21 September 2014

Hello Everyone,

Another few days in paradise.  This week we went to an open market in Tijucal, close to Cuiabá. (Oh, notice that my Portuguese accents are working now that I have connected a Brazilian keyboard)  Anyway, there is a member that sells french fries at the market, so we got a bunch of them and they were good.  We also bought a "pastel" filled with cheese and it was really good also.

A couple pictures from the open market (notice the "bounce house" at the end of the row!

Sunday we drove the president's car to a group meeting in Campo Verde (we posted a picture of the group previosuly).  They called the night before and asked me to speak, and then asked Mom to speak (bear her testimony) just before the meeting - they give me notice and not her, go figure!  My talk went well and I was feeling pretty good about my Portuguese since I spoke about 20 minutes without notes...until (here's where pride goeth before a fall) afterward one of the members asked how long we would be on our mission and I said "18 years!" instead of 18 months! :(  It was actually pretty funny when I noticed the look on their faces and then realized what I had done.  Mom's talk and testimony was awesome - she came prepared with a little book of thoughts that she's been working on, so that helped.  And I should add, since she does most of the blogging, everyone loves her here - just as we knew they would.  She communicates just fine and gets along with the Brazilians even when I'm not around.

Here's a picture of the president's car.

This is President Reber's car.

The car picture was taken at the Brazilian "Bridal Veil Falls" (Cachoeira da Noiva) - here's a picture of the falls, it's beautiful!  I'm guessing it's probably a 200ft drop to the bottom.

On the way home we saw some other fun things:

This was our friendly neighborhood armadillo out for a Sunday afternoon stroll (on the side of the road)

This is a big lizard we saw along the road (it may have been a gila monster,
but we couldn't tell, it was about 2 feet long)

These three pictures were all taken at a river just off the highway on our way back.

The trip takes us though a place called "Chapada dos Guimarães", which is a lot like St. George, with red cliffs, etc.

All is well here, we survived the travel with no GPS, no access to AAA, no phone service, no decent maps, and definitely no decent roads!  Life's an adventure.

And lest you think all we do is travel about having fun, most of our days are spent working in the office.  We've actually only taken two P-days in four weeks... and those were the two days we spent in the Pantanal last week.

Love to all, the church is true!
Dad