Thursday, February 9, 2006

So last night when we called Bishop Marcelo from Joinville he told us to expect at least 50 participants this weekend! That caught me off guard, since we are prepared to teach a class of about 25, so this will be interesting. Dave and I plan to divide the class in 2 and each teach the entire course, switching back and forth between classrooms to give the participants a different teacher every now and then.

We realized we only had 20 of the new manuals, so first thing today we went to Lazer Copy, a copy place owned by the 2nd Counselor of the Stake Presidency and we made 50 copies off the CD we received from training in SLC. Hopefully they have them done by the time we have to leave tomorrow (noon).

Rained again today. The usual Thursday night soccer had a low turnout, a few kids, and Irmão Aldo (the less active man and his son that I made friends w/ last week and played w/ until late). But this week Dave and I didn’t play; we were having a meeting with Sister Natchigall. Her and her husbands had been the SRE workers/ CASP teachers for the past few years and have done a great job!! She told us many a story about their sacrifice and the blessings they received and all they’ve put into this program. They were part-time missionaries, who lived from their nearby home, had 4 kids, and Harold (the father) had just retired. Not much of a retirement when he was working so hard for 2 years. So now they’re taking a well-deserved break. I felt really bad when after hearing many of her stories she leaked out (not sure if she meant to) that she had heard from 2 people at church that we were complaining about how things were unorganized! Honestly, I did not say that to anyone. Maybe they got that impression because we had to call so many people trying to get updated phone numbers (the list we had wasn’t very updated), but that was the only problem. So Dave and I listened and tried to let her know how much we appreciate her and her husband’s work.

It was about 9 pm when we got done w/ our little meeting, and it was still raining pretty good. I was kinda sad about her thinking we didn’t appreciate their work, so I wanted to eat away my troubles… across the street from the hotel there’s a rodizio pizza. For those who are unfamiliar with rodizio pizza, it’s like a buffet for lazy people. Instead of getting up and walking to the buffet table, waiters come by and serve you pizza at your table – constantly coming by with different, good, pizzas. Last night they were having a special. For the same prize I’d pay to get one medium pizza to go I could sit down and eat all I wanted. So, even though I was by myself (Dave wanted a hot dog instead), I enjoyed the rodizio.

During other parts of the day I found time to study, type a paper, and organize more things at the SRE office.