August!!

Hello my dear family!!

It´s hard to believe another week has come and passed! This week has gone by so fast, I hardly know what to say! haha

Me with a sign for a mercado with my name! haha I love it.

We´ve found some cool people this week that I´m excited to be teaching. One is a part member family with some absolutely adorable children! We´ve only been twice but they just instantly helped us feel at home. I love it when that happens. :) Julius Cesar came to church yesterday, so that was pretty legit! :P

I have really quickly come to love this city. I think the Lord is helping me with my directional challenges because in my last few areas, I´ve ALWAYS been able to find my way home! haha Actually I´ve only had one area that I couldn´t find the way home. But I also didn´t speak Portuguese then. Anyway... what I meant to say is that I´ve come to know this city so much faster than any other area and it makes me happy! It really is a gorgeous city and the ward here is SO amazing. It´s the tiniest ward ever, but every single member wants to help and every single member really makes an effort to reach out to us and make sure we´re at least taken care of. I`m so grateful for this ward. I love it! It´s well run, it´s well lead, and I never have to worry what people will say to our investigators. It just makes me happy. :)

Entrance to 1st of May bairro - the CRAZY hill we have to climb.

Something funny about this area is that it has like all the same road names and bairro names as all my other areas combined! It´s crazy. In my last area, we lived in bairro São Jose (we lived on Av. Farroupilha! haha ironic.), but worked mostly in bairro São Luiz. Here, once again we live in bairro São Jose and work a lot in bairro São Luiz. There is a street called Rua Porto Alegre (my first area) and various other streets from my last areas too. I get confused a lot telling people the church is on the wrong street cuz I´m so used to my last area, and they´re all the same road names! haha oops. That´s probably not a good thing. BUT - I always correct myself. Anyway, I just thought it was funny.

   

This zone is another zone that´s pretty far away from Porto Alegre. It´s not as far as Passo Fundo but the zone is a lot bigger. We have to ride a bus for an hour and a half every week to go to district meeting, and an hour and a half back. It´s a treck. haha But it´s fun cuz we get to see other cool cities along the way. haha anyway...

This week has been HOOOT. It blows my mind. I think the weather is crazier than Utah weather and I just didn´t know that was possible. It´s supposed to get up to 30 degrees Celsius this wednesday! We´re like hitting summer weather again. So weird. But, it´s nice. Being cold is hard. haha

Yesterday we ate lunch with a family who has 10 cats, 7 dogs, 25 chickens, and 15 sheep!!! hahaha It was kind of a millenial feel. Also because they have BYU TV and I watched Music and the Spoken word and totally bawled my eyes out. haha But anyway, I loved all the animals!

Anyway, that´s about it for me. I´m sure loving this city and this ward and working here is wonderful. It can still be hard, but it´s always worth it. The Lord is so good to His missionaries. I love you all so much and I´m so happy to hear from you! I hope you all have wonderful weeks!

drea