Not Guac

the office elders' laundry "room"

Some google views for those interested: The other side of our apartment complex  gives you the idea, but it doesn't view down the street to the front of our building. This one is better, swing it around, we are on the side of the street with all the parked cars and motorcycles. The church has some views that might work. Our office is on the second floor in the back part of the bldg. - second as Americans count, first here where the ground floor isn't the first.

So Of Course you would know right off that Vinicio Souza is Elder Crisostomo, right? and Kevin Oliveira is Elder Eckermann. No problem here finding the right photos..... Maybe we can start trying to convince the computer gurus in the US that having the "preferred" (read, used in the mission) name in the assignment history and other places would be more useful than the "official name" and save me many hours of work deciphering and connecting. But I suppose without the Mysteries, life in Brasil would just be too easy. I'm sure the mental exercise is helping our poor aging brains. Well, not really very sure. We alternate between "it's complicated" and "it's a mystery", those are pretty much the only two states of anything we do.

The neighbors brought us some "couscous de manioca?" to try, it tastes about like sawdust and is as dry. The office elders said we were supposed to pour condensed milk over it. That would certainly make a difference.

We spent a fair bit at the fancy store in hopes that this might spice up our Mexican meals, since we can't get salsa but  no such luck. No guacamole flavor, no avocado flavor. Maybe some onion powder flavor. Even the office elders wouldn't take it.

There are several doctors and lawyers in the ward, they are women by the way :) One lawyer is unmarried and one doctor is married to an engineer, another lawyer is married to an engineer. There isn't the same kind of pay for those jobs here, since a lawyer and engineer do fine but in a fairly small apartment in a bldg we would think looked pretty sad on the outside.

It was annual cleaning day for the missionaries. We helped get the inspections started. Durk got to "see the real mission" with one of the office elders when they rode buses and metro (including an extra sidetrip when the doors wouldn't open and they had to get off the bus a stop too late and catch one back  the other way). Sister Chambers and I did the nearby apartments of the office elders and AP's (assistants to the president). They are considered pretty good apartments, but still interesting. The APs got to move into the Bell's and we inspected that one, the one thing that might have tempted me to switch to that one when they left is their view-

yes, its a lousy nighttime picture, but you can get the idea of the skyline :)

So the other apartment had some of the quirks more normally found, like the laundry room (yes, that's basically outside, plenty of fresh air.)

And here's the light switch in one room, I think the tape is not so much holding it to the wire as keeping your hand from live wires.... We couldn't get a light on in the kitchen, turns out you have to find the wire and plug it into an outlet. 

On Saturday afternoon did some hiking to try and find a member, without luck, but we did visit another one who is a seamstress to get a couple of things altered. I wasn't sure how she would feel about photographing her apartment, it has very old wooden floors and (warm!) sunny rooms. Its common to have no glass on the windows, and I have probably mentioned no screens anywhere. But here is the front, looking a little more elegant in photos than real life.

We knew the walk would be long so we took an Uber there but he couldn't really go down the street, it is narrow and had piles of bricks and debris at the start.

You can see a bit of Durk as he calls to find out how to get into the building. Sometimes you clap or yell to get someone to come out or come down to  unlock hings, but when he called our lady on the third floor we found that we could simply reach through and unlatch the door :)

We did the search for the other on the way back and when it didn't pan put we tried again the next day. Seems the Google maps arrow is in the right place but the address given is an old one and  is not even close, so it was another hour of hiking and not actually meeting with the person we went for. But now we know where he really lives. I'm not sure how the system has the wrong address listed yet put the little red balloon in the right spot but it made for an adventure that included asking directions two or three times over. And some of the sights were interesting, including homeless people fast asleep on a mattress with the sleeping dog alongside.

The bottom floor gets painted, look at the layers on the upper ones!

 We were following a man with a large flat metal box on his head, I tried to get a photo when we got out of the bright sun in our faces, but then Durk had a chance to ask him about why he blew a whistle and what he sold. He said people know what he is selling when they hear the whistle (a green plastic one) and he had some sort of slices and rounds that looked like polenta maybe. He had a little wooden stand that unfolded to set his metal box on. I imagine the box got pretty warm in the sun.