Feliz Ano Novo!!!

Olá everyone!


Hope you all had a great new year! It was definitely a great one for us over here. We came down to Vila Real yesterday and spent New years with the elders there. After we got all our stuff done, we headed down to the main town square, and they had a huge bonfire going on and a bunch of bands playing stuff. The bonfire was one of the biggest I've ever seen, and it will probably be the biggest I'll ever see. They took whole entire trees and threw those onto the pile. It got super hot, and we had to stand about 30 feet away to not burn to death. Later, we set off confetti popper things and had a bunch of snacks, which was fun. And they set off a lot more fireworks than I thought. The apartment here has an amazing view of the whole valley, and so we were able to see everything. So that was super cool to see.


This whole past week was a great one too. We had our first member meal! It was really good. They grilled beef and porkchops, and we had rice and salad as well. There was also cow tail, which was definitely a first for me. It was actually pretty good and tasted like roast beef (which is exactly what it was, I guess). The only problem is that it was like 90% bone, so we ate through it pretty quickly. 


We also had two of our friends show up to church on Sunday, which was really good for us. So we were happy about that. We also had another cool experience during the week. Here in Portugal, we have a ton of shops that sell a ton of random stuff for really cheap. We call them China stores because everything in them comes from there, and they are run by Chinese immigrants who moved here. But they're super useful to get stuff for the house that we need without burning a hole in our wallets. It's awesome. Anyway, we were walking around in one looking for something we needed, and a guy stopped us and started asking us about what we do and what we teach. We ended up talking to him for about 10 minutes in a random aisle in the store, and he was super interested in meeting again. He was super nice, too, and we set up a few times to meet with him. So we're really looking forward to that since that stuff doesn't really happen here in Chaves. 


Hope you guys have a great start to the year!


Elder Howard 


Pictures 
- Giant bonfire 
- New Years stuff
- We went to this Japanese restaurant that was super fancy. It wasn't super expensive, like only 9-10€, but the food they put out was absolutely amazing, especially for the money you paid. My comp got tuna tartare, and they put a ton of caviar on top. It was super good, actually. 
- We saw a fire salamander walking around in below freezing temperatures. We thought it was pretty cool





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