May! in New England

 Interesting as it sounds, we declined making a five-hour roundtrip to see the Yale library special collections. Apparently they have one of the largest collections of historical church publications. I would have asked whether there was a chance of seeing anything they might have in the way of older (think medieval) manuscripts. We will see if we can start on visiting the Freedom Trail instead when we get the chance.

Left out of the MTC post; we didn't do the MTC before our SLC HEadquarters mission, so this photo shows Durk pointing to Mission #2 and me pointing to #3, Boston MA. (Recife is hidden under my arm)

I forgot to mention we learned about the Boston Left - we had noticed several times how cars would zip out and left turn in front of oncoming traffic as soon as the light turned green, Pres. and Sis. R told us this is the Boston Left. Fortunately drivers are usually pretty accommodating, letting others into the backed-up traffic, etc. Occasionally it is confusing because they have the right-of-way, but often it is quite helpful and keeps things moving from all directions. We do have a couple of places we drive a lot that are pretty dangerous though - we really hope for the green arrow (left) onto Revere Beach Parkway because otherwise most of the cars on the opposite side are turning and suddenly one comes straight across at you. The same intersection has long lines of cars from the cross-street making u-turns, it must be the most efficient way to get someplace but makes right turns tricky too.

Zone conference April 2025 (double group due to mission leaders seminar coming up) They are broken up into a lot more zones than we had in Brasil, this is half a dozen!

With a member list, we are able to go through and match up people the Thorpes were working with, the new member list, and the ward list that has contact information. Unfortunately it is like Brasil in that you never know what names to look under or what they go by, still takes detective work. It looks like we have several people getting close to being able to go to the temple for endowments and sealings so we're looking to find out if the temple prep teacher is doing a class.

We had to turn on the AC and its it's so nice when it switches off, it is very loud and runs a lot even though the temperature difference isn't much yet. Durk uses the dishwasher as a dish drain, works pretty well. 

Its not uncommon for people to rent out a room of their little apartment to someone else or be renting just a room. Most of the houses here have been turned into apartments though its hard to tell whether they might have always been that way - 

Tracked down the photo from District Training last Tuesday. One thing NOT like Brasil is there isn't the constant need to take lots of selfies and photos of every single thing that happens! Front row from left Eders Esplin, Gomez, Ballard, and Elder Merrill is taking the photo. Center back is President Risenmay with his wife behind him.

Every Friday morning is a mission zoom, though it was on Thursday this week (every regular mtg we get told about comes with an 'except for...."). The missionaries were asked to tell about miracles that happened recently and there are many! For instance one companionship felt they hadn't spent any time lately just talking to people on the street so they went out but found themselves thinking they should go into this one store (hair salon actually) and talk to the owner. Turned out she joined the church 20 years ago in Brasil and didn't know the church was here and was excited to find it and come back. We heard probably about 20 stories like that, awesome.

We were asked to look at D&C 128:19 and think about as we fast this weekend - "glad tidings of great joy" 19 Now, what do we hear in the gospel which we have received? A voice of gladness! A voice of mercy from heaven; and a voice of truth out of the earth; glad tidings for the dead; a voice of gladness for the living and the dead; glad tidings of great joy. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those that bring glad tidings of good things, and that say unto Zion: Behold, thy God reigneth! As the dews of Carmel, so shall the knowledge of God descend upon them!

Pres. R gave a few more bits from their training about how "Gen Z" especially are coming to religion in large numbers, looking for Jesus Christ. He showed how baptisms in this missin have increased greatly. Acts 2:16-18 (repeatedly quoted to Joseph Smith in vision and again on the day of Pentecost) Also Alma 16:16-17 

16 But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel;

17 And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:

18 And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy:

Alma 16:16 And there was no inequality among them; the Lord did pour out his Spirit on all the face of the land to prepare the minds of the children of men, or to prepare their hearts to receive the word which should be taught among them at the time of his coming—

17 That they might not be hardened against the word, that they might not be unbelieving, and go on to destruction, but that they might receive the word with joy, and as a branch be grafted into the true vine, that they might enter into the rest of the Lord their God.

God Is pouring out His Spirit upon our nation, Sis. R again quoted "your old men shall dream dreams and young men shall prophecy" and said we are seeing this today-

We were asked to fast in gratitude, gratitude to be here, for God pouring out His spirit to prepare people, gratitude for growth, for our weaknesses that we can turn to Him and be made stronger, that we get to participate in the miraculous power of God unto conversion, gratitude for the Savior and His Atonement of course-

See, we are in a Latin neighborhood! We got a superb avocado at Merengue Market. (The chicken place also has pizza, it says). I'll have to get a photo next time we get pupusas. 

OK, we really do feel like we're in Brasil quite often. We keep thinking we will need Portuguese when we head to, say, the copy place. Then the copy place has no cardstock. nope, "try the library or CVC pharmacy, they copy things"?? Good thing I started ahead of time since I'm going to have to call around and research where to actually get good copies on nice paper.  - the RS would like my Portuguese "modern lettering" piece of this Pres. Kimball quote for Dia das Mães (it's designed to be colored in as desired.)

You can see the windows of our apartment - the building roof you see up and center, see the four "dormer" windows? The three on the left are our living room and bedroom windows. No dealing with noises from an apartment above us, though I suppose lower ones might hear the airplanes less.

Had our first monthly Sunday evening mission devotional. It was based on President Holland at conference and Roots Tech and a presentation by Elder Danes the mission leaders had. Elder Holland talked some more at Roots Tech with Elder Anderson about his experience almost dying that month in the hospital - how he had it strongly impressed upon him not just for him but for all of us - However much you are praying, pray more, and However much you are testifying of Jesus Christ, testify more.

I thought playing for church wouldn't be stressful but the Portuguese branch changed the songs on me, put up different numbers than I had just practiced, then changed again during the mtg, one back to the original but I had run through the wrong ones anyway because (as I discovered halfway through the first hymn) I was using a Spanish hymnbook, not Portuguese. And the strong singer who leads the Spanish branch had his own unique rhythm for their first hymn that I never did figure out. He can sing louder than the piano though the organ setting can overpower - I suppose that would have been an option, since the poor congregation didn't know who to follow. And I thought the organ setting sounded better than piano but it was harder to follow the singer/leader and to adjust the volume. Whew. But Primary went well!

We stopped by Guloso Burgers, home of Brazilian hamburgers, run by a couple of members we wanted to meet. Here's an example of a typical burger there:

Magic Burger $19.99 6 oz. Tall burger patty, cheese Colby Jack, ham, egg bacon peas corn, crispy onion smoked mayonnaise, pickles on a traditional brioche bun. Yes, peas and corn. Not sure which version is this photo:

Pictured here is the Brie burger, burger patty and cheese with deep-fried Brie, garlic truffle mayo and honey. Ivete told us the Thorpes, our predecessors, were strange and just ordered the small plain burger with nothing but lettuce tomato and ketchup!

The burger place is in a nice area. There is parking! paid at little meter-type things that print you a ticket, a quarter for every fifteen minutes, and there are several nice places like a Brazilian bakery where we got three pão de queijo for a dollar. We plan to return.

We got to visit Danilo and Karol, their oldest daughter I've met in Primary, her English is good as she is in kindergarten all day in English. He is a carpenter and has a nice business van. We actually have an appointment for next week to continue with Gospel Principles. We ended up with a good discussion about Patriarchal Blessings and as Elder Esplin talked about keeping his handy and reading often especially in hard times, I realized that feeling stressed on this mission is a good reason to look at mine more often too.

We drove Teodoro and Soraia to church and learned a bit about them. Later the elders told us she has read the D&C 5 times already! and decided to read the Pearl of Great Price before starting the bible again "for context". Wow. They found out about the church and joined within about three weeks, nine months back. They currently live in a room rented from another (inactive) member and we will work out how to find a place to teach them, also Nildo is just in a room so the Elders have been doing zoom but we'd like to get him know him a bit in person - I found a pastry shop a couple of blocks from him so we hope inviting him to meet there and buying him a cream puff or something will give us a chance to visit a little.

P-day has been cleaning the apartment and a bit more shopping, this time at a fairly nearby real supermarket that has (gasp!) a real parking lot with plenty of spaces. I got brave enough to chance the simpler route that google maps had replaced with three complicated-looking options when I re-opened the app,  apparently faster choices. Halfway there Google gave in and went to that route, which worked just fine. It was super crowded, maybe first of month checks or maybe Cinco de Mayo party prep? The cashier said its a lot busier than this on weekends.  There is a sign for the section of Bosnian food. We met a lady from Hungary. The Latin Americans seem to find it extremely difficult to learn English but europeans don't, maybe they are just used to learning languages-

Gray and rainy with more rain to come all week. We were at almost 80 one day but not above 50 today or tomorrow. We should be used to that though, Missouri's not exactly consistent weather. Now I'm rambling so I'll call it quits.