Two weeks in Portugal

Today is district meeting so we were up early to prepare for that. We got in a short walk and I was able to take a few pictures. I have one of a used car lot of Carlos and his brother. Too bad the guy didn’t have the name of jared it could have been Jared and the brother of Jared. We keep waving at people as we pass by and trying to say good morning, but the people are a bit shy. We hurried home and got stuff ready for lunch then went over to the meeting at the church. For my part I told how it was Trae’s first day as a missionary. We had prepared a good lunch and it went okay. We got everyone sorted out and grandma and I spent an hour or so cleaning up. The lights here are different,I think at times that they are going to explode, but they also seem to be tough. You flip the switch and the light seems to flame on more than light up but when it gets going it works great. Drew asked the marks on the stone in the ruins meant I was able to take a picture of some similar on a church. They have similar marks on the flag of Portugal. That’s the best I can do. We keep finding these huge empty buildings going to rack and ruin. But I was told that one of the reasons people live in Santarem is the low price of rent, so maybe it doesn’t pay to keep them up. So I had already finished this but when I went to add the pictures it went back to this point. So one of the reasons I think people stay here is the good public transportation. They have lots of buses and trains. It is expensive to operate a car here. Gas is $6 a gallon and all the interstates are toll roads. We have a pass for the tolls and it costs about $5 to go to Lisbon and back about. 85 miles. We are starting to like it here a lot and even getting used to the garage. English class was a lot of fun today.