Dec 7, 2014

A week into December, How Did That Happen?

I hope you are all still praying that I can learn Portuguese, every week I go to church and have a renewed determination to learn the language so I can understand the talks and testimonies and communicate with people and most importantly feel more of the spirit.  This determination lasts about a day and then the office work gets overwhelming and I flake out yet again on my language study.  I do not seem to be able to pay the price required for the miracle.  I am totally open for ideas, suggestions, reprimands, commands, etc.  Now except for the fact that I can't understand anyone or anything we are having a blast.  Missionary work is awesome.  Last week we had transfers and because the mission is so large it is always an adventure but this time it was the perfect storm.  Some Elders needed paper work done for the government before they left,(when you use the word government in a sentence just insert the word nightmare), Over sixty tickets had to be marked and the transportation system was down off and on,  Some were needing to take English tests, Some flights were overbooked, One of the elders missed the plane, the office elders were transferring and the new elders (although very excellent were new to their responsibilities and their were gaps in the training) add in that nothing in Brazil is ever a one step process, and you get the idea.  Going on at this same time was preparation for the leadership training conference for the north and south.  In addition to preparing presentations, handouts,outlines etc. Because this conference was longer more meals needed to be scheduled and transportation arranged.  Then it is Christmas Conference where we replace all water filters and Co detectors batteries, update and check all area books and help with all packages from home and the mission. It is a party, and of course dad continues to do his magic with the finances, (which of course seems to require daily miracles).  It would be impossible to do what he does if this wasn't the Lords work.  There is always some house with a crazy landlord or without water, lights or a contract, plus the normal problems of putting money here and taking it from there. The man is amazing and sometimes I get tired just watching what happens.  It will be difficult to describe the money miracles required in a mission this large but one of these miracles needs to be recorded.
Several weeks before this event, the mission key fob battery went dead and the account that was attached to it was in the name of someone who no longer worked for the church.  The account - used for paying most of the mission bills became unusable.  The nightmare that transpired was an ongoing battle and lasted about 3 weeks. Bills were paid by withdrawing money off the presidents card whenever money was available, and trying each day to get a new mission account set up.  I wish I could even remember all the crazy miracles that happened as Dad daily tried to pay the right bills and juggle money around.  I remember thinking, "Why can't they resolve this problem, this is the Lord's work?" When all was finally worked out, Dad retrieved the four thousand reais he had "borrowed" from the president's account (a little each day for a week due to restrictions), so he was ready to put the money back into president Reber's account.  This was on Saturday when he made the last withdrawl and that afternoon he received a phone call from President.  "Elder Harris, I don't know how or even if this is possible but we need three thousand five hundred reais to help the Aquidauana group pay for the bus to get to the temple for the first time.  We will be reimbursed when they get back but we need the money up front, and we have to send it to President Oliveira in the south by Monday in order for them to pay the bus company in time!"  If you understood the bank regulations here you would know that request would really be impossible.  But Elder Harris was able to reply, "President you are not going to believe this, but right now I have four thousand reais in our safe waiting to deposit it back into your account on Monday."  President said, "That is unbelievable, and what adds to the miracle is that Sister Reber and I offered to put five hundred reais out of our own account towards their trip - so just take the full $4,000R and send it!"  The exact amount of money needed for their trip to the temple -- that is not just some lucky moment.  Weeks before, the Lord was preparing a way for the young families to get to the temple to be sealed.  And although it seemed like a huge problem for us in the interim, we were so grateful to be a part of the miracle.  This really was a testimony that this is His work and no unhallowed hand will stop it.
We have traveled with the president to Primavera and Campo Verde.  And with the Davises to other places.  Dad has some pictures.

Our first stop is Diamantino, where we went last weekend with the Davises.  I'm showing the bread store because everything we got there was very good.  One of the loaves of bread was laced with "doce de leite", which is like carmel - very good!

Just wanted to show the "cobblestone" streets in Diamantino... awesome.

This river is usually crystal clear - all the rain has it completely brown with dirt.

Sunset as we came back into town.

Departing Missionary dinner at our place

The 3 on the left and 1 on the right are office workers, the other 5 were leaving.

These two are from our trip out to a dam on the Cuiabá river.  Yes, we did indulge in some dam jokes. :)

Yes, we're getting older and older (just no other place to sit!)

We have had missionaries stay with us and the father of a departing missionary stay also.  And great activities in the area so enjoy whatever dad puts up in the way of pictures.  I hope the pictures will give you a feeling of this lovely area and some of the things we do.  Most importantly thank you for your support and prayers they are felt and so appreciated.  We are so blessed to be here in this place, with these wonderful people, at this time.  This I have found to be a true principle -- we are all unqualified to do the Lord's work but he can use us if we let him.  The Church is True.  Com Amor, Mom and Dad      

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

The tooth, the miracle

How time keeps getting away from me I will never Know.
For the sake of remembering I will add my dentist experience.  This is truly an adventure to be recorded.  I broke off a tooth that had been capped by eating a peanut.  It couldn't easily be repaired so I had to have it extracted.  I made an appointment at a dentist office not far from our apartment - it had been recommended by one of the missionaries here.  I had an x-ray taken and I should have realized how old the equipment was when the dentist started reading my x-ray by holding this little 1" piece of film on a clothes pin and reading it by the light of his iPhone trying to figure out the problem. Most importantly, I should have received a blessing before the tooth was pulled instead of after so I would have been more calm through the ordeal.  I kept thinking what if my face is paralyzed, or what if he breaks my jaw after two hours of prying and drilling and getting little pieces out. I was no longer hoping they would find all the pieces and that I wouldn't get an infection I was praying that I wouldn't have to go somewhere else and start over again!  Crazy, they had to turn off the overhead light to cool it down because it was over heating - the removal was taking much longer than he thought it would. The suction tube they used was slow so we were all had blood all over us - the dentist had to change his goggles and they put rags around my neck to catch the blood running down my back. When I left, there was blood everywhere and I asked if I should help clean it up.  They just laughed.  I showered and soaked my clothes so all is clean for me I can not say about their office.  If I hadn't been so frightened it might have been humorous.  Tom tried taking a picture through the glass but it really doesn't capture the whole experience.  I did survive and I have a great story to add to my foreign mission experience.  Bad things can happen anywhere but the equipment here makes it so much more possible.  Fun times, I was hanging around while Tom was at the office.  They put in about nine stitches which needed to be removed next week.  There was so much pressure trying to pry the last root out they actually blistered and bruised my lip and chin.  So I did feel some what ready for Halloween.  The root was hooked on the jaw so he actually pushed it down and out the other side. Talk about painful. Muito dor!  Hey, be excited I learned to copy and paste.  Perhaps I can be taught.
Miracle, here is a little experience that we learned from one of our Elder's while in Aquidauana yesterday.
Elder J. Santos - is one of our Brazilian missionaries.  He hasn't been here long but was having some health problems with his eyes.  Terrible headaches and sight problems.  The doctors felt that these special glasses would cure the problems.  The glasses would cost him $500.  The mission funds do not pay for glasses so we encouraged him to try and get some help from his home branch and family.  We agreed to help him if he could come up with part of the funds for the cost. He knew that his family and branch could offer little or no help so he began fasting and praying for a solution.  After a couple weeks or so he shared this experience.  "Not knowing what to do or how I could come up with the money, one day I was going through my wallet and found an old Bank Card that I had forgotten about.  I didn't even remember having it on the mission. I had opened the account years before in preparation for my mission. I took the card to the bank to see if there was any money in the account.  When I checked I discovered there was $500 in this account!!   I was able to afford to get my own glasses!"  There are many blessings that come to us as we have faith.  When you ask with sincere faith, miracles happen in ways we least expect. 
We love you all so much.  We love every opportunity we have to skype.  Your goodness and faithfulness brings us so much joy.  We love, love, love the mission and so appreciate your support and prayers.  Com Amor, the parental units.

Oct 26

October of course is always wonderful because General Conference is a huge boost to our hearts. We were able to see all the sessions in English. This month we were able to attend some group meetings, group and district activities, training zone conferences, transfer meetings, baptisms and so many other great things.  

Typical Brazilian Street here in Cuiaba

Dad drinking a "to-go" orange juice - it came in a bag! :)

Feeding visiting Elders our standard - French Toast

The kids would love this - it's a statue thing in the mall.

I took this because we finally rode the bus! Yea!

This is Elder Tavares fixing Mom's computer because another Elder turned the screen sideways!

Of course your dad does find time to work and I continue my course of unimaginable this and that, sometimes being quite helpful and other times not so much.  But we love it. I felt I should add a few Experiences that add to the fun of it all.  The other day as I was showering and totally covered with soap when the water went off.  I rinsed off by using the clean water from the back of the toilet to rinse off and clean my bangs and dry off my soapy hair and feeling some what sticky, got ready to go to the office. (Note we did get water within two hours but how could I have known we would be so blessed!)  Que benção!  (That's what they say a lot here - kind of like "thanks for the experience!")  
The thunder here is crazy loud. We were lying in bed one night and I truly thought the building next to us had suddenly collapsed, but no, just a storm. We live in a blast furnace most of the time (95-100 and humid) but when it rains we have a cooling trend for awhile and it is wonderful.  I just broke my tooth off, post and all, so I am looking forward to a dentist experience.  

This doesn't really do it justice, but you can see some of Mom's torture.  I'll let her tell the story next time.

Last night we went to a wonderful activity with the group in San Matheus and a little four year old girl just fell in love with me and just talked and talked to me.  The awesome thing was her nine year old cousin (cutest young boy) would translate everything she said - just a little slower.  The problem was he translated her Portuguese by using his Portuguese!  He was too kind for words and his thoughtfulness was so sweet.  I understood little but I never told him that. 

This is the Elder's House (top) and church meeting house (bottom) where we went to the churrasco.

We just put the sign up above when we went to the churrasco (like a BBQ).

I thought I'd show how they get water (no pressure otherwise)

The churrasco was great, I helped with some of the cooking...

This is Mom with the little girl and "translator" by her side.

The sister in the middle was just called to Maceio (Brett & Becky have been there!)

We went to Presidents home to have lunch with the departing missionaries.  They were all excellent missionaries and it was hard to let them go.  Sister Reber gave them her final motherly advice and she cried because she realizes this will be the last time she will see some of these wonderful missionaries that she has loved so much.  It was a beautiful experience she asked them to always, read their scriptures, pray, attend the temple, and marry a rock solid member of the church, and one more thing that I can´t remember.  President Reber asked them to stay solidly in the middle of the path and not go toward the edge.   He told them about an experience he had with a rain storm and a bus.  The rain had washed away the road on the edge under the road and the only safe place was right in the middle.  Good advice but mostly it was the spirit of gratitude for a job well done.  

Here are the seven returning home, 2 Americans, 4 Brazilians, and 1 Peruvian

Loved it !!  Our hope is we will leave our mission feeling that it has been a job well done, so keep up the prayers.  I might come home speaking Portuguese. :) xoxox 
The Church is True.  
Com amor, Mom    

09 October 2014

It's been a bit since we posted, probably because there's not that much to report - a lot of office work is being done.  It's hot, but that's not unusual - this week was pretty much 100° every day, and it's only spring here.  We went on "divisions" last week in São Matheus, along with President and Sister Reber and the Davises.  Here's a picture.

Group on "divisions" in São Matheus (a new group in the mission)

We also fed the Elders in the office french toast (not in the office):

Breakfast - French toast with cream syrup

We found a really nice park (with mosquitoes), but it's too far to walk:

This is a map of the park, several Kilometers around

Speaking of walking, Mom and I walked down to a shopping area in town, about 1.5 miles from the office.  We left after work at about 4:00pm because I had to get some bills paid at the local "lotérica" (where all bills are paid, of course!) and it was closing at 5:00pm.  The shopping area is call "Praínha" (Pry-een-ya), which means little beach but we don't know why it's called that since there are no beaches around... funny.  We saw this cool group of trees with hanging yellow flowers on the way there, along with a shot of the city...

We went to two baptisms this week in our ward.  I got to baptize the two kids at the second one, and Mom was asked to give the baptismal talk at the last minute - fortunately (read, tender mercy) she picked up her little yellow thought book at home before the meeting.  Picture (font and kids and I):

Me with André and Andrea

We also got caught in the rain (real rain) for the first time, we were drenched - I'm not sure this picture does it justice.  We only walked (read, ran) from the office to our apartment, which is only a half-block away!

The banks were on strike last week - not too fun for us!

 A lot more pictures than words this week - next time we'll have more words... :)

Love you all,
The church is true!
Dad