lights so it's like a big movie theater. This Sunday we watched the movie "Legacy". The chick-flick of church films! Oh goody! At that part where the buck-toothed heroine is saying goodnight to the supposed-British-convert-with-the-American-accent-and-long-hair on the porch (you know the part?) after their date and she's trying to tell him that she's "swarn to marry Jacob", I forgot that I was in the CTM momentarilly. The girl goes off on this tangent about how "love is kindess. It's patient, it's long-suffering, it endures all things--" and then the guy shuts her up with a kiss, and right at that part I said (kind of a lot more loudly than I meant to), "Oh YEAH!"  The entire room of missionaries burst into laughter. I realized right away how innappropriate such humor was in such a place and ducked down, hoping that the dark was enough to hide me from all the heads turning to see who'd said such a thing. The sisters on either side of me were laughing so hard that they were crying for quite a while, and all of the Elders in my district, scandallized almost as much as they were entertained, whispered accusingly at me, "SISTER WHITAKER!!!!"  It was very emabrassing.

   

In other news, I sang a solo on sunday (don't ask), and then during the evening devotional I sang "I Need Thee Every Hour" with a small group and President Degn liked it so much that when we finished, he asked us to sing it again. It was very powerful and beautiful. President Degn is a concert pianist, and he can rock the keys like nobody's buisness.

Speaking of doing things like nobody's buisiness! Ya'll would not believe it if you could see me playing vollyball!!! I can serve like a ninja. That's about all I can do, though. The Elders cheer every time I so much as touch the ball. Especially if I do it on purpose. It doesn't even matter which way it goes, so long as I actually try to hit it. One day, one of the Brazilian Elders realized that I was only useful as a server, so he put me in that position and kept me there for the remainder of the game. I was ok with that. Ha ha.

Iiiiiiiit's Sister Whitaker!!!

  

    When Ryan first left for his mission, he described it like falling down the stairs only without the fear or the pain. Reana described it as being thrown into a freezing cold pond.  My home teacher described it as being a fish that had just been caught and had its head whacked against a rock . For me, the last description feels the closest.

  That's almost exactly what it felt like for me my first week here at the CTM.  It's really hard to explain.  I don't think you can ever really understand what it's like unless you've been through it.  I feel just like Rapunzel in the new cartoon after she's just left the tower and she goes back and forth between joyful exclamations of ``I'm never going back!`` and mournful lamentation, wondering why on earth she'd left the tower.

  It's been a rough week.  A wonderful, amazing, powerful, hard, scary, hilarious, fun, funny, dizzying, horrifying week.  I've never felt so weak and pitiful in my entire life.  I have so much to work on before I'll ever be ready to walk the streets of Bahia as a representative of Jesus Christ.  Every day gets a little better, though, and some days are just down-right, all-out FUN!  I have the most amazing district imaginable.  I feel so blessed. And minha compenhera, Sister Oliver, is a blast and a half.   I'm really grateful I have her as a compenhera, because I have a tendency to stress and be a perfectionist, and she is the most chill human being alive.  Sometimes we goof off way too much in our district, but I'm grateful for the chance to learn how to relax every now and then.  We had an awesome testimony meeting the other night.  I am absolutely amazed by these Elders.  They're younger than Risa, most of them, but just in the past week I've watched them change in remarkable ways.  I can't even believe we've only known each other for a week.  It's scary how quickly the idea of ``home`` starts to fade into a vague kind of dream.

    So, what do I think of Brazil?  Sao Paulo is madness.  Sheer, blinkin', bloomin' madness.  And I love it.  When we first arrived, the other three sisters and I got to ride in our own, personal car apart from the Elders, and we thought we were probably going to die before we reached the CTM.  Drivers here are INSANE!!!  And the city is humungous. Sky-scrapers as far as the eye can see in every direction, with smog so thick overhead you start to forget there's any such thing as a sky or the sun.  Traffic is so bad here all the time that a lot of people just take the train and endure a 2+ hour commute to and from work every day.  One of my teachers does that.

     The food here at the CTM is pretty good.  Brazilian cafeteria food, basically.  Not as bad as US cafeteria food, but not nearly as good as what our teachers tell us we have to look forward to in the field.

     Here's a Portuguese tongue-twister my teacher told us about that was cracking me up so bad I couldn't breath or see through my tears for almost a full minute.  I want Ryan to try and say it to you all so you can hear how hilarious it is.  ``A ra arranha a aranna, a aranna a arranha a ra.``  The translation is something like: a frog scratches a spider, a spider scratches a frog, or something like that. It sounds amazing.

   

    I'm learning a ton, getting a little better at Portuguese every day, though it's coming to me very slowly, and just loving the Gospel! I know this is where the Lord wants me and I'm so grateful to be here.

Chapter 11: Makin' a List, Checkin' It Twice

No, it's not Santa Clause, it's me! Getting everything together for the ultimate Christmas.
Post-it notes and pieces of scratch paper with things to remember scribbled on them are taking over my bedroom, along with bins and boxes and blouses. I can barely walk in there, let alone make sense of the mad jumble. The time for preparation is coming to an end. Only six days before I'll be toting my 18-month supply of living essentials through three airports and setting up residence in....... Sao Paulo, Brazil!That's right. The long-awaited VISA finally came last week! And so, I will be flying straight to the training center in Brazil. And since I won't be able to receive any packages from home while I'm there, I darn well better have everything I need in my suitcase.

"What's that?" you may be asking right now. "Did I read that right? No packages to the CTM?" That's right. Any packages I receive will have to be sent to my mission office. I can only assume that means I won't get them until I'm out of the training center (about 9 weeks) and in my mission field. I will, however, be able to receive and send letters from the CTM! So, off to the side I've posted my CTM mailing address. ->

Also posted off to the side is my mission office mailing address, where letters and packages can be sent to me until I know the address of my first assignment in the mission field. Even then, this will always be a safe address to use, even though it's not quite as direct. ->

As for emails.... I know that some Mission Presidents allow missionaries to email friends, as well as family, but I don't know yet what MY Mission President will allow. So for now we're just going to assume that I can only email, and receive emails from, my family. Hurrah for snail mail!

Now that we've got all that out of the way, let's get back to my list!

- Contact info on blog? Check

- Ugly, but oh-so-comfy and durable sandals? Check (Thank you, Chaco!)

- Tea Tree Oil shampoo to ward off lice? Check (Thank you, Sunni!)

- Modest dresses made from climate-friendly materials (no polyester or nylon!) Check

- Microfiber towel (for quick drying and conserved space) Check (Thank you, Ammon!)

- Journals to record my missionary treasured moments? Check (Thank you, Ammon!)

- Photo albums, to remember what my friends and family look like? Check (Thank you, Ammon!)

- All the shots I need to cross the border? Check (Thank you, Phil Darrah!)
- Camera? Check (Thank you Blair and Rebecca!)

- Sunday shoes? ....Hmm....

- Second suitcase? .... Hmm....

- First aid/sewing kits? .... I know I've got those somewhere....

- Umbrella? .... I'm sure I've got one in some closet or another.....

- Scriptures in Portuguese? ................

Ok, so I'm not quite ready to hop on the plane yet. But so much of what I do have ready is a result of other people being so generous with their time, energy, and resources. My family has been so wonderful, driving me about, being patient with my pre-mission stress, and keeping me on task with what I need to do. I'm so grateful for all their support. My friends, too, have been so amazing. I just love you all! Thank you, thank you, thank you all a million times over for all your love and support! Only a few days more.....

Chapter 10: A Guest Appearence by Rod Serling

Portrait of Railee Whitaker: a pampered girl from Beaverton who likes her rice with Yumm sauce and her oatmeal without sugar. But she finds herself perpetually hungry for a want of greatness in her diet; the kind of greatness found only in the selfless service and hard work of a full-time mission. What you're about to see is that hunger of the kind Railee feels can't be satisfied merely by a plane ride to an exotic beach on the humid coast of Bahia, Brazil, but by entering a portal to a dimension where reality is no longer defined by what is tangible. Railee Whitaker has crossed over the threshold of the physical world into... the Twilight Zone.

Cue spinning white door, blinking eye and eery music.

Thank you, Rod Serling, for your generous contribution to my humble blog! You're a real peach.

Anyone reading this post may think that Rod went a little overboard with his intro, but let me tell you-- his dramatics are spot on in this case! Some days I really do feel like I've kissed the "normal life" goodbye and I find myself in awe of what my new "normal is". By merely telling people (at work, on the MAX, at the park, etc) about what I'll be doing in the Fall, I end up making the bold statement that I know what I believe to be true so strongly that I'm willing to travel to a foreign country where I don't know anyone, learn another language, and go door-to-door every day to share it. As the time for my mission draws nearer, it's becoming more and more impossible to open my mouth without bearing my testimony in some way or another. The time for lukewarm neutrality has passed and I'm only just beginning to realize that what I will be for the next 18 months of my life is a walking, talking bold statement. I won't merely be a person who quietly believes in the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ-- I'll be a representative of Jesus Christ, with His name on my chest, and there will be no stepping down or blending in to the crowd. For 18 straight months, nothing will be about me or what I want. It will all be 100% about the needs of the people I am called to serve. I won't be casually checking facebook or listening to the latest music. I won't be sleeping in or going out to the movies. I'll be focusing all my energy- everything I am and all that I have- on serving the Lord, my companion, and the people of Bahia.

The wait for a VISA is a strange limbo of sorts. After that phone call to the Church Travel Office, I heard nothing from anyone about my mission. My other friends who are also preparing to leave on their missions all received letters from their Mission Presidents, greeting them and telling them what to bring with them. I, however, wasn't sure until a few days ago that my Mission President even existed! In the packet I received with my mission call, there was a blank space where a picture of my President and his wife was supposed to be, and a brief explanation that no picture was available yet because he'd only recently been called and wouldn't be set apart as the new President until July 1. After July 1, I'm sure he was a very busy man, and so I tried not to get my hopes up that a letter would come from him anytime soon.

... But early this week, a letter from Missao Brasil Salvador Sul, addressed to "Sister Railee Whitaker" appeared in the mailbox just for me. President and Sister Andrezzo hadn't forgotten about me! They're alive! They're real! Still no picture of them, but at least I've got a signature!

The letter, along with its enclosed list of 'Important Recommendations', served to reawaken the dormant enthusiasm for my mission and my mind immediately started making lists of things to pack. I've spent the day organizing my room-- setting aside clothes I can wear on my mission, putting the ones I can't into storage bins, and tossing everything else into a bag for the Goodwill. It's suddenly dawned on me just how soon I'll be leaving. And just how unprepared I am! There's still so much to do, and so much to learn. This roller coaster has such a long climb to the top that, for a while, I became deaf to the monotonous clicking. But now that I'm almost to the peak, I'm aware of it again and even as I wonder, "Why did I get on this thing?!" I can't suppress the giddy anticipation in my stomach that makes me hold on tight and squeal in girlish delight.

Chapter 9: Passports and Visas and Mailboxes, Oh My!

The signatures were collected, the expensive stamps stamped, the pictures taken, the documents copied, and the packets stapled. All I was waiting for was the Secretary of State to send back my notarized documents with an authentication seal. It seemed to take forever. Though, really, it was only about three days. I'd organized all of the other documents over and over again in anticipation, keeping them in the pre-addressed envelope the Church Travel Office had sent to me, ready to stick in the last papers when I got them back and mail it all off. I admit, I was getting nervous. Every day, it seemed, I was hearing "horror stories" of missionaries called to Brazil who didn't get their Visas in time and had to be reassigned to a state-side mission for weeks, or months, until their visas finally came. How long had those missionaries taken to send off their documents to start the Visa process, I wondered? Every passing hour seemed to doom me to another week in the Provo MTC (Missionary Training Center) instead of the Brazil CTM.
My fingernails were all-but-gone by the time I heard my mom call out, "Railee, your papers came in the mail!" It was already two weeks past the deadline I'd been given to send my papers in, so maybe you can imagine my anxiousness to send everything off as soon as possible.
With the treasured documents clenched in my eager little hands, I rushed to get the envelope that had everything else in it and, after organizing it all over and over again, counting and re-counting, checking and re-checking to be sure that nothing was missing, I slid (well, stuffed, actually) every golden ticket into the envelope that was not nearly big enough to house such prized papers with the space they deserved. Mom had gone off to the gym by that point, and holding the hefty envelope, I remember thinking that it seemed too big to put in the mailbox, but I was in such a hurry to send it off that I just put a bunch of stamps on it, hoping that it would be enough, and tossed that baby into the mailbox.
It felt a little better, knowing that at least the work for my Visa wasn't going to be held up by me anymore, but something felt a little weird to me about all of that important information sitting out there in such a public place-- my Passport, photocopy of my driver's license, birth certificate, etc. all right there on the sidewalk, practically. What if someone stole it?
Nervously, I walked back out to the mailbox, where I said a little prayer over the envelope that it would make it safely and quickly to the Church Travel Office. I felt better after that.
.... Until mom came home and heard what I'd done. "That's not going to work," she said. "We need to take it to the post office." But the mailman had already taken it away. I started to panic. Oh no, oh no! What if it all got lost in the mail? What if someone stole it? "It'll just be returned," mom assured me, "and then we can take it to the post office."
I was so frustrated with myself. In my haste I'd been pretty thoughtless, and now it was going to take even longer to send everything off!

I was too embarrassed to tell anyone.

A week passed, and the thick envelope with the three stamps was never returned. I tried not to freak out. Especially whenever people would ask, "So, how's that Visa coming?"

Another week passed, and still nothing. I hoped it had all miraculously made it to the Church Travel Office.

And then, on Tuesday of this week, I started getting text messages from an unknown number-- some guy who said his name was "John", and who was under the impression that I was a blond babe he'd met somewhere scandalous, named Railee, and that I'd given him my number. He wanted to take me out for a cocktail on the waterfront. All of my claims that I was not the Railee he thought I was and my demands to know how he'd gotten my phone number only elicited things like: "Babe, why u bein this way? Ur hurtin my feelings."
Finally, I realized what had happened.
Someone had stolen my important documents! Some gangster man who stole people's identities and sold them to other people for large amounts of money. He'd sold my identity to some blond tramp who was too young to get into bars and needed a fake ID! Now she was going around giving out my number to weirdos she didn't care about for laughs.
I realized that she must also have my Passport. She had everything she needed to get a Visa, too. Great scott! She was going to go to Brazil-- my Brazil-- and enjoy the golden sunshine and turquoise water and wonderful people in the wrong way!
Now angrier and more frustrated than ever, I told this John fellow: "I'm sorry, but you have the wrong number. I would never give my phone number to anyone who would speak about me in such a disrespectful way."
I didn't hear from him again. But I knew this wasn't over. I needed to go to the source. I needed to find little miss party-girl Blondie and beg her to give me my life back! I felt like George Bailey, ready to run out into the snow with a wild glint in my eyes, scanning the town of Beaverton, dodging cars and wandering wildly through cemeteries that have my name on the headstones.

But maybe I was getting a little ahead of myself. First, I needed to calmly call the Church Travel Office and ask if they'd ever received my papers. If they hadn't, then I could go crazy.

Sadly, I missed their office hours, so I sent a desperate email instead. I got a reply this morning from Chelsea Morris, the woman in charge of my travel needs, stating that yes, all of my documents had arrived on May 18th and had been sent to the consulate of Brazil. Birds started singing, the sun broke through the clouds, Bowser and Delilah started doing a happy jig, and the dish ran away with the spoon!

And so all of my worries have been put to rest. My part is officially done and now all I have to do is the fun stuff, like shopping and studying the scriptures, while the Brazil Consulate looks over everything and decides whether or not I can be trusted to cross their border.

I'm really hoping that my Visa will come in time for me to report to the Sao Paulo CTM on September 5th, as I'm scheduled to, but if it doesn't.... That's really ok. I'd actually love to experience the Provo MTC. After driving past it so many times and getting so excited to go inside "someday", I admit that it was slightly disappointing when I realized that I wouldn't get to go. I got over that disappointment pretty quickly in the excitement of getting to go to the one in Brazil, but still, I really wouldn't mind going to both. Whatever happens, I'm sure it'll be for the best and that I won't regret it. So I'm just not going to worry about it for now.

Chapter 8: Feeling a Little Scrawny

When I held my mission call in my hand for the first time, I felt the weight of it. Not merely the weight of several papers and an informational booklet, but the weight of the responsibility I was about to take on. There's an indescribable joy that fills your heart when you hear your bishop, and then your stake president, tell you that they consider you worthy to be a full-time missionary for the church. But to hold in your hand a letter from the Prophet, calling you to be a witness to all the world of the Savior Himself... it's hard to find words to describe how I felt. Joy, gratitude, wonder, awe, and above all else, humility.
This is the picture that came to my mind first. It's one of my favorite Norman Rockwell paintings (and anyone who knows me knows how much I love Norman Rockwell paintings). It encompasses my feelings about being a missionary. Especially as time goes by, I'm grateful that I have four months ahead of me before I actually leave, because I have a LOT to work on.

President Hinkley, who was the leader of the church when I was in high school, once said while speaking to a room full of missionaries, "You're not much to look at, but you're all the Lord has." He was a funny man. Funny, and oh, so right! It's been a source of consistent awe for me, to watch the Lord accomplish His purposes through the flawed and weak mortals who desire to serve Him.

In a way, I feel like Captain America before the super-steroid injections-- little and weak with a huge determination to do something great.

Especially as I struggle with the pronunciation of simple Portuguese words, I'm putting full faith in the Lord to expand my capacity to think, feel, learn, and be all that I can to serve the people of Brazil. I know I could never do it on my own, but if I do all that I can, I know that the Lord will make good use of me yet.