Backpackers (last weeks email)

A majority of the week we spent as backpackers traveling everywhere and in the last 7 nights, only 2 were spent in our apartment! Its easier to sum up the week day-by-day...

Monday: left the bus station at 1am and took a 7 hour bus ride to Maceio for leadership council. Pretty fun to travel with just the 8 of us.
Tuesday: leadership council. Always one of my favorite parts of the transfer. President Taylor gave a training on how to build and grow people through feedback instead of just correct or 'fix' them. Also, Sister Taylor made pancakes for breakfast and there was nutella so it was like Christmas for me. Left to go back to Aracaju around 7pm...
Wednesday: and got here about 2 in the morning. Slept a few hours and had a district meeting at 8:30. The cutest little lady in our ward took us to a fancy restaurant for lunch which was a treat!!
Thursday: left in the morning to catch a bus to Itabaiana, about 2 hours from here. Division with Sister Alves, who is here waiting for her visa to Mexico. She is only in her 2nd week but already knows how to teach really well and we celebrated that night with ice cream.
Friday: still in Itabaiana, divison with Sister Sa. She goes home in a few weeks so it was so fun to talk about all her mission stories. Rained all day and made me feel like I was in Seattle :)
Saturday: got back to our area and went straight to lunch, then worked until we got home that night. Visited a recent-convert that reminds me a LOT of grandma Sharee and takes care of us here.
Sunday: all of the people we wanted to bring to church ended up falling through but when we showed up to church who was there in the 2nd pew:: Juliano!! He wasnt able to have us over to meet  his family this week and when we called Saturday, no one answered. But he showed up and told us all about how he has been learning more on the church website about everything and that he ^recieved some answers from God this week.^He is super anxious for us to meet his family and I am super excited!!
Today: Sister Dias woke me up at 1am because she was in a lot of pain and we ended up going to the hospital. She has gsatritis and ate something yesterday that did not agree with her stomach. We stayed there until 7am and the poor thing is still hurting a little bit so we are staying home all day. Feeling very grateful for this keyboard thing that lets me write emails here in our apartment and upload them when we get to the lanhouse.

Crazy crazy crazy week and I won't lie in saying that I am not completely exhausted but it also makes the time pass so quickly. Its already July!!??!

Love love love you all, please light off some fireworks for me on Thursday(I will be proudly dressed in red, white and blue here in Brasil hahaha).

Love,
Sister Lauren Mather

Photos:
trip to and from Maceio(and what happens when you ask the elders to take a picture)