Well here we are again on foreign soil and getting settled in for another 18 months as mental health advisers to the area presidency and 27 mission presidents and one MTC president. Since we were on visa hold for so long we actually started working while we were still in the US. I was consulting with presidents and talking to missionaries starting in early Sept.

We touched down here on Nov 29th and immediately began to understand that there is a big difference between Portuguese and Spanish. (Native speakers here can understand Spanish pretty well but it is difficult for Spanish speakers, native or otherwise to understand spoken Portuguese. The pronunciation is significantly different (More like French — our son-in-law Anthony will be happy to hear that). We are making progress — Darwin especially, since his Spanish is so good. We had our first really successful experience with a neighbor last night. She came to our door to talk to us about some plans for Christmas in the Apartment complex and with lots of patience on her part and good cheer we were finally able to understand what was going on. It was really pretty cool. She invited us down to get better acquainted later.

Will post more later. I need to see if this works. Bye for now. Vicki