Among the Gaúchos: A Stormy Vacation

On my way to Santa Maria 10/26/2015

The time always flies by when there are exchanges and during this past week there were two! After district meeting on Tuesday I went with Elder Campos in my area so that Elder Longo could go with Elder Araújo (our District Leader) which was all good seeing as we live in the same house, no traveling involved.

our district meeting

I don't know why we did the YMCA pose...
(and neither does Sister C there in the front, haha)
But on Wednesday I we had the exchange with the assistants of the transfer so that means a lot of bus time... ughh, so I headed out 11:20 and arrived in the city around 3:20. A good old friend Elder Rocha

Exchange with Elder Rocha Martins
(we lived in the same house back in Cruz Alta a year ago)

Martins was waiting for me there and we went straight to work, but the day turned out to be more of a stormy vacation than an exchange, haha. There have been a lot of crazy storms passing through the area of southern Brasil that have caused a lot of damage to many houses. We had a service project planned to help an investigator of theirs move out of their house which was literally falling over. So we switched clothes back at their house and headed out but just when we got there the rain started to fall. Before we were even able to fill one truck load the crazy thunder and wind came rolling. Because of all these crazy storms with hail and lightning etc. Pres. Parrela has made it very clear that our safety is in first place so... we were stuck there in the falling down house with the family haha.

After a good time waiting to see if the rain would die down we decided to sprint in the rain to a near by members house, the rain was so hard running down my face I thought my contacts would fall out. Thankfully we were awaited there by towels and something similar to a "pig-in-a-blanket" that the irmã was baking, yumm. But alas the storm wouldn't calm down so after another wait we had to go walking home in the calmer-ish rain, all in our service project clothes haha. By the time we got back to the mission house and changed clothes it was 8:00 and we only had time to go to an appointment they had marked with a family of recent converts for dinner! (which was very welcome seeing that I didn't have time to eat anything for lunch haha)

But yeah, that was our little vacation and Thursday I was back on a bus 12:10 to Santo Ângelo where I arrived very tired of bus rides at 4:00. Also this week I completed 1 year and 9 months on the mission! pretty crazy especially because that means I have less than 2 months down to go... wow