keep on truckin'

Not much is new to tell and busy busy - so yes, posts are getting farther between. Meanwhile we go from Transfer Week to Zone Conferences and back again. And again.  True, there's always a new wrinkle or complication, but listing those would be encyclopedic.

Elder Couto heading home in his northeast Brasil headgear,
too bad you can't see the whole thing, the back was interesting.... 

The street the office is on has a new bike lane that also works well for carts.  

people living in the park in front of the Bom Preco (that was WalMart for about a year and a half). There was a dad washing his kid in a bucket of water, hopefully not from the "river"

Hope it's allowed to share this from a recent report from a missionary in our mission:
"Recently, in the weekly emails of some of our missionaries, I learned about a woman named Claudia. They found Claudia while making contacts on the street. When missionaries opened the Book of Mormon to read and let the book speak for herself, Claudia recognized the book and shared an interesting story with the missionaries about how she knew about the Book of Mormon. It turns out that Claudia and her family read a book many times during the years that she was young, but they didn't know it was really the Book of Mormon. Claudia said she received a copy of the book from a teacher, but there was no cover nor any other pages that they could use to identify the book. In reading the Book of Mormon with her family, Claudia decided to memorize a favorite verse in the book and often repeated that verse to herself in difficult times in her life. Later, when she moved out of the house, the unidentified book stayed with her family.
One day after moving house, Claudia found what appeared to be a copy of the same book in a trash can. It contained only a few pages, so she still couldn't find out the source of the book, but was excited to read familiar pages of the book again. So, when the missionaries stopped her on the street to talk to her and opened a copy of the Book of Mormon and read it to her, she recognized that it was the same book that she and her family were reading for many years. Claudia opened the book to the verse she had memorized years ago and read to the missionaries. She was excited and very grateful to receive this new copy of the Book of Mormon and for knowing more about the Church. The missionaries gave him a new copy of the Book of Mormon and she said she would put on a special cover to keep it new and clean. She started to receive lessons from missionaries.
Can you imagine the joy these missionaries felt after following the promptings of the
spirit of stopping Claudia on the street and opening the Book of Mormon to let it speak for itself?"

So, the refreshments at the ward Relief Society "Ministering Meeting" included a surprise cake made to celebrate our one-year in Brasil anniversary. Thanks to watching the cutting of cake for a birthday at English class, I had a clue how to do it right when they made me cut it - thin enough for a big group to get a piece (and it was several layers tall) using a large spoon and a small knife.

A whole crew and many hours replacing the whole bottom mechanism made our door, well, about as hard to open as it was before. But instead of one really hard place it is all just fairly hard to push/pull. Maybe one day someone will take the white plastic protective stuff off the metal.....

variety of street views again

Would kind of like to know how fast the buildings get like this....Most of the new ones are tile and stay clean-looking a bit longer without repainting - we think -

Office staff and AP's as Elder Harrison got ready to leave, we get to know the office elders pretty well and its hard to see them move on. Every time it changes the character of the office.

Following the iron rod to the Tree of Life - although this photo was a reprise, after they had eaten the real fruit that had been on there. One girl was so excited to eat her guava she could hardly get over it.

The source of our food poisoning about a year ago - (not the Subway, which has the most popular "cream cheese chicken" and vegetables which unfortunately do not look anything like the photo of the salad you can choose to buy.)

Its closed in this photo, but yes, it is a restaurant, even fancy ones are often remodeled homes.

Birthday party after English Connect class, Heloisa (holding cake, the H is silent) turned 18 on the 18th as we had lesson 18.

after zone conference is photo time, everyone has to take photos with all their former companions and friends. This is right after meetings end when they are picking up their materials. There were 80 orders of materials to fill in two days!

Main photo of second zone conference, where we go help lay out all the materials at the Prazeres building.  Right in front of me is Sister Marrott who gave me a haircut - she was coming to the office on her P-day and it was really nice to have an english-speaking American-trained haircutter.
Photos below are from the drive there, which as always is very complicated - no driving straight anywhere.

All sorts of little stands, sometimes rows of them together and sometimes once in a while, sometimes along the road facing foot traffic on the sidewalk, sometimes up against buildings, occasionally in the middle like this.

The open doorways are furniture fixing shops. Would you like to buy fruit salad from the guy with the bike?

a pay-for-parking lot

street vendors are everywhere, and by street, I mean in the street whenever traffic stops. Mostly water and chips or fruit or wierd sort of cheeto-like puffs with no color or flavor.

We bought this pitanya on sale and asked the neighbor about it, who wasn't sure - so we went back home and googled it and a minute later the neighbors came back with the info they had googled - dragon fruit (like I thought) but I was told the yellow kind with white inside is much sweeter. These had very mild flavor but stain your hands like beets.

Eating pitanya at the Benevides'

Elder Harrison stopping by our apartment to say good-by when he got transferred. He was a great Executive secretary and now gets to be a great zone leader.

Some old folks hanging around.

jfl

Even the grocery stores (and malls) charge for parking. This one goes by how much you spent at the grocery store - under an hour was free then about one hour per each R$50 you spend - (about $12), so mostly it is a matter of keeping control over who parks there. Then there has to be an attendant near the exit to see your receipt and figure out if you owe any money.

I was trying out a "melody map" to teach "O Poder das Escrituras" (Scripture Power) but had too much trouble remembering how the words fit the music on the second half so I gave up and we sang along to the youtube video. The church music app doesn't allow for hearing the words with the music (in portuguese) so only the video tells me which choices to make when they squeeze words together. And I have a tendency to start singing the words to the tune of Nephi's Courage --- which they fit really well. I'm going to write the words in on the chart for my own benefit and now that the piano is nearer the front it might be easier to play as I teach the songs?

Later in the day I got called (20 minutes into their rehearsal) to please come play for the stake choir;

This is what came with Domino's pizza - ketchup and mayonnaise.

From seven to eight a.m. Monday morning was the drumming and horn-blowing of a marching band-type sound, not very melodic but loud and energetic, from the street nearby. Maybe the grand opening of the building they've been working on. It didn't seem to us that it was finished but maybe they had to start school in it anyway. Very patriotic with Brasil's colors on there. And perhaps the end of construction banging clanging roaring engines in the middle of the night?