Porto Alegre and Sao Francisco de Paula

March 4  Wednesday

David and Ann were up at out the door at 5:30 a.m. for the contracted bus trip to Porto Alegre.  The missionaries were out front at 5:15 a.m.

Merl and I slept in and thoroughly enjoyed it.  It was a tough decision to make - whether to ride the bus to Porto Alegre for the Zone Missionary Conference with the missionaries, go to a meeting (that is difficult to glean anything from), have lunch, and leave early by ourselves so we can hopefully make it back in time for piano lessons.  Duty over pleasure won out.  We have so little time left here and so many young people wanting to learn to play the piano - currently 20 students (varies from
week to week).


Whenever I hear the clip-clop of horses hooves on the cobblestone road, I run to the window to see what is going by.  This time it was a garbage/recycler horse-drawn cart.  Sometimes it is a gaucho which is fun to watch.


About noon, we went to the photo place to print out Primary pictures and baptism pictures for the Elders.  Not wanting to go back home to fix lunch, we stopped at a little food shop and got a cheesy bread roll and a chicken pastel. Merl said the pastel was terrible - won't go there again.

At 3:30 p.m. we walked to the bust station to go to SF de Paula for piano lessons and integration.  The sky was overcast and the air was what I call 'heavy."  Just as we arrived at the shelter covering the bus stop, the rain came.  We just made it!  Toay the bus was 17 minutes late - first time we have experienced a late bus; frequently they may come a few minutes early and wait til the appointed time to leave.  Lately I have been trying to sleep on the bus ride - about an hour; makes the trip go much faster. 

We arrived at the church in time for me to collect the trash and for Merl to set up the teclado.  Jessica arrived first, and she received a full lesson.  After that, it was a steady stream of students.  When the Elders arrived, I told Elder Rebeira that things needed to change (he is the one drumming up all the business.)  There is no way we can give any meaningful lessons when so many show up at the same time and we only have two yours to teach before Integration meeting is supposed to start.  Most of them arrive an hour before the meeting.  One solution I had was to make a trip over early afternoon on Thursday to teach students who only have morning school.  The last bus back to Canela leaves at 6:00 p.m.  If the Elders can contact the parents to make arrangements for some of them to come on Thursday, it would help with the schedule on Wednesday evening.  We will see what arrangements they can make.

Elder Rebeira and Elder Piccini (on exchange) facilitated the meeting tonight - spiritual message and game.  No other leaders showed up.  I jogged to the local Mercado in hopes of purchasing something for an after-meeting snack, but everything was closed - and it was raining.  Fortuntely, Siaonara showed up near the end of the meeting to give kids a ride home and drive us back to Canela.  We were glad she came - otherwise we would have been sleeping on the couch.