We had only been in Brazil a few weeks when family called to tell us that my Dad had passed away. He hadn’t been very well when we talked to him just before we left the U.S. Of course, neither Fred nor I could leave the mission field to attend the funeral. Just about all of the extended were able to go to Mesa and support Mom. Elder Richard G. Scott, who had been one of my Dad’s missionaries, spoke at the funeral. My sister Gina told me that he looked right at Mom all the time he was speaking. It was hard not being able to be there. A few days after the funeral, Elder Scott called the mission home, where we were staying with the kids, and wanted to visit with Fred about Dad but he and Carol were out in another state for zone conference but I had a nice visit with him.
In early December, a Monday, I received a call from the Murdock Travel person who takes care of all missionary travels. She told us that Leon and I had tickets to fly to Los Angeles
the next Tuesday evening to get our permanent visas. It had not worked out as earlier thought, to go across the border into another country to get the visas. We would need our copies of birth certificates and marriage license. I immediately went upstairs to the church lawyer’s office to get them but he was out of town! He had no secretary and no one knew where they could be. The Area Authority’s secretary told me to look through all the papers and files I could see but I couldn’t find them. They were not in the file he had for us. Our originals were packed away somewhere in Utah with one of our kids. We couldn’t get the visas without them! I said a quick, heartfelt prayer and the secretary came in and said I should look in a certain pile of papers. I had already gone through it but looked again and THERE THEY WERE! I have never had a prayer answered so quickly and completely before and I was so grateful.
We flew to Los Angeles. The church had rented a car for us and arranged for us to stay at the Los Angeles Temple patrons’ lodging. We went to the Brazilian Consulate and got our visas and now we could wear our missionary name tags. Carol had given us a list of things to buy for her family and we also had a list of things we wanted that were unavailable in Brazil. It was fun shopping at an American grocery store. One evening, I stood outside at a pay phone and called all eight kids collect and got to talk to almost all of them. What fun! We also went one afternoon out to see Mary and her family. We enjoyed being in the States again but were happy to go back to Brazil and continue our mission.
In December, Mom and Gina came to Brazil for about a month-long visit. I’m sure it was a big help for Mom, to have something nice like that to take her mind off her loss. They stayed with Fred and Carol, in the same room Leon and I had used. It was so fun to see them, to show them where we were working and living, and taking them to different meetings.
Close to Christmas, Fred, Carol, Jonathan, Violet, Gina, Mom and I drove to Santos, which is on the coast. Fred had worked there as a missionary and our family had stopped there at various times while traveling on ships to Argentina and Uruguay. It was so great to see the ocean and the hills covered with greenery. There were also the famous wavy sidewalks that are so prominent in Rio de Janeiro but Santos had some too. You could get dizzy staring at them for a long time.
One of the members of the International Branch, the branch we attended, was an American working for some company. He and his wife had bought a beautiful vacation place out in the country. He was Dallas Archibald, and later was called as a General Authority in the 2nd Quorum of Seventy. It was a gorgeous place. So many flowering trees and plants. They had a lake and a swimming pool. It looked like the Garden of Eden. They were very generous and held many branch activities there. For New Years, they had a big branch party but Mom was having problems with her heart so she was in the hospital for the day and I stayed with her. Later, the family went out to the vacation place so I got to see it. It was lovely.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009
arrival in Brazil, apartment
Since we were traveling on tourist visas, we couldn’t wear our name tags. We arrived in Sâo Paulo early in the morning, before 8:00 a.m. and Fred wasn’t there to meet us!!! Here we were in a foreign country and no way to get to the Mission Office. We tried calling but as it was early in the morning, no one was in the office. Fred finally came; relief! He took us to his apartment, which was on the 17th floor of an 18th floor building. Carol had given us Violet’s room, with twin beds, in which we stayed for several weeks before an apartment was ready for us. Fred, Carol, Lexie, Jonathan and Violet lived in that apartment.
When he took us to the office the missionaries had prepared a big welcome banner for us and made us feel very welcome. My trainer was Elder Brown, who had been the executive secretary and Elder Boyer trained Leon, he was the financial secretary. There were a couple of other missionaries working in the office, the historian and the commissary elder. Leon’s office was rather small and had a huge, old safe in it, where we kept the missionaries’ passports. All passports had to be taken to a Cartório, a notary public, where they were copied and the Elders carried the copies with them at all times. My office was larger and I had a computer and printer. It had an old version of Word Perfect. The keyboard was in Portuguese and so I wrote my friends at UVCC to send me an old template with the commands in English. This really helped a lot.
The mission office was located in a three story building which housed the Area President’s Office as well as the Church Offices and it also had a branch of the Itaú Bank that we used for all the missionaries and office monies. This was on a huge block that held the Temple, a Stake Center and there was also a building used as lodging for visitors to the temple and as the MTC or CTM in Portuguese. We had guards at the entrances to the complex.
After a few weeks, an apartment became available in the Vertentes apartment complex across the street from the church block. There were about eight tall buildings, four on each side of a little plaza. We were in building Lambari apt. 51. Several apartments in the complex had been purchased by the Church for temple workers but there were not anymore American temple couples so these apartments were available for us and later for some other missionary couples.
We had two bedrooms, a bathroom with different shades of dark blue for the sink and toilet; also the tile on the walls was turquoise. Very colorful. The kitchen had a marble counter. No hot water; it had to be heated for dishes. We had a washer and dryer which I appreciated but I had to wash with cold water the whole time we were there. My stove used a propane tank and was quite small, it looked like it belonged in a doll house. We also had a refrigerator. There was another bedroom and small bath (which we never used) which would have been the maid’s quarters. We had a large water bottle which we kept filled at the temple complex where a well of pure water was located. The apartment was like low class student housing but we were happy to be in it. All fresh vegetables had to be soaked in a special solution before we could eat them.
We did have hot water for showering. Every night, when we got back from the office, we would turn on the fuse that the water heater for the shower used so I had hot water for my nightly shower. We would turn it off when we went to bed and by morning the water was still hot enough for Leon to shower. We didn’t dare leave it turned on all day, the water just kept getting hotter and hotter and we were afraid it would explode!
When he took us to the office the missionaries had prepared a big welcome banner for us and made us feel very welcome. My trainer was Elder Brown, who had been the executive secretary and Elder Boyer trained Leon, he was the financial secretary. There were a couple of other missionaries working in the office, the historian and the commissary elder. Leon’s office was rather small and had a huge, old safe in it, where we kept the missionaries’ passports. All passports had to be taken to a Cartório, a notary public, where they were copied and the Elders carried the copies with them at all times. My office was larger and I had a computer and printer. It had an old version of Word Perfect. The keyboard was in Portuguese and so I wrote my friends at UVCC to send me an old template with the commands in English. This really helped a lot.
The mission office was located in a three story building which housed the Area President’s Office as well as the Church Offices and it also had a branch of the Itaú Bank that we used for all the missionaries and office monies. This was on a huge block that held the Temple, a Stake Center and there was also a building used as lodging for visitors to the temple and as the MTC or CTM in Portuguese. We had guards at the entrances to the complex.
After a few weeks, an apartment became available in the Vertentes apartment complex across the street from the church block. There were about eight tall buildings, four on each side of a little plaza. We were in building Lambari apt. 51. Several apartments in the complex had been purchased by the Church for temple workers but there were not anymore American temple couples so these apartments were available for us and later for some other missionary couples.
We had two bedrooms, a bathroom with different shades of dark blue for the sink and toilet; also the tile on the walls was turquoise. Very colorful. The kitchen had a marble counter. No hot water; it had to be heated for dishes. We had a washer and dryer which I appreciated but I had to wash with cold water the whole time we were there. My stove used a propane tank and was quite small, it looked like it belonged in a doll house. We also had a refrigerator. There was another bedroom and small bath (which we never used) which would have been the maid’s quarters. We had a large water bottle which we kept filled at the temple complex where a well of pure water was located. The apartment was like low class student housing but we were happy to be in it. All fresh vegetables had to be soaked in a special solution before we could eat them.
We did have hot water for showering. Every night, when we got back from the office, we would turn on the fuse that the water heater for the shower used so I had hot water for my nightly shower. We would turn it off when we went to bed and by morning the water was still hot enough for Leon to shower. We didn’t dare leave it turned on all day, the water just kept getting hotter and hotter and we were afraid it would explode!
Monday, July 6, 2009
Richard's birth, Doug deployment, call to Brazil
On the 5th of October, 1990, Mark Richard was born to Mark and Sharon three months early. He only weighed 2 lbs ½ oz!!! He was so small! He was in the hospital for quite a long time. Leon and I were allowed to see him a few times. He was finally permitted to return home but was on oxygen. I took a special class so I would know how to care for him while Mark and Sharon attended her sister Carlene’s wedding.
In December Doug, our marine, was activated to go to Okinawa. His group went to relieve other marines who were sent to Iraq for Desert Storm. The family got together to take a family picture. We hadn’t had one for a long time and everyone was present! Sharon’s Dad, Spencer Rigby, who lived across the street, took the picture.
My brother Fred was called to be Mission President of a new mission in Sâo Paulo, Brazil. He was to be set apart by Elder Richard G. Scott, of the Twelve. He had been a missionary under my Dad. Fred invited Leon and me to be present but when we got to the MTC, Elder Scott thought it best to wait a week or so when my Dad could be present. Carol was scheduled to give a concert in the Assembly Hall and the folks were coming up for that. David accompanied on of Carol’s numbers on the violin.
Fred invited us both to visit with him in the lobby of the MTC. He said he had found out that mission presidents could suggest couples to come and serve in their missions. He and Carol had prayed about it and he felt Leon and I should come and be office missionaries! I though we should go home and pray about it but Leon said that we had made covenants in the Temple and, of course, we would go! He was teaching summer band and I was working at UVCC. This was the 18th of June and the next Portuguese class would begin July 3rd at the MTC. I quit work and Tricia and Alan, and others started working on our house to get it ready to sell. We couldn’t go without selling it and paying off debts. The 3rd of July was supposed to be Leon’s last day of summer band but the other band teacher took his classes. We were able to be with Fred and Carol when they were set apart by Elder Scott and our parents were also present.
All the arrangements for our call were conducted over the telephone. We didn’t get our official missionary call letter until we had been in the MTC for three weeks! We lived at Tricia’s for three weeks and three weeks at David’s. We had classes morning, afternoon and evening. At night, after the last class, we worked on the house. Two of our teachers were returned missionaries from Brazil and the other was a girl from Portugal. Her accent was different from the two young men. We enjoyed our classes and the firesides and devotionals very much. As we studied Portuguese, all the Spanish Leon had studied in high school came out of his mouth when he wanted Portuguese. There was one other couple in our class; they were going to Recife, Brazil. They had lived in Brazil before. He was a Texan and spoke Portuguese with a Texan accent!
We finished our six weeks in the MTC but our visas had not come. They finally decided to send us down to Brazil on tourist visas and thought we could go into a country on the border of Brazil and get our permanent visas there. Two more weeks had passed before we were finally ready to go. We had a great family picnic in Provo before we left. We gave Tricia our power of attorney to take care of all our bills, sale of house, etc. She did a magnificent job of it all the time we were gone
In December Doug, our marine, was activated to go to Okinawa. His group went to relieve other marines who were sent to Iraq for Desert Storm. The family got together to take a family picture. We hadn’t had one for a long time and everyone was present! Sharon’s Dad, Spencer Rigby, who lived across the street, took the picture.
My brother Fred was called to be Mission President of a new mission in Sâo Paulo, Brazil. He was to be set apart by Elder Richard G. Scott, of the Twelve. He had been a missionary under my Dad. Fred invited Leon and me to be present but when we got to the MTC, Elder Scott thought it best to wait a week or so when my Dad could be present. Carol was scheduled to give a concert in the Assembly Hall and the folks were coming up for that. David accompanied on of Carol’s numbers on the violin.
Fred invited us both to visit with him in the lobby of the MTC. He said he had found out that mission presidents could suggest couples to come and serve in their missions. He and Carol had prayed about it and he felt Leon and I should come and be office missionaries! I though we should go home and pray about it but Leon said that we had made covenants in the Temple and, of course, we would go! He was teaching summer band and I was working at UVCC. This was the 18th of June and the next Portuguese class would begin July 3rd at the MTC. I quit work and Tricia and Alan, and others started working on our house to get it ready to sell. We couldn’t go without selling it and paying off debts. The 3rd of July was supposed to be Leon’s last day of summer band but the other band teacher took his classes. We were able to be with Fred and Carol when they were set apart by Elder Scott and our parents were also present.
All the arrangements for our call were conducted over the telephone. We didn’t get our official missionary call letter until we had been in the MTC for three weeks! We lived at Tricia’s for three weeks and three weeks at David’s. We had classes morning, afternoon and evening. At night, after the last class, we worked on the house. Two of our teachers were returned missionaries from Brazil and the other was a girl from Portugal. Her accent was different from the two young men. We enjoyed our classes and the firesides and devotionals very much. As we studied Portuguese, all the Spanish Leon had studied in high school came out of his mouth when he wanted Portuguese. There was one other couple in our class; they were going to Recife, Brazil. They had lived in Brazil before. He was a Texan and spoke Portuguese with a Texan accent!
We finished our six weeks in the MTC but our visas had not come. They finally decided to send us down to Brazil on tourist visas and thought we could go into a country on the border of Brazil and get our permanent visas there. Two more weeks had passed before we were finally ready to go. We had a great family picnic in Provo before we left. We gave Tricia our power of attorney to take care of all our bills, sale of house, etc. She did a magnificent job of it all the time we were gone
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