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| Dance practice |
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| One of their favorite lancherias (snack shops) |
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| At the Fenarroz Rice Festival |
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| Inspecting some farm machinery |
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| Elder Shirley on a big rice harvester |
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| Valley center pivots - used all over the world. Just like the one at home in Idaho! |
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| Elder Shirley sporting a new gaucho hat that comes in handy with the cooler weather
May 26, 2014
It’s been another week
of ups and downs. But isn’t that the
life of a missionary? President Castro
gave us missionaries a scripture to memorize.
It’s found in D & C 123:17 and basically says, “Let us cheerfully do
all things that lie in our power, and then may we stand still…..” We do our best, but can still experience
disappointments. But if we have done our
part, we need not be disappointed in ourselves.
And so it was.
We began our week with
an uplifting district meeting with the missionaries in our area. We always enjoy meeting together with
them. They are always so enthused. Our zone and district leaders prepare helpful,
thoughtful lessons. And often they bake
a treat too. Sometimes we take a treat
as well. We never lack for good food…good
nourishment both physically and spiritually!
We had our first dance
practice with the youth for the upcoming Baile (Ball). This Baile will be similar to the one held a
couple of months ago. Again everyone is
encouraged to wear a hat and the men can even wear a “tapete” (rug or
wig). Don’t know where that idea came
from, but it should be interesting. We
have been asked by Presidente Samuel (President of the Uniao branch) to teach
some of the youth a swing or lindy dance.
They observed us dancing at the last Baile. And now they want the youth to do some couple
dancing, American style. They want them to do the “floor show”. They are busy making plans as to what to wear
and how to do their hair. They are even
making skirts for the girls. Never mind
that they haven’t learned a dance yet.
But we are working on that.
Tuesday was our first
dance practice and followed their regular Tuesday night youth meeting. We picked some fun swing music (Wake Me Up Before You Go Go by
Wham---old stuff!) , loaded it on a jump drive and went to the church. We had quite a few willing youth, both young
men and young women. We taught them a
few basic steps and moves. Practice time
is really limited, so we tried to keep it very basic. Basic is more our style anyway! They were good sports and tried anything we
threw at them. They caught on pretty
good. We followed up this practice with
another one on Saturday afternoon where we worked on perfecting the dance from
beginning to end. It looks like it may actually
come together! I think that we may have
more trouble remembering the order of the steps than they do. We are excited and especially excited that
the youth seem to enjoy it. We cheered
for their success. They even cheered for
themselves! We only have one more practice
on Tuesday. Our hope is mostly that they
have a good time. It has been a fun and
unusual missionary assignment for us. It’s
made “study time” fun. Guess it falls
under the category of “member and leader support”, right?
Wednesday night was a
bit of a disappointment for us and the Marina Branch Sister missionaries. Sister Picula (Australia) and Sister
Techmeier (Brazil) had planned a “multirao” or an evening where members of the
branch would come together for missionary work.
Sister Picula was sick and had to go to the hospital which is more like
a doctor’s office. It was a windy,
rainy, cold day. But Sister Techmeier
decided to do splits with another set of sister missionaries and let Sister
Picula stay home and have Sister Morales come help her. Our assignment was to make pipoca, the sweet
and salty variety again for the 30 people that they hoped would be in
attendance. We got up just before 6 am
to make the popcorn. That evening, as it
was rainy and we had a lot of popcorn to carry, we grabbed a taxi. Don’t know if it was the weather or what, but
members were calling the Sisters and cancelling. We ended up with nobody in attendance and a
couple of long-faced sister missionaries.
But we were reminded of our scripture of cheerfully doing all things
that were in our power. We had done our
part. That is all we could do! We were all disappointed, but not in ourselves. Such is the life of a missionary. Popcorn went home with smiling Sister
Missionaries!
The weather has indeed
changed. We now bundle up in hats,
coats, scarves, gloves and carry our umbrellas.
Elder Shirley found a cool gaucho hat which he likes to wear. One of the Elders told him that they weren’t
allowed to wear hats. Hopefully, that
rule doesn’t apply to senior missionaries as he likes to cover his
sparsely-clad head. It is interesting to
experience the changing of seasons. We
are still loving the rain! Night-time
temperatures have been down to 4 degrees C.
We have been told that some mornings we may see a little frost in the
wee hours.
Our apartment heater
is not working yet. We have talked to
the “dona” a couple of times. She says
she will ask someone to fix it. President
and Sister Castro are buying heaters for all of the missionaries, but they
haven’t been delivered yet. We did go
out and buy a small heater. We
especially need it to help dry the laundry.
We don’t have a clothes dryer.
With all of the humidity, it takes days for a batch of laundry to
dry. Hopefully, the little heater will
help. We also have a nice oven in our
small kitchen. We like to pull our
chairs into the kitchen in front of the oven to eat. We also have improvised with a couple of
socks filled with rice to use as our rice bags.
They are great for our cold feet. Every season has its challenges. We also love our nice, heavy blanket that we
bought at Pedal de Ouro.
With the cooler
weather came shower problems of the indoor variety. Sometimes, our shower turns cold in the
middle of a shower. That is if you can
get hot water to begin with. We have a
big holding tank of water up on the roof.
In the summer, the water was pre-warmed nicely. But not now.
We bought a new shower, hoping that was the problem. No such luck!
It may be a problem in the building or maybe with time of day and
usage. But we were treated on Sunday
morning with a warm shower for both of us!
We just never know. We figure
that if our son, Brian, could handle cold showers, so can we! It makes us really appreciate the
conveniences of home. We are not
complaining. Such is the life of a
missionary! It’s a unique,
once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Our experiences with a
cold house and cold shower are not unique.
At church on Sunday, there was no heat.
In sacrament meeting, people wore coats, hats, and gloves. Windows were still open for the needed
ventilation. Many told us that they also
had no heat in their homes. Although
there are some who cook on wood stoves.
Presidente Samuel and his wife don’t have a shower that works right now
either. We all laugh together as we
discuss our situations!
Roberto and Marcia
Reinbrecht and family gave us a friendly call.
It seems that their son Cristofer had a belated birthday party with
friends on Friday evening. They asked to
postpone our visit til next week.
However, as seems to be the case, they can never escape us. We decided to attend the Fenarroz Rice
Festival on Friday afternoon. We saw
lots of tractors and farm equipment used to harvest rice and soy. Huge tractors! We saw Massey Fergusons, New Hollands, John
Deere, Case IH and even saw a Valley Center pivot exhibit. Elder Shirley especially liked it. While there, we attended part of a
performance by a small orchestra from Porto Alegre. When the performance finished, we looked up
and saw the Reinbrechts in front of us a few rows. They saw us and came back to visit. Hope they don’t think we are stalking
them! Roberto’s mom, Magali, was with
them too. They were all very friendly
and apologetic for having to miss our appointment. As we missed Cristofer’s birthday, we are
planning on taking over a birthday gift for him. He just turned 13 and plays the keyboard. He
is a very smart, cute kid and speaks English pretty well. We think that we may burn a CD for him with
some BYU Vocal Point a cappella music or something like that. We have another appointment with this family
on Friday as it is the only night each week that they have free. However, we aren’t sure how time will work
out with the Baile. We hate to be the
ones to cancel. Hopefully, we can do
both.
We were excited to learn
from a branch member that, as seniors, we may be able to get a pass to ride the
city bus for free. So we sought out that
office this week. We were expecting a
lot of hassle and that we would probably be turned down as we were foreigners. But to our surprise, they asked no questions,
just took our id’s and info and pics and made us a card. Now we can ride as often or as far as we want
in the city. Sometimes, we are glad to
be old!
We continue to visit
members and non-members when we can. We
returned to visit Nelson and his wife.
They are the ones who cancelled the FHE we had planned for their
family. As we got to their home, they
were just coming up the street with a load of lumber on a bicycle and heavy
bags in their hands. We helped them the
last little ways. They seemed genuinely
happy to see us and invited us in. We
took a new and improved version of the pan-making video. Elder Shirley put “Eye of the Tiger” music
with the video for Nelson followed with some church videos. Nelson was happy with that and played a short
Mormon message video from the CD while we were there. They were both smiling. That is a good sign, right? She had just made some jam and wanted us to
try it. She brought each of us a small
bowl of jam….no bread, just jam and a spoon.
It was really good, but neither of could eat the whole bowl of just
jam. She asked if we didn’t like
it. Hopefully, we didn’t offend. Nelson keeps saying that he needs to come to
church again. We along with other branch
members are keeping after him. They are
good people!
We have visited with
Nilson and Lucas. Lucas is back in town
and both of them want to start up again with English classes. Guess we will start that again this
week. Also Dione wants to go visiting
with us in the Cachoeira branch this week.
He is in the Marina branch, but likes to go visiting with us. So we set up an appointment. Looks to be another full week ahead!
Anyway, we continue to
try and cheerfully do all things that lie in our power. Boa semana to all!
Eu te amo!
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