this week from Brazil

Before I try to catch up on blogging I wanted to post from Brandon:


Hello everyone,I don´t have much to say because i just talked to you all. But we had our baptism and it was excellent. It is still raining alot and everyone is still out of town. I only have 1 investigator that is still in town. This week we have to find a bunch of new people. It was fun to talk to you all and that everyone is having fun. One thing i missed was root beer and dr. pepper. Is there a way to send root beer and dr. pepper to me? Without them expolding on the way. The food was good for christmas, lots of rice, beans, fruit,and bbq. That´s about it. New years is coming up and it will be another party here in brazil. It´s a little hard to teach when everyone is partying. But see you all later. Elder Lewis

Christmas Eve...

My goal is to be caught up with the ol blog by New Year's... HA...
As kids grow up... the routine on Christmas Eve definitely changes... on Christmas Eve me and the kids used to go see Christmas lights, read the Christmas Story, put out cookies for Santa, put out reindeer food, watch miracle on 34th St, do some wrapping etc etc!
As I get to my point, I digress for a minute....
MANY years ago I went to Education week and went to a class on traditions. I learned a VERY important point... traditions can be started and stopped whenever you want! Really?!?!? Sooooo.... one tradition MY family had was to eat pickled herring on New Year's Eve... PICKLED HERRING!!!! Have you ever tasted pickled herring?!?! I think this tradition went back for YEARS! Guess what tradition I stopped IMMEDIATELY?!?!? I am HAPPY to say we do NOT eat pickled herring on New Year's Eve and I don't think ANYONE in my family is sad about that!
So back to Christmas Eve...
As adults now... we have done a few different things on Christmas Eve to entertain ourselves... go to zoo lights, see movies.. etc...
This year I decided just to do a nice adult dinner and play games since there would be 7 of us ADULTS... yes... even Trent (my baby) is one of the adults now!

Here I am with my SandraLeeMarthaStewartWannabee pose. Since there wasn't going to be any children around I got out the MILK GLASS dishes and GOLD (plated) silverware.... ooooohhhhh aaaawwwwww....

YUM... T bones and all the fixins! BUT... I guess I should have had some social graces lessons before hand... Mike couldn't understand why I tied ribbons on the water bottles and Trent couldn't understand why we had individual jellos on top of SHREDDED LETTUCE!!! Good thing I didn't confuse them anymore by putting out multiple silverwares! Maybe next year I will give them 2 forks!

Everyone loved the nice meal on nice dishes and said this should be a new tradition! It just might be!

So for entertainment I bought a bunch of little gifts.... oh yes... the anticipation to get one of these nocostwastoogreat gifts was intense. BUT... to win one ya had to win a round of the Left Right Center game. I bought it at Walgreens and it was SO fun!

OOooohhhh... what will he roll?!?!?

A winner!

Another winner!

You can see some of the GREAT prizes!

We played clear til almost 11:00! It was gettin late and silly!

Whoa... what an event! Mom needs more Martinellis!!!!

I love some of our old traditions and I love coming up with new ones too! I can't wait til next year!

Red night...

WOW... we had SO much going on last week... first off was RED night... This started YEARS ago. Whenever my brother came into town he always treated the whole fam with KFC. It has since evolved into RED night... Christmas time... KFC comes in red buckets... and then we added the red elephant game... He brings LOTS of KFC... he goes to the KFC early in the day and orders it all...
Dan and Erin diggin in

Everyone looks forward to a yummy dinner!

After our tummies are full we are ready to play the red elephant game... it's the same as the white elephant game except all the gifts are red!

red sparkly bags...

BIG bags...little boxes.... ya never know what will be inside!

we're always ready for the unexpected in this family... there were a few gag gifts too... like this one AND a couple others... ya had to be there!

Some of the fam with their red stuff. It was a fun night and a great start to the rest of the week!

lots of pics from Brazil...

I'm catching up after a busy fun week. Here's Brandon's last email and pics.... AND we had a great phone call on Christmas!

Oi Famíla
Merry Christmas to all!!!! The plans are still the same. 6:00 my time i´ll call you and give you the number to call me back. This week there was bunch of activities here. One of them, we were really hungry and we bought something to eat. That hamburger was only 3 reais. about $1.50 in american dollars. Hamburgers brazilian style are alot different than american. There is a patty the size of a kids meal cheeseburger burried under tons of lettuce, tomatoes, corn, bacon strips, ham, hot dog, pineapple, an egg, and crispy potato things. It was good. Elder Zwick also came this week and it was awesome to listen to him talk. He speaks super good portuguese, his wife not so much but she gave an excellent talk. We had a conference with him friday morning and ate lunch with him too. We took a picture too bunch the mission didn´t send it to our email yet. Saturday we had a ward party and there was tons of food, music and games. As you see in the pics there was a pool i couldn´t swim in and tons of soccer we are not allowed to play. But the food was good, lots of bbq. Today we have a baptism!!! We are going to baptize a dude that was a jehova´s witness for 15 years! We should also baptize another teenager too, We just have to see if his parents are going to leave today. If not then he will be baptized too. The LoftusLewisLutherJudkins Party looked fun, big booty is so fun. We´ve already tried to teach brazilians how to play but they physically and mentally aren´t able to play. But that´s about it for this week. I´ll talk to you guys in a few days, see you later. Don´t forget. Elder Lewis

Festivities...

This is always a fun time of year getting together with family and friends... here are some highlights of this weekend: We had a couple of visitors at our house so on Saturday we went to have breakfast with Santa at my work!

Wow... Jadon looks excited!

Krislin getting her face painted... check out that guys moustache! I hope Mike doesn't get any ideas!

Cute snowflake!

Of course there were crafts...

Even Trent joined in on the fun... I wonder what he asked Santa for?!?!

Later that night we went to our annual party with our great friends... we've been doing this for so many years we have the second generation coming too! I was too busy eating to take pictures of the food, but we always have quite a feast! AND... We ALWAYS play the white elephant game... oh look at the anticipation!

Oh what could it be?!?

Let the stealing begin!

We play games too... a couple years ago we started playing Big Booty... I'm not even going to explain that one... you have to be there to experience it! Let's just say you have to be somewhat coordinated, pay attention and have the desire to be BIG BOOTY!

YAY... I made it to BIG BOOTY once but was quickly de throned!

Me and my cute friends Brenda and Sharon! We had a great time!

Now I'm gearing up for the next event... RED night!

From Brazil...

Hey everyone!This week looked really fun at home. Trent, elder stuart did run track and knows danny barker. I would send pics but i have to buy another card reader because the one i have been using has decided to stop working. We also had a stake activity this week but it didn´t go out so well. It was a great big first message for everyone to get to know the church. The problem was that the members didn´t invite anyone. The assistants called the day of and said the we could bring investigators. If they didn´t call I don´t think anyone would of been there. We brought a family and 3 other pairs of missionaries brought some people, other than that there was hardly anyone. But it was a good lesson and fun to be with our investigators. We also had a baptism planned for this week but the dude´s grandparents took him away to their house. This week we have to keep a good eye on him. Also for the first time ever that i´ve seen in brazil, it hailed. It started to rain yesterday and i noticed that the rain was unusually cold. Then it started to rain harder and the rain was hurting, then i realized that it was ice beating on me. It was fun, the wind broke my umbrella. It was just a little one that fit in my bag. That´s about it for this week. I don´t know what we are going to do for christmas. I will call you guys 6 o´ clock at night from here. You can look it up and see what the time difference is. On the 18th a seventy is going to be here and talk with us. Elder Zwick. It should be awesome. Everything is going great down here and i´m still eating good and healthy. I still don´t know the status of elder lopes, if he really has problems in the head or not. Next week i´ll send pics for you guys. I´ll send a bunch because we also have a ward christmas party this week too. The temple looks really pretty. I saw it in the backround of one of the pics you sent. It´s always fun to walk around the temple at christmas time. And also congrats to Trent for being an elder now. Fun that Dustin got to come down too. How are the sports doing? How are the Cowboys doing? I don´t really need to ask because they are always doing good. Are the suns doing good too? That´s about it. I got the packages and the box but they are still at the office because i didn´t have enough hands to bring them with me on the bus back to the house. Any other questions? See you all later. Elder Lewis.

Everyone must have had today off!

What a crazy day! EVERYONE must have had today off too! Today is Wednesday... the middle of the week.... the middle of the day... and the stores were crowded and the traffic was bad too! AND... I thought I would be finished in only a couple hours! Silly me... BUT... the good news is that I am 98% finished with shopping and wrapping... BUT... 0% baking was accomplished... BUT.... It was a fun day anyway and WAY better than being at work!

Day off!

Yay yahoo yipee!!! A day off! I sooooooooooooo LOVE days off! I took today off so I can get ALL my Christmas errands/shopping/baking/wrapping/etc finished! I have a BIG list to accomplish so I am starting early... acctually it's not THAT early... I slept in til 5! I'll update later and let you know if I scratched EVERYTHING off my list!

from Brazil...

I'm a little behind in posting... this is from last week!

Oi famíliaThis week was kind of crazy. Just yesterday was crazy to tell the truth. Elder Lopes already got tranfered! With all the health problems he has, president kind of put a pause on his mission. He is companions with another missionary with a bunch of health problems too. My new comp is Elder Stuart. He´s from Utah and he doesn´t speak very much portuguese. He has been on the mission for about 5 months. But the crazy thing about the transfer was that we didn´t know anyone was getting tranfered until yesterday afternoon. The secretary called us monday night and said that elder lopes had an interview with president tue. morning at 11. Elder lopes asked if he had to bring anything and he said no. When we got to the office, The same secretary asked if he brought his bags because he was being transfered and my comp was already on the highway coming to gioania. So we had to run back to our area which is a little more than an hour away from the office eat lunch, pack his bags, and get back to the office by 2 in the afternoon. Just like all mormons in the world, my comp didn´t show up until 4:30 and we got home around 6. It was a fun day. The packages already showed up. But i had my briefcase with me so i didn´t have enough hands to bring them with me on the bus. We also have a stake activity this friday. It´s going to be a huge first message of the restoration. The stake is planning for about 500 investigators to be in attendence. It should be great. Anything new with you guys? Christmas is getting close! This is my first and last christmas phonecall. How´s everyone doing? Is it cold there? It is raining a ton here, everyday for a week and a half now. It´s raining right now. That´s about it here. We have a baptism for this saturday all planed out but i´ll tell you aboutit next week. Happy birthday to those who are getting older this month. See you all later. Elder Lewis.

Surprise guest!

Wow... what a weekend.... Our family travel agent (you know who...) totally arranged for Dustin to come out for the weekend!The airport was busy with our family on Friday night... while I was waiting for Mike to fly in from LA... Trent was getting Dustin from his Nashville flight.

So we were up early on Saturday to go to Trent's basketball game...

Only one guy showed up from the other team so we ended up playing ourselves. So no matter what we won!

Trent and Dustin went shooting after the game. I sent them the camera and said TAKE PICTURES CUZ YOU FORGOT LAST TIME DUSTIN WAS HERE!!! so they forgot to take pics AGAIN... but they had a good time and I got a pic of their score sheet.

Saturday night some of us went to the temple for a concert...

and Christmas lights! It was beautiful like always!

AND... the MAIN reason Dustin got a 4 day pass and made this quick trip... He ordained Trent an Elder! So after a great Stake Conference everyone came over. These special events always touch a mom's heart... I can't believe my baby is an Elder!Erin and Sharon gave Trent his first missionary shirt that he can wear next Christmas... but he couldn't wait.... scroll down for the fashion debut!

AND... what else do we do when we get together?!?!?... EAT of course!! Everyone brought yummy Mexican food!

The family pic...

the funny family!

After ALL that... we relaxed... the guys watched some ol football game while the kids played ... AND...

the girls played Phase 10!

Cute kids...

the grand finale!

What a great weekend!