Comings and Goings On

Just a few photos of what we've been doing lately.  We attended a zone activity on the last P-day of the transfer.  The church owns a really nice place in the hills that are close to the city.  The property is within this zone and so it was the perfect place for them to meet to relax a little and have a churrasco (barbeque).

A lot of the Brazilian elders know how to use these outdoor grills.  The North Americans just sit back and let them go at it.  As you can tell, I was a lot of help too.  It's definitely a man's job here in Brazil to do the outdoor cooking and I think the elders feel pretty manly when they do it.  When you ask one of the Brazilian missionaries what their favorite food is, they usually answer churrasco.  It's popular here, but even more so in southern Brazil, I understand.

 Elder Neves is just putting a couple of pineapples on the grill. It is really good especially with cinnamon on it.  They also cooked some chicken and other sausage-type things and grilled some bread that was pretty good. I brought some brownies with a layer of marshmallow and frosting on top.  That was about as close to s'mores as I could get. 

It has been really dry lately and the grass and trees show it.  I hope they can survive because the drier and hotter part of the year is just starting.  The trees on the hills behind are usually green and beautiful, but everything was pretty brown.  In fact on the other side of that hill there was a pretty good sized brush/forest fire that day.  You can sort of see the haze in the sky.  You can't tell from this picture just how big this place is.  They have about 8 or 10 of those lovely shelters with the fireplace things in them with tables and sinks.  There are restroom/shower facilities in various places there and a few other nice buildings.  All 13 stakes that are here share it, so I guess it has to be big.

        This is our "going home" group.  This time of year it seems like we always have some that have to leave a little early to get back to school, so we had a pretty small group left by the end of the transfer. The airline schedules were so varied and crazy, we had to have the farewell dinner for them on Sunday afternoon.  We will miss these good missionaries. 

                                                      

On Monday morning, it was transfer day.  The missionaries meet in the parking lot at a church near the office and make the switches.  They also like to visit with their old companions and mission friends.  It's a fun time for them, but we try to move them along pretty fast.  There is work to be done, you know.

This is only a small part of the missionaries and suitcases I saw when I pulled up, but I just couldn't get a picture of it all.  Quite often members from the wards will come down so they can help the missionaries get their luggage hauled.  It is so nice of them.  For some reason, the city buses won't let them get on with those big suitcases.  If you've seen a crowded bus in South America, you probably understand why.

On Tuesday we dealt with more luggage when we met the new elders at the airport.  Today we got a great group of eight, all Brazilians.  We all go to our apartment and have a sit-down dinner and get acquainted a little bit.  We will get one North American tomorrow.  They are having trouble getting visas again so a lot of the North Americans are going to the MTC in Provo for training while they are waiting for visas.  Sometimes they get stuck there for quite a while and then just trickle in as their visas arrive. It sort of puts a kink in our system, but what are you gonna do? 

And that's what we've been up to lately. 

Anticipation, Anticipa-a-tion

Sometimes we get hungry for restaurant food we used to get occasionally at home.  (We only talk about it 4 or 5 times a week.  Or maybe a day.)  We think the restaurants are a little expensive here so we don't go out too often.  But, recently we saw this advertisement and thought Hallelujah! There is a place we can buy deep-fried, battered shrimp.  Let's go!  (We had asked before at a couple of other restaurants if it was available, and they acted like they had never heard of such a thing.)

We made plans, talked about it all day,  and decided to take along our bottle of cocktail sauce we had imported from home. We headed out at about 6:30 or 7:00, which is early by Brazilian standards.  We got seated quickly, and ordered quickly because we knew what we wanted. It didn't take long for our waiter to come back with our order.  It was about this time we realized we had forgotten to bring our cocktail sauce, but no worries.  We could see that it was a lot of food and we just figured we would eat some of the shrimp there and then ask for a box and take the rest home to eat with the sauce.

It looked great.  The shrimp were all lined up around the outside of the serving dish atop some pretty rice and vegetables with some potatoes in the middle. (I just realized that I 'm not sure whether I should say shrimp or shrimps and use was or were.  I guess I will look up the plural form later.)  Anyway, Alan beat me to the first shrimp.  He took a bite.  I waited for a reaction.  I honestly thought he was going to cry, and he said he almost did.

But alas, not for joy.

Each shrimp had been split and filled with what we later found out was catipury cheese before it was battered and fried.  I think Alan described it pretty well when he said it was like biting into a nice, juicy shrimp that had been covered in a generic brand of Easy Cheese.  I thought the texture was more along the lines of Elmer's Glue. ( Not that I've eaten any since elementary school, but that's what came to mind.)

So we ate the potatoes, of course, stirred the rice around a bit, and asked for a box.  Before we left the restaurant Alan asked if we could order the shrimp another time without the cheese.  The waiter said, "No because we just buy them frozen.  They come that way."

Pre-frozen shrimp and we are 50 yards from the ocean?  Talk about a double whammy!  Actually, triple whammy if you consider the price we paid. 

When we got home we made some incisions,  squeezed the cheese out and enjoyed some nearly cheese-free shrimp WITH imported cocktail sauce. Not too bad, but there was a certain air of sadness, bordering depression as we ate.

It's still hard to talk about.