Church

Some things we don't want to forget about church:

Our weekly parking space.  We have to park on another road on the other side of the median from the church.  The church is sandwiched in between houses where there is limited parking.  When we first moved here, we tried parking close to the church but were told by the tenants sitting on their porch, that we were not allowed to park in front of their house.  It's a public street obviously, but people claim areas of the street as theirs.  When we didn't know this, we parked there and discovered a nice long scratch on the side of the car after church.  Needless to say, since then, we have parked on another street where there are no houses.

Sometimes it gets a little scary trying to cross two very busy streets in church clothes and heels with three kids without crosswalks and cars coming around a bit of a blind corner.

We don't want to forget Sister Vicky who helped teach the kids when Sister Lisa W. was out of the country.  Vicky's husband's company moved them to a compound in Talatona so they're going to attend that branch now.  She's from China, but spoke English well enough to teach them.  Both of these sisters have expressed their gratitude for the opportunity to teach our kids because it gave them a calling that they could do because they didn't speak Portuguese.  But clearly we have benefited the most.  Sadly, at the end of this month, Sister Lisa will be moving back to the states for good, so we'll be without English speaking primary teachers. 

Here are a few pics that Bri got a few months ago before our branch split.  We usually had a full room, so our numbers now are smaller.  You can see Savvy and our friend Aaron with headphones on for translation from one of our missionaries.  Sadly Aaron just found out that he won't be coming back to Angola anymore for work.  We are sad to not have him here with us!  He has been a wonderful "every-other-month" addition to our family here.  We're hoping we can hook back up in the states though and have his family out to visit us in D.C.!

The branch now, with less people.  The new branch president for our branch is President Enique who's conducting.

After church on Sunday, our little buddy from nursery came up to me and gave me a big hug around my legs.  I picked him up and he started talking in Portuguese about something he saw out the window.  He even tried to help me with my pronunciation of "vermelho," which is red in Portuguese.  We hugged some more and then I put him down.  He ran over to Savvy and tried to pick her up by her legs.  Too cute--he kept grunting as he tried and tried to no avail.  We all had a good laugh.  This little guy is in the other branch now, so we miss him.  The kids and I were going into nursery for a while to help out during the 3rd hour of primary because the kids were getting frustrated with not understanding what was going on in Portuguese.  We all felt useful and the kids absolutely love helping out and playing with the kids.

After Sacrament we also saw our friend Augusto and a few of his sons and nephews.  All boys.  :)  They're in the other branch now too.

One thing we started back in October, is "CHIP time."  It stands for "CHildren Instruct Parents."  I decided to start it because with church being in Portuguese, even with a Primary lesson being in English, I felt that the kids could benefit from doing their own study of the gospel.  And all of my kids love to teach, whether it's about how to do a Rubik's cube or how to make something, so I figured they would love the opportunity to be in the teacher role and have the parents be the students.  The kids teach the family something from the church magazine called the Friend, or a General conference talk, etc.  I choose and assign them the article or talk that I feel relates to something they struggled with or asked about that week.  They prepare and teach their lesson after church on Sundays.  It keeps a nice focus for the Sunday and keeps them busy reading, preparing, etc.and of course is giving them an opportunity to learn the gopsel and have the principles reinforced in their mind/heart through teaching it and feeling the spirit as they share their testimonies.  Thomas has taught about things like integrity, gratitude, cyber safety.  Savvy has taught about bullying/being kind, serving others, and how to deal with our emotions throughout the day with Heavenly Father's help, and Rhea has taught about keeping the Sabbath day holy and being a child of God.  The stories they read out of the friend are great because they're colorful and child focused like they need and it gives them a direction.  When they're a little older they'll probably feel more comfortable choosing what to teach.  Its been great because with them teaching, it's provided a place for some great communication and expression of thoughts and feelings from them.  They also love writing on white boards and like to use visual aids and activities like hang-man in their lessons.  They are definitely feeling more and more comfortable with teaching.  And to make it fun, if we happen to have any chips in the house, we like to pull those out after for a snack.