Patience is a Virtue

Just a little update on my last post. I had told myself that as soon as I posted my rantings about being on hold forever that I would hang up the phone and try again another day, but I didn't.

I just started doing something else and after a while I finally heard a voice, a real human voice. It did have an Indian accent, but I could deal with that. I grabbed the phone and said hello, hello, but apparently the agent couldn't hear me. I kept trying... hello!....HELLO! He also kept saying hello and then he said, "I will hang up now. Apparently you are no longer on the line."

Alan could hear this because the phone was still on speaker. He said he wished he'd had a camera to capture the look on my face. I'm sure it was one of panic and despair. At that moment there must have been a divine intervention because I hit the TALK button. I didn't know why, I was just trying anything. That turned the speaker phone off, finally, and best of all the agent could hear me now.

Raul was great. He fixed everything. In the course of our conversation he asked me how long I had been on hold. I promise I didn't bring it up, he asked. By then it had been really close to 2 hours, but I said an hour and 45 minutes, just to give them the benefit of the doubt. He politely apologized and then said that he was going to see that I got an extra 30 days of virus protection for the inconvenience. Woot! Woot! I love free stuff.

Later I worked it out and I probably made a whopping 2.50 an hour by being patient. Oh well. At least I got the dishes done, some filing of pictures and had something to blog about. I guess it was worth the 2 hours.

P. S. I was going to try to find a picture on Google images to go along with this post, but when I went there it said that "using this site could damage your computer." It said the same thing on Yahoo image search and others in the list. Is that warning always there and I had just never seen it before? Has anyone else ever seen that? Do I have to call Raul again?

Freaking Dang it!

Freaking Dang it! is a missionary curse word combination I have heard one of the Brazilian elders here use. He is trying to learn English and this is what he uses to express his frustration. It makes me laugh every time I hear him say it.

But today I'm using it and I am not laughing because I have been waiting on the telephone for over an hour. It might be an hour and a half by now. I just had a simple question for someone about why Norton Internet Protection keeps sending me pop up things that say my subscription protection has expired and it doesn't expire until June 2009.

I really hate being on hold. This has gone on so long I feel like they put me on "mold." The "music" they have for you to enjoy while you pass the time is really getting on my nerves. It just isn't that enjoyable. The really sad part is that I decided to do the dishes and a few other things while waiting so I pushed the speakerphone button so I could hear it as I was working. I didn't want to miss it when the agent came on the line. Now I can't get the darn thing off speakerphone and the music is starting to bug Alan too.

So why don't I just hang up? Everytime I think I can't stand it anymore and I am going to hang up, a voice interupts the music to say, "We appreciate your patience. Please don't hang up. If you hang up now, it will increase your wait time as all calls are answered in the order they were placed."

Yes, I have it memorized, word for word.

I don't want to start over with this thing. I had already spoken to an agent in India who asked me all the initial questions before giving me this customer service number. Even though I had to ask her to repeat a lot of things I tried to be patient and nice because I understand a little about trying to be understood while speaking a different language and how frustrating it is when people don't really even try to understand.

Well, my patience is exhausted. The music track is cycling again and I just heard a really horrible instrumental rendition of "A Time for Us" for at least the 3rd time. I am through waiting. If a virus gets me, it gets me. I just can't take it anymore, freaking dang it!

The Party is Over...Way Over

We knew our way fun Christmas was over when, just a few days ago, Alan was eating the last cherry chocolate the kids brought down. Is that a sad look or what? But we had a great time with our whole family down here for the holidays. Here are a few pictures of how it went.

We were absolutely spoiled this year, not just because all of our family was here together, but they brought us 10 suitcases , full to the max, of mostly food items, that we had been missing.

The trip wore everybody out so the first day, I saw a lot of this.

The tables were turned this year. We were opening all the gifts......

The kids were looking on with hardly a thing to open. Sorry, kids.

Thanks for all the nice things you sent us. Dale and Angela sent Alan this sheep ornament and that put him in a festive mood.

We managed to have a really nice Christmas dinner with most of the things we usually have back at home and a few new things too.

As is usual during the holidays, we ate a lot. Our waiter took a picture of us after we finished a meal at the churrascaria. It is one of those places where they keep bringing you different meats to eat and you keep eating it until you are sick.

We all posed for a picture after a lunch we had with one of our elders that was leaving the mission a little ahead of his group. I was glad the kids got to meet him because he was a really great elder.

Of course we went to the beach. This beach has some pretty interesting colors of sand. I liked the contrast of the blue sea and the terra cotta colored sand in this picture.

We rode dune buggies along the shore and up into some sand dunes.

We had to stay out of the sun for a day or so after all day at the beach. Let's just say most of us got a little pink. So we played games, mostly a variation of Clue that Lee and Kim brought.
It probably doesn't look all that exciting to anyone else, but we had a really great time. I'm pretty sure it will be a Christmas we will all remember.

Recent doings/ Random Pictures

There is nothing quite like a missionary choir. This is one of the zones singing at the conference.

Alan has been busy making fudge. It is a hit down here. I really don't know how many batches he has made, but it is a lot.

I love this kid. Besides the fact that I don't understand Portuguese very well, he has a pretty heavy lisp. I don't understand hardly a word he says, but I always understand his smile.

We had to say goodby to two of our really great sisters on the same day. The one on the left will be back ,if everything goes well, after she gets her ankle fixed. The one on the right is headed for BYU.

This is a picture of some of the missionaries in the musical devotional getting on the bus to go to Sobral. They were a great group.

Alan is chatting with everybody after our lunch at the restaurant in Sobral. That long table of missionaries drew a lot of stares that day.


You can't go wrong with the candy bar game. Frankly, I don't think they make a candy bar down here that I would want to steal, but the elders had a lot of fun playing it.

This overturned truck was on the road to Sobral when we went out last week. It had a load of logs that were all over the place. It probably swerved trying to miss a big pot hole or a goat or something. Just another verification of the reason we don't like to drive that road. It was still on the road when we went back about 6 hours later.

I had to take this picture while we were cooking for the conferences. All six of the burners were on and the oven was on too. Can you say sweat? We were dripping.

It's Beginning to Look a Little Like Christmas

Although it really doesn't feel like Christmas to us here because of the weather and all, we have seen some pretty fun decorations around the city and thought we would share some of the things we see here. One good thing is that Brazil is a very Christian country so to have a nativity in the center of town is okay here. I really like this one even though it isn't typical. It is really pretty at night.
I got our own sorry little tree put up just in time for the new group of Elders that arrived a few weeks ago. It is a little lacking in decorations, but it looks okay at night when the lights are on.


There is a large round-about we drive through often with this large tree in the center. It is made of fabric on some large metal frame. At night, they have colored lights shine up through the middle and is really looks neat.I had to take a picture of the painted snowman on the windows of this mattress store, which, by the way, there are tons of in this city. I was surprised that a snowman would mean Christmas to people here since most of them have never seen snow. I was also surprised to see the painted windows like we have at home too.

I guess Santa doesn't come down the chimney here since there aren't any. He just sneaks in over the balcony.

This "tree" was colorful and caught my eye. I think it is at the headquarters for one of the groups of native people here. I don't know anything about them, but I thought the tree was pretty funky.

This big snowman is made of painted 2 liter bottles. It is actually sort of tacky looking, but I thought it was an accompishment of sorts.

I took pretty lousy pictures the night we were in the old Centro part of the city. I sort of liked the idea of the huge bow on the building though.

Another lousy picture...sorry. It was pretty in real. The lighting on the building is pretty and each balcony had a huge wreath on it that was lit up too. I don't know what the building is, but during December they open the balconies on all the windows and young people that are dressed in Christmas hats, etc. sing and dance. There are two in each window. I think they really might be lip syncing, but it is still really showy and sounds good. That actually got us in the Christmas mood. I think we will try to go again when our family comes down in a few days.

I have no idea what this guy was up to. He was just standing on the street as we passed by one evening. I don't know why he is wearing a green Santa suit. Maybe his red one was dirty.

FELIZ NATAL (Merry Christmas) everyone. It is still okay to say that in Brazil.

So Close and Yet So Far Away

I'll warn you right up front that I am going to whine a little.

We've been here for almost 5 months and still don't have the stuff we shipped a few weeks before we left Idaho. We were told it takes longer to get all the paperwork and approvals for shipments to Brazil and to expect some delay, but I was under the impression that 2 months would be the maximum. We have had some updates on the location of our shipment. Our first update came from Lucy. She asked me if I knew our stuff had gone to the Philippines. What?!!!? I hadn't heard a word about it. The office in Sao Paulo had called every so often to say the stuff had left Idaho, or that it was still in the United States waiting for clearance or something, but they us had not called about that. Lucy heard it from a lady that stopped in at Mini Bazaar who had just returned from her mission in the Philippines. That made me worry a little and I called to see if it was really even true. They said it was true but not to worry because they had located in in Manilla and it was on its way to Miami. Great.

About a month ago we heard it was in Brazil. Then we heard Rio de Janeiro. At least it was heading the right way. Then we got a call that it would be here, in Fortaleza, on Mon. November 10th. Yippee!! I waited all day. Nothing. Nothing all week. Two days ago we find out it is here. Yippee again! But wait...it is sitting at the airport and won't be released until someone pays $RS700, about $370.00, in state tariffs or taxes or something. Our state just happens to be one of the few that requires it. *#/@*# &*# Curses! Sao Paulo office tells us that they think we can get around it if we can find a lawyer that knows about such things. Great.

At this point I am wondering just how bad I want my salad spinner anyway. I mean it's really only 4 boxes of stuff and this would give me an excuse to buy some new clothes that might actually be better for the climate here anyway. But then I remember there are some pretty important things in there, like my recipes and family pictures and my sewing machine and Dangit!...............

I want my stuff!

Iguacu or Iguassu (it depends what side of the border you are on)

I thought I would put up a few pictures of our trip to Foz do Iguacu where we attended the Mission Presidents Seminar last week. All of the Mission Presidents from Brazil were there. Elder Scott presided and taught along with Elder Neil A. Andersen and the Area Presidency, Elder Didier, Elder Ellis, and Elder Soares. We learned a lot and had a good time too.
Hey! Where is everybody? That's what we thought when we arrived at the airport in Fortaleza. We found out our plane had just left. For reasons that take too long to explain, our ticket was printed with the wrong time.

Luckily, we were able to catch a flight on another airline and make it on time for the meetings. The grounds of the hotel were beautiful. This was the view of the gardens outside our window.

Alan thought the place cards they had for us in the dining room of the hotel were pretty funny, so I took this picture. Nobody calls us by the right name here either.

These are all the mission presidents and wives that are in the "Freshmen" class this year. We have a pretty big class. So far, no one has dropped out, but as we compared notes, we found out that we weren't the only ones that had wondered if we should. The upper classmen assured us that the first months are the roughest. We will all hang in there I'm pretty sure.

I snapped a picture of Alan during one of the breaks. We had meetings morning and afternoon for 2 and 1/2 days. You can see all the microphones and headsets so everyone could hear and get the translation if needed. May I just say I was grateful for those little puppies.

All work and no play? No way! This picture was taken with Elder Didier and his wife and his mother-in-law just before we headed out on the trail around the falls. The mother-in-law is 98 years old and lives with them. They take her with them whenever they can. I just asked if I could take a picture of Sister Didier and her mom, but the next thing I knew Elder Didier was there and said for us to hop in too. So we did. I think we would all like to live to 98 if we could be as perky as Sister Didier's mom was. We even heard that when the boat ride to the falls was over, she said she wanted to go again. I was just glad to be off the boat and still alive.

The day was rainy, but the view was still awesome. The couple posing are Walter and Claudia Queiroz. They are from Brazil, but have lived in the United States for 25 years. They are a really fun, hard-working couple. We really enjoy them. She always looks so cute. Check out her shoes. They were darling, but halfway up the trail, she was asking around for a bandaid.

I, on the other hand was my regular frump self, but the water falls were so close here, I had to put this picture on.

It feels pretty crazy to walk out on this walkway, but it is there, so you just have to do it.

In the center of this picture you can see Elder Scott. He is wearing the long sleeved white shirt and dark blue hat. We didn't want to bug him or act like paparazzi so this is the best shot we got of him. We were waiting around for the jeeps to take us down to get on the boats that take you right up to, and it felt like under, some of the falls. It really started to pour about the time we got on the boat, so I didn't get any more pictures. You are probably relieved about that. I know this has been sort of an overload. Anyway, we had a fun adventure along with some great meetings.