Miscellaneous items and adventures

Elder Alvarez loves to try new foods. This is a Lebanese bread that looks and tastes a lot like a flour tortilla. Yumm!

 Jazmin's 10th birthday (on the right) with her sisters Lenifer and Cristiana. Right now Cristiana (the baby) is in the hospital for the second time with pneumonia. She was only home about a week in between the two times. Please pray for her!

Elder Alvarez with Cristiana.

Parabêns para você! Parabêns para você! 🎜🎝🎜🎝

Mission tour zone conference with Elder Zwick. Waiting for Elder Zwick to arrive. This is three zones together (Praia East, Praia West, Assomada)

Sister Mboia is from Mozambique. She was serving in Cape Verde, but became ill and had to return home. When she got better and was waiting to be re-assigned, she was a companion to our dear Sister Dyer, from our ward. Then she was able to come back to Cape Verde to finish her mission. So she is a sweet connection with home, all the way around the world. Midnight airport pickups make for scary photos (as in no make up) 😁 African sisters are so blessed to not need makeup to look gorgeous!

We went to Mindelo on assignment by the mission president for Elder Alvarez to represent the mission (he's the first counselor) at their stake conference. We were walking down the street, and Elder Alvarez said, "I wonder where we could find someone to shine my shoes". Just then, a man walking towards us holding a small cloth bag offered to shine his shoes. In his small bag he had a shoe shine brush and a can of neutral colored shine. So cool!

Stake Conference in Mindelo. The young man next to Elder Alvarez is from Mexico, and this is his sweet wife and daughter.

In Cape Verde, it is very rare to see anyone smoking cigarettes, except for Europeans. But apparently among the older generations they smoke pipes, because even though this is only about the second person we have seen smoking a pipe, there are many pictures of older people doing it.

This is our trusty mission cabby in Mindelo, although this is not his cab. That day his cab broke down and he borrowed a pickup to take us to the airport. His name is George and he does all the taxi travel for all the missionaries. He knows where every church and missionary apartment is, and knows all the missionaries, even though he is not a member.  

Elder Alvarez found the boy on the left all alone and crying, and tried to console him. After a while other children came, and soon he stopped crying and smiled. They loved playing with a little pop up rubber toy. They had so much fun!

Relief Society activity in our Achada Mato branch. We had a lesson on writing in our journals, and then we made our own journals.

Candida, Sister Alvarez, Katia, Claudia, Sandra, Suzilene. 

We've had this remodeling going on in our building for the last couple of months. This is our apartment while they were doing the biggest part of the work. They are also working on the mission office (second floor)  and on the outside of the building, and now they are also working on the landlord's apartment on the first floor. While they were working on our apartment, we had to move in to the landlord's apartment, and he and his family moved in to their daughter's apartment. We were there for about 10 days. It was kind of awkward, but they have a very lovely and comfortable apartment. So we couldn't complain. Now we are back in our apartment, even though they still are doing minor repairs. 

This is one of the workers. Elder Alvarez wears a straw hat to protect himself from the sun. This young man asked him if he had one he could give him. He wanted to look like an American cowboy. 😊