Taxi for Tuesday

I was up super early, 4:30 to go pick up six sister missionaries to take them to a church in our city to meet a bus that was going to the temple in Campinas (2 hours away). I got to their house early and that was the only thing that went according to plan.

About ten minutes away from their house one sister forgot her badge. I was about to "turn around"(in quotes because you cannot just turn around in Brazil.) but I missed a very important but subtle direction from the GPS and got stuck in the no way out part of the freeway, in which I had to drive 4 km to the next exit. Then I turned around to go back to their house, and the only exit I could take was under construction and I couldn't get off the freeway in the other direction.

Tension was high! And so was the condensation in the car, the windows all fogged up! The sister who has been here the longest told me to exit , but I didn't since there was no way back on the freeway at that exit so I went further and found a round about and made it back in the freeway in the right direction, at that time the elders had called to see why they weren't there.

I was giving it all I got!

I made sure to not miss the critical but subtle turn this time. Luckily the church was the same church I had helped my friend at last Sunday so I knew the fast back way to get to it. We made it two minutes late, but we weren't the last ones there! I was so relieved to get them there, but it was about 45 minutes of crazy driving!

I took a little nap when I finally got home. Then my normal day began without stop. School, grocery shopping, prep for English class, prep for Activity days for Church (involved actually physically cutting and pasting AND coloring, I detest all of those individually and I had to do them all collectively, it was so un-fun), make dinner (actually did it before the kids got home from school, so glad I did that!) more prep, eat dinner (I felt like I was ready to faint from fatigue at this point), leave early to pick up church kids, learned I forgot to pick up a girl (feel so bad!) English only had two people, it was quite disappointing since at least ten people asked me about it since I got back. Not quite worth my effort.

Then activity days with my labor intensive paper work. My great friend and helper Brother Bruno wasn't there so I was trying to manage 12 kids who couldn't even hear me talk let alone understand my Portuguese. It was rough and not the activity I envisioned (and I envision low expectations).

The best part of the night is when I took the kids home and one had a Bid em Bau for me! I have waited so long for it, and it was just pure joy to play it with my little friend Joao in his little cement house. It was great to end with a little light at the end of the day.