Week 15

Hi Family! If this email makes it to you it will be a miracle. Right now it is storming in Guará and the internet was out all morning and when we returned this afternoon it died right after we got on. We waited an hour for it to come back on and here we are. I am semi confident I can get this sent, so we will give it a whirl!I My letter last week was definitely lacking in content and for that I apologize. I have a few things to note this week that hopefully will keep you all interested in my life.
This week we met with our district. Our new elder is another Brazilian... Elder Spironeli I think that is how it is spelled. He is a pretty cool fellow. He likes to speak English and he will be returning to BYU the same time I will be. It looks like I will have a friend still in school after all when I get back!
Birthday news. Sister Victorio´s was a success I think. We woke up and she took a shower first and I decorated her desk with balloons and a made a banner out of postits that said happy birthday. I also bought her a jumprope that she has been wanting. It was a real feat buying it without her seeing it but I did it. I will attach photos either today or next week if I dont have time. I also made brownies and cookies. She really likes cookies. The elders in our district made mousse and bought her a cake and then later in the night we went to the bishops house and his wife prepared a surpise party with more cake and food. It was awesome. Basically, on the mission if your companion has a birthday it is like you are having a birthday because we are stuck together. Wonderful. I bit much on the sugar part I think though.
One funny story. My ability to converse it improving, not super rapidly, but it is happening. The other day we had lunch at the house of a member who´s husband is not a member. He is a super intelligent man and I think he just refuses to pray about the Book of Mormon because he is a afraid of the responsibilty he will have after he knows for a fact it is true. He is a non practicing catholic and was explaining ´´their book´´ and I was confused becasue I was pretty sure he was talking about the bible which we also have. So I decided I wanted to know for sure if he was talking about the bible or not so I asked him if he was talking about the bible and he said yes and I followed up saying essencially, just this? It was funny. They all laughed. Reading this now it is not very funny. But, it was really funny so pretend you were there and laugh.
Another funny story. We are teaching a woman named Rossy. Her two kids are awesome and are also already members of the church. We had a family home evening with them and we played a game where one person writes a sentence and you pass the paper and the next person has to draw the sentence. Someone wrote ´´A girl dreaming about the United States´´ (it wasn´t me I swear) Anyway Rossy drew a girl with a dreamcloud of... the Eiffel Tower. Ha ha ha. It was really funny. In other news I think that she will be baptized here soon which is great news.
Finally, one spiritualish story. We run into this fellow Joilton all over the place when we are walking. He is a pretty nice fellow. We were walking to the chapel the other day to meet a member and we saw him. We stopped and talked for a minute and I asked him if he wanted to see the inside of the church. He did and it was awesome. I think that he really enjoyed seeing the inside and next week he said he will come to church with us. Awesome.
Anyway, this is all for now. I love you all. Tomorrow we will be getting our mail so I will let you all know if I got your letters or not next week!

Sister Hoopes

PS My address is:

Sister Kristen Hoopes
Missão Brasil Brasília
Shin-CA 05 Lote B1
Sala 304/307
CEP 71503-505-Brasília DF Brasil