Festa Junina is a big party in Recife

Festa Junina lasts the whole month of June in Recife. 

They stack piles of wood along many of the streets 

and on June 24th celebrate with large fires. 

It is similar to Sadie Hawkins day in the States. 

Young and old dress up like hillbillies

 with plaid shirts, straw hats, pig tails or braids and mustaches.

This was our wards celebration of the holiday.

Our bishop and his wife, Flavio and Rebecca Escobar, love to party and this was a fun evening with a great turnout. Bishop Escobar is also the temple recorder

We fell in love with Elder and Sister Luis. They just finished their mission here at the temple and will be greatly missed. The young sister missionary also just left. She is from Argentina. She met and developed a friendship with a missionary from Brazil going to serve his mission in Argentina, while they were in the Missionary Training Center. 

This holiday celebrates with lots of corn on the cob, corn bread, sweet corn soup, and pop corn. There were all kinds of other food like chicken stroganoff, rice and beans, fruit, cake and milk pudding.

We bought hats at the market and tried to get into the spirit of the festival.

There was a live band that played non stop for the whole evening. The whole ward family came as well as many less active members, investigators and other people from other wards. It reminded me of the old days in Boise when I was growing up and my parents took me to ward dances throughout the stake.

Here are our wonderful senior sister missionaries

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I am dancing the Virginia real with sister  Gala Hansen.

We love the sister missionaries, Sister Maxwell is from Michigan. We have them over for dinner once a month. They are terrifc missionaries. Since we have been in the ward they have had at least two or three baptisms a month. They brought investigators with them to the celebration

There is a park right next to the church where there was a celebration also going on.  This one was sponsored by the City of Recife.

 They have dance completions all month long in the parks.

We walked over and watched for a while during our wards celebration.