So I´m in a new area! It´s a city called Juquitiba which is totally outside the city of São Paulo (it´s pronounced Zhoo-kee-CHEE-buh). It´s very green, very rainy, and muddy. To walk from one end of our area to another would probably take 3 or 4 hours, so we take microônibus, which are Sprinter vans with lots of seats inside.
I don´t miss the city. It smells, there´s trash everywhere, and tons of AWFUL music on every street. This area is DEFINITELY not as rich as the last one, but it´s more tranquil here.
My companion is Sister Rigel, and she´s from Idaho. She´s already been in this area for almost 6 months, so she´ll be heading out soon. she´s funny and easy to get along with. She´s another blonde! She´s a very firm missionary, and doesn´t take any nonsense from investigators. However, she doesn´t like dropping investigators. So there´s quite a few people that have stuck around not progressing for a long time, that in my opinion we should stop teaching, but oh well.
The bairros (neighborhoods) are really separated here so it´s hard to work all of our area in one day. I imagine this is more like what it would be like to serve in the US, except we´re on foot.
We´re teaching a couple great people, one of whom is working really hard to stop drinking, so we´ll see how it goes with getting people ready for baptism. There are a lot of great people here I think, it´s just hard because we have to walk through the forest and up hills to get to them.
Here it´s just a branch, but we´re getting very close to the number we need to become a ward. The branch president is amazing. He really is a selfless man. I really like the people so far.
Don´t worry, I´m wearing plenty of bug spray. Although the people here claim that dengue doesn´t exist in Juquitiba. You asked about Zika but honestly nobody talks about that here.
I think I´m probably gonna be here for a while. It´s way different here than in my last area and the strategies are gonna be completely different to work this area to its potential, but I´m excited!
I live with just my companion, which is different and kind of lonely, but it also means the house has more space and is a lot more organized. We live in the center of town, so all the stores and everything are really close.
It takes 3 hours to get to the main part of the mission. My legs are gonna take some time to get used to all this.
Sister West
India in Brazil 