Oh How Lovely Was This Day

Today is incredibly lovely.......We were able to finish up many things this morning, so we have come home early today. I'm sitting on our balcony, listening to the call of the many birds above the sounds of the city. I had no idea there would be so many birds right here in the heart of the city! I've spent a delightful fifteen minutes hanging over the railing watching them--blue, grey, rusty, a mustard-y yellow as well as a buttery yellow.......and all different voices! Father in Heaven has blessed us so abundantly! Their homes are in a wooded patch just behind our building. I imagine I'm looking down on the top of the jungle canopy! Dozens of different trees; all shades of green from lemony green to blue-green that create excellent camouflage for the blue birds. I'm sure they are all different heights as well. But from up here, they look fairly flat. There is a small "university" bordering the  other side of the trees. I hope there is no easy access to this little oasis. I hate to think of someone coming in and cutting down the trees for a high-rise apartment building. (They just did that over by the mission home--makes my heart ache.) This morning while waiting for the elevator we were watching out the window on the other side of the building. The zoo is straight across the street--another large wooded area. I had already taken pictures of the ships at the mouth of the bay and was watching the birds--swallows, I think, a few different varieties--as the careened above the road seeking their breakfast. I see them often while we are waiting. Sometimes they fly so close to the window I could touch them and they are so swift! Suddenly, hundreds of yellow wings blossomed out from one of the trees in the zoo. At first I thought they were more birds, then more fluttered into the sky! Butterflies!! Thousands of them!! Bright yellow butterflies! that quickly got lost in the bright light of morning. I want to know the names of all these lovely things......the trees, the birds, the butterflies...... What a Wonderful World! It truly is glorious and beautiful!!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from Salvador! About six weeks ago the lights began to appear along the streets. So pretty! They were all blue and white--warm and cool. I loved the sparkly blue....... Tonight we went out to "see the lights". Most of these are a little blurry, but I thought they turned out pretty well, considering I took them "on the fly".......

While driving around, we found a really big park covered with lights........and in the trees. It's so interesting to see them with leaves on! So different! Still beautiful! Lots of people there tonight.

Sharing.........

There are some things I need to share with you before they get lost in the netherlands of time and space........not to mention my mushy brain!

We have two very fine sisters serving in our ward--both from Sao Paulo--though that doesn't tell much about them. Somehow, we had an old, but functioning stove available in the mission. The elders had asked if they could give it to a ward member, but had never got around to it. Well! When these terrific sisters learned about it, they wanted it! Now! Roger and I went and picked it up from the elders, wore out two (and I'm afraid the only) SOS pads I will see here cleaning it up, checked to make sure it worked--totally excited that every burner worked! We loaded it into the back of our car and went to pick up the sisters. The very grateful recipient is the one who lives in the "slot canyon" at the bottom of those scary stairs........I think I wrote about that in another post, early on. The street in front of those stairs is only slightly less steep. But Roger stopped the car--right in the road, because, of course, there is absolutely no where else! The sisters and I got out, lifted the stove out of the back, and Roger went to see if he could find a safe place to park the car. And those two adorable sisters picked up that stove and started down the stairs!! About a third of the way down, a very nice young man offered to help, handed me his grocery bag, and took the near end of the stove from Sister A. There was no help for Sister C. on the bottom end, but she was steadfast and we soon found ourselves in front of B's door! She came to the door about the time Roger showed up at the bottom of the stairs. We moved the stove into the kitchen--pulled the old one out, hooked up the new one, checked again to make sure everything worked--they did! RAH!!! Then! those sweet, stalwart young women picked up that old, worn out, rusted out, greasy stove and hauled it out and UP all those stairs! Sadly, there was no nice young man to help. But they made it all the way to the top. Roger hurried to get the car and those darling girls rolled the stove into it. We drove to where the garbage was piled on the street--waiting for pick up......they still do it by hand here--three men standing on the back of a garbage truck jump down and hand-throw the garbage into the back of the truck. We left the old, well-used stove with the rest of the garbage and we all went home--tired, but with joyful hearts.

 

This is a poor picture of the stairs......but it does give you an idea of what they are like.......and here are a couple of really poor pictures of those heroes...........I really don't know how they did it. Maybe they had angels helping them..........

I'm still way impressed with how hard these people work........and more than a little sorry about it. This is the second time they have cut this area since we got here. And they "cut" it right down to the dirt, raked it up and put it in bags...........

Haven't seen many cement mixers........really, not one till yesterday.......most often the ingredients are dumped on the sidewalk and mixed with a shovel right there......... They do have cement trucks for the big projects...........

These are the goofy elders in our district.....well, till yesterday when we had transfers and three of them were transferred. We are now down by two.......thankfully, we still have our darling sisters. I think it's so cool how this work brings us together from all around the world......here we have an elder from Mexico, one from Cape Verde, one from another state here in Brazil, and two from Utah. We love them all!

Roger had lots of chances to use his new drill........CO/smoke alarms in the new apartments..... curtains and white boards...........

I never tire of the constantly changing view from the windows near the elevators. I wish I remembered what the sky was like for this first one.......why there is no color and such stark contrast. I'm always fascinated by the ships.....what are they carrying? where have they come from? where are they going? what was the weather like during their voyage? how long did it take? How I'd love to have the answers............

 

Addendum

So many things I want to tell you........and pictures to show you.........I might have to do it in two or three posts. I don't know that I can do it all tonight.

The day after our tropical rainstorm (November 27), which did cause some damage in some areas--I was sad to hear--we were on the road again. The rain washed a lot of red dirt and debris into the ocean.....and garbage, I'm sorry to say.........

You can see how dirty and turbulent the ocean is...... I was also interested to see that the cleanup began immediately. There were men in orange coveralls cleaning up along the roads, and the men in green had knee-high boots (like my father used to wear) wading through what little water was left in the "canals" (in Arizona we would call them a "wash") cleaning up the garbage and debris. (I hope the video doesn't make you motion sick. I have to take a lot of my pictures "on the fly").

I was also a little amazed at how quickly the ocean cleared up......... here is it November 28-- Thanksgiving Day. Some places were still a little muddy.......

By the 29th, it was mostly clean.........

And pretty much back to it's beautiful self on the 30th.......

I can hardly believe that I really live close enough to the Atlantic Ocean that I can see it 2-3 times a week! I hope we have a p-day before too much longer so I can wet my feet in that ocean. We are told it is warm! Can you imagine? .......Oh. In the picture above, you may notice what looks like a small island out there on the horizon....... It's a ship!! They are so much bigger than they appear from our apartment building. Just mind-boggling to me....... This picture--below--is looking across the mouth of the bay. There are ships out there, I promise. About eight of them! There were a bunch of them the morning after the storm.

Even the collapsed wall was cleaned up and a metal barrier, fence/wall, kind of thing in it's place. I don't know if it's meant to be permanent or not, but it all looks clean and nice as of yesterday, the 30th. I was so glad to see the backhoe.

Now another, unrelated curiosity............... Brazil has taken "Black Friday" to a whole new level. Or maybe not, now I think about it. I've never been Black Friday shopping, so I don't know what it's like at home. But I know what it's like here! We were crazy enough to go to the mall on Friday!! Never again! Truly, they advertise "Black Week".

These are washing machines here in front

See the red and black flags?

One of the stores we were in had black crepe draped across the ceiling and balloons everywhere. Even Walmart had black streamers everywhere throughout the non-food part of the store and piles of electronics, mostly TVs, and small appliances like blenders, fans, and microwave ovens. I've never seen anything like it! Maybe you have, if you are a black Friday shopper...........

RAIN DAY!!!!

I'm just going to paste my journal entry in here because why write it twice?? Right!?!?

Today is a day for the record book!!!! It was raining when we woke up. Hard. And it kept raining all morning long. I put lunch in the crock pot, first thing (we were going to be feeding four hungry elders at lunchtime).......browned the roasts and cut up the potatoes and carrots. It was chuck full! Our first plan (A) was to go finish up the contracts and take some kitchen supplies to Amaralina. Then Sister Triumpho called to say they were at the airport, the new elder's plane had been delayed more than an hour and the President needed to be at the office for interviews, could we come wait at the airport? Of course. 

Plan B: go to the office to unload the kitchen supplies so we would have room for luggage, then to the airport. It was raining like crazy. The roads were flooding. We had to drive very slowly and merge to other lanes to avoid driving through higher than axle deep water. The buses were pushing the water with their bumper in some places.

 We finally got to the office, unloaded the car and got everything upstairs, thanks to Anna (she is one of the “guards”, I think, but she is also the one who does all the cleaning). She is a gem! Sister Triumpho called to say the plane had to land somewhere else and the elder would be coming by bus and would be another 4-6 hours. Could we pick him up then? Sure. Plan C: haul half the stuff back to the car to take to Amaralina. We needed to get gas and planned to do that along the way. Still raining and flooding. The “canal” was completely full of water! It was even coming back through the storm drains onto the road—Garibaldi and Lucaia. 

Sorry it's fuzzy........best I can do.........

 
The “coast road” was much better. Of course, the canal was rushing into the ocean and it was churning! The ocean was brown today……… 

We pulled into a station to get some gas. The power was out so they could not pump any! Then the traffic nearly stopped! It took us more than an hour to go just a few blocks! We crawled along—literally—and prayed that we would not run out of gas. Just before the Amaralina church house there were two power poles leaning out into the street…….so far out that the busses could not get around them. And only one car at a time could get between the busses. It looked like an old wall had fallen onto the power poles and knocked them over. One was lying across a taxi! We wondered if there would be power to open the portas at the apartments. When we got to the first one, we could not see any lights anywhere, so we went to the second one……….they had power. We were able to park in the garage, out of the rain, and use the elevator. Thank goodness! They will have a nice apartment. I’m so grateful for that! We then wondered if we might be able to find our way around to the other apartment without going back into the traffic mess—the roads are one way in that area. I thought maybe I could do it, but all that happened was we got up in those narrow, twisting streets that are nearly straight up and down and got lost……….. still no gas. We finally found our way out and came home to check on lunch as we were feeding the elders today. The potatoes and carrots were still hard so I turned it to high and we started for the office. Stopped at the gas station at the end of our street to gas up. So thankful we had not run out!! The elders were mopping up the floor at the office. They were all dripping wet after walking through that rain and there was water everywhere. Even the chairs were wet! I sat on one long enough to learn that! We came home for lunch. The potatoes and carrots were still hard! I put all the veggies in the pressure cooker and the roasts in another pan and put it in the oven. The pressure cooker I put on the stove and prayed. While they cooked, Roger went to pick up the elders and I cut up the pineapple and set the table. They arrived before I got the gravy made, but thankfully, everything turned out okay and they ate every bit of it all! except the gravy. There was a little gravy left…….. We visited for a bit. Shared testimonies and had prayer, then Roger took them home and I washed the dishes. I was almost finished when he returned and we went back to the office. The rain had let up some.

Plan C: President Triumpho cancelled several interviews because of the rain—told the missionaries to stay in—we had a “rain day”!!! So they would go meet Elder Garcia. This time I was careful to sit on a dry chair. I did a little stitching while Roger tried to get some more stuff done with the contracts. I really don’t know all that he was trying to do, but I do know that he was somewhat frustrated and feeling a little overwhelmed. We are also trying to get an apartment open in Eunapolis which is a long way away, so he is trying to do it through email and telephone and nineteen year old sister missionary and Portuguese…….hard! We came home about 5:30. The rain had stopped and most of the roads had dried. We still found a puddle now and then, but nothing bad. Had some snacks……..I was not hungry after that big lunch. I finished a quilt block! Yay!! And marked the last two leaves on my temple apron. Then it was time to go to Primary program practice at the church. We got there……we learned the practice had been cancelled. Then! Roger wanted to go buy the pillow Sister Triumpho had called to ask us to get before tomorrow afternoon. So we did—ended up buying EIGHT!! As we will have 13 new missionaries in two weeks……… It’s been quite the day.........one for the record books............