Happy Birthday Take 2!!! (May 6)

BOM DIA FAMILIA!!!!!!

 Hope you all are doing SUPERB!

 

well.

Here´s a little about this week......

 

It was a very fun week here in Atibaia..........

Once again, we walked a LOT....

Did I tell you all that sometimes we have to take buses/little vans to go on the FREEWAY to get to some of the neighborhoods we are working in????? Yep.

And sometimes, (okay, more like a lot of times.....) we have to wait on the side of before mentioned freeway to wait and catch these buses/vans to go home afterwards! Its great fun guys.

Such a rush to run across the FREEWAY to go catch your bus.... I still think "my mom would kill me if she saw me doing this!!" everytime. hahahaha.

Dont kill me please!

And dont worry, we are very safe about it. =]

 

This week our little family--- Jurací and Cleonice are doing very well! They arent very good at reading the Book of Mormon by themselves yet (have some reading troubles), but we´ve been reading with them a lot. They also went to our activity wednesday night AND a family night saturday night ANDDDD went to church again this sunday!!! WOO!!!

Yep, they are doing well and we are trying to help them understand what we´ve been teaching them a little better..... And trying to plan for them to get married here in the next month or so!

 

Wednesday was a great day, it was a holiday here ... "dia do trabalho" (labor day???) and so we got to do a division with two awesome girls from the ward! Isabella and Isadora are sisters and are both preparing to leave on missions in the near future.... they used to leave with the sisters a LOT, like everyday, but now they are working, so they can only help us out every once in a while... But, it was a very fun day! Sister Menden got a little scared to leave me and have to go teach with Isadora, but it was good for her. hhhahaha. Nobody died, so it was a sucess.

Wednesday night we also had our ACTIVITY!!! It was Noite da sobremesa---AKA DESSERT NIGHT!!! and it was a great success.

There was a good 25ish people there, ANDD our investigators Cleonice and Jurací--who enjoyed it a LOT.

The elders quorum was in charge of bringing desserts, and there was a lot of good food!

We also did an activity before hand that the Isas (Isabella and Isadora) put together... We put little photos of Christ inside little envelopes and gave one to everyone and told them not to open it. Then we gave them each a tack and had them stab holes in the envelope everytime they answered negatively to a series of questions.... like "did you pray every day this week?' Or "did you serve someone today??"

Anyways, it was a funny activity and everyone enjoyed it. Then Isadora brought it back to the spiritual side talking about the Atonement at the end.... It was VERY good.

This ward is so great guys!!!!!

 

Saturday nights, we always have a family night with this AWESOME giant family in our ward..... They have 11 kids, and there are always tons of people in their house.... Its a party all day everyday. =]

But anyways, they are all pretty recent converts and are always spreading the gospel with all of their friends and inviting us to go teach people that they know! Its the best!

Every saturday night, they have family night and invite lots of people, and tell us to bring whoever we want to invite as well. This time, Cleonice and Jurací went (who are referrals from this family as well...) and had a great time.

OH YEAH, and Renata--- (one of the older daughters in this family, who is sooooooooooooooo cool. guys. you have no idea....) went and took us to an area far away to meet some people that the sisters before me and S. Menden were teaching... We ended up not getting to meet them cause they werent home, but we got to teach another investigator that lives out there and it was cool. Its awesome how much everyone is helping us here! 

Renata with her "RENATA" top ramen.... Did I mention that she is awesome?????! She got baptized six months ago and is getting ready to go on a MISSION here in another six months!! AH!

BUT ANYWAYS, back to family night....

We had family night like normal..... a great message given by Renata, hymns, a prayer by Sister Menden (who gets red in the face just like me when she gets nervous BTW....) and then hot dogs brasilian style for the snack. Mmmmmm. Very good.

Afterwards, people started being all weird and made me and Sister Menden LEAVE the kitchen where everyone was eating to go sit in the living room with just the mom of the family--Irmã Leticia... They were all like "go in there cause Irmã Leticia wants to talk to you!" So we did. But when we got there, she just asked some silly questions about nothing and we sat there doing nothing.... hahah. (Little did I know in the moment that this was all planned out....hmmm. Sneaky Sister Menden and Renata...... )

After a while, they called us all to go in the kitchen... Sister Menden VERRRYYY unsuspiciously grabbed my camera OUT of my hands and ran into the kitchen first... haha.

Then when I got into the door way, EVERYBODY was smashed behind the table with this GIANT birthday cake with a  HUGE candle/firework in the middle, and everyone singing "parabens" aka happy birthday.... AHHHHHH. 

THIS was my birthday candle!!!!

MOM, I dont want anymore of those baby candles!!!! hahaha.

Yep. I might not have known anybody very well yet on my actual birthday (last week), but they still wanted to plan a surprise party for me the week after..... How sweet!

So, totally got embarassed standing there in the doorway with everyone singing to me.... and didn't know what to say when they asked me to give a speech... hahaha. But it was great fun. 

The cheering party guests.... ahhhh.

 

They also bought a giant TUB of paçoca!!! (my favorite brasilian candy..... its a lot like peanut butter.... but sooo good!)

And here they have a tradition that the birthday person has to cut the cake and choose someone to give the first peice to.... Usually acompanied by a little speech and a lot of sucking up....hahaha. Oh, and since there wasn't time for me to blow out that GIANT firework candle, they had me make a wish while cutting the first peice of cake with the knife upside down, cutting from the bottom up..... weird..... anyways.

While I was cutting and making my wish they all joked that I was wishing for all of them to get days off of work.... hahaha. Cause everyone that likes to leave and teach with the sisters is working a lot, and so I told them that we would be praying for them to get holidays so they can leave with us everyday..... ahahaha.

Yep. So here´s to holidays for everyone!

Anyways, the surprise party was great fun, and I love this ward SO MUCH!

 

Sunday was also awesome because we found an AWESOME family to teach!! YEAH!! I´m hoping for great things with them.... but I´ll tell more about it next week cause I´m so out of time!

 

Love you all so oooooo much!!!

Have the best week!!

 

Sister Ward