Festa Junina

Elder Merrell at the Festa, in the middle is the Jose who is his ministering companion

In front of our apartment building, you can see the sidewalk disappearing on the right.

Some of you know I had wanted to be here two winters and one summer to avoid the hottest weather, but I believe I have changed my mind, this is "winter" which is a bit cooler but more than a bit wetter! (If we didn't have AC my attitude might be otherwise.) More on that later...

Heading home

We had another transfer week and got in the smallest group yet, only eight new missionaries which seemed pretty easy. It was the first group to have no English speakers and the departing group was the first to include no sisters. The next couple of groups will be very heavy on the English speakers as late summer/early fall are times the school year works out for many to come from the states. Durk helped a bit with Spanish for the Spanish speakers but they didn't need it much. Portuguese is pretty close and they pick it up fast.
The other "regular" occurrence in our six-week cycle is zone conference but in July we have temple trips instead. So instead of three days back-to-back 2-zone conferences we have six rather random days where one zone at a time comes in and has a meeting, lunch, and a temple session. It has worked out nicely to sort of even out their opportunities to go to the temple so they all go around Christmas and in the summer.

 Durk did more apartment inspections while I prepped food and spent an evening making cookies for English class (includes checking the oven thermometer I brought about every five minutes). We thought maybe a day of review games and cookies would help get things going a littler better. The cookies are always an experiment, nothing comes out the same twice, but they were pretty good. We decided what you buy here are "somewhat chocolate flavored chips".

But then came the Noah day and class eventually had to be canceled. Last Thursday it rained and rained. We finally planned to call an Uber to get us through to the office, but the water level was going down for a while and we walked to the office just fine during a break (light drizzle). Then it poured more until things were flooding all over. Many schools canceled, people were walking through the lakes with rolled-up pantlegs, the plastic chinelos (flip-flops) were practical.

This wasn't even taken on that Thursday, but a few days later when it came again. This is the street we walk to the office. Usually we walk on the side you are looking towards, occasionally we have had to walk in the parking places a little when water was over the walkway but you can see it is clear up covering the diagonal parking spots as well. And still raining. I wore sandals and carried dry shoes. 

The office elders had to go to the airport and couldn't Uber because the demand was so high the usual R$16 was up to R$90 and by the time they were returning it was R$134! I wish I could link the video that came through on whatsapp of the entryway to the bishops house, not sure how deeply it was underwater. We had some leak into the house and finally tracked it to the airconditioner in the spare room, which wasn't on but was sitting crooked and now has an old t-shirt shim under one corner. At least two reports said over 120 centimeters of rainfall.

Saturday was the stake Festa Junina,

The line for hotdogs never got shorter, there was another table without a line that everyone insisted had the same food but they had the "chili" without the "dog" Forgive poor photography, I hate to be obvious about taking photos!

held in the parking area on the ground floor under the chapel. You might be able to make out a black door in the background, that would lead to the stairs to the mission office. On the right out of the picture is the entrance to the stairs and elevator for the chapel and institute. They all join on the upper floors. In the far corner was the live music, plenty loud. Its hard enough to understand the language when you aren't all yelling over the music.

This table started with a pile of hot dogs as high as the pot and the length of the table. There was another table filled with cakes, one for the guarana (later some juice showed up too) and one for the corn. It is not sweet corn so we didn't bother, but it was handy to serve it up in pieces of cornhusk. The sister in the red and black plaid at the end is the RS president.

We tried dancing a bit, the songs went on and on and on, and they don't cha-cha here, so eventually we retreated from the noise and went home.

I'm not sure who that haggard old lady is in the photo.... This one looks better:

Then the big social event of the following day, which we had expected to be a simple dinner with another couple or two that turned out to be a very Latin American social event with half the ward.

A quick sneak peak. The shutters have old wavy glass in them, there is another set behind that can close more thoroughly. Everything was open though it was raining, it was pleasant inside.

Well over twenty people in the apartment spilling out into the entryway and on the veranda with the drying clothes. We had two kind of fejoiada, black bean and white bean. We were told several times that it was "Incomplete" because they didn't use the pig's ears and tail and feet and such. Its customary to put the juicy stuff on the plate first with the rice and dry semolina on top, and they had some lettuce you could throw on there. One of the juice offerings was "clorofila" which  apparently uses leaves from cauliflower (and sugar!). The Relief Society president hauled me through the kitchen and back part of the place and told me that here we all help. I was certainly willing but I couldn't figure out just how in the crush. I knew I could help clean up though, so after eating I took dishes back and then was told very strongly by three people that the first time you come to a house, you visit and after that you can help. It was a an enjoyable afternoon and we were very grateful that a member with a car drove us home through the rain.
I did a very rough job of leading music in Primary, will definitely have to work harder on some useful phrases (sem gritar, sem pular - no screaming or jumping) and learning the songs in Portuguese. I figured out how to make a playlist on my phone and maybe if I listen enough they won't just sound like gibberish. After three weeks I still haven't gotten one little four-line song down.