Sunday, January 1, 2017

Mission 2 - Week 13 (good luck!)

Hello again, our 13th week of reporting from Brazil.  Actually today is our 105th day on our mission - I know, right?!  Well, so far it's been awesome so I'm sure the next 441 days will be just as awesome.  Let's see, that means this week we will finish one-fifth of our mission... Wow!
OK, on to the news - quit getting so trunky!

Oh, back to trunky for a minute (but only a minute) - we got to Skype with all the kids and grandkids on Christmas and it was just wonderful.  Thanks so much for everyone taking time on their busy Christmas Day to share the fun with us - we just loved it.

OK, now on to news... I think.
Monday we worked in the office - pretty quiet this week since it seems like most of the people are on vacation.  By Brazilian work code (not sure if it's law, but it might be), workers have to take vacations in big chunks of time, they don't get to do a day here and a day there like the US.  So most take either the month of December (Cristina in our department) or the month of January (Daniel in our department).  So we've been doing Cristina's job in her absence, but luckily she comes back to work tomorrow (lucky for us, but not so lucky for her!).  I tweaked my back a little on Monday morning running into an open closet door - yeah, it was wierd.  So I babied it for a few days and it's pretty much better now.  It's been kind of tentative the whole time we've been here, but I won't go into that.  FHE was by the Andersons and it was on using the Book of Mormon as our most powerful teaching tools.
We've been walking up to this bread store (padaria) close to us and we found a cheese bread that is really good - it's called Josephina (don't know why!)  So we've started putting a pepper-like cheese on the bread and melting the cheese in the oven and it is good.  It will probably become one of our weekly staples.  I bring this up because it's what we did Tuesday night, it's always a nice walk.
We went to the temple on Wednesday and did work for Sister Salisbury here.  It was very enjoyable, as usual.  Then Thursday was a normal work day and after work we went out to a mall called Shopping Taboão - a little bigger and nicer than the mall by us.  Both of these were inside the mall! 



We ate at a new pizza place there, which was good and also inexpensive.  We also picked up a white belt for my temple pants because I'm down about 10 pounds, and it could be embarrasing to lose your pants in a temple session... just sayin'.
Friday we had the day off, so we did a bunch of cleaning and organizing in our apartment, including taking down all our Christmas decorations, etc.  It was nice to have the day off which left Saturday open to go to the Ibirapuera Park with a few of the others.  We went to another art museum but it was closed, as were all the museums because of the holiday - on-line it said they were open!  But it turned out fine as we walked around the park and it was a very beautiful day.  

These trees have beautiful red flowers in the tops of the tree.

A view across the park lake toward downtown.

Caught three swans crossing the river - sorry I didn't get a close up shot.

A view of the park from outside the museum (where we remained!)
Then we walked about a half hour over to a new Taco Bell here in São Paulo!  Yeah, we ate tacos and burritos, and at least the tacos were quite good - can't say the same about the burritos.  Another new experience in Brazil.

Two of the nice skyscrapers we saw on the walk over to Taco Bell


Christmas Tree right outside the Taco Bell (in another Mall)

Cute couple we caught a picture of by the Christmas decorations
That night we got together with the other couples and played some games and ate goodies - a usual New Year's Eve party, except that we didn't get to make a homemade bomb.  We did, however, have bombs going off in our neighborhood until about 1:00am!
Happy New Year to all.

We love you.
The Church is True
Dad and Mom

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