Hey Mom,

How are things there? Sounds like it was a good/crazy week. Thanks for the pictures. Give the family my love. Thanks for everything.

Well, this week was rough. Really rough. We spent almost all of it in Lisboa, from Monday to the end of the day one Wednesday, which means we did hardly (numbers wise) anything because Tuesday and Wednesday were our days with lots of appointments with lots of good people. Lisboa was cool. I hope I get to serve there. We stayed in Lapa with the sisters there. One of the sisters was Sister Hayes, my MTC companion, so that was really cool to see her.  But, back to Lisboa. We got in late Monday night and no one was there to pick us up, so we called and woke them up to come and get us, then they dropped us off in Lapa where we spent the night. Then in the morning we went with some other girls so that they could get their residence cards and Sister Sandholtz also. Then we spent the rest of the day working in the office because there was a leadership conference going on and so they needed help. Afterwards I opened my suitcase, which was perfectly fine and everything was there. Most of the suitcases looked untouched. The mission sure spins big rumors when the president doesn't say it right out. Sister Fluckiger said that what had mostly been stolen was an ipad (someone had bought it here cheap to take home), electric razors, cameras and a few other electronics. Nothing was stolen from mine though, so that was good. One of the elders in our district though, his razor was stolen, and the poor guy, he really needs it because he got a haircut but it wasn't mission worthy and so another elder cut it, and it looks AWFUL:).Then we went back and spent the next night in Lapa again. Though we ended up having dinner with some members there, which was really awkward because we weren't invited but we had to go with the sisters anyway. They were really nice though and we had atum with natas, which was delicious. Fish is really starting to grow on me. Then the next morning we went and got my card with Sister Dudley, Sister Radvansky, and Sister Caldwell (Sisters Rad and Dudley were in my district and I knew Sister Caldwell before the MTC) and so that was really fun to get to hang out with them all day, even if it was just like 4 hours at the card place:). Then we hung out in the office for a while again and then we went to the airport. Irmão João was nice enough to pick us up from there:). 

Thursday was okay, we marked one our investigators for baptism for this coming Sunday which we're excited about. Considering we've only taught the first lesson, this is going to be a really busy week:). His name is André and he's 18. He is a great kid and we've been talking about him going on a mission also. We need more boys in our ramo because we  have a bunch of unmarried women and moças, so it's a good thing that Sister Sandholtz and I are pretty much only teaching young men between 18-24 right now haha. Then in the evening we had to do a second de licing treatment, not because she still had lice, but because those were the instructions on the package. Thankfully we are lice free! We watched a movie and ate lots of popcorn. I'm a popcorn addict.

Friday we did planning and the visita guiada of the capela, it was actually a really good one and we're really excited about the people. There was a man and his son who came who had actually been looking up online information about the church and had found the address of the church and had walked there just hoping to find someone there they could talk to about it! They live in our area, but because they are men, we're gonna let the elders teach them. The elders are very confident that they'll be baptized. We also met André there and another young man named Rodrigo that we're really excited to teach also. Before the visita though, we had an appointment with these two young men with 18 and 19 years and we were supposed to be there at the capela at 3 and we were running behind and then this random man in the road wanted to talk to us and so we were even later and by the time we got there, it was 3:15 and no one was there so we waited a little longer and no one showed up, so we decided to leave and we started walking and this lady stopped us. Turned out she was a member from Ribeira Grande and we talked with her and her son for a few minutes, and right as they were saying good bye, our appointment showed up! It was awesome. We didn't get to teach though because they had an emergency and they'd just come to reschedule (!!!) and so we're meeting with them this week, but it sure was awesome to have all those people put in our path so that we could get into contact with these two boys. Imagine if we'd been there on time.

Saturday, all of our appointments fell through except one with a man named Francisco who we were gonna mark but we ended up not doing so and will do later this week. Then we had ward counsel. Sunday was good. We didn't have any marked appointments so we went and tried to invite less actives to the movie night. None of them came, but an Italian guy that I had met two transfers ago came, and agreed to let us teach him. It was kind of a hard day to work though because there was this big procession going on in the city for the saint Sta. Clara and the streets were just filled with flowers and people. It's a little hard to talk to people when they're at the time, professing their love for some saint, plus we're not supposed to teach in front of religious processions or other churchs.

Now I'll answer you're questions:) Yes, I exchanged the stuff from my suitcase and got my makeup, though I probably won't need what I brought because transfers will be next sunday (not this coming one, but the one that is like the 16th or something like that) and it's likely that I will be transfered, which I can't decide if I'm happy about or not. I need a change, but I'll miss the members here and this area. People are taking bets on where I'm headed, right now it's either Lisboa or Braga (according to the other missionaries). So you'd probably better not send anything next week, and when you send packages they take about 2 weeks (thanks for the snickers by the way:). The senior missionaries are coming this week! They're coming on the 5th or 6th and they're moving into another apartment that we found and we're keeping ours, which is the most expensive in the mission (woot woot;)). We're in charge of preparing things, but I'm not sure what that means because we haven't got the apartment key and we haven't heard from Sis. Fluckiger about it in a while. We're excited though:).

Well,got to go! Love you tons!

Sister Wach