I´ve officially returned to Brasil. Yep, it´s real. I didn´t realize how much I was being spoiled in Vila Mariana until I went back to the real world! Dirt roads exist again. As do trees and grass and horses and all of the lovely smells that come with them. When I got off the bus Tuesday night, I took a deep breath of fresh, clean air for the first time in a long, long time. It was good.
However, the lovely nature has a price to pay. Suzano is a very big ward in terms of area. We share the ward with the elders, which is fun at times. Although they got to stay in the city and work close to the church while we´re way, way, way out in the country. It takes about half an hour to get to the city from our house. It´s kind of crazy. There ups and downs to being in the country. The great thing is that everyone actually lives there, and there are families! However, lots of these families can be very poor, and aren´t married. And because of the money factor, it´s really, really hard for them to go to church because it´s kind of expensive for them (it´s 6 reais round trip per person) However, we´re going to work our hardest here and we have tons of goals in place to help this ward grow.
And boy does it need it! There were only about 40 people in the sacrament meeting yesterday, which was very, very sad. We´re going to have to work from the ground up to get this ward going.
My new companion is Sister T. Silva, and Sister Godoy already knew her and said that she´s awesome, but that she´s anti-American. Luckily, I discovered that she was only anti american because her last american companion only wanted to talk in English all the time and didn´t include her in her conversations. Luckily, I only remember English on P-days when I have to write to you guys, so we haven´t had any problems :) But she´s really great and a hard worker. She´s from Rio Grande do Sul, which is waaaay in the south of Brasil, so her accent is different, but not as strong as the people from the the north.
My zone is pretty great as well, with half of the elders there being my friends already, which is fun. It´s crazy to see missionaries that I watched enter the mission train other new missionaries. It makes me feel very old, that´s for sure.
Let´s see, what else... Oh, we live in the back of a member´s house, which is pretty fun. Sometimes we get to eat dinner and get rides home, which is good. I like rides home.
Not going to lie, I miss Vila Mariana a TON. It´s hard to get used to a new area, but I´m also liking Suzano so far, which is good. And I get to talk to Sister Godoy every once in awhile when our cellphone gets signal, which is good.
I think that´s pretty much it in terms of new things that have happened. Oh, getting here from the office was BRUTAL. We had to take the metro and then switched to the train, and then we had to take a bus. It took us around three hours to get home. Luckily, some of the Elders helped out with my suitcases, even though they didn´t need to, which was nice of them.
I was going to send a picture of me with my new companion, but we forgot to bring the cable thing. Bummer. Next week should be better and I should have more time as well.
I love you all! Have a great week!
Sister Tillman
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