Sonderegger Mission Updates: January 11, 2016

Dear Family,

How are things going? Things are going okay here. Dad is starting to get better from his cold. We are just plugging away here at the office. Unfortunately, there isn’t a ton that I can do right now because of the language barrier. I am trying to work on that as best I can. I try to talk to someone everyday. I have set a goal to get up at 6:00 every morning to study the language. I have found that only reading the Book of Mormon isn’t enough and besides scripture language is a lot different that the way we speak today. I will keep reading the B of M everyday and I am in the middle of Alma presently. I read one verse at a time, well actually I am listening to it on my scripture side by side app so I can see the English as well as Portuguese. So I listen to one verse and follow along and then stop and reread it and then check to see if I have understood it. It takes quite a while to get through one chapter. I have been doing this since the middle of August when I finished reading it in English.

One thing that I think will help me even more is that yesterday I started my ward assignment of directing the choir. I loved it! I had practiced a choir scenario during the summer with my language tutor and that really helped me. I had three pages of notes with music terms in front of me and that helped. I also can do a pretty good pantomime! J It was a lot of fun. I hope that more people will attend. Maybe when the other ward members see how much fun we are having they will start to come. My motto is this: If we sing, they will come.

I have also been working with a lady who lives near us and they are moving to Utah next month. She is a nurse and is going to get more training at the U of U. They are actually going to be living in the same apartment complex where Lynn and Brandi lived for a while. They will live there for a while at first and then will probably move to a better place. They will be gone for at least 4 years. So I am helping her with English and she is helping me with Portuguese. She is a ball of fire and is a lot of fun to be around. The other day she was trying to say “successful” only it came out as “sussexful!” When she realized what she said she about fell on the floor from laughing so hard! Her name is Dagmar and her husband calls her ‘Daggi” which sounds like ‘Doggy.” Dad told him that he better not call her that in the US or else people might think that he is abusive! J They are a sweet family.

We went down to Praia Grande last week to do the next step in our gardening project. The man’s name is Ivan and he has a very large yard. Unfortunately, the soil is very poor. The area was a bog and a lot of fill dirt was hauled in and it was full of junk as you can see in this picture. The whole area is like that. It will have to be raked up a bunch and then they will build boxes and fill with good soil. We are working on finding out where we can buy tools, seeds, soil, lumber, etc. It isn’t like just running down to the Garden Gate next to Grandmas. It is kind of complicated to find that kind of a store or stores.

We never really know what is happening around here. Fernando (our “boss”) has a tremendous load as he has lost most of his staff due to retirement or relocating to another department. So it is basically just him and 4 missionaries (three of whom don’t speak Portuguese-me included). I guess there is one other fellow on the staff and he works very hard but he is only over the welfare area of mental health and there is a lot more to the welfare program than that. One day Fernando will say, “Oh, we are going to Praia Grande in an hour.” Or, “Tomorrow we are going to Curitiba.” Or, “I will let you know if we are going to Curitiba tomorrow.” We really don’t ever quite know what we are going to be doing.

We had one week of no rain and now the last couple of days it has rained a lot. A couple of weeks ago it rained so hard that there were a few people in our ward who got flooded.

Well I hope that you are all doing well. We love you all very much. Take care.

Love,

Mom and Dad/Paula and Ferron