Making Contact Again

This is the Prado family.  I taught them in Ponta Grossa in 1967.

Last Saturday Joseria was in the temple.  She’s the little blond girl.

This is her son Moroni.  He has come several times and once I was done for the day and out taking pictures of a sunset when he came out of the temple.

His brother has also come and has been part of a sealing team with me.  Joseria, Moroni, and his brother have all served missions.  Hers was in Brasilia.  Seeing her was a tearful reunion for both of us.

Split Seconds

For all those who recommended these when I asked about jam tarts, here are tonight’s treats.

Strawberry, raspberry, peach and a few ginger.

Curitiba Sunsets

Porto Alegre had magnificent sunsets that we could see from our apartment.  The problem there was that the sunsets were usually over by the time that I could get out a camera and get to the temple to try to get a picture.  My best temple picture from Porto Alegre is a sunset one, but I missed more than I took.  Here we have had three impressive sunsets, all when we were away from the temple, and a set of less impressive ones while we were home.  One advantage in Porto Alegre was that the road in front of the temple was higher than the temple and you looked down to the west when you stood in front of the temple.  Here you are looking up at the temple and you only see the bright sunset colors as a low band to the side of the temple, though you can often get interesting clouds.  I will clearly keep trying, but for now, here are three impressive sunsets and the best of the ones with the temple.

The more I look at this last one, the more I wonder how hard it will be to get a better shot.

There will, of course, be a lot more sunsets.

Trying to Make it More Like Home

In Porto Alegre there was no artwork on the walls, and no one cared what we put up.  So we had pictures of the grandkids and even some artwork they had sent to us.  I had pictures printed of our family and taped them to poster-sized paper and taped the results to our walls.  When we got here there were church pictures on many of the walls and we were told not to change them or put up our own.  That meant that we needed picture frames that could go on tables in place of things to go on the walls, and finding them wasn’t an easy thing.  Wandering the mall one evening we found a household goods store that we hadn’t seen before and bought two picture frames that I thought held 8 pictures, though what we actually bought were two of the ones that were on sale but only held 6 pictures.  For some reason I didn’t ever bother to count again and just went looking through my picture collection and some that Sandy had sent to us of her family for 16 pictures.

Pictures here are 10 by 15 centimeters, not exactly 4 by 6 inches, but the frames were exactly 4 by 6.  So I trimmed pictures to fit and then realized I had two more that I wanted to display than I had frames for.  In the end, we added four pictures and another frame.  Two sit on the high table next to the dining room table, and one sits on the coffee table that is pushed to one side of the living room so I have space to do stretching exercises on the rug.

On an entirely different note, here is a picture of what you need to make a good substitute for Miracle Whip.  Mayonnaise is a staple of Brazilian cooking and is in every store, but no one seems to carry Miracle Whip.  Janice grew up eating tuna salads with Miracle Whip, a tradition we have continued.  You can easily find tuna, though it’s relatively expensive, but finding all the ingredients for the recipe from the Internet for a Miracle Whip substitute required going to several different stores to include one gourmet shop for mustard powder.   When you add sweet paprika to mayonnaise you don’t get something that looks like Miracle Whip, but along with the other things it makes something that really does taste right in a salad.  So one more piece of home added.

Capybaras in the Park

I first saw a capybara as I was riding through the park and thought the one I saw on the other side of part of the lake looked like a small hippo lying in the grass, which really didn’t make any sense at all.  The next time I saw them there was a larger group up walking, and it was clear that they were something different.

They were still on the other side of the water (as you can see here), and so I couldn’t get close easily.

We identified them as capybaras and got some information about them through a Google search.  They are the world’s largest rodents, and closely related to a guinea pig.  They can get to be as big as 150 pounds.  I did figure out that there was a way to get out to where they were, but it wasn’t going to be as easy as just riding the bike out there.

Then a few days later, I noticed a bunch of people stopped taking pictures and here was a single capybara on the other side of the lake just sitting there looking out over the lake.

It was paying no attention to those taking its picture, to include me, but I have included a picture of someone else who was there taking a picture because it gives you a really good idea of the actual size of the capybara.  It’s a really big rodent.

A Blue Moon Over Curitiba

This was our Blue Moon for July.