First Week in Cruz Alta!

8/18/2014 

Well I’m here in my new area Cruz Alta 1 B!! And today's been a little crazy because it’s a holiday here for the city's birthday, anyway get to that later. After packing and saying good bye to lots of awesome people in Ala (ward) Urlândia in Santa Maria and cramming stuff into my suit cases I had a 2 hour bus ride to my new area Tuesday morning.                                                                                                                                                         
                                                     Saying goodbye to Santa Maria!

The joys of packing. 

Last Santa Maria Selfie

Farewell for now, my friends.

                                          
First off my new companion Elder Gois, from Parana Brasil. He is a great guy and we get along really well. He actually only has 2 more weeks than I do in the mission and the day I entered the CTM he left for the field kind of cool. Also his 19th birthday is coming up this next month. And our apartment is on the second floor in a good building except for my semi-ghetto window and the walls in the shower give a slight shock if you touch them while wet haha taking a shower is like playing that game operation, but it’s safe for now, we think...

New Companion Elder Gois

 Our ward here is awesome and the lunches here are great, I spent a lot of the week walking around the area and getting to know the members here. Everyone is impressed with my Portuguese which means that I’ve really progressed a lot or that they’ve had some Americans serve here who really were awful at the language (a bit of both I think haha). Our chapel here is really nice and pretty new, we had a ward activity for the cities birthday and a late father’s day here in Brasil, which was super fun and had good churrasco.

Churrasco at our ward activity.

We had a great turn out to our activity to celebrate the birthday of Cruz Alta and a late Father's Day in Brasil!

Also I was a bit out of the habit of singing a lot back in Santa Maria which I changed the day I arrived there in Cruz Alta. And this Sunday I got to sing a special hymn "O Meu Pai" (Oh My Father) as a special musical number for sacrament meeting and the Stake President who was there said that he wanted to see a ward choir here when he next visited so we will see if he was joking haha. 

I am super excited to be serving here with Elder Gois and I know that we will see miracles happen here in the obra missionaria (missionary work)! I love you all back home and good luck getting ready for school!

Elder Pierce

Beautiful new chapel

The Elders in Cruz Alta

Our ward boundaries and my area is marked to the south (if you can see it).

New room- its a bit drafty with the window right there.

The view out of our window the first morning in Cruz Alta

Our apartment is on the second floor.