Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Updates & Pictures from Mom - 10/23/16

Dear Family,

Sorry I haven't written for a while but our laptop hasn't been working very well lately.  I haven't been able to connect to the internet for a while and I have a bunch of pictures to send.  Thank goodness for Emily.  She helped me fix our computer from Idaho!!  She gave me a simple solution, restart it, and it worked!  Yeah Emily!!

We have had some neat things happen the last few weeks.  First and foremost...........our Petrolina Quail Project has just been approved!!  There has been a lot of hurdles to jump over but we finally made it.  I just saw the confirmation email from headquarters in Salt Lake this afternoon.  It is a project that they are going to monitor very closely as there isn't another quail project in the whole church.  I sure hope that it will work out well.  The stake presidency might not be too happy at first as we had to cut it down a lot.  They don't know that yet.  We will send them the numbers of what was approved and hopefully they will still want to go through with it.  We'll keep you posted on this ongoing soap opera (novella in Brazil).

Two weeks ago there was a holiday on Wed. so 14 of the senior missionaries went to a beautiful place about 3 hours away called Campos do Jordao.  It is at about 5,000 ft. elevation and it was nice to get out of the city and breathe some pure air!  We went to a beautiful garden and then went into the center of the city to the restaurant/clothing district and had lunch and just bummed around.  I actually found a really cute yellow sweater vest that just happened to have my name written on it.  :)  We had lunch at a really good Italian restaurant.  Some of the others went to a fondue restaurant but Dad doesn't really like fondue.  There were chocolate shops all over the place so of course we had to indulge!  Sometimes they call that city "Little Switzerland."  

Last week we had a seminar/retreat for our department.  We started out in Sao Paulo on Tues. and then went down to the coast to a city called Garuja.  It was really beautiful  We've been there before but it has been 20 years since we were there.  We stayed in a "5-star" hotel.  I think that this one really was one.  It was older but it was really nice and the grounds were beautiful.  The swimming pool area was spectacular!  There were lots of areas to hold conventions and I know that there were at least two going on at the same time.  There were tennis courts, soccer, mini golf, recreation/fitness room, and playground plus the beach was across the street.  The restaurants, there were several, were wonderful!  The food was out of this world.  I was worried that I would gain a bunch of weight and since I had started to lose a little, that was a concern.  I was very careful and didn't eat some of everything and I only took very small portions of what I did eat.  I only gained back 1 pound.  It is hard not to gain weight at places like that.

We had meetings each day and then we had some fun activities also.  We started out going into the city of Sao Paulo on Tues. and played a mystery game where each group had a different crime to solve in one hour.  Our group didn't make it but we were close.  I guess that they related each activity to some aspect of welfare/self-reliance but somehow I didn't quite get all of that because of the language barrier.  I just had fun!

On Thurs. we went on a boat ride and went to a semi-private lagoon and several of the people went swimming from the boat.  We didn't go swimming but I still had a lot of fun.  Dad, however, had quite a bout with seasickness so he didn't like it too much.  He didn't throw-up but came close.  He wasn't the only one and there were some of the others who did throw up over the side of the boat.  There were about 40 of us.

On Friday we left just after breakfast and came back to Sao Paulo and went to the Jewish Cultural Center and went through an area set up to simulate blindness.  I couldn't see anything, including my hand in front of my face.  It was very difficult and a bit unnerving.  All of the guides who work in that area are either blind or have some kind of vision impairment.  It was very interesting.  The first thing I thought of was the account in 3rd Nephi where there was total darkness for three days.  That would be very hard.

We had time to go for walks along the beach and enjoy the beauty of everything.  It was a nice week.  One funny thing on our way down was something that Sister Guimaraes said.  She talks a lot and talks loudly and she is very gullible!  We passed through an industrial area where she told us that a few years ago it was considered to be the most polluted place in the world.  I remember driving through there 20 years ago and it was terrible!  Then she said, (I didn't pick on this because of the language), "I heard that there were babies born here without heads!"  I had a good chuckle about that when Dad told me.  She was completely serious!

We had a good experience at our branch last week (today was their stake conference so we went to our old ward).  We left at 7:45 a.m. and got home at 7:45 p.m.  It was a long day but it was a good day.  We had lunch at the Branch President's home and then he asked us and the young elders to stop and give some blessings to a member family who were all sick.  It was a good experience.

We love you all very much and pray for you always.  We like it when we get emails from home.  :)  It's also nice to receive an actual letter.  :)  Have a good week.

Love,
Mom/Paula

Pictures:  1.  Garden at Campos Do Jordao;  2.  our first ever maze experience; 3. A grass maze; 4.  Dad and Elders Salisbury and Shumway; 5.  An interesting floor-used motherboard from computers!; 6.  Our group at the Japanese garden










1.  Lookout at the gardens
2.  Different plants attach themselves onto trees
3.  restaurant-notice the cheese grater light fixtures.
4.  my meal-salmon stuffed with spinach and wrapped in phyllo with ravioli stuffed with shrimp and spinach.  very yummy!







1.  swimming pool at our resort in Guaruja
2.  man climbing coconut palm-the real deal-not for show like in Hawaii!
3.  Looking out from the main entrance at our hotel.
4.  Our boat
5.  Boarding the boat-yes, that is Dad wearing cargo shorts!
6.  Captain Hook











1.  Ready to launch
2.  Multi-million dollar mansions on the beach
3.  The city of Bertioga near Guaruja
4.  Dad and I with Elder Guimaraes, and Sister Cox outside of the last restaurant of the week.
5.  Interesting architecture in Sao Paulo








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