Happy Labor Day!! :) I hope you all can relax a little bit and do something fun! I have so many memories of riding the Jet Ski or going camping Labor Day weekend!We gotta go camping again when I get back. I never understood why our family stopped going camping. I love the outdoors! :) It is nuts everyone is in school again, time is passing by super fast. I will get home and then it will be wedding after wedding.... lots of dancing for me :) 

So an update on everything...

My companion is Sister Souberon. She is from Argentina and she has 3 months in the field. She is super sweet! :) I am in the city of Fortaleza so there are lots of tall buildings and the majority of the people here live in big apartment buildings. Our church building here has 5 levels. It is huge, I have never seen a church like this one... it almost looks like a temple it is so big. It has less than a year so is super new and pretty. This area is a lot different than my other areas since it is where the wealthier people live. I thought it would be super hard here to meet new people and to enter houses but we have found a lot of awesome people in just this week alone. We talk with everyone on the streets and there are modest houses occasionly that we knock on their doors. 

This week was awesome because we found an awesome family. My companion and I felt at the same time that we needed to talk with a family we saw on the other side of the street so we walked over and talked with them a little, taught a lesson and invited them to church. They went to church with us yesterday and then a family in the ward invited them to eat lunch at their house. I love the members here, really I love the members in all my areas. I miss Conjunto Ceara but there are awesome people here too. Put simply I will be happy wherever I am :) This just shows how important it is to follow the spirit! It was an awesome experience. They are a family of 4. Also Patricia went to church with us. She is 15 and she has a baptismal date for Setember 14th. She already wants to visit investigators with us :) She loves church and told us she gets super excited when Sunday arrives! :) 

Oh so something super weird that happened this week.... this was my welcoming to my new area! My first day here we were walking and out of nowhere, on a normal street with people walking around in mid day, a man had pulled his pants down to do what I still have no idea but he had nothing on.... we saw everything! seriously it was horrible.... I was like did that just really happen?? we were disgusted.... Oh people here.... sometimes you wonder.... but you just gotta love them!! Oh and next week I will tell you more about Franciso. He is a recent convert/ less active. He is awesome but has drinking problçems. Sweetest man, but lacks confidence in himself it's super sad. 

Well no more time but love and miss yall lots!!! Time is passing by super fast! I think I will be here until the end of my mission! Craziness! Have an amazing week!

Com amor,

Sister Mattei :)