Weather, Food and Cold Showers!

12/30/13

It´s nice to speak in English haha!  It was nice to talk to everyone on Christmas and definitely gave me a boost!

Anyway, I´m adapting more to the mission life.  Once you get into the groove and understand everyday you are going to be walking and walking you kind of come to terms with what you´ll be doing for the next 2 years. My companion and I get along really well and if our spirits get down, they aren´t down for long.  When we were walking in the rain on Christmas and our shoes were filled with water (and I mean filled) we just sang a bunch of Hymns.  It´s funny how you can still have high spirits even during those times.  Although the really hot days (32C) I could do without.   I´m starting to turn a different shade of pink...sunscreen everyday!  It´s a  love-hate relationship throughout the day because you love the clouds because it´s cooler and blocks the sun but you hate the chance of rain and carrying the weight of a rain jacket.  I´ve pretty much come to terms that Im going to get wet.

The food has still been good.  I´ve been able to go to the store and actually buy good food and I love our little panini press in our kitchen for sandwiches.  We also went to Subway today. The girl making my sandwich kept laughing at me because my Portuguese pronunciation was so bad.  I´d point at the spinach and say ´´verde´´ which means green.  We also ate at a member's house yesterday and instead of rice and beans they had chicken primavera and MASHED POTATOES!  A nice change from the usual food here. The potatoes were a little different but they were nice to see.

All the American missionaires went to the police station to become ´´legal´´. It was so nice to speak English.

Elder Taylor gave me some tips for living here in Brazil:  1.)  If you send packages, declare the amount around $30 or I will have to pay a lot of money to receive it, 2.)  In 1.5 years he has not gotten sick yet, 3.)  Apparently Brazilian Stroganoff is really good, and 4.)  The time does fly by.

I remember Dad asked about our Ward size, last week was 70 and this week was 62. It feels really small. Apparently the Mormon world runs on the universal Mormon standard time because everyone is late.  We have Priesthood first (weird) and I think we had about 7 people when we started.

Be grateful for warm showers.  We have been losing power every so often and cold showers in the morning really wake you up!