My last area of the mission was called Patos, which if you haven't gotten by now, means Ducks. There aren't really any ducks out there, at least none that I've seen. It's not really a small city, but it's in the middle of nowhere. The bus trip took over eight hours from Natal to Patos. It doesn't take that long by car, but the bus stopped a lot and took a longer route.The hotel we stayed at was really bad. But since we arrived at 11:20pm at night there wasn't much time to look for another. The next day we did look, but they all looked the same. There was one nice one, but it costs 3x as much.
Patos ended up being a lot of fun despite not having much to do in the city. We spent a lot of time with Rafaela, a girl I baptized that is now 20 and her friends, Aninha, Jessika, and Bruna. Here we are at a little park.
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| This is Rafaela, one of the people I baptized. |
We also ate lunch with the missionaries at a Chinese restaurant then went to the only landmark in Patos. It's called the Cruz da Menina. (Young girl's cross). It's kind of a morbid story. A 15-year old girl was killed and her body found there. For some reason people started asking for things (miracles). It turned into this big monument and there are different rooms with objects people brought back when their miracle came true.
Patos was a great trip. It was good to see some people that I had baptized that are still really active and have even regularly attend the temple.
We have limited internet access now as we just moved to California. Hopefully we can get some more posts up pretty soon.
How did people react to Christina's blonde hair? She sure stands out in all of these pictures! (In a good way, of course.) :) I'm glad you guys had fun.
ReplyDeleteWe tried playing a game called "spot the native blonde girl." So the whole time in Brazil we tried to find at least one Brazilian girl with naturally blonde hair. I think we saw one, including Rio. I hear in the South it's a different story than the North.
ReplyDeleteBut everyONE we met at church said that Christina was "linda" or "bonita" which mean beautiful. We definitely stood out walking down the streets, especially in Patos, a city where tourists have no reason to visit.