Dear Family
We have been having a great time, spread out around missionary work, of course - which is also great.  We found this cool little museum in Cuiabá about Cuiabá History and we love Cuiabá even more.  It has such beautiful people.

One of the exhibits in the Cuiaba Museum

This was the inside of one of the Catholic churches here in town

We also visited the Pantanal (where all the animals are) on our P-day.  It was totally beautiful and you will love some of these pictures.  Our room's air conditioning did not work (well, it did run but it was VERY loud so we shut it off) so we were a little hot and we didn't get much sleep.  They fed us three yummy meals and it is fun to eat different things especially if I don't have to make them.  I don't love passion fruit, who knew?, since I am pretty passionate about a lot of things.  And they serve potatoes cold with the salad bar, makes sense they are considered a vegetable.  I can eat anything if you put Nutella on it and wash it down with Guaraná!  I might be Brazilian.  We had a delightful guide which I am sorry to say we did not get a picture with. He works six days a week, always Saturday and Sunday and makes about five hundred dollars a month.  He has six children which he sees on the one day he he has off and returns home.
He walked us all around and showed us monkeys and birds in the area.

This is a Tuuu (Two-U-U) bird, they are huge.

These are like the Rio birds.

This one I caught in the wild, on our long walk.

One of the many monkeys we saw.

A hawk I caught taking off (on our walk)

More Tuuu birds with their babies (two on the right are about 2 months old, can't fly yet)

Also got an owl during the day.

This one was taken at our"Pousada" where we spent the night.

I found the iguana all by myself! and the guide gave me a "Muito Bem!" for my find.

Here is "My" Iguana (Dad took the picture from about 2 feet away!)

The termite hills are everywhere.  They are built so strong even when the rainy season comes and floods them they still stand.  Some are six feet tall or more.

Termite mounds (Yes, it looks like a graveyard)

We did not take a boat down the river, but there are thousands of alligators, also paranha, anaconda, and various other snakes.  We hope to go back durning the rainy season and do that.    If Kevin is reading this we did find the "rodents of unusual size" and Dad took a picture:

Here it is, and they are as big as a large dog (a fat one)

They are crazy big but the nice thing about that is you would see them if they came into your house so there really isn't a rodent problem in our apartment :).  And we live on the third floor. The birds are beautiful, I could easily stand on the observation tower for hours and watch them. The pit is that you need to get them in flight because for some birds when the wings are closed they are brown when they fly there are reds, whites, yellows, oranges, you get the picture - also some have enormous wing spans that are absolutely incredible in flight.  I did try to get a picture close up of an alligator but he hissed and scared me almost to death.  We had a frog in our room which we made the owner come catch because although it was small I didn't know if it was poisonous.  I know... chicken baby (probably unlikely you'll call Mom that after seeing the alligator picture).  But just to show you how tough I am I grabbed a Gater by the tail and even though he had already eaten it was still pretty brave (just a note, when Dad grabbed his tail he hadn't eaten yet! - His picture is on FaceBook).

Yep, it's a real gator, but maybe not as dangerous as it looks... kind of tame, really

We are back to the office this afternoon with only the fun memories of this enchanted area.  Tom is off financing and I need to get some transfer papers done, so just know we love you all very much.
The Church is True.
love mom