Can't believe it's already February

Time continues to fly by as we are always busy working with the Gramado branch and Gramado District.  The weeks pass by so quickly we just go from one P-Day to the next.  We have been having some success with the work as well.  The Sister missionaries in our district taught Flavio and baptized him after he had attended church two weeks.

The week after he was baptized he was ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood and was given a calling as our branch greeter.  The young man on the right who performed the baptism is Jeferson, and he was just baptized himself last August.  He is now working on filling out his mission papers and will go as soon as he has been a member for a year. 

Heidi has been busy with the Relief Society.  She conducted a Relief Society training meeting on January 25th for the five branch relief society presidents in our district.  One of the things she is helping them with is to not forget even one sister in the relief society.  She started a poster for the Gramado branch and gave poster board and a picture of the Savior with a lamb to each of the other four relief society presidents.  She is taking pictures of all the sisters in our branch (with the help of the visiting teachers) holding the restoration pamphlet, and is putting the pictures on the poster.  Here is a sample of the pictures.  The first is Manuela, the relief society president of the Gramado Branch.

 The next is Rita, an inactive sister we have visited.

And even one of Sister Copa.

 

For the March Relief Society Birthday the relief society presidents have been challenged to take pictures of all their sisters, put them on the poster, and bring them to display at the Birthday event.

 

One P-day we went with the Egberts to visit the Parque da Cachoeira, which is another beautiful park with waterfalls.

The next P-Day we went with the Egberts back to the Zoo and Gaucho Park because the second Egbert couple had not been with us when we went last time.

 This is some of the beautiful scenery around the Zoo and Gaucho park.

 

Since we can't be with our own grandchildren, we also love to play with the Brazilian children.  Here is one example of how cute they are.

 

Heidi and I went to a dance in the Taquara Branch building.  This was a fund raiser for the youth of the branch who are going on a big campout in February.  The church tries to get the youth away from the cities during Carnival (which is like Mardi Gras) because it is such a worldly and carnal time that the youth don't need to be exposed to it.  They had a Hawaiian theme for the dance and the refreshments were all different types of fruit.

We love the Hortencias, hydrangea plants that are the trademark flower of the Gramado region. We cut them regularly and have them around our apartment, and have even bought some silk ones to put on our wreath after taking off the Christmas decorations.  There are some beautiful colors.

 

We took the Sister missionaries from the Petropolis branch to visit an investigator family that lives about 40 miles away.  While driving there we can see a beautiful red field down at the bottom of a valley.  One of the Elders told us it was a field of red flowers.  We decided to drive over to see it on the last trip there.

We could not get too close to the field, but with the zoom on the camera we could see that it wasn't flowers but a red canopy that was protecting the plants underneath.

Sister Rocha, one of the Sisters in the Petropolis branch, wants to go the U.S. and study English for about four months after she finishes her mission this August.  It might work out that she will stay with Kimberly and Eddie during those four months.  Here is what she looks like.

We do a lot of work with the Sister missionaries here really get to love them.  But then they always get transferred away.

This last P-Day we went with the Egberts to Caxias do Sul for lunch and to see the sights.  The main thing we saw there was the Catholic Cathedral.  It is beautiful and we got to take our picture with the retired priest.

 

 This is a picture of the ceiling.

They even have a replica of the Pieta that is well done.

We took a picture of the Mormon chapel while we were there also.