August Update

August has been an exciting month for us. The bishop of our Brazilian Ward, Jardim das Rosas, has the cutest little baby daughter, Alana. She turned one on August 5th and we were invited to have dinner with the family after church. Here are a few pictures of the party. She loved the little Raggedy Ann type doll we gave her.

We took a trip with two other Senior Couples to go see the Amazon River and the city of Manaus, a city of about 3 million people on the Rio Negro just before it merges with the Amazon. It is a four hour flight from Sao Paulo. It is famous because as the two rivers merge the waters don't mix for about four miles. The Rio Negro has dark almost black water, and the Amazon has muddy brown water. Both rivers are very large. We attended the Manaus temple as soon as we landed, and it really is a beautiful temple right on the banks of the Rio Negro.

We stayed at the Intercity Hotel, which has 16 floors and a roof top swimming pool which we enjoyed. We had a room on the 16th floor, and the views were magnificent from our room.

 We took a boat excursion to see where the rivers merge, and it was an amazing sight to see.

We passed a few floating villages along the shore.

At one stop along the Rio Negro there was a nature hike through the jungle on an elevated walkway. There was water everywhere below the walk, with the trees and brush growing up out of the water.

The huge Lilly pads were growing below the trail, and we could see across to the Amazon River in the background. We didn't see any wildlife on our nature hike, but it was still enjoyable. After the hike we ate lunch before getting back on our tour boat.

After lunch the boat took us up some channels of the river through an archipelago of islands. There were a few local businesses along the side of the channel.

The channels got pretty narrow in some places, and we had to keep our arms in to keep from being scratched by the passing branches. It was a beautiful ride through the jungle.

Out on the main river, we passed the city of Manaus and went under the Manaus-Iranduba bridge, which is a 3.6 km crossing over the Rio Negro River. The highest section is a beautiful suspension section.

We sat in the back of the boat and enjoyed the wonderful views.

We visited an area where some of the passengers got in the water with the famous pink river dolphins. These dolphins are born gray but turn pink as they get older. The older they are the pinker they get. The water didn't look very clean, so neither of us got in the water. The worker would feed the dolphins fish and the people in the water would be around in a circle watching.

This was the tour boat we were on.

We made a stop at a native Indian village and they put on a show of dancing and had some of their trinkets for sale. The native women wore only grass skirts and flower necklaces.

We passed the bridge again on our way back to Manaus.

On Saturday before our return flight, we stopped at the Municipal Market where they have lots of souvenir shops

After the shops we went to see the famous Amazon Theater in Manaus, sometimes called the Opera House. It is a beautiful old colonial building built in 1987 when Manaus was in its heyday of rubber production.

We went on a tour of the building and were able to watch some students practicing, hoping to become part of the main orchestra.  We were able to hear the magnificent acoustics of this building.

They took us through the large ballroom, which was the social center of the city when it was a booming rubber town.

It has a beautiful hardwood dance floor made up of 12,000 pieces of beautiful woods.

 The ceiling is painted with a beautiful mural.

All around the edges are beautiful ornate paintings and carvings where the balcony is.

It was just a three day trip, but a wonderful break from our Monday through Friday office job. 

This week we had a visit from two of the members of the Quorum of the Twelve, President Ballard and Elder Soares, the longest and the shortest tenured members of the 12. There are five missions here in Sao Paulo, and all the missionaries were invited to a meeting with them in the stake center beside the Temple. The were between 700 and 800 missionaries. What a sight to see! We thoroughly enjoyed listening to these two Apostles of Jesus Christ instruct the missionaries and bear their testimonies. The Brazilians loved seeing Elder Soares, the first Apostle from Brazil.