That week where we usually don´t have school

Ola famílinha,
This week was pretty good. I got to see you! It was not very busy as far as missionary work goes... We had some nice lessons and met a couple of new people, but what with it being Christmas and all, no one seemed to have much time to stop and talk about Christ.
Christmas eve was wonderful. We went over to the Marinho´s, the British family who lives here. We had gotten permission to see the Muppets Christmas Caroll! It was wonderful and we ate delicious non-Portuguese food the whole time and it was a nice little evening by a fire singing hymns in English.
So a few days ago we had a compromisso by Braga Parque, the mall in our area. We had a few minutes before the pesquisador would be there, so we decided to get out of the rain and grab some hot chocolate. Let me tell you, it was the biggest disappointment of a hot drink I have ever had. There wasn´t enough milk, so it was about as thick as chocolate pudding, and it was cold because the worker mixed it for about 5 minutes--not that you could tell, because it was all lumpy. It was actually really funny because we tried to drink it and it just stayed in the cup. Good thing they gave us spoons :)
On Saturday, the elders´ investigator Michael got baptized! It was awesome because he is American and doesn´t even speak Portuguese, so we all took turns translating. And then afterwards we got to play around with his two daughters (who are 6 and 7). Not to brag, but they love us.
We had a family home evening this week with this little Cabo Verde family (most of them are members). It was so fun because Nelson, the son/brother/whatever, plays guitar really well, so we just started singing a bunch of Christmas songs and he would play. As my companion says he played "chilled out acoustic". So it was fun.
It has been raining like crazy. And windy, so Braga is basically like an umbrella graveyard. On Tuesday afternoon between lunch and dinner we got to 44 before we stopped counting. The nice thing is, a lot of them aren´t even that bad, so we "rescue" them when ours die. (We have killed 7 or 8 umbrellas...)

I was sorry to hear about uncle Josh. Presidente Fluckiger called and told me on Friday. I hope everyone is doing okay. Know I love you all tons!
It was great to see you on Christmas! It kind of feels like it never happened, so I think it will be weird to come home. "Where have I been the last 18 months? Why do I know Portuguese?"
I love you all tons and hope you have a wonderful new year! I will be waking up when the clock strikes 12 in Utah!
Vos amo!
Sister Gidney
p.s. here´s a picture of christmas lunch.. and an umbrella (sorry it´s fuzzy)