A Few Challenges - and Some Wonderful Things!

The last two weeks have had some challenges - what mission hasn't? But there have also been some wonderful things. 

First the challenges:

On November 15, I taught my first Adjusting to Missionary Life Workshop - And all of a sudden, ,there were technical problems! The night before we were to have it, I found that I was shut out of my church account and couldn't access my teaching materials, my power point presentation for the workshop, and I couldn't receive or send emails. The Sister President who was co-facilitating with me had her computer go down at the same time. But, then I remembered that I had sent a copy of the facilitator's guide in an email and I was able to access it through Gmail. So, we went ahead with the workshop. Later. I was able to talk to someone in the General Services Center of the church, along with one of the coordinators in the Missionary Department and they said that the reason I lost access to my church account is that a bug in the program removed callings from a few random people in the database and I was one of them. But I got my access back in a day or so.

Next challenge - water came pouring down from the ceiling in the bathroom. The pipes from the air conditioner in the bedroom to the window vent in the back room were condensing and the pipes had come unhooked from each other. Water was pouring onto the bathroom ceiling. So, for a week, I had a pipe into a bucket that I had to empty a few times a day. It took me a week to get someone to come to fix it. It was crazy!

Well, things are better now- but first they got worse. My water heater, which was only giving me two minutes of hot water before turning off, finally gave out a week ago. I had no hot water at all. I first asked for it to be fixed on October 26 and our maintenance man came by and looked at it. He told me I needed a new water heater and he would get one. Three weeks went by and he never came back. When it died, I sent more emails, WhatsApp messages, and I even went by the maintenance office. He said he would come Wednesday, then Thursday, then Friday, then Monday. I was pretty mad, but I tried really hard to control it. Finally, he came and put in a new water heater. He also partially fixed the leak- He cut three holes in my ceiling (I now have four). The drip is fixed completely now, and the holes in my ceiling are mostly fixed. So, it was a perfect storm!

Now, the wonderful things!

The Adjusting to Missionary Life Workshop went great! The missionaries seemed so happy to be able to talk about their stressors with the Sister President there, listening, understanding, and just loving them. I could tell that having her there meant so much to them!

Thanksgiving is a regular day here, so we had our Thanksgiving dinner for Family Home Evening on Monday. But on Thursday, I made a pumpkin pie and a pecan pie and brought them to the office, where we could enjoy them. I was blessed because one of our missionary couples had brought some ingredients from the states that could not be bought here, so I could make the pies. 

But even though Thursday wasn't Thanksgiving here, it was "Brasil Ganha!" Day (Brazil wins!) It was the first game of the World Cup - and EVERYTHING stops here when the game is on. The stores close, there is no traffic on the streets, there are almost no busses running, and the few that are are nearly empty. A city of 12 million people becomes a ghost town for two hours. And, of course, Brazil won!

The second game was yesterday (November 28) and the same thing happened again. Even at the office, everyone was gathered around computer screens to watch the game. Here is one gathering of people (complete with airhorn!). And Brazil won again! The next game is Friday at 4 our time. 

I love seeing the holiday season in Brazil! First, the season starts right after November 2 (All Souls Day here). Trees go up everywhere and I have even been wished Merry Christmas early in November. And even though they don't have Thanksgiving, they certainly have Black Friday - and it lasts the entire month of November!

We went to two different churrascos (Brazilian Barbecues) this past week. One was more formal and the other a more casual one. The food is amazing and not expensive at all. The meat is very tender and nice and there are lots of vegetable dishes (those are always my favorite part).

The work is starting to ramp up here - nearly every hour of my week (9:30 to 5) is booked. But thankfully, most missionaries just need someone to listen to them while they talk about how homesick they are, how hot it is, and how hard it is to learn Portuguese! I love helping them to adjust and it really means a lot to me when I see one who is struggling for a couple weeks and then they are smiling and telling me that their Portuguese finally all came together and they don't need me anymore!

Have a good holiday season everyone!