Hey Mom,
Yes, we went to Floripa on Monday.
I found some cool souvenir things to send home. One of the packages
you sent came in; the one with cereal and cookies and stuff. Thanks! :)
I´m going to go to Floripa again this coming Monday to buy more stuff, so maybe
the other packages will have arrived by then.I´ll be interested to read my mission blog once I´m home. I´ve written journal entries for almost every single day during my mission. I´m almost on to my 4th journal now.
On my mission I´ve come to learn that when one is disposed to do good, the Spirit will guide them to do and say things without them even realizing that the Spirit is guiding them. I´ve had a lot of experiences where I just decided to do something and afterwards it turned out to have been something the Spirit was prompting me to do, without me even noticing it.
The second year of the mission has gone by pretty fast. If the extension wasn´t happening, next week would be my last full week on the mission. Can´t believe I´m already at that point now.
I´m really glad I´m not in
Houston right now; I´ve been looking at photos of Elder Carter and me
from one year ago and remembering just how awful the summer weather was there. 
Everyone down here is very surprised when I tell them that I grew up next to a volcano, ha ha!
I usually show people pictures of Mt Ranier and you guys. One church member lady did not believe that I was related to Catriel because she
has blue eyes and mine are brownish. It was very funny; she didn´t
believe me at all. |
| Ben-Daniel with his blue-eyed siblings |
I'm looking forward to sharing stories from the mission when I get home; I´ve got a lot of them now.
Shakespaere and I are doing great. Our teaching pool is increasing, which is good.
Oh yeah, on Saturday we had Festa Junina, the weird holiday. It was even weirder once I experienced it, ha ha. I took lots of pictures, so I´ll send you those now.
The stuff in the pot is a
traditional drink for this holiday, called Quentão (translation: really
hot). It´s hot grape juice with ginger and cinnamon in it. It´s pretty
good.
 |
| It looks like I´m holding a cork in my hand, but it is a piece of peanut candy. They eat peanuts at this holiday. |
 |
| Me eating pine seeds |
I
learned that moths apparently do not eat the same things as butterflies;
the moth we rescued died. :( so we gave him a Viking funeral in our
sink.
This is a picture of our apartment complex.
Elder Duffin
