Goodbye to Littleton

i dont even know where to start with the craziness of this week.. 

the beginning of the week was spent with cleaning, packing, and running around saying goodbye to all of Littleton. which was so sad goodbyes are the worste! wednesday was transfer meeting. sister francis and i wore matching dresses because we randomly had the same one :) everyone thought that was pretty funny. transfer meeting was long because we had 31 missionares going home and they all gave their departing testimonies. i cried through the entire things. like not one glistening tear, full out crying the entire time. because my family is going home! everyone that i have served with so far is leaving. my trainers, sisters brown and hileman. my first STL, sister gomez. and SO many others that i have come to love so much. so that was hard for me. we sat next to sister hope and she cried through it all too. so that made me feel better that i wasnt the only one sitting there crying my soul out. but anyone that knows me knows that its not weird for me to be the only one crying. 

after the meeting was the usual chaos. everyone saying goodbyes, getting pictures, and getting our luggage where it needed to be. i eventually found sister sorensen and we headed to my new home in westborough! 

so about my new area. there are 10 misisonaries here that cover the 2 wards - framingham/marlborough. we all live in the same appartment complex. sister sorensen and i cover the portuguese and spanish. but there's a set of elders for each too. we go to 6 hours of church because we have to be at both wards since SP meets with one and PO with the other. 

im happy cause there are a TON of brazilians here!!! YAY! they make us yummy food :)

sister sorensen is my new companion and she is totally perfect. this is her last transfer so once again ill only have a companion for 6 weeks. but thats okay! I LOVE HER. 

this area is also awesome cause we get to do successful street contacting again! in littleton literally no one would talk to us, but here everyone does! even if theyre not interested theyre still nice. so thats really refreshing.

i also get to have roommates again which is the best thing ever! sister asay is a new missionary. and sister lee i knew at byu. we had communications class together and one day in class she told me not to serve a mission.... :) she's so funny i love her. 

theres this really cool couple here - the Pumas. He's our branch mission leader and his wife is pregnant as can be. theyre super cool and funny. im excited to work with them!

sorry this email is way all over them place. i keep stopping and then coming back to it and so it doesnt make any sense. basically im really happy in my new area and with my new companion but theres not a ton to say cause its only been a few days here! 

this week we have Mission Leadership Conference with the Packards and zone meeting. the at the end of the week we are spending the weekend in Pitsburg. We were going there anyways to go the a joseph smith fireside on saturday because sisster sorensen is in charge of the music program. so President invited us to come a day early and go to the Boston Pops Symphony with their family on friday. we're way excited for that!! so we'll be spending the weekend there!

my mission means everything to me. this gospel means everything to me. it gives me purpose. it gives me hope and faith and peace. it brings me joy and fills me with the love of Christ. because of that, i KNOW that this is the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

<3 sister tantilllo

Sister Training Leader

TRANSFERED. FRAMINGHAM/MARLBOROUGH. SPANISH&PORTUGUESE. SISTER TRAINING LEADER. 

alright explanation time. so President has been keeping me pretty in the loop on this whole thing. which is way nice of him and not a usual thing. so he told me i was getting transferred back to portuguese a week ago or so. and then on wednesday he told me he wanted to make me a sister training leader. which for those of you who dont know is a position of extra responsibility and we are assigned 3-5 other companionships to take care of, teach how to be more effective missionaries, and watch over their emotional and spiritual needs. anyways, so im that now. he called me friday morning and officially asked me. he also said that i would be going to an area where i would be able to use all three of the languages i have so far been in (spanish, portuguese, english). and i was like alright.. theres only like two areas in our entire mission where thats even possible. dorchester or marlborough. so i knew it would be one of those two! then later on friday after district meeting transfer texts came out! and i found out that the Lord wants me in framingham/marlborough! which is only like 20min from here and closer to the Packards. my companion will be sister sorensen. its a zebra area which means its a mix of two languages. so the two of us will cover both spanish and portuguese. it will be fun!! i called siste hileman and told her and she was like "the Lord has been preparing you for this your whole mission! this is why youve had to bounce around the languages so much!

ALSO TODAY IS MY 11 MONTH MARK! where does the time go..

we had the most incredible zone conference with our entire mission presidency. the highlight was president christensen's testimony, president's haight's humor, and president packard's talk on pride. it was so good! "pride is the great stumbling block to zion!" sister hileman gave me a birthday present at it and it was an album full of funny pictures. after the day long conference sister francis and i got to meet with president, during which he told me all of the stuff i already talked about with being a STL and where to transfer me.  

on sunday sister francis and i got to speak in sacrament meeting! and what do you know... my topic was pride! so i pretty much regave presidents talk in a 5 minute version of what took him 2 hours to say. i wish they couldve heard the 2hour version. Tyler, Jon and Andrea's son, really wanted to come up with me so i let him start my talk by saying "God loves me" and then he went and sat back down. it was way cute!

we went on exchanges this week with our STLs here. i went to billerica with siste layton. and sister staley came here to littleton with francis. it was a fun day and for our dinner appointment we got to go on an airforce base!!! cause thats where the family lived. it was sweet!

i had a wonderful birthday! it fell on a sunday which was supe lucky because i got to be with everyone at church for it! sister francis was really good about telling EVERYONE about it and i was sung to several times throughout the day. natalie showed up with cookies and a big hug where she lifted me off the ground. it was the sweetest! we have the best ward. 

for birthdays sister packard sends out a mission wide text with a bio about whoever's birthday it is. and sister carone wrote mine! it was so cute this is what it said "Now a big birthday shoutout for the nicest person in the MBM: Sister Tantillo! She comes to us from sammamish. WA!!! Did you know she sang in the last General Relief Society Meeting broadcast? She is also a piano lover! she plays like an angel, not only the piano but also the ukulele and singing! she likes to make figure 8s with a car in the snow and to speak portuguese with a brazilian accent! she's almost been in all the language progams in the MBM!! from spanish to portuguese, from creol to english! she is also a great soccer player and used to coach before the MBM. but most important shes a really spiritual person and everyone can feel it when aound her!! we sure love Sist Tantillo!" haha isnt that the nicest thing ever? carone sent it to sister packard to send out to the entire mission! except they took off the nicest pesrson in the mission cause thats just not true :)

and then eveyone in the mission is allowed to text or call you on birthdays. even elders! so i got to talk to and text a lot of my favorite people in the mission!

we had some really cool lessons this week. peter came back alive! and we had a lesson with him and taught him how to relate scripture stories to his own life,. he like that a lot. and brother christensen referred us to his neighbor who is indian. we had a lesson with both of them about our purpose on earth and he is a new investigator now!

on sunday this guy Kent randomly walked into our building before church started and wanted help finding the Lord's prayer. we ended up having a really cool talk with him and he gave us his number. he couldnt stay that day but wanted to a different day. 

its so hard to say goodbye to the people here.  i love them all so much! natalie is going to be the hardest though... wish me luck! 

i love you all! hope you have a great week :)

MBM

Its been another wonderful week in the MBM! 

Last Monday we went up to Nashua for a BBQ with several other missioanries. the Elders had a grand old time trying to force us to eat all of their food. They made us hispanic corn = mayonnaise and chili powder. rach wouldve hated it. also it was sister lewis' birthday last week and mine is this week so a couple of the elders made us a birthday cake. it was totally gross and i dont even want to know what they put in it. but they sang to both us of and made us take a bite. 

This past weekend a kid that Sister Carone and I taught in Brockton got baptized! and nobody bothered to tell us!! We found out whent the mission sent out a text saying everyone that had gotten baptized this week and we were like "Junior? like our Junior? the kid that made us cry and loose sleep over Junior? yes that Junior". so that was kinda sad cause we totally wouldve gone back and see him get baptized since we taught him for so long! but i was als SO HAPPY that he finally decided to get baptized! he was supposed to while we were there and then decided to stop coming to church ever. so im happy that that all worked out. 

We also had return and report this week! its an all day conference with the Packards that the trainers and trainees come to to return and report on how their mission has been going so far and to make sure us trainers are taking good care of them. We met in Belmont and got to listen to the Packards for hours. which is one of my favorite things to do! We carpooled with the Billerica Elders. Elder Espinola is the new missionary and he is from Paraguay and is learning English. Elder Broadhead is his trainer and he made us listen to country-gospel music the whole drive there. 

We had a tornado this week! (dont freak out mom). we were visiting with an older lady in our ward, anna mason, when we got a text from our zone leaders saying that a tornado had been spotted and to find shelter immediately and not leave. so we stayed in anna masons tiny little apartment and talked with her for 2 hours while we waiting for the storm to leave. we could barely hear her little voice over the thunder! 

We've spent a  lot of time with Barbara this week. i love her so much. she is trying to track down the missionaries that taught her when she first joined the church 50 years ago. so we're calling every bishop in mesa and boise to see if anyone has records of them living there then. not much success so far but we soooo badly want to help her find them! 

We had a Brazilian dinner this week! it made me so happy! it was with the Abreu family in our ward who are from brasil. They have the cutest little daughter who is so confused right now between portuguese and english and says half of each sentence in either one. its funny. 

Natalie and the rest of the youth went to youth conference this week and had a really great time! We had a lesson with Andrea and Sister Peterson came with us. Peter is still camping/fasting and hopefully will come back soon! We're going on exchanges with our sister training leaders tonight. i get to go to billerica and sister francis gets to lead this area! she'll do great! we have the entire day planned for her so she wont have to worry about a thing! and then we have zone conference in lowell on wednesday with the packards. 

we find out about transfers this friday and i'm most likely being transferred. we have a shortage of portuguese sisters because three are going home and the ones that were supposed to replace them got delayed with coming. so ill most likely be transferred back to portuguese to help fill in those empty spots. ill let you know though! 

love you all and have a great week!