Death of Dad, short return to U.S.

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.