Leonara takes piano
lessons from me at our apartment. She was baptized last weekend. The girl next to her is a non-member friend
that she brings to church with her. Maria
Eduarda is the tall young woman on the left of the picture. She is a cousin and
an investigator. They both come each week to church. This is very important because many parents
here are not married so these young people are learning about a lifestyle that
is quite foreign to their culture when we talk about eternal marriage. 
This picture is of Juliana and her father. She just turned
8. Their family has been sealed in the
temple and they all come to church. Her
father works out of town on a farm to support his family. He is a builder but cannot find enough work
here so he is not home every night – he comes home on the bus on weekends to
see his family and to come to church. 
We
see a wide variety of clothing at church. Many girls and women wear pants –
some don’t have a dress. Even members
don’t always have special Sunday clothes. It is very cool when the young men
can come in a white shirt and quite rare to see suits or dress slacks instead
of everyday pants.
There
is one family who lives so far away (in the “interior”) from the church that
they have to ride a horse for a ways, then take a bus ride, then walk to get to
church. They want to come so bad that
they do this but only once a month because it costs them so much money and that
is all they can afford.
 |
| 3 way adapter - top, bottom, middle |
 |
| Brazilian plug & outlet, round prongs |
 |
| Standard 3-prong adapter |
Other types of conversion occur when we read the Conversion of
Temperature - Celsius to Farenheit -- as well as the temperature on the
oven when I cook and the liquid measures in liters instead of quarts and
gallons. I buy food by the kilo, gram, or mil. We convert electricity using our
American plugs with adapters.
My cookies are somewhat of a hit with the sisters and youth. It
becomes interesting when we try to share recipes. At one home we had
“Bolo de chocolate” and when I got the recipe it involved copo de oleo, xicara
de trigo ou mais, colhor de ferment royial. So not only was there a
conversion of language but of measurement. I had the same problem when
Alana, the 24 year old Young Women’s president, asked for a cookie
recipe. We are teaching her the temple prep lessons at our home on
Saturdays, when she is home from college.
 |
| Foods we purchase regularly at the store. There are no zip lock bags only the rolls seen at the left side of the photo. They are much like produce bags in the US. |
I handed her the recipe where I had converted the ingredients.
Shortening=Gordura
Vegetal.
Brown
sugar=Açucar Muscavo.
Vanilla=Baunilla.
Eggs=Ovos.
Flour=Farinha
de trigo
Soda=Bicarbonato
de sodio
Salt=Sal
Cinnamon=Canela em Po
Etc. For other spices
I thought I was thinking great – I had even converted the
temperature to Centigrade -- until she wanted to know what teaspoons and
Tablespoons were. Then I learned about colher de chá and colher de
soupa being their teaspoon and soup spoon. The copo and xicara are
different size cup measurements.
One of our most interesting searches has been to find whole
wheat flour. Whole anything usually has “Integral”, meaning whole or complete, on
the package but people did not understand me or maybe why I wanted “farinha de
trigo integral”. Finally as we visited with Sonia Mello at her home this
week the question was answered. When we arrived for our visit she had two
sisters visiting her, one from out of town. We were going to make our
visit short so we were not intruding on their visit but they had prepared a
“lite” supper for us. The daughter –in-law from next door came over with
croissants – some filled with jam – others with meat and cheese. Then there was
cheese and meat and regular rolls along with punch.
Since Sonia is the only member among her living siblings, the
two sisters seemed a bit uncomfortable with the missionaries at first. We
talked about their family history. Their father had 15 children by two
wives. The father had 23 children in his extended family. Needless
to say there are a lot of people involved in the family. She brought out
a book published in 1988 about the ancestors on her father’s side. We
were able to take the book home and I scanned all 244 pages and will make discs
for her to give people since the book seems to be unavailable anymore. Of
course, I had to go on familysearch.org and see about the
connections there. Much of the family appears there but there are gaps
that could make for some good research for her family. By time we left
her house that day her sisters were smiling and talking with us quite freely
about children. There are families in the US working in the Boston area
and some of the “netos” (grandchildren) are looking pretty American to them. We
hope to have more contact with the whole family and get to know them better.
Back to my whole wheat problem—the daughter-in-law makes all
kinds of bread. When John told her I made banana and “abobrinha”
(zuccinhi) bread last week and was looking for whole wheat she gave us
directions to a specialty store. We finally found it on one of our longer
walks. The owner, Cynthia, is of Ukrainian descent, and was very
helpful. We found lots of herbs in her store. She spoke at length
about the importance of learning English. Her daughter speaks Ukrainian
at home, Portuguese in school, and is learning English from a teacher.
She also said she had taught piano for over 15 years and that Elder Carter had
invited her to the branch to play for them. It didn’t happen. We
will try to visit her again. She is golden.
We also met the
barber…… story next week!
No comments:
Post a Comment