Back From Vacation

The temple shut down for maintenance and cleaning May 23rd until June 6th.  They had to shut down the power and water in the housing complex as well and did some spraying for bugs.  This meant that we had to leave for part of the time.  Part of the time became the full 2 weeks.  We went to live for this time with another missionary couple who have been serving here for 6 months but are still waiting for their call to arrive.  The Bro. and Sis. Mello live about and hour and a half Northwest of Campinas.

First thing when we arrived is to have a little game of pool.  Note the tile on the wall.

Front view of the house where we stayed.  All the homes are fenced with locked gates.  The house is long and narrow.    The garage behind the gate is for cars not storage and you can park 2 cars one behind the other.

We stayed in the upper room on the right with the balcony in front.  The pool table is under the bedroom. Half of the living space is outside and is all tiled.

Click Here for other photos in Rio Claro web album

Verae standing in the front courtyard after church. Since there is no heat in the church buildings and the windows and doors were all opened, Verae was freezing.  Even a dog wandered in to sacrament meeting for a while.

Notice the street signs on the corner of the house. Also there are always grates on the windows.

Next we went to the summer cabin near Paraty in the state of Rio de Janeiro.  The picture at the left is of the fishing village of Praia Grande where the family of Sister Mello makes their living.  We stopped here to get some octopus.  I don't think we will be trying any.

The tropical flowers and birds are so pretty.

Notice the little blue bird left of center.  We saw red, yellow, blue, green, brown, and black birds. We saw big black Urubu birds which are like seagulls but black and a little bigger.
Verae enjoyed the bird watching so much that she spend half a day trying to get pictures and movies of the different kinds of birds, and all the colorful plants.

We added a lot of pictures to the previous web album of Paraty.

Click Here to view the Paraty web album.