Wednesday, 18, 12:27 am

A little giant. That’s what they call him.

Today during the workshop Humberto arrived from his trip to Natal and the northeast of Brazil. Humberto is the director or the Employment Services in the Porto Alegre area – or in other words, our boss. He can’t be more than 5 feet tall, with a healthy gut, but he’s the word is, he’s got power behind his small stature.

Today Dave and I woke up at 7:30 am and quickly got ready for the workshop that would start at 8:30 am. Does this picture look like I've had 4 hours of sleep the past few days or what?

After another cold shower (my choice due to the heat) and getting dressed we ate a breakfast of mango, pineapple, croissants and such at the hotels restaurant that is actually in the mall area that is connected to the hotel. It was good.

We got to the SRE by 8:20 and helped set up for class. Starting a little late is a natural part of life in Brazil and they warned us that would happen often during the workshops. Today actually started reasonably on time.

A volunteer named Alexandre, and Elder Burrup taught the workshop today. After the first hour and a half, while we were on a 10 minute break I asked if David and I could play a ‘get to know ya’ game, just to wake them up a bit and get the juices flowing. They agreed, and so we played the game where everyone puts out 10 fingers and then we went around the room and each person had to say something they had or had never done. And when other people could not agree w/ what was said, they had to lower a finger. When all your fingers are lowered you have to sit down, the last one standing wins. Both Dave and I were the first ones down. Ha. But it was a success, and I think it showed the instructors our ability to communicate w/ the people and Elder soon offered us to teach one of the sections called, “me in 30 seconds”. It went really well. I taught the first part and started the practicing while Dave finished it up.

During class I received a phone call. Crazy, huh? I’m in brazil and I’ve called one person (Jefferson) the night before, and I’m already getting phone calls that the office. It was another mission friend, Marcio Padilha, who also lives in Porto Alegre. So that was fun talking to him. We arranged to meet at the temple tonight for the 7:30 pm session.

After the workshop was over at 12:30 Humberto took us out to a good lunch and then Dave and I bought some groceries and headed back to the hotel. He took a nap while I caught up on some emails.

4:40 pm we headed out in the drizzle to Jefferson’s mother’s jewelry store a few blocks away. From there we all took a bus to his house to meet his mom and little brother and to let him get changed for the temple. His mom is so funny.

Jefferson then drove us to the temple of Porto Alegre where we met up w/ Marcio and there were actually a lot of people there… Marcio’s stake I guess. There they don’t rent out clothes, but did have some to borrow. So that worked out nice.

Jefferson then wanted to show us their stake center. It seriously is the biggest, nicest church building I’ve seen in brazil. They even have an air-conditioned, indoor soccer area. It’s pretty sweet. Wood floors, netting… sweet.

Since it was already 10 pm, and our free dinner at the hotel is only until 10, we then went to “Hot Dog Americano” and got the biggest hotdog I’ve ever seen. A huge bun, 2 dogs, eggs, tomatoes, lettuce, peas, and other stuff just filling the bun to the brim. It was almost impossible to eat.

From there I expected Jefferson to drive us to our hotel, but that didn’t really happen. He got about half way and then said he didn’t have enough gas to get there and back. He didn’t really let us offer to help or anything, he just pulled over and walked w/ us to the bus stop and told us how to get home. That was okay, except it was 11:40 pm and I didn’t really know the city too well. And anyone who knows any big city in Brazil knows its not particularly safe late at night. When we got to the downtown stop I asked the money changer on the bus where the “Rua da Praia” was. He told me. So we decided to follow 2 directions our professor from BYU told us, 1. don’t ever walk like you’re lost, even if you are. 2. stay in well lit areas. So even though we were kinda lost, we just kept walking, following the more lit streets. I asked a Police man where to go, and then a woman and her husband who were coming home from church. Amazingly we took the best, most well lit and direct bath to the hotel. What a blessing.

Now its 12:55 am and Dave’s been asleep for the past hour. I got the Ethernet connection to work, so I’ve been talking with Scott and Brent and friends and keeping in touch w/ home and emails. The internet’s amazing.

So, tomorrow Dave and I are going to talk w/ Humberto about the specifics of what he’s expecting of us. Some ideas I had coming in have already been changed a little. It seems we won’t be doing any training of other teachers, but just teaching in Florianopolis. And it seems they don’t want us doing much research about the careers in the surrounding city (like we were taught to do in our Salt Lake training), but we’ll see how it goes. Our talk w/ Humberto tomorrow should help clarify a few things.