Wow! Hard to believe
someone hasn’t updated this blog since December of last year! ;-) We did make it through another Carnival
season without incident! Below are the
precautions taken by our apartment security just in case anyone decides to
throw rocks etc.—all boarded up!
x
A few weeks ago we got a surprise transfer to a smaller town
in the middle of Bahia—about an 8—9 hour drive south of Salvador called
Itapetinga! It is a lot more hot and
humid here—last week in the 90’s with 90% humidity but I think we will start
cooling down here in a couple of weeks.
I am lucky in that whatever keeps biting Elder Briggs at night doesn’t
seem to bother with me! One of our sons
came up with this brilliant idea shown below (frozen water bottles tied to fan)
and his father actually tried it! BIG
eye roll!!
We live in a basement apartment, which is a lot bigger than
our Salvador apartment. They told us
that we had air conditioning but when we got here and asked the other
missionaries, they said, “Oh yes! We have
two! We call them fans!” One night we heard all this meowing and it
sounded like it was coming from inside our apartment—we found this poor little
scared kitty hiding under our bed!
Our Apartment owners had us over to dinner one of first
Sundays in Itapetinga. They are very
nice people and we enjoyed getting to know them a little better.
Below is a picture of what our apartment looks like from
about 6 in the evening until 6 in the morning (the door to our apartment is the
second on the left:
Now this is what it is transformed into from 6 am to 6 pm,
by our apartment owner who lives up above:
I think he carries everything anyone would want in
Itapetinga and he seems to know everyone that comes walking by.
We have found a little restaurant for lunch here called NoNôs. Sorry these things are important to me! Too hot to use a stove here. See picture below.
Everyday there is this guy out waiting as we park our car
who is very friendly and Elder Briggs always gives him some money—and he makes
this grasshoppers for him. He has
received two so far.
We have been getting up early and going on a walk around
this lake and park they have here in town.
Our sweat glands are working overtime during that hour or so but it is
good exercise for us.
The next picture is one of Elder
Briggs getting one of his many breathalyzer tests out on the road here in
Brazil! (Third time is a charm!) He passes every time!
This is a picture of a “Thinker”
statue on the outskirts of our little town—didn’t want to be in this
picture—don’t like this picture and don’t think much of the statue or my skirt
being all askew! That’s all I’m going to
say!!
We did have a wonderful
conference with one of our twelve apostles, Elder Bednar one morning that we
went back to Salvador for and it was really great and inspiring! So glad that some of our sisters and elders
were able to meet an apostle here in Brazil.
They probably won’t have that opportunity too many times in their
lives.
We have been trying to help find
some 190 prospective elders on our church rolls and were assigned to do about
105 of them. We spent several of our
first weeks driving around and looking up—well trying to look up addresses and
were pretty successful! We had a little
social last night at the church to try to get everyone in our ward excited and
geared up to start their family history—which is a lot more difficult to do
here in Brazil than in the United States.
We are getting down to our last
few weeks here in Brazil and are missing family and friends. We love all of these people that we are
meeting here in Brazil—they could not be more helpful and they have a much
harder life here than we do in the United States, but are still happy and doing
the best they can! We are so grateful
for this experience and for all we have learned. We know this church is true and that Jesus
Christ has restored His church in the latter-days and we are so grateful to
know that. See you all soon.
Paul and Kaye Briggs
