I Love da Cake!

Hello Family!

Sister Gomes and I had wonderful birthdays. I'll tell you a bit about mine:

It started out with no water and no gas! (No, it actually started with us waking up EARLY to help Olga carry water, but water decided not to come so that didn't work very well.) Ha-ha. Luckily, we were able to buy gas (but didn't get water until today) and my dear companion/roommates/Praia Sisters made me a cake, an awesome Caboverdian/Angolan lunch (chicken with yellow rice, a cabbage and cucumber salad all mixed together with a bunch of french-fries! It was actually delicious). Sister Laimana made me cupcakes! It was the first time I've had cupcakes in 11 months. They were delicious. They sang Parabens to me and I got a whole bunch of things that Sister Turnbow sent me from Mindelo! A 'Ami e dodu na bo' t-shirt, a Chinese fan, balloons, a top (which I'm not talented enough to use) and a picture she took of me sleeping. Ha-ha. Basically I stuffed myself with cake, cupcakes and more cake! And that was just on my birthday.

Random Note: every Sister in our house has a birthday this transfer. Ha-ha.

My birthday ended sort of horribly, but I don't really feel like sharing that. We'll just say that if I see or hear another parent beating their child, I'm going to beat them! Okay. Not really, but I would like to.

Let's see. What else happened this week? We had more cake on Saturday because Sister Adam's invited us over for lunch. And then cake on Sunday which I made for Sister Gomes. Goodness. So much cake!

But we also had Zone Conference on Wednesday! It was so good. (And the food didn't make me sick this time.) Hey, we had cake there, too. Ha. But Zone Conference was great. Each one of us received a tie and in the month of October we're all going to find, teach and baptize a future priesthood holder! We talked about a lot of things and I learned lots of new things, reminded of a lot of things I already knew and I'm just so happy to be a missionary!

Speaking of cake, we were over at Fofy's house the other day and she was making cake, but she and her mom were using parts of a broom handle to mix the batter! Awesome.

Okay. A couple of cool stories of the week. We found a man named Sonhana (?) who's really neat. He's from Guinea-bissau and he came to church! We contacted him, taught him, invited him to church and he came! There's a special place in my heart from people from Guinea. I miss Lelo from Praia 1. Anyway.

We also made a contact with a boy name Ivandro the other day and invited him to church, too. We gave his name to the Elders as a reference and they hadn't even gotten around to contacting him and he came to church! Goodness. We can rarely get our own investigators to church, but we can help out the Elders with theirs! I'm excited to hear how he receives the lessons though, because he's one of those people you just see and think 'Man! He looks really nice. I want to be friends with him.' Super cheerful and nice. Okay.

Sorry, my thoughts are sort of all over the place today/this week. It was kind of one of those weeks when you go out and work every day but you just don't see any results so you get a little frustrated, but next week is going to be FULL of good lessons. (AND GENERAL CONFERENCE!)

But I did get to go to Tininha and Karine's baptism on Saturday! Now all three of Augusto's daughters are baptized! It's so awesome to see that family complete. I love them. And Augusto has a calling in church and everything--he's the door greeter! Man, I wish you could all meet him.

Well, I guess that's it. I hope you all have a great week and that everyone's well! I love you all!

Love,
Sister Brooks