A Few Moments in My Comfort Zone

Oi Minha Familia!!

Oh how I miss you all. This has been a trying week. But I survived. :)

First of all, the ward here is SUPER involved. It´s pretty wonderful. We´ve been doing a reach out for the past few weeks to all the less actives in the ward. Our ward has about 1500 members with about 200 active. So, they´ve divided up the list to the entire ward (well... those who will participate) and are doing visits every sunday until April. How cool is that? It sure helps the missionaries know who to go visit more!! Also, this week we had what they call a Gincana. What is that, you ask? Well... I´m still not exactly sure. I looked it up in my dictionary and it said "Auto Rally" but I´m pretty sure that´s not what we did. haha basically we just divided the ward into groups and had everyone bring friends - we brought people and played a bunch of competitive games. Thankfully for me - the missionaries couldn´t participate (sack races don´t exactly mix with skirts) so we helped the other teams and I filmed it all. I say "thankfully for me" because man... large groups of people competing are already a little intimidating for me... (unless I´m watching from a distance) but for some reason it´s all just scarier in Portuguese. It was a good activity... I just kind of wanted to hide. But I didn´t. And I´m grateful for such an active and excited ward. They are embracing the work and I´m lucky to be here.

This week also we found an 81 year old man, Alcides, with a 10 year old son, Henrique, who are absolutely incredible. When we gave a baptism invitation, Alcides leaned over to Henrique and said "We need this. We need God in our lives. Baptism will bless us!" haha I thought it was adorable. We´ll hopefully get to work some more with them over the next few weeks. :) We didn´t get to teach Geyciara this week but, hopefully soon.

I had a cool experience yesterday. I was at church - still feeling a little overwhelmed from the Gincana on Saturday and ... church is always pretty stressful. We have sacrament meeting last and I was thinking about how much I miss my comfort zone. I know I probably shouldn´t have been thinking about that, but I was just having a tough time. I only so much as thought in my mind "Man... how I´d give almost anything for a few moments in my comfort zone." and at the end of Sacrament meeting, I heard - in perfect American English "Where are you sisters from?" I turned around and saw an elderly man who just returned from serving a mission with his Brazillian wife. They live in our ward and he´s from Idaho!! I almost cried, I was so excited to talk to someone in English. We talked for a few minutes and ... well... I was given a few minutes of my comfort zone. What a blessing that was for me. I´m grateful the Lord hears and answers the prayers we don´t even consciously pray. Tender mercies. :)

Well, that´s about all this week. We´re having a TON of rain which always makes me happy. :) I hope all is well with you! I think of you all the time and I miss you like crazy. I love you!!

Drea