Week 31

Feliz Dia Depois O Dia Dos Pais! 

So this past week has been good. The past couple weeks I have been all over the place emotionally. Up, down... everywhere, but, I am feeling back to normal hallelujah! Brasil didnt celebrate fathers day yesterday, but we did have a holiday and a soccer match which is basically a holiday here. Tuesday was Valentines Day and a lot of stores were decorated and there was a little more PDA in the streets than normal, but aside from that I think it was a fairly normal day. The soccer match- I actually think there were two here in Brasil this week, but one was in Fortaleza so it wasnt as big of an event. On Saturday Brasil played Japan here in the huge new stadium that they built here in Brasilia. The streets were basically empty during the game. I can proudly announce that Brasil won 3-0 a fact I know mainly because everyone we talked to after gave us play by plays. ha ha. 

We had some other significant events this week. Our first district meeting of the transfer was on Tuesday. We have a very unique district. We have 2 Brazillians, 2 North Americans, and 2 Bolivians. I dont think that the odds of that happening are very high but it happened here. Based on the second Bolivian missionary I have met here on the mission I think that my companion is a very normal Bolivian. ha. =) They also brought mail to the district meeting finally so I got some long awaited letters which made me pretty happy. 

Later in the week we had a zone conference and President and Sister Gaertner came and participated. It was really good. Sister Gaertner didnt realize that Sister Victorio and I are serving together again and she asked President about it and it sounds like the possibility of receiving another sister here in the mission before the transfer is over is pretty likely. It sounds like a trio could be in my future. During the conference President had a set of missionaries do a teaching practice in front of everyone. The elders had described two investigators that they have a girl and her grandma and president told them to practice inviting them to be baptized. One of the elders asked who they should use to be the investigators and and President said they could choose anyone. Logically, I think sister V and I would have been the most likely to be chosen to be the girl and the grandma since we are now the only sisters in the zone, but they surprisingly said that president and sister G could be the investigators. Sister G was the girl and President G was Luiza the grandma. It was funny to me. Especially listening to the elders call him senhora. 

In the zone conference President G also talked a little bit about some of the things we should be doing... like exercising and such. The rule for waking up in the mission is that we need to wake up at 630. What happens a lot is people wake up at 630 and then kneel on their beds and pray... and then half an hour later at 7 ish they wake up. ha ha. Needless to say the new rule is we have to be out of bed at 630. While at the zone conference we got to see another zone that is close to ours which was cool. Some of my old district from the CTM were there.  

In other news things in terms of missionary work is going good here. We are super busy because we now have the investigators that I had been teaching and the investigators that Sister V had been teaching to visit which is actually kind of a lot of work to keep up on. We have had some good moments though. Mira a girl sister Coombs and I had been teaching has been reading the BOM like crazy she is already in 2 Nefi which I was excited about. And Renan who got baptized a few weeks ago finally decided he would were a white shirt and tye to church. Made my Sunday. Speaking of Sunday... Funny story. 

So in the past I dont know if anyone remembers- but I had a terrible filling up all the time when I gave talks in church. So this Sunday Sister V and I both gave talks and I talked for 15 minutes.... What?! I think that is a record for my longest talk. 

Everything in general is going good. I am washing a lot of dishes and teaching people the gospel and speaking Portuguese and walking a ton and staying happy. I hope that you all are doing good and that Summertime at home is going well too. I love you all! 

Sister Hoopes

 

PS If anyone has good FHE activity ideas or fun little games you should send them my way!!!!