Wet Cement

Hello My Family!!!

What a week it has been! haha First of all, transfers are tomorrow! Can you believe I´ve already been here a whole transfer? This transfer was shorter because of Christmas... so only 5 weeks. But still. I´m staying!!! YAY! I´m stoked. Sister Furtado and I get another transfer together!! Transfers here are craaazy. Like... We didn´t find out about transfers until about 20 minutes ago. Thru email. In New York they would call us like 5 days before transfers and tell us where we´re going, who we´re gonna be with, etc. Here they just send an email with a list of people who are being transfered. You don´t know where you´re going or who you´re gonna be with. You just know to show up at the train station tomorrow with your bags all packed. It´s nuts. I really thought I´d be transfered because I heard that sisters rarely stay together more than one transfer in this mission. So I´m pretty happy to be staying! 

Sister Furtado and I on her birthday.
haha the coke can says "Friendship" and it makes me happy! 

This week was good! Andressa and Marcio were baptized yesterday!! They are incredible. We´ve been teaching their whole family for a couple weeks now and all of them want to be baptized. Andressa is 17 and Marcio is 15. Their Mom and Dad have started the paperwork for marriage and will hopefully be baptized shortly thereafter! We´re so excited. The other day, we went to their house and found Andressa on the church website looking at the missionary page! She told us she wants to serve a mission when she´s 19 and well... she´s just amazing. Yesterday was beautiful and everyone cried. haha :) 

This week we also had the mission Christmas party! I got to see Sister Aidukaitis (I STILL can´t spell her name) from the MTC and I got to meet Sister Stevens (we talked before the mission, she left a month after me but got to Brazil 3 months before me. haha!) It was pretty happy. President and Sister Wright gave everyone temple recommend holders from the Porto Alegre temple and personalized to the Porto Alegre North mission! So cool!! I just love them. It was a fun day, and my district did a flash mob of random Christmas songs! haha I recorded it. Hopefully I´ll find a way to send videos home someday! 

Sewing our flashmob dresses!

The four sisters in our district :) All matching for the flashmob. haha
These dresses were like $8 so we all bought one to match for the Christmas party. 

Awhhh Sister Wright :)

Okay. The other day, Sister Furtado and I were really late to an appointment. We were half running half walking because it was late at night and we needed to teach a lesson and be back home in like... 45 minutes. Which is impossible. Anyway. We were hauling it to Simone´s house, not thinking of anything but "don´t trip on the cobblestone." Suddenly, I saw Sister Furtado hesitate, but I just plowed forward. My next step sunk into something deep and my back foot wouldn´t move. A part of me was scared it was dog poop again but... I didn´t have time to think about that before I looked down and realized I was standing in freshly laid cement!! Sister Furtado had one foot in and we both ninja jumped out. I sat on the sidewalk and poured my water bottle all over my shoes trying to get the cement off. We were both kind of in "We´re late... just get it off and keep going" mode, but then Sister Furtado started singing "I love to be a missionary" and I just burst out laughing! What a scene that was! We both just laughed so hard realizing how ridiculous it was that we´d not notice wet cement, and walk thru it in our sunday shoes (Okay, so we wear sunday shoes every day. But it makes the story better). haha needless to say, we signed our footprints with our initials and officially made our mark on Brazil. Bah. So funny. Maybe you had to be there. But I laughed pretty hard. And my shoes are fine... just in case you were worried.

This is what happens when you have a favorite pair of shoes. And then you wear the other ones one day.

Anyway, life is good. I get another transfer with Sister Furtado, I have 33 mosquito bites on JUST my right arm, but I´m getting used to bathing in sunscreen and bug repellant every day. The Portuguese is hard, but it was never really meant to be easy. haha I´m trying to say something new every day, and... really, life is good. :) I don´t know yet how it will work with calling home for Christmas. Hopefully they tell us more soon! But I´m so excited to talk to youuu! I love you all so much! I hope all is well!!

Drea