Relaxing P-Day in Maringá; Stomach flu; Comfortable speaking Portuguese

Hey everyone!  I'm writing a little bit later today because the four of us sisters spent the afternoon in the city - looking at shops, visiting the cathedral, taking pictures...awesome, and so good to finally have a semi-relaxing P-Day, especially since next week is transfers and I might not get another chance to enjoy Maringá!

So.  This week has been....interesting.... haha.  I don't know what happened exactly, but it seems like almost everything has been going wrong, and we've been struggling to work through it all.  Sister Lopez said that our numbers this week were the worst of her mission so far.  :P  I think we're both a little bit tired...ready for a change.  It's a good thing that transfers are coming up, I think we need it.  But we talked a lot about the difficulties we've been having, and made some decisions to help us do better.  

It all started at lunch last P-Day.  A lady in our ward had called to invite us to eat at her house - for some reason she had a ton of food and wanted to share it with us.  We were pretty excited - free food, right? - and agreed to go there for lunch.

Cut to later that day, appr. 12 am. .... four sister missionaries all racing for the bathroom.  Haha, yep, SOMEthing we ate did not react well with our stomachs, and every one of us was SICK as a dog the next day.  We missed District Meeting on Tuesday and spent most of the day at home, miserable.  Not fun.

The next day it RAINED like crazy.  Rained and rained and rained, and we arrived at our lunch appointment COMPLETELY soaked.  I didn't mind too much, because it had been SO hot that the cool rain was a blessing.  :)  

Sister Lopez and I tried our best to celebrate Halloween, but it didn't end up being too great... haha.  We had plans to have a real party - "costumes" (aka those mustaches you sent me), candy, apple cider....the whole shebang.  The day turned out to be super busy, running around trying to visit all of our investigators ... and we didn't get home until it was too late to do much.  We each bought a sucker to eat on our way home and tried to remember the little we knew of the Thriller dance, and THAT was pretty much the extent of the festivities.  :)  Sister Lopez is determined to do better for Thanksgiving, but we'll see what happens.... How was Halloween for you guys?  Got pictures?  

The good news is that I'm definitely getting used to speaking Portuguese - there were a few times this week where people asked me to speak for them in English, and it was HARD!  It felt really, really weird to be speaking in English again, and took me a few seconds to flip the English switch in my brain.  :)  That's a good sign, right?  I'm learning this language!!!  Woohoo!  :)

Well, that's about it for this week.  I hope everything's going well there.  I love you all sooooo much, and it's always so good to hear about what you all are up to.  :)  

Love,

Sister Melissa Gee