Benvindo à Araraquara! March 2, 2015

Hey There!

That's right folks, this letter is coming straight to you from Araraquara, São Paulo, Brazil! What a crazy week this has been! So remember how I said last week that Sister Sena was emergency transfered to Araraquara to get to know the area, well, turns out that I was soon to follow! She came back to Irajá (Ribeirão Preto) for a few days with us, and then Friday night, the unbelievable happened. So, we were walking to the ward activity Friday night, I was on exchange with one of our Sister Training Leaders, Sister Rodriguez, and we ran into Sister Andersen and Sister Sena on their way to the activity as well. Now, we backtrack for a bit in the story. Crazy as it sounds, the assistants had called Sister Beserra asking to talk to Sister Sena and I. Since we were on exchange and not with Sister Sena and Sister Andersen, the assistants were kind of like, whatever, we will just call back later. Sister Beserra knew that something was up, and so she called Sister Sena almost instantly because she knew something had to be up. They figured out something crazy. Then, Sister Sena called the assistants to comfirm, and she told me when we met up on the way to the activity. We were going to be companions in Araraquara! Whoot Whoot! We got the call earlier than the normal transfer call because we were leaving the next day, two days before transfers. 

So, I arrived with my companion, Sister Sena in Araraquara Saturday night around 6:30. Crazy! I never expected us to be companions, especially when we just were living together the transfer before. Gah! Super cool because I love her to death! The Acriana and Americana are going to rule this city! With all that craziness being said, I will account what happened in our ward in Irajá when we left. They closed Sister Beserra and my area, and took the assistants out and put in another set of elders from the mission office, the financial secretaries. So, that was kind of a big shock for our ward. Sister Beserra went to Campos Elísios to be a Sister Training Leader! Woohoo! She will be absolutely amazing there! Sister Sena and I are here in Araraquara, and Sister Andersen stayed in Irajá. And you will never guess the name of her companion. Her companion is Sister Anderson. Crazy! Just one letter different! And Sister Anderson is an American with just one transfer more than Sister Andersen (aka, same time on the mission as me, but all of it here in Brazil). Wow. It was a crazy transfer for sure! 

And guess what? The whole city of Araraquara is one zone, and Sister Sena and I are the ONLY sisters in the entire zone. Meaning, the only sisters in the entire city. Holy Elders! It is going to be super weird at zone and district meetings for sure! Oh, and that means that is is just the two of us living in our apartment, so we have tons of space. We live in downtown Araraquara, so we are ridiculously close to everything. Like, we live on "third street" so, super duper close, like grocery store across the street kind of close. It's perfect. 

So, I guess I have spent enough time talking about the transfer, so I will talk about the only other thing we really did this week: the activity with the ward! We had a little cooking class where we taught pão de queijo and chocolate chip cookies! It was lots of fun, and we had a pretty good turn out. The morning of the activity, we went to Irmã Lúcia's house to bake a few batches of cookies beforehand, print off recipes, and stuff like that to prepare for the activity. All in all, we make about 200 cookies! Wowie Zowie! They all got eaten though, so that's super good. Then, we went to the activity that night, made another batch infront of the people to teach how to do it, and Irmã Laura taught how to make pão de queijo mineiro (mineiro=from the state of Minas here in Brazil). It was loads of fun, and Sister Andersen shared a message with the Family Proclamation to the World about how with the gospel, we have all the ingredients to help our families, just like a recipe. I think the activity was a great success because the ward is getting super pumped about activites, and they will have them there about once a month. Whoohoo! And the food was good, so no complaints there. 

Hey, sorry for the rambling, but I actually had stuff to say this week. Love you all!

Com todo meu amor,

Síster Jensen