Temple Trip to Porto Alegre

March 14  Saturday

Today promised to be a beautiful, sunny day - even though it was still dark when we walked to the church to catch a temple bus at 6:00 a.m.  When we arrived, one bus was outside the gates of the church, filling with members from the Canela Hortencia Branch.  A little later, another bus pulled up with SF de Paula members - there was a bit of confusion with the rosters of who was supposed to be where as some of the SF members actually live in Canela. 


After several head-counts and updating the logs, everyone was in their place and ready to go to Gramado to pick members from the Gramado and Nova Petropolis Branches.  After meeting in the chapel for a song and prayer, everyone boarded the buses for the 2+ hour bus ride to Porto Alegre.  (A third bus from the Taquara Branch was ahead of us - five branches in our district.)

We arrived a the temple about 9:30 a.m.  Some people went to the Temple Distribution Center and others went to the temple to get in line for the 11:00 a.m. session.  The temple was full!  The waiting room was packed with youth waiting to do baptisms and young children who traveled with their parents and will be spending the day in the waiting room. 

We were fortunate and were able to be in the 11:00 session.  We  then went to a little food stand across the street from the temple for lunch.  They had pastels and sandwiches, cold drinks, and snacks.  It was very hot - fortunately there was a small table and chairs under the only tree in sight.  It was still hot, but the shade made lunch pleasant.  (I didn't plan very well and left my camera in the temple - very few pictures for today.)

Up the road a little, was another food stand with a grill - the man there was not getting any business.  For some reason, I feel the need to help support the economy here (just ask Merl), so I went to this stand and purchased a delicious chicken kabob and a cold drink.  The chicken was much better than the two pasteis I had already eaten.  That drummed a bit of business for him as others saw what I had and wanted one.

We went back to the temple and were asked to help with a sealing session which was a good experience - even though everything was said in Portuguese, we felt the spirit of the importance of what we were doing.  Love the temple!!

Everyone was back on the bus around 5:00 p.m.  They youth were excited about their experiences of the day - many of them brand new members at the temple for the first time.  They all sat in the back of the bus and visited, sang, and had a good time. . . I think most of the adults slept.

We arrived back in Canela at 7:30 p.m. - just in time for a quick trip to the grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner tomorrow.  Kellers and Pres. and Sis. Pavan (previous mission president) were coming for lunch.  I made a batch of cornbread from the recipe Janete gave us and got it in the oven while Ann cut up bags of fruit to be assembled into a salad for lunch.  Merl and I dozed off on the couch waiting for the cornbread to cook. . . fortunately Ann came in and pulled it out of the oven - appeared to be very over-done, but it actually was very good in the end.

It was a good day sharing spiritual things with the wonderful members here in Brazil. 

New housing construction in the
big city of Porto Alegre

Bicycle/walking strip between traffic
lanes along the way