Jerry and Vernon: Our favorite park

This is our favorite park. We have been here three times now. The director of the area MTC's, Kelly Mills, was just here and after going out to dinner we took him to my favorite spot.

The park is always so peaceful and amazingly quiet even when there are a lot of people here. We almost feel like we are in a cathedral when we are here.

The turtles look like statues sunning themselves on these logs. They move so so slowly (except when they are swimming in the water) that they do look like they are statues. Then they are just extremely slow.

The geese enjoy strolling right along with us.

Every time we come there is some tree or bush in bloom no matter if it is winter, spring, summer or fall.

We always enjoy being together with the Halls and the Woodwards

Just over the fence were families of capivara, ducks and geese all sitting and sunning themselves.

The park is very clean and well maintained. There is no charge to enter the park. I am always surprized that more people do not spend time in the park. On Saturday when we brought Brother Mills here, there were more people than on Fridays when we normally have our P-day. This day there were a lot of monkeys in the trees and groups of children were feeding them.

These long rows of trees resemble long corridors in cathedrals with high vaulted ceilings.

This part of the park is very serine with a statue of patron saint of the forest looking out over a small stream and with huge moss covered bolders.

It is hard to imagine when you are in the park that just a short distance away are very crowded highways with thousands of cars. The retaining walls throughout the park are made of concrete blocks and the pathways are also made of some sort of paving stone.

We met a couple in the park that were willing to take a group picture here on top of this monument. It marks the midpoint between the equador and the South Pole and is known as the Tropic of Capricorn. We gave them a pass-a-long card and shared with them a little bit about the Book of Mormon and the Church.

This is the museum of wood. It must have been an old mansion at one time.

The upper level of the museum is not always open to visitors but this day we were invited to go up stairs. Here we are putting on the slippers designed to help protect the wooden floors.

Vernon's pair were a bit miss-matched
but you can see how beautiful the floor is with these two tones of hard wood.

The guide stayed with us and explained everything in great detail. The President speaks Portuguese and Sister Woodward speaks some but mostly we all rely on Vernon to do the interpretting.

These are close-up shots of the stained glass windows that were the only source of light on this second level.

Butterflies were the motif in the one of the rooms.

Seed pods and leaves of the various specie of trees in Brazil was the inspiration for the stain glass windows in the other room.

This one window had a whole in it.

The defused light coming through these colored glass panels also lends to the peacefulness of this place.

Each one of these wooden panels is made from a different type of wood found in Brazil.

The carving on each panel shows what the leaves look like and the seed pods for this specific type of wood

All of the rooms on the second floor are filled with old furniture that has been made from the various types of wood. I especially liked the different chair designs.

I was tempted to sit in the chairs to see how comfortable they were but there were "please do not sit on the chairs" signs all over the place.

This room is down stairs and has large gross sections of wood to give you a sence of how big the tress are. Then there are trunks behind the table that have been cut revealing the varigation in color that many of the trees have. The bags on top of the cabinet are also made out of wood products. They appeared to be made from large strips of bark or pods that we saw laying on the ground under certain types of trees in the park.

This cabinet holds actual samples of the seeds for each of the different types of wood.

The seeds are as varied and interesting as the samples of the wood.

This shot gives you a feel for the architecture of the building and the beautiful natural lighting throughout the museum.

On this particular day there was a display of children's art from throughout the world. They were all impressions of the Amazon. Following are a few of my favorite.

Tuacons are birds native to Brazil

These children really seemed to be able to capture the richness of the color I see and feel everywhere in Brazil.

The shapes and movement of these childrens art is so delightful.

Many of them captured for me the mood of this wonderful country.

I hope you enjoyed them as much as I did.

Just outside the park are small shops and cafes. On Saturday there were street venders that seem to pop up every where. The other day when we went to the zoo. The police came by and told them to move or they would have to take them to jail and confisgate their wares. They all packed up but as soon as the police left, the the venders moved back in.