Tuesday, November 25, 2014

25 November 2014

Well, another couple weeks have passed and we have a few more pictures and updates:

"Valentines Dance" (actually couples activity for one of the wards:
A bunch of fun, we even did some dancing...
The local fresh meat store - you don't see this in the USA:
Lots of meat hanging for purchase.  I bought a slab of bacon - it was excellent!
The next was our "Torta na Cara" (Pie in the Face) activity:
We have to credit the Elders with this socializing activity at the Cuiabá ward.
This was a fun activity, with people getting pie in the face if they didn't answer church questions right.  The bishop was hesitant to go up and compete, but I went up with him - then accidentally gave him the wrong answer for how many plagues there were with Moses in Egypt!  Luckily they didn't make him take a pie, they just redid another question... whew!

This is the Windmill Padaria (bakery), where we shop once in awhile - we would go more but it's quite expensive.  They do have the best little french bread rolls:
Pretty sweet sunset, não é?
Then there's the always pleasant, but too filling, churrascaria:
This was grilled pineapple with cinnamon, to die for!
We'll call this one "Journey to the center of the Earth", only it's just the center of South America (the other one, we already showed you one).
We went late one night, so no one was here.  It's all about timing.
This was a huge religious expo here in Cuiabá and the church was invited to host a booth.  We went over and helped feed the missionaries working there and watched the entertainment:
There were literally thousands of people and probably forty or so religions.
The sad part about this one was that the stake youth choir didn't have time to sing because they took so long raffling off a motorcycle and a car.  The good part is that is was great exposure for the church and the missionaries got about 75 referrals from it.  And, I know food keeps coming up, we got to try a new food - Palito.  It's kind of like a pastel (deep fried with cheese or hamburger inside) on a stick.

One of the members brought us a Jaca fruit (Jack fruit in the US).  It was huge at about 25-30 lbs:
It's got little spikes all around it, but you can pry it open with your hands easily.
 
This is the inside - those are seeds, not bugs.
You kind of cut the fruit off the center and pull out "bulbs" of fruit that have a seed in the middle of them.  We saw on the internet that you could roast the seeds like chestnuts, but one of the blew up in our oven so we stopped trying that.  The fruit itself doesn't taste bad, but the smell is something awful.  We took the fruit and froze it and now we put it in shakes and it's really good.

This is the Paraguay river that separates Brazil from Boliva (and Paraguay at times):
If you look closely, in the distance you can see people playing volleyball.
I got to go with President Reber to Cáceres to visit with some Elders.  It was a long drive, but very pretty and the roads weren't too bad.  It was also fun to visit with the Elders - all from Brazil and all from the Northeast.  Cities that Brett and Becky would remember from our cruise, Fortaleza, Maceio, and Recife.

An open-air market called a feira, in Tijucal not too far out of town:
The Elders were choosing a watermelon to cut in half with rubber bands... I know...
We go to this place for the french fries (they are awesome and sold by a returned missionary), but I also had a crepe (pronounced crappy), and a pastel with ham and cheese in it.

A beautiful picture of downtown Cuiabá from a distance:
Yes, I did take this with my iPhone... :)

Next is Mom and I by a lovely waterfall, where we stopped on another trip with the Mission President:
We might not have been as close to the water as we appear.
The water in the river was quite dirty because it had rained hard for the last couple days.  Amazingly, it didn't rain on us at all when we walked down and back.  The rainy season is just beginning.  The other day we walked over to the office in a heavy rain and we were soaked - yes, we did have an umbrella!

One more cool thing, and then on to the main event:
This was a huge roach that we saw on the same trip.  That's a dum-dum sucker by it.

OK, now the fun stuff, these are pictures from a "Fazenda" (Farm) that we went out to on Monday to celebrate Thanksgiving.  Mom made a pumpkin and apple pie (they don't really have pumpkins here, so it was squash, but you couldn't really tell) that were awesome.  She also made the dressing, which tasted just like the US version.  Other people brought mashed potatoes and deviled eggs, etc.  But the main dish was chicken (turkey was too tough and too hard to kill) - the three Elders all picked out a chicken, caught it, then killed it and gutted it and cooked it.  OK, to be honest, none of them would cut the heads off so one of the employees at the farm did it.  Then they took off the feathers and mom showed them how to gut the chickens.  Pictures are following:

This was the group of guys at the farm.  President, me, Richards, Phipps, Bonaro, Edson (not missionary), Davis

This was behind the farm, right on the Cuiabá river.  Very cool.

Them plucking the feathers off one of the chickens

A tuacahn bird that was in one of the trees at the fazenda.  It was hard to get the picture.

This was inside one of the fazenda buildings, not too shabby.  Yes, my partner and I won at pool.

I got this picture of a parrot of some kind in the trees.
Unfortunately, I didn't get any good shots of the monkeys that came by the fazenda jumping from tree to tree - it was pretty cool.  The whole day was very nice.

The church is true, love to all
Dad







1 comment:

  1. This is all so awesome-I wish tickets to Brazil were free :) Keep the pictures coming. (I would have loved to see mom teach the elders how to take care of the chicken--who says farm learning isn't useful on a mission :)
    Love you a million!

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