Festa Junina is Big in Boston

 

Karol and Danilo with daughters Jasmin and Iane, with Soraia in back

The best part was that Nildo and Amarildo both came, after not seeing them for several weeks. There were many visitors that even Mary didn't know and I think they all enjoyed it and definitely everyone got plenty to eat. The Spanish missionaries came in and ate too.
 

Early in the day posts about prep starting showing  up - arroz doce here (one batch used 3-4 cans of condensed milk, we heard) and one showed a huge pile of several meats but i'm not sure I saw the finished product unless it all melded into the giant soup kettle. That's when I began to realize what a big deal this was. I knew a festa was coming and we'd need to bring food so silly me had collected everything to make a giant pasta salad with lots of veg. When they said "if you weren't on the sign-up, bring whatever you like" I sent back and asked about pasta salad, Got a "yes, sure" but wondered if they were just being polite. Then the gal asked another (braver or closer friends to us?) to please let me know that wasn't at all traditional and she sent two links to proper Brazilian bakeries where I could get a traditional cake and a photo of Paçoquinha (peanut candy), her other suggestion. (Brazilians don't really eat green, although a caesar salad did manage to slip in, we noticed) 

So I knew the pasta wasn't going to go over but it was half made, so of course we gave it to the missionaries - lots of them come to the church building on Saturday evenings to make calls (to remind people who made a commitment to come to church and suggest they could set alarms, plan how to get there, etc.) And we went to the bakery and got a cake made with corn flour because corn and peanuts are especially traditional for Festa Junina. And just happened to buy ourselves a pudim while there - yummy but not as good as Cicera's!

Jerusa and Marcella and youngling with big plaid patch on his rear :)

I had forgotten about the freckles and pigtails - and plaid shirts, rolled-up jeans, and straw hats. We saw this in Brazil at our stake Festa but that one was so loud it actually hurt and we didn't stay long. This one, thanks to Ailton, had music you could talk over. (If you talked loudly of course) He asked me in the morning if we had survived and when I told him we enjoyed it he seemed surprised but pleased.

Crislaine and Renata

Jerusa was asked last-minute to be Caller for the dance and she did great, they were having a ball but we couldn't understand enough to ever have done it!

Denubia, in red, had apparently gifted the yellow dress to her friend who was thrilled to pieces

Hot dogs are required, most preferred the pieces in broth with corn (and I like New England style hotdog buns, by the way) - leftovers the next day at Mary and Tales' found some complaining about wanting more corn on theirs. And of course you add potato sticks on top.

Giant kettle was scraped clean and people kept coming back hoping for more.

As expected, it didn't really get hopping until an hour beyond official start time but end time included cleaning up - everyone pitched in and even disassembled the booths and all done before 9 - I think it helped that there were lots of little kids who were worn out. And loads of food left.

The next day we finally had our first autosuficiencia class with total of 7 people. Didn't go too badly - we'll see who keeps coming.  Drove Cris home and we introduced Otacilia to the Covenant Path app later that day.

Peaceful Pday and the end of June! getting some hot humid days here though not super humid yet, not like Missouri so far. The apt complex pool is seeing a fair bit of use these days. Going to see if I can track down a photo of the elders after they drew on beards and moustaches for the Festa, it was a big hit, everyone thought it hilarious and I hope they didn't have too much trouble washing them off because some of the Primary kids had definite shadows of theirs on Sunday.