it's a mystery

The Fortaleza temple! details much later in the post.....

Sometimes this board is mostly shopping lists and apartment inspection or fixing lists, but right now it is a big grid for checking off all the steps for the apartments needed in the growth before splitting the mission. There is a lot of effort involved from finding to moving in. Apartment owners mostly just stick up a sign, so it takes pavement pounding to find something available in the right area - then there is checking it out, agreeing and getting contracts approved, buying furniture and fittings, (you have to provide the oven, fridge, washer, etc.) getting utilities going, tax information, etc. etc. It can mean moving things up and down many flights of stairs in the heat with no electricity on yet to run fans. And you might get to watch pigs eating garbage out front.  Not everyone gets these sorts of adventures, isn't Sister Houseman lucky?

Betania's son-in-law is a barber so Durk got an impromptu haircut in her living room when we stopped by for a "cha" for her grandbaby that is about to arrive. We had four canceled Ubers trying to get home from there and the driver that finally did come was not the safest, we almost got broadsided. It's the first time I've really felt unsafe, since usually drivers watch out for each other extremely well despite the crazy traffic patterns.

Not the first missent to far off shores, if you ever wonder why some mail is slow......

Not often, but once in awhile I get a little creative time in while I have the energy.

Wahoo! it only took a year and a half or more to get this little project done (I started well before we came). We hope to have prints made but everything is suspended until after Carnaval.

We have a new favorite eating place with a familiar name, GreenMix opened a new store in Shopping RioMar and we had the best salad in a year. They have a salad counter with a laminated page of options that you mark choices on, pay there, then they bring it to you (soon!). Caramelized onions, nuts and seeds, palmito, all sorts of goodies. The other couples (temple missionaries) went to the Grill counter and their veggie side dishes were gorgeous. If only they were in our neighborhood, I'd be over there once a week. There were no lines because we went on a Monday (and we didn't have the usual wait to convince them we were ready for the bill), but traffic is still heavy and routes complicated so it's generally about a three hour commitment all told. We do enjoy spending some time with other senior couples though, hearing about their previous mission experiences and such.

Mail! Thanks, JC Young Women.

My current desk decor (the big cornhusk flower moved to Cicera's potted plant next door). We love Bethany's cards, and it arrived right on Valentine's Day, which is not the same day for Brazilians - so we can celebrate twice.

It always changes the character of the office when office elders come and go. We miss Elder Rivera who made us think there were birds chirping at the window with his little whistles while he worked, but now he is a new district leader and a new missionary trainer and opened a brand new area.

Elder Rivera with his newly-arrived companion, who spent quite a while waiting in another mission for his visa. They will be a powerhouse companionship! There are so many really awesome missionaries here!

We had a chance for a quick trip out of the city - missionaries with certain health problems need an escort home just to make sure if anything happened there would be someone who could speak for them so we got to go to Fortaleza. It wasn't working to schedule flights that that would allow us to do a session at the new temple so we planned to just hang out in the airport before returning, but when we got there, one of the welcoming party for the missionary offered to drive us out to see the temple.

Since Durk knew the temple president a bit from his mission, someone went to get him and he brought us in and showed us around. They kept saying it was small but beautiful and it really is gorgeous, quite a gem.

The rain was unusual as the area is known for being very very dry, yet right now there is a lot of green grass which we don't see much here. It was interesting to see a city similar yet different - it has more of a real freeway, somewhat more consistent neighborhoods with large areas of tile roofed buildings and areas with very tall buildings in slightly different styles, and not so much graffiti or random dead buildings. You can't tell much from the airport view :)

The worst part of the trip was actually the taxi ride home - it was peak "get to Carnaval" time and after the first mile of so flying along, we got stuck with lines of busses and all sorts of gridlock, eventually hitting a bridge that had lanes taken up with ending of partying so that it took about two hours in the taxi from the airport. That's longer than the flight to Fortaleza.

One of the things the missionary said as we watched people not following instructions at the airport, is that Brazilians are just going to do what they want to do. Along the highway we saw a very large sign saying "please obey the traffic signals". We've noticed that sometimes the white dashed lines on the street seem to mean "center your car here so you can go into either lane when you want to"

So what's the mystery (in the title)? you name it, we do a lot of detective work, all of us, every day. From landlords without phone number or email address to printers that can change their mind daily whether or not they talk to certain computers, we could list multiple things everyday that we have to figure out, find, or guess, or give up and shrug.