Dear Family,
It's been a couple of weeks since I have written so I thought I'd better repent! Today is actually another holiday in Brazil. Man, I've never seen so many holidays as what they have here. What is even more interesting is that when a holiday falls at the beginning or ending of the week people take what they call "bridge days." So like today, Tuesday is a holiday, tons of people took Friday off as well as Mondayor maybe just Monday as their bridge days. The office was pretty quiet yesterday! If a holiday falls on a Thursday, most people will takeFriday off as a bridge day. Brazilians love their holidays! You should see the traffic when a holiday is approaching...unbelievable! It usually takes about 1 1/2 hours to get to the coast but on a holiday it can take up to 7 hours!
I think that we have started into the rainy season again. It is getting more and more humid and the days are getting warmer. Dad really sweats a ton down here and he gets pretty miserable. One of our sister missionaries who left in July, Sister Zaugg, sweat even more than Dad does. I always felt bad for her as she was almost constantly drenched! I'm glad that it isn't as bad for me. I get hot and sweaty but at least not drenched. One thing for sure is that my skin is really soft down here. I haven't had to use hand lotion one single time down here.
Two weeks ago was a holiday and we went, as a group, up to Campinas and went to a session in the temple. Dad has been through that one a few years ago but this was my first time. It is really beautiful, well actually, ALL temples are beautiful! The secretary of the temple was a friend of ours when we lived in Campinas 20 years ago. We got a royal welcome! She had tears running down her cheeks and we both got long, tight hugs. It was really neat to see her. She was the Primary president and I was called to be her counselor for 1 month. Her husband passed away a few years after we left and so she has raised her 5 sons as a single mom. They have all turned out to be great young men. One of them is currently her bishop! Her name is Gisele Vaz.
We've been working on our Petrolina project, trying to get all of the details in place as Dad and Julio will be going up there for some meetings on the 27th of this month. There are legal issues that have to be addressed and agreements that have to be made up and then signed. It is really very complicated. I think that they people are getting very excited about it finally happening after four years of planning.
I teach an English class once day a week and I really enjoy it. I teach a more advanced class. It helps me have something more to do during the week. We've been working on prepositions as they are really confusing to the Brazilians. Portuguese prepositions are a killer for me as well! I make lots of mistakes with them. I am actually learning a whole lot of English grammar myself! Just before Halloween I dressed up like a witch and we did all Halloween things. I even showed them a picture of Gary as a zombie! They really thought that was funny! To end my lesson we watched a video of Act 4, scene 1 of Macbeth...the witches, "Double, double, toil and trouble." After that we read it aloud and I think they liked that. We will end our class on Nov. 30th and then start up again the first of Feb. Normally they would go until the end of May, but we will finish our mission at the end of April/first of May so it will be a little short.
Today most of the missionaries went on a walking tour of one part of the city to see the graphic art graffiti. This kind of graffiti is different as it is really art. Probably the majority of the buildings, walls, stores, signs, bridges, etc. are covered in graffiti and believe me, it is not pretty. Most of the graffiti is made up of strange symbols and it is everywhere! It makes you sick. It just looks dirty. They used to paint graffiti on the temple wall/fence but the grounds people would have it painted over before daylight so no one ever saw it. The perpetrators finally quit so it is one of the few places you see where there isn't any graffiti. We didn't go today as Dad has a very sore foot. He hurt it over two months ago and it isn't getting better. He is just trying to tough it out until we get home and he can go to a Podiatrist. We are going to go see a matinee of Dr. Strange. I think that we've been to more movies down here than we've been to for several years back home! It's been kind of fun.
I've attached a few pictures of the Campinas Temple and the surrounding city. It has really grown since we were there 20 years ago. Campinas has about 1 1/2 million people but only 4 stakes. There are other cities much smaller that have double the stakes. I don't know why Campinas has a smaller LDS population than other cities of similar size or smaller. I know that there are a lot of wealthy people that live up there. One of them is Carlos Martins who is a member of the church and was our Stake Pres. when we were there 20 years ago. He started a language school and then franchised it. He sold it a couple of years ago for around $750 MILLION dollars!! We used to do our laundry at his house! He was also very wealthy back then.
I sure love you all very much. You are in our prayers everyday. We have a very good family. Hope you all have a very good week.
Love,
Mom/Paula
Photos
1. Campinas Temple
2. Our group
3. Us
4. Campinas
5. cute flowers around the temple
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