Sunshine From Brazil

Olá Minha Mãe!

How’s it goin’ up there? We had some changes down here, but not too much. So today was transfers, right? So this week we were really antsy to see what would go down, because we knew that our area would split into two areas. Ha, so this whole week we were warning everyone, and on top of wondering if we will leave or not, there also was the thought which ward will we stay in? So this week we were switching off just about every day on what we thought would happen. Also we discussed which ward would we like to stay in and what would we do. It’s hard to pick favorites, right?

Anyways, last night we got the news that I would leave and Elder McLaws would stay. So we had two last suppers, one with that family with did Easter with, the other with the owner of the house. Ha, well..... after this morning waking up super early to pack my bags, we got to transfers to see that actually I was leaving my old area to work in the new area, which is one of the wards of our old area... Did you catch all that? So basically I am staying. Ha, it just was pretty funny at transfers though because I had everything packed and ready to leave.

So Elder McLaws will finish off his mission here in Ala Castelão (The area with Luyan, the cozinhas, where Jurandi used to live, where Luzia, the Mom of Laiz, and all that) And I will work in Ala Jardim Castelão. (Where Easter family lives, and where we like to fly kites) So yeah.  A little complicated but it will be cool living with 4 elders and it will be interesting doing splits in the other ward.

But now I am with Elder Barbosa! He seems like quite the stud muffin. To me he seems like basically a studly Brazilian Texan-like cowboy who rocks at the guitar. He has 1 year and 3 months and is from São Paulo. I’ll get to know him well here. It will be good to practice the language with him. It looks like he wants to learn English, he speaks pretty good.

But yeah, that’s just about it for news here. The week was a little slow. Hopefully things will revitalize now that we split, and we can focus better.

I can’t believe that stupid package made it back. I thought it would be coming back here but guess not!

That’s my little spiel for the week, Love ya’ll!

-Elder Cetraro

Editor’s Note: I sent Zac a 13 pound Christmas package on October 31, 2012. It has been to Brazil and back twice and I thought I would never see it again. It showed up on our doorstep April 23, 2013, just 6 months shy of travelling the world. It had been cut open and taped shut, probably for customs inspection. Everything was there and pretty much intact. The jar of Nutella had exploded but surprisingly the contents survived well.