Botanical Gardens of São Paulo

Kerma and Richard Hill from Blackfoot Idaho, Area Medical Adviser for Brazil with Jerry. We took them to the Botanical Gardens for our first P-day in a month. We had been to this park before, but this was their first time. Dr Hill receives calls on his cell phone all day long from mission presidents and their wives requesting medical advise for sick and injured missionaries. Here he is taking a call from Sister Prieto (the mission president's wife) in the Goiânia Mission.

These huge leaves were clustered around the base of a palm tree and were about two feet wide and three feet across. They were not part of the palm tree but were growing on a separate staulk next to the palm tree.

Dr Hill still on the same call.

This bush of brilliant pink flowers caught our eye as we walked through the gardens. The gardens were full of school children on field trips from various schools in the São Paulo area. Here a group of children are rolling down a grassy slope and then running back to the top to try it again.

Children are pretty much the same all over the world. At first a little shy, but as we made an effort to talk with them they warmed up. Soon they we practicing all the English word they knew. When we began to speak to them in Portuguese their natural curiosity came to the surface and we had a delightful time talking with them. As you can see they were quite willing to let us take a few pictures.

These children were all from the same school and ranged from about nine to twelve years old.

There was such a profusion of beautiful flowers through out the gardens that was hard not to show more of them. For now this one will have to do.

Oh to have this much energy again!

They followed us for a while asking us if we didn't want to take just one more picture Upon seeing this large gatheing of children excitingly pointing and screaming for other to "come and see", we joined the crowd to see what was happening.
This was the reason. A small band of tiny monkeys had come out of the forest to beg for food. One of the students had a banana which he peeled and offered to one of the larger monkeys. He quickly grabbed it and in trying to scamper away, dropped the banana. You can see him in the middle of the picture about half way up the tree. He's looking regretfully down at the banana. Tchau for now. I will send more pictures soon.

Vernon and Jerry.

Couples we have served with

President and Sister Clark addressing Dr. and Sister Brinton, Area Medical Advisor (AMA). He thanked them for their for dedicated service in Brazil. This was a gathering of the mission presidency and branch presidencies, as we held a farewell party for the Brintons. They served together in Rio as Mission President and then came back to Brazil about six months later as AMA.

Front row left to right: Ronald and Thelma Dent. He served as the mental health adviser and now they serve together as temple missionaries together. Then Sister Nilce Bassi. Back row: President Osvaldo Bassi, president of Branch 12. And then us.From left to right: Adriana and Paulo Kretly, 2nd councelor in the CTM presidency; Orestes de Oliveira, counselor in Branch 13; Nasário and Martha Araújo, President of Branch 13; Dennis and Lavina Alldredge, counselor in Branch 4.

From left to right: Carli and David Arntsen (she has her hand on his shoulder). President of Branch 6; Don Farrow, counselor in Branch 4; Larry and Lynette Clark (her sister's husband is David Eastman's brother. Some of you know David). President of Branch 4; Front row couple on the right: Nolan and Christine Steadman, counselor in Branch 1. From left to right: Luis Carlos and Rose Mary Perrupato, counselor in Branch 12; Ruth and Thomas Pratt, president of Branch 7; Álvaro and Fátima Ichi, counselor in Branch 12; The Perrupato's son; Maria and Ruben Ferraz, counselor in Branch 6.
Back row, from left to right: Richard and Kerma Hill, new AMA and counselor in Branch 7; Milton and Barbara Brinton, departing AMA and former president onf Branch 4; Sidney and Marisa Camargo, first counselor of the CTM presidency; Donald and Zaza Clark, MTC President; Front row: Luiz Carlos Yamaguchi, president of Branch 11; Ercilia and loacir Nunes, counselor in Branch 11.

We´re still alive here in Brazil

13 August 2010

Dear Family, Friends et al.,

There will be pictures to follow soon!

Until now Jerry has been the chief of our blogging efforts. However since we returned to Brazil, she has had more to do than she had during the first two years we were here (some of it is at her own choice) and I have a little less to do than before. Currently she is going through the grammar part of a new district's curriculum in the classroom with them for two to three hours a day.

She is supervising the rehersals of the MTC choir for their perfomances at a new LDS chapel "open house" not far from here. We are now in the middle of perforamces every night this week. We are just there at the open house for a half hour, but getting almost a hundred missionaries up the hill to the chapel and then back to the MTC each evening is a major task in itself. And it has been more of an adjustment to a new mission president and wife than anticipated.

She also is doing an hour of exercise, an hour of companion study with me, and two hours of individual study a day. (She truly is not happy unless she is over scheduled). I, therefore, have assumed her duty as the official blogger in this companionship. The drawback here is that my typing skills are not nearly as good as hers. But I'm going to give it my best shot and we'll post news items of interest and photos on a regular basis.

Repentance is a wonderful principle and with some help from Jerry we want to get back into the routine of posting the things that will be of interest to all of you. Thanks for all of your encouragement to do so. We appreciate all of you very much.

Abraços (hugs) to all.

Vernon and Jerry

No pictures yet! We have to relearn how to post them.

We went home March 12 and resubmitted our mission papers. We received our 2nd mission call on May 12th. We were called to return to Sao Paulo and serve one more year in the Missionary Training Center (MTC). Vernon is the Executive secretary and I am his assistant.

It was interesting returning to the same apartment where we had lived for two years. We knew exactly where to put everything and was unpacked in no time. Sunday we were able to reunite with eight senior couples we had been serving with and one couple we had known before, who had returned while we were gone for their fourth mission in Brazil.

Seven new American couples arrived while we were gone. All the young missionaries are new to us too. A Lot is being changed in the first two days of the orientation for the new young missionaries. The missionary department is always trying to make these first few weeks of an individual's mission meaningful and memorable.

One thing knew to our calling is "acting." The missionaries now have a teaching experience the very first day. We acted the part of a couple that the missionaries had found and were coming over to teach for the very first time. Two MTC teachers acted the part of the missionaries. They did not know our specific situation but the new missionaries did. The new missionaries were to evaluate the first encounter with the couple by the missionaries to see if the missionaries were able to identify the specific needs of the couple. It was interesting how insightful the new young missionaries were.

friday p-day at the batanical garden

For p-day we love to find

a park in Sao Paulo to stroll through. So for my birthday I got to choose.

this botanical garden use to be a private estate.

one of the buildings in the park is a plant museum.

I love the little details on this building.

Vernon/Grandpa enjoys the museums more than most of us because he can read the text that goes along with all the displays.

but I can still enjoy the architecture and the stain glass windows (this was the ceilingin in the entry) without a good command of Portuguese

.

these wide open areas are such a refreshing brake to all the freeways, skyscrapers, cars, concrete, and graffiti

Off in the distance are green houses.

Here we are inside one of the green houses.

Even those these gardens are inside, we often see just as lush folage in outside landscaped gardens throughout Sao Paulo.

Many of the gated communities that surround the skyscraper communities here in Sao Paulo look very much like these botanical gardens only on a smaller scale. It is amazing how far away you feel from the city when a wall of natural growth surrounds you.

Wow! I just love all the variety of theses different sizes and shapes of these leaves.

This was one of the hotest days we have had so far in Brazil and inside these green houses it was almost too humid and too hot to stay very long.

There has been so much rain in Sao Paulo that a trail washed out and cover the park with mud. All the water was muddy and these water lilies were covered with mud. There were workers throughout the park that were shoveling out walkways and spraying the plants that were covered with mud.

Some of the walkways were covered with puddles and some of the stair ways looked like water falls from the ground water that was draining off. We have had rain everyday in Sao Paulo for about 45 days straight. Usually the day starts out hot with clear skies then some time between 4 and 6 the skies cloud up and we have a thunder storm. Fortunately it helps things to cool off but the ground has just become so saturated that even some trees are falling over.

These stairs looked like something out of an ancient Mayan ruin. There were two sets of stairs on either side of a large multi circular pond. stairs looked like something out of an ancient Myan ruin.

This day was almost too hot to be out, but it was amazingly cool in the shade. After we got home I think we all felt exhausted from a little heat exhaustion.

The flowers are just breath taking all over Brazil. I never seem to be able to get use to seeing these types of flowers out in the open. Back home they would only be inside, in a green house, or a floral shop.

Blue flowers that looked like orchids were growing as a bush which we had never seen before.

This walkway was covered by tall bamboo. It was like walking through a natural vaulted ceiling as high as you might see in a cathedral.

Originally I wanted to bring a picnic but when we found that there was this delightful out door cafe at the park we decided to have lunch under these gorgeous arbors

We did bring some fruit with us. The Brazilians call it "lashiba". They look like old strawberries, but when you peel them they look and taste like a sweet peeled white grape.

But inside is a huge pit.

It turned out to be a perfectly refreshing day.