No longer a parking garage......
I brought up extra security camera views so I could check in now and then as a whole crew worked on transforming the parking area under the building. Quite the DeLuxe Wedding! Not someone in our ward or stake even. We would have liked to slip in after dark and see it lit up, they were hanging crystal chandeliers above the food table. We headed out from the office as the early arrivals were coming - several in gold-colored gowns, either part of the wedding party or it was a "gold" wedding and guests dressed to fit in. All the furniture was brought in the afternoon before and apparently they didn't leave anyone to guard it overnight, figuring our gate system was good. But once before the stake has decorated it all up with flags and banners and such for an "Especially for Youth" sort of event, and when they decorators went to lunch the local homeless lady came in and took everything down and made off with it. It took looking back at security footage to figure it out. Recently it was found that she had been keeping spare clothes tucked into the firehoses with the extinguishers in the chapel and she threatened death if someone removed them.
Random inspiration for the week: a great talk that we should all review, me especially :)
I felt like I understood most of Sunday's stake conference, which was
not by Pernambucanos (that's people from the state we are in, where people speak really fast and sloppily and even other Brazilians often can't understand). Durk really enjoyed talking to the area authority who came from where he (Durk) served as a young missionary and knew many of the same people.
Yikes! did not plan to go to a dentist while here.
A bit like going back in time, little office with one helper and a spit basin. But he did seem to know his stuff, thankfully. Seems instead of a loose filling it was the crown next to it and under the crown the tooth was pretty much all cavity, not much was left anyway after being crowned due to very large filling and cracking and then having had a root canal through the crown and then having the root canal redone because of trouble. So he dug out the roots and I will let everything heal a while. The office is a little place with a small waiting room with TV going, one assistant who takes the CPF number and checks out our ID cards, hands the doc things now and then. He has a desk in the room with the chair and equipment where he talks and "marks" the next appointment and takes your cash money. He is the dentist of the dentist missionaries used to go to until her hubby was called as mission president elsewhere in Brasil. There are a lot of little dental offices on the street I would be pretty scared to go into.
Saturday Institute classes of EnglishConnect were sparsely attended this week, but those that came got chocolates if they actually did any homework. It's hard to get them to study between classes. Durk checked out the Spanish edition of the book and only the introduction is in Spanish, nothing else, so we are not as eager anymore about getting a Portuguese version. They really need more of the instruction in the native language, at least for the first level. I do OK with the second level since most of the class is really even beyond level two and they can understand most of my English when I speak fairly slowly and simply. They need the chance to practice actually speaking, which is the emphasis.
Primary continues to be interesting and a challenge. Today it was seven kids, four boys (more often it's only girls) and those plus one of the girls have rarely or never been before, while the other two always come and know all the songs. Makes it interesting to teach singing! We are working on The Miracle (O Milagre) by Shawna Edwards (yes, it has been published in the Friend so it's "kosher") but the chorus gets kind of tricky, especially fitting in the Portuguese words and for people like me who don't sing so well anymore even when the notes aren't so high as those! I was thinking we'd quit with what we know but now the presidency has decided it will be the big finale for our Primary Program. I need to work on the language for talking about the meaning of the song, the greatest miracle of Christ being the one that saves us.
Speaking of parking areas, the deconstruction across the street has changed again, into a parking lot, unofficially I think,
and the front area in the photo is often very full of motorcycles on the rubble. I guess free parking is free parking..... I do like that the walls are beginning to get painted up again with nice graffiti. In the background you can see the construction of the building that is causing all sorts of road closing and mess near the far corner of our street, not to mention banging and clanging at all hours since they often work at night when they can get trucks through. The tall building showing above the silver car is our apartment building. Behind it is the college (a satellite campus, you might call it) that brings in all the students that often fill the streets, and that owns the rubble being parked on plus the building under construction. Down in front of the construction there is a whole line of food carts in the evening even with the piles of dirt and rocks and frequent flooding from the road and building work. For a while every weekday evening they play loud music and many horns honk as cars try to squeeze through. Fortunately the loudest music is from vehicles moving so it doesn't last.
Pacovan bananas are pretty good, the smaller bunch are about four inches.
Caught two of the awesome office elders talking with this young man the other evening,
Elder Harrison center (executive secretary - don't envy him dealing with visas and other bureaucratic legalities! - and Elder Rivera from Chile who is training to take over for Sister Chambers).
We had a sister fall in a manhole last week - the lid flipped and she went down in but managed to catch herself with her elbows out - she didn't touch bottom! They felt lucky to have been with some elders who could help as she had to be pulled out, suffering scrapes and bruises but nothing serious. We are detouring around all the many various concrete and metal "lids" in our walk to the office more than we used to :)
Family notes: I wasn't the only one to lose a tooth this week,
and Drew is looking very scholarly in glasses
Random inspiration for the week: a great talk that we should all review, me especially :)
I felt like I understood most of Sunday's stake conference, which was
 |
| The missionaries from Recife Stake with Lori and Allie Houseman toward the right and President towards left |
Yikes! did not plan to go to a dentist while here.
A bit like going back in time, little office with one helper and a spit basin. But he did seem to know his stuff, thankfully. Seems instead of a loose filling it was the crown next to it and under the crown the tooth was pretty much all cavity, not much was left anyway after being crowned due to very large filling and cracking and then having had a root canal through the crown and then having the root canal redone because of trouble. So he dug out the roots and I will let everything heal a while. The office is a little place with a small waiting room with TV going, one assistant who takes the CPF number and checks out our ID cards, hands the doc things now and then. He has a desk in the room with the chair and equipment where he talks and "marks" the next appointment and takes your cash money. He is the dentist of the dentist missionaries used to go to until her hubby was called as mission president elsewhere in Brasil. There are a lot of little dental offices on the street I would be pretty scared to go into.
Saturday Institute classes of EnglishConnect were sparsely attended this week, but those that came got chocolates if they actually did any homework. It's hard to get them to study between classes. Durk checked out the Spanish edition of the book and only the introduction is in Spanish, nothing else, so we are not as eager anymore about getting a Portuguese version. They really need more of the instruction in the native language, at least for the first level. I do OK with the second level since most of the class is really even beyond level two and they can understand most of my English when I speak fairly slowly and simply. They need the chance to practice actually speaking, which is the emphasis.
Primary continues to be interesting and a challenge. Today it was seven kids, four boys (more often it's only girls) and those plus one of the girls have rarely or never been before, while the other two always come and know all the songs. Makes it interesting to teach singing! We are working on The Miracle (O Milagre) by Shawna Edwards (yes, it has been published in the Friend so it's "kosher") but the chorus gets kind of tricky, especially fitting in the Portuguese words and for people like me who don't sing so well anymore even when the notes aren't so high as those! I was thinking we'd quit with what we know but now the presidency has decided it will be the big finale for our Primary Program. I need to work on the language for talking about the meaning of the song, the greatest miracle of Christ being the one that saves us.
Speaking of parking areas, the deconstruction across the street has changed again, into a parking lot, unofficially I think,
 |
| We saw more trash and concrete chunks being dumped there as darkness fell one night - from a hand-pulled cart |
Pacovan bananas are pretty good, the smaller bunch are about four inches.
We had a sister fall in a manhole last week - the lid flipped and she went down in but managed to catch herself with her elbows out - she didn't touch bottom! They felt lucky to have been with some elders who could help as she had to be pulled out, suffering scrapes and bruises but nothing serious. We are detouring around all the many various concrete and metal "lids" in our walk to the office more than we used to :)
Family notes: I wasn't the only one to lose a tooth this week,
 |
| grandson Isaac |
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