One of my children's favorite stories from my growing up years involves what our daughter Anna refers to as the Fifteen-Foot Polynesian Woman. I do not remember with any certainty when or exactly where this incident occurred, likely sometime during the mid-1960s, when I would have been 15 or 16 or thereabouts.
My brother Jerry, who is eleven years older than I am, was a milk man and would make home deliveries in Nampa and the rural areas near town. During the years I was in high school, I would often go with him in his milk truck on Saturday mornings or, when school was out, on summer mornings.
Late one spring or summer morning, along toward midday, as we were concluding our rural deliveries somewhere south and west of Nampa, out near Lake Lowell, we were driving along a remote road in our dairy truck. There were tall weeds or bull rushes growing along the ditch or borrow pit to the left of the road. As we were driving along, we saw a woman standing off the side of the road. Just standing there. A gentle smile on her face. She was dressed in a long blue dress, perhaps a muumuu, or some other flowing gown of some sort. She appeared to be somewhere from the islands—perhaps Hawaiian or Polynesian.
It startled us both. "Did you see that?" we said to each other. We looked out the mirrors behind us and saw no one. We stopped to investigate further. Still nothing.
As we tried to process what we had just seen, we thought the woman in the blue muumuu, who was standing out among the growth in the borrow pit, would have had to be very tall—perhaps eight or ten feet tall—for her to be eye level with us in the truck. (Her height, in later tellings of the story, grew to fifteen feet.)
Kind of spooky.
Yet we both had seen her. And it was broad daylight. And to this day, nearly half a century later, I have no clear explanation of what Jerry and I saw that day. Or why.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Friday, October 16, 2009
What's in a name?
An edited version of a thought I gave on Tuesday morning, October 16, 1984, in the weekly devotional of the Missionary Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where I had been working for the past eight years
The pattern in recent months in these devotional talks has been to give some background about ourselves. I was born the seventh of nine children, the next to last of my parents' eight sons before their final child turned out to be a daughter. I was born in eastern Oregon and lived there until I was nine. Then we moved twenty or so miles eastward into Idaho, where I finished growing up in the Nampa area until I went away to BYU, a mission to Brazil, and back to BYU to graduate in English and Portuguese.
I met my wife on a blind date at BYU, and we have been living happily ever after since that time. And here we are eight children later.
And that brings us to what I wanted to talk about.
Since the birth of our eighth child two weeks ago, I have thought a lot about the importance of names. Interestingly, for the first time in our career as parents, we didn’t have a name ready for this new little one, so she was named by committee.
Over the years we have tried to give our children names that would give them something to live up to. In the book of Helaman in the Book of Mormon we read of how Helaman did a similar thing with two of his sons, Lehi and Nephi. Let me read just two verses from the fifth chapter:
"Behold, my sons, I desire that ye should remember to keep the commandments of God; and I would that ye should declare unto the people these words. Behold, I have given you the names of our first parents who came out of the land of Jerusalem; and this I have done that when you remember your names ye may remember them; and when ye remember them ye may remember their works; and when ye remember their works ye may know how that it is said, and also written, that they were good.
"Therefore, my sons, I would that ye should do that which is good, that it may be said of you, and also written, even as it has been said and written of them" (Helaman 5:6–7).
I suspect as we seek to obey the commandment the Lord has given us to honor our fathers and mothers we could do no better than to honor the names they have given us—whether our given names or the family names we bear.
President George Albert Smith, while he was President of the Church, told of an incident earlier in his life when he was quite ill and hovered for some weeks between life and death. He was down in St. George, where the climate was supposed to be more healthful for his particular condition.
While there he had a dream or vision, or perhaps even entered into the spirit world, where he met his grandfather, George A. Smith, whom he was named after. His grandfather was a very large man, and he approached George Albert Smith and asked him what he had done with his name.
President Smith was happy to report that he had nothing to bring shame or dishonor to that name. And it was a time of renewed resolve for him to make something of his life, which of course he did, including being called to preside over the Lord's church.
There is another name that is very important to each of us. At the time of our baptism we covenanted with God that we would take upon us the name of Jesus Christ. We became His disciples. We were adopted as His sons and daughters. We were purchased by His blood. In the very finest sense of the word, we became Christians, followers of Christ, His children.
We read in the scriptures in several places that there is none other name by which we may be saved.
And just as Helaman told his two sons, Lehi and Nephi, we "should remember to keep the commandments of God." As we seek to keep His commandments, as we seek to remember Him always (as we promise each week to do), as we seek to love Him and our fellowmen, as we seek to reverence Him, we will be remembering Him and honoring His name and becoming more like Him, which I pray each of us may do. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
The pattern in recent months in these devotional talks has been to give some background about ourselves. I was born the seventh of nine children, the next to last of my parents' eight sons before their final child turned out to be a daughter. I was born in eastern Oregon and lived there until I was nine. Then we moved twenty or so miles eastward into Idaho, where I finished growing up in the Nampa area until I went away to BYU, a mission to Brazil, and back to BYU to graduate in English and Portuguese.
I met my wife on a blind date at BYU, and we have been living happily ever after since that time. And here we are eight children later.
And that brings us to what I wanted to talk about.
Since the birth of our eighth child two weeks ago, I have thought a lot about the importance of names. Interestingly, for the first time in our career as parents, we didn’t have a name ready for this new little one, so she was named by committee.
Over the years we have tried to give our children names that would give them something to live up to. In the book of Helaman in the Book of Mormon we read of how Helaman did a similar thing with two of his sons, Lehi and Nephi. Let me read just two verses from the fifth chapter:
"Behold, my sons, I desire that ye should remember to keep the commandments of God; and I would that ye should declare unto the people these words. Behold, I have given you the names of our first parents who came out of the land of Jerusalem; and this I have done that when you remember your names ye may remember them; and when ye remember them ye may remember their works; and when ye remember their works ye may know how that it is said, and also written, that they were good.
"Therefore, my sons, I would that ye should do that which is good, that it may be said of you, and also written, even as it has been said and written of them" (Helaman 5:6–7).
I suspect as we seek to obey the commandment the Lord has given us to honor our fathers and mothers we could do no better than to honor the names they have given us—whether our given names or the family names we bear.
President George Albert Smith, while he was President of the Church, told of an incident earlier in his life when he was quite ill and hovered for some weeks between life and death. He was down in St. George, where the climate was supposed to be more healthful for his particular condition.
While there he had a dream or vision, or perhaps even entered into the spirit world, where he met his grandfather, George A. Smith, whom he was named after. His grandfather was a very large man, and he approached George Albert Smith and asked him what he had done with his name.
President Smith was happy to report that he had nothing to bring shame or dishonor to that name. And it was a time of renewed resolve for him to make something of his life, which of course he did, including being called to preside over the Lord's church.
There is another name that is very important to each of us. At the time of our baptism we covenanted with God that we would take upon us the name of Jesus Christ. We became His disciples. We were adopted as His sons and daughters. We were purchased by His blood. In the very finest sense of the word, we became Christians, followers of Christ, His children.
We read in the scriptures in several places that there is none other name by which we may be saved.
And just as Helaman told his two sons, Lehi and Nephi, we "should remember to keep the commandments of God." As we seek to keep His commandments, as we seek to remember Him always (as we promise each week to do), as we seek to love Him and our fellowmen, as we seek to reverence Him, we will be remembering Him and honoring His name and becoming more like Him, which I pray each of us may do. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
The birth of our eighth child
Twenty-five years ago today I made a simple, one-sentence entry in my journal: "Our eighth child and sixth daughter was born today." No other details or explanations.
"Since the birth of our eighth child," I observed two weeks later, "I have thought a lot about the importance of names. Interestingly, for the first time in our career as parents, we didn't have a name ready for this new little one, so she was named by committee."
A couple more weeks beyond that—on the next fast Sunday, November 4, 1984—I elaborated a little in the father's blessing I gave her: "Mary Elizabeth, you have recently been in the presence of our Father in heaven and now come very welcomed into your family and help to fulfill that scriptural teaching that children are an heritage of the Lord and happy is that man or woman who has his quiver full of them.
"You have been given two special and sacred names: Mary, after that handmaiden who was described as highly favored of the Lord, who had the great and unique privilege of bearing and rearing and teaching and nurturing the very Son of the Most High God; and Elizabeth, after her cousin who, in her advanced age, was privileged to bear and rear and teach and nurture that prophet who prepared the way before the Lord and whom the Master Himself declared there was no greater born among women. These women were good and were full of faith and kept the commandments of God and are saved with an everlasting salvation in His kingdom. You are given their names that you might remember them, and in remembering them be like them: that you too may be good and full of faith and keep the commandments and be saved in the celestial kingdom of God."
Fortunately, the historical record is not entirely silent on Mary's arrival into this world. I published at the time a quarterly newsletter for the descendants and relatives of John Marvin Lange and Barbara Jean Fraughton entitled Die Lange Zeit. The Family Bulletin Board in that fall 1984 issue reported:
"Mary Elizabeth Cleverly, Dean and Claudia's eighth child and sixth daughter, was born at 10:37 on Monday morning, October 1, in Bountiful's Lakeview Hospital. She weighed in at 7 pounds 1 ounce, was 19 1/2 inches long, and had lots of dark hair. She is Grandma and Grandpa's eleventh grandchild and ninth granddaughter.
"Claudia had gone to the hospital that morning by appointment to have the baby induced. Though she feared the labor would be longer and harder, it only took a little over an hour and a half.
"Mother and baby came home on Wednesday, October 3, to greet all the eagerly awaiting older brothers and sisters. Grandma and Grandpa had generously come from California to help out for a week and were able to stay until Mary Elizabeth's first week birthday the following Monday, October 8. Their timely assistance was much appreciated."
"Since the birth of our eighth child," I observed two weeks later, "I have thought a lot about the importance of names. Interestingly, for the first time in our career as parents, we didn't have a name ready for this new little one, so she was named by committee."
A couple more weeks beyond that—on the next fast Sunday, November 4, 1984—I elaborated a little in the father's blessing I gave her: "Mary Elizabeth, you have recently been in the presence of our Father in heaven and now come very welcomed into your family and help to fulfill that scriptural teaching that children are an heritage of the Lord and happy is that man or woman who has his quiver full of them.
"You have been given two special and sacred names: Mary, after that handmaiden who was described as highly favored of the Lord, who had the great and unique privilege of bearing and rearing and teaching and nurturing the very Son of the Most High God; and Elizabeth, after her cousin who, in her advanced age, was privileged to bear and rear and teach and nurture that prophet who prepared the way before the Lord and whom the Master Himself declared there was no greater born among women. These women were good and were full of faith and kept the commandments of God and are saved with an everlasting salvation in His kingdom. You are given their names that you might remember them, and in remembering them be like them: that you too may be good and full of faith and keep the commandments and be saved in the celestial kingdom of God."
Fortunately, the historical record is not entirely silent on Mary's arrival into this world. I published at the time a quarterly newsletter for the descendants and relatives of John Marvin Lange and Barbara Jean Fraughton entitled Die Lange Zeit. The Family Bulletin Board in that fall 1984 issue reported:
"Mary Elizabeth Cleverly, Dean and Claudia's eighth child and sixth daughter, was born at 10:37 on Monday morning, October 1, in Bountiful's Lakeview Hospital. She weighed in at 7 pounds 1 ounce, was 19 1/2 inches long, and had lots of dark hair. She is Grandma and Grandpa's eleventh grandchild and ninth granddaughter.
"Claudia had gone to the hospital that morning by appointment to have the baby induced. Though she feared the labor would be longer and harder, it only took a little over an hour and a half.
"Mother and baby came home on Wednesday, October 3, to greet all the eagerly awaiting older brothers and sisters. Grandma and Grandpa had generously come from California to help out for a week and were able to stay until Mary Elizabeth's first week birthday the following Monday, October 8. Their timely assistance was much appreciated."
Friday, September 11, 2009
Someone watching out for us
On January 1, 2004, I wrote in my personal journal: "I do not know how many more New Year's Days I will live to see. Mercifully and for His wise purposes, Heavenly Father doesn't usually reveal that detail to us. This could be my last one. Or I could see 30 more. Quem sabe. The genius of this mortal probation is that we don't know how long the test lasts."
During the two preceding summers—in August 2002 and again in July 2003—I had suffered and survived heart attacks, the first in my family, as far as we know, to do so. My mother and two brothers had died of heart attacks. My father had died of a stroke. And, so as a new year was beginning, I was in a pensive mood and reflecting on my own mortality.
I am convinced that there are unseen beings, angels if you will, who watch over and protect us, probably far more than we dream of.
In my journal for January 2, 2004, I wrote: "We were faced with one on the drive to work this morning. It had snowed again during the night, and the roads in Salt Lake had not been cleared yet. Bruce Birch was driving his little car, a bit too fast I thought, when along Beck Street we hit some slush and he lost control of the car. Traffic was far lighter than normal for that time of day, and he was able to regain control before hitting anything or leaving the roadway. It was a frightening few moments, and we both concurred after the adrenalin stopped pumping through us that we must have had someone watching out for us.
"I wonder at times how often we are protected on the highways by unseen influences from beyond the veil, including times when we are totally unaware of potential dangers. I consider, for example, when Anna and her friend Bethany Youngs were hit broadside coming down Little Cottonwood Canyon a couple weeks ago. Anna's car was totaled, but neither of them was hurt.
"Or our near fatal crash in eastern Colorado last summer when we were on our way to Lubbock to visit Robert and Rachael. We were somewhere east of Pueblo on U.S. highway 50, probably near Rocky Ford or La Junta. The highway was divided, two lanes in each direction, but not controlled access. As we approached an intersection, an old man turned left right in front of us, did a U-turn into the right lane going our direction, nearly ran a car off the road, and quickly switched back into the left lane (the one we were in). We came within inches of smashing into him, and Shauna and Rebecca in the minivan behind us nearly smashing into us. We were traveling at least 65 miles per hour, the posted speed limit, and I really do not understand how we did not hit him. Had we done so, he probably would have been dead, and who knows about us. We followed the man into the next town, and the incredible thing is that we don't think he ever even knew what had happened. I am convinced someone was watching out for us and him that summer morning."
During the two preceding summers—in August 2002 and again in July 2003—I had suffered and survived heart attacks, the first in my family, as far as we know, to do so. My mother and two brothers had died of heart attacks. My father had died of a stroke. And, so as a new year was beginning, I was in a pensive mood and reflecting on my own mortality.
I am convinced that there are unseen beings, angels if you will, who watch over and protect us, probably far more than we dream of.
In my journal for January 2, 2004, I wrote: "We were faced with one on the drive to work this morning. It had snowed again during the night, and the roads in Salt Lake had not been cleared yet. Bruce Birch was driving his little car, a bit too fast I thought, when along Beck Street we hit some slush and he lost control of the car. Traffic was far lighter than normal for that time of day, and he was able to regain control before hitting anything or leaving the roadway. It was a frightening few moments, and we both concurred after the adrenalin stopped pumping through us that we must have had someone watching out for us.
"I wonder at times how often we are protected on the highways by unseen influences from beyond the veil, including times when we are totally unaware of potential dangers. I consider, for example, when Anna and her friend Bethany Youngs were hit broadside coming down Little Cottonwood Canyon a couple weeks ago. Anna's car was totaled, but neither of them was hurt.
"Or our near fatal crash in eastern Colorado last summer when we were on our way to Lubbock to visit Robert and Rachael. We were somewhere east of Pueblo on U.S. highway 50, probably near Rocky Ford or La Junta. The highway was divided, two lanes in each direction, but not controlled access. As we approached an intersection, an old man turned left right in front of us, did a U-turn into the right lane going our direction, nearly ran a car off the road, and quickly switched back into the left lane (the one we were in). We came within inches of smashing into him, and Shauna and Rebecca in the minivan behind us nearly smashing into us. We were traveling at least 65 miles per hour, the posted speed limit, and I really do not understand how we did not hit him. Had we done so, he probably would have been dead, and who knows about us. We followed the man into the next town, and the incredible thing is that we don't think he ever even knew what had happened. I am convinced someone was watching out for us and him that summer morning."
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
The birth of our first child
September 2, 1973, was a fast Sunday. We had been to church on campus, where I served as a counselor in the presidency of a BYU branch. Fall was beginning, students were returning to school, it was the first Sunday of the new school year, it was a holiday weekend, and we were about to become parents. It was an exciting time.
Claudia was eight months along, expecting our first child on October 5, and everything seemed to be progressing as it should. She looked cute being so very pregnant. Two weeks earlier—on Friday, August 17—she had graduated cum laude from Brigham Young University with a bachelor's degree in elementary education. Following her graduation, we rode back to California as her parents' guests for a week at Laguna Beach. Our apartment there perched on top of a cliff overlooking the vastness of the mighty ocean.
But now we were back in Utah and looking forward to a new school year. We were both out of school, but our ties to the university continued through my employment on campus and through our associations in the branch. Just the day before, on Saturday, I had completed and mailed the first issue of the Cleverly Newsletter, a quarterly newsletter for my parents' family that I would continue to publish over the coming decades in quarterly, monthly, even weekly formats.
Sunday afternoon we were home from church, and Claudia had prepared our Sunday dinner. We sat down to eat around four o'clock in the afternoon. I noticed her squirming in her chair and asked what the problem was.
"Oh, just constipation," she replied.
A bit later she was feeling worse and called her doctor. His first question was, "Are you in labor?"
"Of course not. I'm not due for another month."
From the way she described how she was feeling he couldn't tell what was wrong. "Maybe it is constipation," he concluded. He prescribed some medicine, but before we could even think about finding a drug store that was open, she was feeling so bad that I called the doctor again. He told me to take her straight to the hospital and he would meet us there.
We drove over to the hospital in Marshmallow, our little white Volkswagen. It was only a few blocks from where we lived. At 5:17 Claudia was wheeled into the labor room with contractions at eighty seconds. Not bad for not knowing she was having contractions.
I was sent down to admit her to the hospital, and when I returned she was in the delivery room having a baby. I was allowed to be with her, even though we'd had only three of the six required prenatal classes.
Our son was born at 6:30 in the evening. Michael Adam was seventeen and a half inches, six pounds seven ounces. A month and three days early. Claudia's labor had been extremely short—two and a half hours from start to finish.
The instant the doctor laid the baby on her stomach, Claudia said, "Let's do it again!"
For a few hours I was allowed to stay with her in the recovery room. There was little sleep for either of us that night. Nineteen years later, as Michael was preparing to leave for his mission to Brazil, I spoke in his missionary farewell of that first night: "Nineteen years ago . . . Claudia lay in a hospital bed in Provo with her firstborn son in her arms, just hours old, counting his fingers and toes, as I suppose new mothers do, but even more importantly thinking ahead, among other things, to this very day. She was planning in her mind the future course of his life, envisioning his serving a mission, looking forward with an eye of faith. And so what does she spend the next nineteen years doing? The kinds of things the Lord's prophets have told parents to do to get their sons ready and worthy to serve missions. She has acted in faith, seeing with her eyes the things which she had beheld with the eye of faith."
The next day was Labor Day, even though Claudia had done her laboring on the Sabbath day. On Tuesday her mom flew in from southern California to help out for a week and a half. Our new little son was the Langes' first grandchild. Claudia and Michael Adam came home from the hospital on Wednesday.
We took our baby to get his name on the Sunday just before October conference. In fast and testimony meeting on Sunday, September 30, I held our firstborn son in my arms and gave him his first blessing. Most of the members of the BYU Eleventh Branch were single students, with maybe a half dozen married couples, so a baby blessing was a rare treat for them.
"Our Father in heaven, by the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood which we bear as elders in the Church of Jesus Christ," I prayed, "we take this infant child in our arms to give him a name and a father's blessing. And the name which we give him, and by which he will be known upon the records of Thy church and the records of this land, is Michael Adam Cleverly.
"We pray, Father, at this time that Thy blessings will be poured out upon this child in abundance, that he may grow strong and develop and obtain the full stature of his being, that he may fulfill the mission for which he was sent to this earth. We pray, our Heavenly Father, that he may grow strong in the gospel, that he may grow spiritually through experience. We pray that he may be valiant in righteous living, that he may live up to the great example that was given by the patriarch of the human family whose name he bears. We pray that his mind may be blessed, that he may grasp the teachings of the gospel and teachings of a secular nature in the work of the world that he may choose.
"Bless his parents that they may provide an atmosphere of growth and learning, that he may have every advantage which he needs to return to Thy presence. Please bless him, Father, we humbly pray and do so in the name of Thy beloved Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen."
I cannot describe the feelings that swelled in my heart during that blessing. The feelings were of love and a profound respect for the miracle of life and a keen awareness of my new responsibilities as a parent. A few moments later, during the quiet of the sacrament, the Spirit touched the eyes of my understanding. Were it not for the Savior's atoning sacrifice, none of what I was experiencing would have been happening. Without that sacrifice there would be no Church and we would not have been met in a fast and testimony meeting. Without that sacrifice there would be no priesthood with which to have blessed that child. Without that sacrifice there would be no eternal family ties and no knowledge of the importance of the family. Without that sacrifice life itself would be meaningless.
Claudia was eight months along, expecting our first child on October 5, and everything seemed to be progressing as it should. She looked cute being so very pregnant. Two weeks earlier—on Friday, August 17—she had graduated cum laude from Brigham Young University with a bachelor's degree in elementary education. Following her graduation, we rode back to California as her parents' guests for a week at Laguna Beach. Our apartment there perched on top of a cliff overlooking the vastness of the mighty ocean.
But now we were back in Utah and looking forward to a new school year. We were both out of school, but our ties to the university continued through my employment on campus and through our associations in the branch. Just the day before, on Saturday, I had completed and mailed the first issue of the Cleverly Newsletter, a quarterly newsletter for my parents' family that I would continue to publish over the coming decades in quarterly, monthly, even weekly formats.
Sunday afternoon we were home from church, and Claudia had prepared our Sunday dinner. We sat down to eat around four o'clock in the afternoon. I noticed her squirming in her chair and asked what the problem was.
"Oh, just constipation," she replied.
A bit later she was feeling worse and called her doctor. His first question was, "Are you in labor?"
"Of course not. I'm not due for another month."
From the way she described how she was feeling he couldn't tell what was wrong. "Maybe it is constipation," he concluded. He prescribed some medicine, but before we could even think about finding a drug store that was open, she was feeling so bad that I called the doctor again. He told me to take her straight to the hospital and he would meet us there.
We drove over to the hospital in Marshmallow, our little white Volkswagen. It was only a few blocks from where we lived. At 5:17 Claudia was wheeled into the labor room with contractions at eighty seconds. Not bad for not knowing she was having contractions.
I was sent down to admit her to the hospital, and when I returned she was in the delivery room having a baby. I was allowed to be with her, even though we'd had only three of the six required prenatal classes.
Our son was born at 6:30 in the evening. Michael Adam was seventeen and a half inches, six pounds seven ounces. A month and three days early. Claudia's labor had been extremely short—two and a half hours from start to finish.
The instant the doctor laid the baby on her stomach, Claudia said, "Let's do it again!"
For a few hours I was allowed to stay with her in the recovery room. There was little sleep for either of us that night. Nineteen years later, as Michael was preparing to leave for his mission to Brazil, I spoke in his missionary farewell of that first night: "Nineteen years ago . . . Claudia lay in a hospital bed in Provo with her firstborn son in her arms, just hours old, counting his fingers and toes, as I suppose new mothers do, but even more importantly thinking ahead, among other things, to this very day. She was planning in her mind the future course of his life, envisioning his serving a mission, looking forward with an eye of faith. And so what does she spend the next nineteen years doing? The kinds of things the Lord's prophets have told parents to do to get their sons ready and worthy to serve missions. She has acted in faith, seeing with her eyes the things which she had beheld with the eye of faith."
The next day was Labor Day, even though Claudia had done her laboring on the Sabbath day. On Tuesday her mom flew in from southern California to help out for a week and a half. Our new little son was the Langes' first grandchild. Claudia and Michael Adam came home from the hospital on Wednesday.
We took our baby to get his name on the Sunday just before October conference. In fast and testimony meeting on Sunday, September 30, I held our firstborn son in my arms and gave him his first blessing. Most of the members of the BYU Eleventh Branch were single students, with maybe a half dozen married couples, so a baby blessing was a rare treat for them.
"Our Father in heaven, by the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood which we bear as elders in the Church of Jesus Christ," I prayed, "we take this infant child in our arms to give him a name and a father's blessing. And the name which we give him, and by which he will be known upon the records of Thy church and the records of this land, is Michael Adam Cleverly.
"We pray, Father, at this time that Thy blessings will be poured out upon this child in abundance, that he may grow strong and develop and obtain the full stature of his being, that he may fulfill the mission for which he was sent to this earth. We pray, our Heavenly Father, that he may grow strong in the gospel, that he may grow spiritually through experience. We pray that he may be valiant in righteous living, that he may live up to the great example that was given by the patriarch of the human family whose name he bears. We pray that his mind may be blessed, that he may grasp the teachings of the gospel and teachings of a secular nature in the work of the world that he may choose.
"Bless his parents that they may provide an atmosphere of growth and learning, that he may have every advantage which he needs to return to Thy presence. Please bless him, Father, we humbly pray and do so in the name of Thy beloved Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen."
I cannot describe the feelings that swelled in my heart during that blessing. The feelings were of love and a profound respect for the miracle of life and a keen awareness of my new responsibilities as a parent. A few moments later, during the quiet of the sacrament, the Spirit touched the eyes of my understanding. Were it not for the Savior's atoning sacrifice, none of what I was experiencing would have been happening. Without that sacrifice there would be no Church and we would not have been met in a fast and testimony meeting. Without that sacrifice there would be no priesthood with which to have blessed that child. Without that sacrifice there would be no eternal family ties and no knowledge of the importance of the family. Without that sacrifice life itself would be meaningless.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
The birth of our second child
In late July 1974, the day after I had a wisdom tooth pulled, Claudia's parents came from southern California to visit us in Provo. Her father came to attend the ninth annual priesthood genealogy seminar at BYU. But the real reason was that their only grandchild, Michael Adam, happened to live at our house. Claudia was great with child. We were not venturing far from home, not knowing whether our second child, like the first, might come five weeks earlier than expected.
At her weekly doctor visit, about three weeks before the August 19 due date, the doctor told Claudia the baby could come at any time. Based on that comment and our experience the previous fall when Michael Adam was born, Claudia's mother decided to stay for the birth of the baby. Her father drove home. He had to return to work.
And so we all waited. And waited. And waited. August 19 came and still no baby. We tried all the old tricks—taking castor oil, driving across railroad tracks—none of them worked. Claudia's dad, alone in California, was probably tiring of peanut butter sandwiches every day.
On Sunday evening, August 25, we went to church in the campus branch where I was serving as a counselor in the branch presidency. I was conducting sacrament meeting. As part of the service, we were inviting members from the congregation to speak impromptu. I called on Claudia, and she came forward and started by saying she thought I had done it just to get the baby coming. Unknown to me then, she was already feeling slight contractions. She shared a beautiful experience from her semester in Europe when her group held a sacrament service on the beaches of Thessalonica, Greece, on the Sunday of April conference.
Anyway, back at home after the meeting, Claudia let us know she thought she was finally having a baby. That was good news to her mother, who by now was anxious to return home after four weeks at our house.
We walked around the block—Claudia, Michael Adam, and me—and then she came home to take a hot bath. I guess the walking and the bath help it along. We started timing contractions at four minutes, but soon they were only two minutes apart, lasting about 30–40 seconds each. Then sometime around 10:15 at night we went to the hospital.
We had pretty much concluded that this second baby would also be a boy. This was in the day before ultrasounds were used to give parents advance notice of what flavor was coming. After a not too difficult labor, Rebecca was born at 2:24 in the morning of Monday, August 26, exactly one week short of her older brother's first birthday. She weighed in at seven pounds fifteen ounces—almost eight pounds—and was twenty inches long.
I wrote in my journal: "Our first daughter and second child was born this morning at 2:24. She is healthy and her wonderful mother—my beloved Claudja—pulled through it all in fine form. The experience of having a child born, and being there to see it happen, always arrests my thoughts and arouses deep emotions that I cannot express. Once again, life seems a miracle so sacred, so divine that I'm amazed that our loving Father so freely shared its powers with us, especially as we see its abuse all around.
"Rebecca comes very welcomed into our home. Just as surely as Michael Adam came to us a week short of a year ago, her coming was also planned and prayed for this time."
With the doctor's having said three weeks before the due date that the baby could come at any moment, and then Claudia's going a full week after the due date, she felt like she had had a ten-month pregnancy. Her poor mother had had to wait six weeks before she could return home to California after Rebecca was born and established.
A month after Rebecca was born, on the Sunday just before October conference, we took our baby to get her name and blessing. In fast and testimony meeting on Sunday, September 29, I held Rebecca in my arms and gave her her first blessing. Most of the members of the BYU Eleventh Branch were single students, with maybe a half dozen married couples, so a baby blessing was a rare treat for them.
"Our Heavenly Father, by the authority of the holy Melchizedek Priesthood which we bear as elders in the Church of Jesus Christ, we take this infant in our arms to give her a name and her first father's blessing. And the name that we give to her and by which she will be known on the records of Thy church and the records of the land is Rebecca Cleverly.
"Now we pray, Heavenly Father, first of all that Thou wilt bless those of us who are her parents and her family, that we may teach her the truths of Thy gospel and provide for her the environment that she needs to prepare for her mission here upon the earth and to prepare to return to Thy presence after this life.
"We are grateful for this precious spirit that has come at this time in the world's history. Bless her with health, with strength, with understanding, that she may be an example to those who associate with her during her sojourn here upon the earth. May she be blessed with every gift and talent that she needs to accomplish her mission in this life. May she prepare herself for the great responsibility and blessing of someday becoming a mother in Zion—to prepare other precious spirits for the coming of Thy Son.
"May she be aware of the great heritage that is hers, that she has inherited from her families and may she appreciate the great heritage of the name that she is receiving and pattern her life after the great woman Rebekah in the Old Testament, who was a faithful woman in Israel, who stood at the side of a prophet of God as a companion and a helpmeet. May this child's life be as glorious and as obedient to Thy will as hers.
"These blessings we seal upon her, as stated, by the authority of the priesthood which we possess, and in the name of the Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen."
At her weekly doctor visit, about three weeks before the August 19 due date, the doctor told Claudia the baby could come at any time. Based on that comment and our experience the previous fall when Michael Adam was born, Claudia's mother decided to stay for the birth of the baby. Her father drove home. He had to return to work.
And so we all waited. And waited. And waited. August 19 came and still no baby. We tried all the old tricks—taking castor oil, driving across railroad tracks—none of them worked. Claudia's dad, alone in California, was probably tiring of peanut butter sandwiches every day.
On Sunday evening, August 25, we went to church in the campus branch where I was serving as a counselor in the branch presidency. I was conducting sacrament meeting. As part of the service, we were inviting members from the congregation to speak impromptu. I called on Claudia, and she came forward and started by saying she thought I had done it just to get the baby coming. Unknown to me then, she was already feeling slight contractions. She shared a beautiful experience from her semester in Europe when her group held a sacrament service on the beaches of Thessalonica, Greece, on the Sunday of April conference.
Anyway, back at home after the meeting, Claudia let us know she thought she was finally having a baby. That was good news to her mother, who by now was anxious to return home after four weeks at our house.
We walked around the block—Claudia, Michael Adam, and me—and then she came home to take a hot bath. I guess the walking and the bath help it along. We started timing contractions at four minutes, but soon they were only two minutes apart, lasting about 30–40 seconds each. Then sometime around 10:15 at night we went to the hospital.
We had pretty much concluded that this second baby would also be a boy. This was in the day before ultrasounds were used to give parents advance notice of what flavor was coming. After a not too difficult labor, Rebecca was born at 2:24 in the morning of Monday, August 26, exactly one week short of her older brother's first birthday. She weighed in at seven pounds fifteen ounces—almost eight pounds—and was twenty inches long.
I wrote in my journal: "Our first daughter and second child was born this morning at 2:24. She is healthy and her wonderful mother—my beloved Claudja—pulled through it all in fine form. The experience of having a child born, and being there to see it happen, always arrests my thoughts and arouses deep emotions that I cannot express. Once again, life seems a miracle so sacred, so divine that I'm amazed that our loving Father so freely shared its powers with us, especially as we see its abuse all around.
"Rebecca comes very welcomed into our home. Just as surely as Michael Adam came to us a week short of a year ago, her coming was also planned and prayed for this time."
With the doctor's having said three weeks before the due date that the baby could come at any moment, and then Claudia's going a full week after the due date, she felt like she had had a ten-month pregnancy. Her poor mother had had to wait six weeks before she could return home to California after Rebecca was born and established.
A month after Rebecca was born, on the Sunday just before October conference, we took our baby to get her name and blessing. In fast and testimony meeting on Sunday, September 29, I held Rebecca in my arms and gave her her first blessing. Most of the members of the BYU Eleventh Branch were single students, with maybe a half dozen married couples, so a baby blessing was a rare treat for them.
"Our Heavenly Father, by the authority of the holy Melchizedek Priesthood which we bear as elders in the Church of Jesus Christ, we take this infant in our arms to give her a name and her first father's blessing. And the name that we give to her and by which she will be known on the records of Thy church and the records of the land is Rebecca Cleverly.
"Now we pray, Heavenly Father, first of all that Thou wilt bless those of us who are her parents and her family, that we may teach her the truths of Thy gospel and provide for her the environment that she needs to prepare for her mission here upon the earth and to prepare to return to Thy presence after this life.
"We are grateful for this precious spirit that has come at this time in the world's history. Bless her with health, with strength, with understanding, that she may be an example to those who associate with her during her sojourn here upon the earth. May she be blessed with every gift and talent that she needs to accomplish her mission in this life. May she prepare herself for the great responsibility and blessing of someday becoming a mother in Zion—to prepare other precious spirits for the coming of Thy Son.
"May she be aware of the great heritage that is hers, that she has inherited from her families and may she appreciate the great heritage of the name that she is receiving and pattern her life after the great woman Rebekah in the Old Testament, who was a faithful woman in Israel, who stood at the side of a prophet of God as a companion and a helpmeet. May this child's life be as glorious and as obedient to Thy will as hers.
"These blessings we seal upon her, as stated, by the authority of the priesthood which we possess, and in the name of the Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen."
Friday, August 21, 2009
Fetching Talmage from Brazil
A report, based on my journal, of a trip that Rachael (age 22), Camilla (16), Eliza (15), Mary (13), and I took to Brazil to meet Talmage and accompany him home from the Brazil Curitiba Mission. We left Utah on Tuesday afternoon, May 26, 1998 (the same day Caleb Dean Cleverly was born to Michael and Shauna), and returned home on Thursday, June 11. With this trip, nine of the ten members of our original family, everyone except Anna, had been to Brazil.
Tuesday, May 26, 1998
The adventure began this afternoon at 3:45 when our United flight to Chicago lifted off from the Salt Lake airport. It was the first time Camilla, Eliza, and Mary had ever flown that they can remember. Rachael, of course, is an experienced world traveler.
The flight was rather routine, although bumpy from turbulence. We arrived in Chicago after nearly three hours, just as evening was coming on. An hour later we were on a second United flight, this one a ten-hour non-stop to São Paulo. We called home from the airport in Chicago (which Rachael thinks is the nicest airport in the country, perhaps even in the world), but Mom had not heard anything yet from Michael and Shauna about their new baby. (Shauna had gone to the hospital just a couple hours before we left.)
Wednesday, May 27
We landed at the Gaurulhos airport in São Paulo about 9:00 local time. It took little time to clear customs, and we had no checked luggage to wait for, so we mostly just waited for our 12:15 VARIG flight to Belo Horizonte. Mary and I wandered about the terminal until we could find an ATM that would accept my VISA debit card. We had eaten twice on the plane, so we were not hungry but bought drinks at the McDonald's in the airport. I also spoke to three American missionaries on their way to Porto Alegre.
After an hour's flight to Belo Horizonte, we were in the capital of Minas Gerais, the first time I had ever been in this part of Brazil. Arlen Woffinden, who has been president of the Brazil Belo Horizonte Mission since last July, met us and drove us the 30 km back to Belo. He took us to a point where we could overlook much of the city of some 4 million or so people and where the girls took their first pictures. We visited at the mission home with the Woffindens (Arlen, Debi, 17-year-old Danny, and 14-year-old Avery), called home to Mom (and learned that Caleb had been born last night), showered, and ate a delicious Brazilian dinner (of pork chops, fried potatoes, rice, beans, a Brazilian variety of broccoli, and salad) prepared by the maid Rosa.
Before dinner, Avery took the four girls over to the shopping mall across the street from the mission home, which is on the third floor of a 17-story apartment building, and Arlen took me to the mission office, which is about three blocks away on the 10th floor of a 10-story office building.
After dinner Arlen and I went to a member-missionary fireside in Sete Lagoas, about an hour away from the mission home. The two assistants also went with us. We left Belo later than we had planned, the roads were wet from rain, and the elder who thought he knew where the chapel was helped get us lost, so we arrived about an hour after the meeting was supposed to have begun. Everyone was just standing around waiting, and no one seemed to mind. Even after we began, people kept wandering in throughout the meeting.
It was an enjoyable evening. Arlen invited me to bear my testimony during his talk, which I did in Portuguese. The girls were all asleep by the time we returned to the mission home after 11:00 (8:00 p.m. back in Utah).
Thursday, May 28
This morning we went to the correio [post office] and mailed 427 copies of O Casa News, the newsletter Michael does for former missionaries of the Brazil Manaus Mission, to all the people on his mailing list who live in Brazil. Our mailing the newsletter here in Brazil saved Michael several hundreds of dollars over what the postage would have cost from the United States. We then drove with Debi and Avery out to the American school where Danny (a junior) and Avery (an eighth grader) go to school. President Woffinden is in interviews and zone conference all day.
This afternoon the four girls and I drove out to Ouro Preto (which means Black Gold), the colonial capital of Minas Gerais. It is about an hour and a half from Belo Horizonte through very lovely countryside. The city, which is a nationally protected world heritage site, looks much the same as it did in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is filled with old churches. The one we toured—Nossa Senhora de Pilar—was ornately decorated with gold and silver and old paintings and statues. The guide said it was the most lavish church in Ouro Preto and the second richest in all of Brazil.
We also wandered through some of the many gem shops and jewelry stores and bought several souvenirs and gifts in the open-air soapstone market. A very persistent peddler obnoxiously kept trying to sell us some semi-precious gems from the area and kept hounding us wherever we went. He apparently did not understand the word não. At the soapstone market, the girls got brave enough to inquire about prices and make purchases without my standing at their side to translate for them.
It had threatened rain all afternoon but did not rain until we were driving the 90 kilometers back to Belo Horizonte. It was dark already, and the road was harder to see, but we didn't get lost and were able to follow the directions the Woffindens had given us.
Back at the mission home, we ate dinner, a Brazilian version of chicken stroganoff, vegetables, rice, and beans, and spent the evening visiting. It has been wonderful to be with such dear friends as Arlen and Debi.
I placed calls to Irmã Virgínia in Maceió, not knowing if she had received my letter saying we were coming (she had), and to Marta in Manaus, who thought at first I was Michael calling (which I was not).
Friday, May 29
A pleasant final day with the Woffindens. This morning we sat visiting with Arlen and, after he left for a meeting at the mission office, with Debi. We did laundry and repacked our bags. The soapstone we had purchased and a package we need to take to the Woffindens’ son in Salvador filled up the space we emptied in three bags by mailing Michael's newsletters and giving the Woffindens the stuff we brought from the States for them. Avery, who has been home from school this week with a bad cold, had gone back to school part of yesterday but was home again today.
At about 1:30 Arlen returned home and we ate spaghetti that Debi had prepared. Then all of us went walking down to a central market, which was quite an eye-opening cultural experience for the girls. They were disgusted, for example, with the way unrefrigerated meat was handled and the smells of everything. They were especially grossed out by the pig head or pig tail that was being sold.
We returned to the mission home, said our farewells, and rode to the international airport with Debi. It had been a delightful three days for us, and it was great to see dear friends again.
Our flight from Belo Horizonte took us to Brasília, the nation's capital. After a 50-minute layover we took a second flight to Maceió with a stop in Salvador. We arrived in Maceió at 11:05 p.m. and were met by Betânia and Sônia (Virgínia's daughter-in-law who is married to Tiago). Rachael, Camilla, and Mary went home to Betânia’s house, and Eliza and I went home with Virgínia and Sônia. It had been raining, and though Sônia felt it was too cold, we all sweltered in the warm humidity.
After a little midnight supper of Virgínia's famous chocolate cake, some cheese, and drinks of guaraná, Eliza and I went to bed.
Saturday, May 30
Betânia and her husband Chico have a vacation home a ways south of town in Barra de São Miguel, where they used to live when their children were smaller. All of us went there this morning, riding either in Betânia's car or in a school bus (a Volkswagen bus) driven by Inez’s friend, to go to the beach there. The girls enjoyed playing in the water. It was a beautiful place.
We returned to Virginia's house late in the afternoon, and pretty much all of her family were gathered: Inez (who had gone with us to the beach), Alexandre (who runs an English school and is not married), Betânia, Andre, Adriano (whom I baptized in 1970 and who is now a counselor in the stake presidency), his wife Amélia, and some of the younger children that Virgínia adopted after I was here as a missionary: Tiago, Pedro, and Lucas. Nine rambunctious grandchildren were also here, and the place was pretty noisy.
Tiago and Lucas are now married and, with their wives, live here with Virgínia. Tiago's wife Sônia is receiving the missionary discussions and plans to be baptized. She seems like a very nice person. Lucas is 17, his wife only 15, and they are expecting a baby in August.
After eating, some of the group went over to Betânia's apartment and, after Chico got home, went to the Shopping (a mall) and to the feira along the beach. Rachael found a darling little shirt for Caleb, who is now four days old.
Tonight Eliza joined the other three girls at Betânia's house. I stayed alone at Virginia's. It must have been near midnight that she and Sônia fixed me a "little" midnight snack (two hamburgers and some suco de something). I was very tired when I went to bed.
While we were at Betânia's house after dinner, I called home to Claudia.
Sunday, May 31
This morning we attended meetings in the Farol Ward. Virgínia and I went at 8:30, even though the sacrament meeting didn't begin until 9:00, so that she could attend choir practice. Only one other sister came for the practice. Betânia came with the four girls a little before church was to begin. Virgínia is the ward organist, and Betânia is a counselor in the Relief Society presidency. Adriano, Amélia, and their two little boys—Aldo and Mateus—also came, even though they are in another ward. Adriano is second counselor in the stake presidency.
Sacrament meeting was very nice, although the girls got little out of it. Even with the language barrier, the members did a wonderful job of making the girls feel welcome.
Rachael and I attended the Gospel Doctrine class together. Camilla, Eliza, and Mary went to a youth Sunday School class.
During the final hour the adults met together in a combined meeting of the Melchizedek Priesthood and Relief Society, which Rachael and I attended. Camilla, Eliza, and Mary went to Young Women, where Elder McLaughlin interpreted for them. In our combined meeting, the bishop invited me to bear my testimony, after which he led a marvelous and animated discussion on the four cornerstones of a happy marriage as taught by President Hinckley.
We met a lady in the ward originally from Feira de Santana in Bahia who knows Jailson da Rocha, Michael's first missionary companion. We hope to see Jailson in Salvador tomorrow. I sent him a telegram Friday afternoon from Belo Horizonte.
Most, if not all, of Virginia's family gathered at her house after church for Sunday dinner. We had a lovely visit.
Later in the afternoon Virgínia, Inez, Sarah, Alexandre, Betânia, and the five of us went to visit Nádia and her aged mother. They were delighted to see us and, after her nearly talking our leg off, we left sometime after dark. From Nádia's apartment, we had a lovely view out one direction of the city, a lighthouse (the farol after which this part of Maceió is named), and the sea. From the other direction, we could see the building in which the Brazil Maceió Mission will have its office after the headquarters transfer in July from Recife. The mission up until now has been known as the Brazil Recife South Mission.
Virgínia went to choir practice at the church, and everyone else went home to eat again. The two missionaries—Elders McLaughlin and Borelli—were there. Elder McLaughlin had made two apple pies for the occasion, which he had brought by yesterday afternoon before we returned from the beach.
After more visiting, Eliza and I went to bed around 10:00 so we could get up at 4:00 tomorrow morning to catch our early flight to Salvador. Eliza affirmed that it had been a stretching, growing, tiring weekend, but one she had really enjoyed. It reminded me of what Claudia had observed after being in Maceió two years ago, "This is the hardest vacation I have ever enjoyed."
Monday, June 1
Eliza and I awoke at 4:00, got ready, ate Virginia's last breakfast, and were ready by 4:30 when Betânia and the other three girls came to pick us up to go to the airport, where we caught a 5:40 flight to Salvador. Eliza had feigned sleep on the airplane so she didn't have to eat breakfast a second time.
For me it had been a wonderful reunion with these dear people here in Maceió, and the girls seemed to enjoy the visit.
In less than an hour we arrived in Salvador, the capital of Bahia and the colonial capital of Brazil from 1549 until the early 1800s, when the capital was moved to Rio de Janeiro at the time the Portuguese royal family came from Europe to take up residence during the Napoleonic wars.
Brad Sheppard, president of the Brazil Salvador Mission, met us at the airport. One of his new assistants, Elder Rómulo Mello, was on his way to São Paulo for a week for some kind of medical treatment and to be sealed to his family in the temple. (We didn't figure out until tonight that this Elder Mello was Renata's brother from Manaus.)
The Sheppards originally had invited us to spend the night at their home, but they had a sister with what may be rheumatic fever who had to use the only extra room, so President Sheppard put us up at a little hotel near the beach that they use to house groups of new missionaries.
We freshened up before he returned at 9:00 to drive us up to the old part of the city, where we spent several hours touring the cathedral, many other old churches filled with gold and silver and old paintings, and the Pelourinho, where all the houses, shops, and other buildings have been restored in colorful fashion to their sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century splendor. We saw where Jorge Amado, a famous Brazilian author, had lived and worked. We visited the H. Stern jewelry store, which included a walk through a Disneyesque mineral mine and a sales pitch to buy some beautiful but expensive Brazilian gems.
It rained on us a couple times, once quite heavily, and we had to stand in a doorway until it lessened.
The churches we had seen reminded us of a passage in the Book of Mormon: "Behold, the gold, and the silver, and the silks, and the scarlets, and the fine-twined linen, and the precious clothing, and the harlots, are the desires of this great and abominable church" (1 Nephi 13:8).
The African slaves were required to build the many churches in Salvador but were denied access after they were completed. The prophet Nephi had also seen that in vision: "Because of pride, and because of false teachers, and false doctrine, their churches have become corrupted, and their churches are lifted up; because of pride they are puffed up. They rob the poor because of their fine sanctuaries" (2 Nephi 28:13).
Our guide for the day, Carlos, did a thorough job, was a pleasant fellow, and we hope really should have been paid the R$100 (US$89 total or R$20 a piece) he charged us.
We took the municipal elevator the 700 meters or so from the cidade alta (upper city) down to the cidade baixa (lower city) and spent a couple more hours in the mercado looking for and buying Bahian souvenir gifts for those back home.
While we were waiting for President Sheppard to pick us up, I conversed with a British couple that was visiting Brazil from London. Like us, they go tomorrow to Manaus.
President Sheppard took us to the mission home (the same one Rebecca lived in for three months in 1993 when she came to Brazil with Cláudia Amato), where we met more of the Sheppard family. The mission home is on the third floor of a seven-story apartment building and has a large balcony that overlooks a lovely little tropical forest that has birds and monkeys and such.
Bruce Harper had called me from work, so President Sheppard had me call him back, then invited me to call home to Claudia. They ordered pizza from Pizza Hut, a nice change of pace for the girls, who have bravely tried a lot of Brazilian foods.
During dinner the heavens opened and dumped a lot of rain. Many of the streets turned into rivers and lakes. Mary and Eliza played sliding games with the two youngest Sheppard girls on the wet tiles of the big balcony overlooking the monkey jungle. President Sheppard then drove us back to the hotel through the torrential downpour. The street next to the hotel was a river.
Tuesday, June 2
Talmage’s 21st birthday. We will be seeing him in just two more days.
President Sheppard picked us up from our hotel at 6:00 and drove us to the airport to catch our 7:10 flight to São Paulo and then back north to Manaus. The two flights were uneventful, and we arrived about 1:30 this afternoon in Manaus. Álvaro and Marta Pinto came to meet us, along with one of Álvaro's counselors in the stake presidency who has a Volkswagen bus.
We went to Álvaro and Marta's house, where we ate. Álvaro, who is one of several stake presidents here in Manaus, works for the Church Educational System as a coordinator for northern Brazil. He and Marta visited the United States for the first time last September, when they stayed with Michael and Shauna. They have three boys: Éneo (age 18), Olípio (age 14), and Plínio (who will turn 4 on September 2, Michael's birthday). They are trying to arrange for Éneo to come to the United States this coming December to study English.
After we were through eating we went to the Manaus opera house or Teatro Amazonas, as it is known here. The famous landmark was built in 1896, during the height of the rubber boom in the Amazon basin. We got to the opera house just after it closed, so the girls did not get a chance to see inside. (I attended a performance here four years ago when I came to pick Michael up from his mission.) We also visited the nearby praça and an old church built a hundred years ago (new in comparison with the Salvador churches). It was raining lightly.
Next we went out to Ponta Negra2 and walked through the little zoo at the Hotel Tropical and down to the river. It is a beautiful spot. A lovely sunset occurred while we were there. Then we came home and ate again, after which we went to the Shopping.
The four girls slept in Éneo's and Olípio's room, and I slept in Plínio's room. Just before retiring, Marta had us call Mom and Michael and Shauna.
Wednesday, June 3
This morning, leaving about two hours behind schedule, we got in a little ten-passenger boat named "Cláudia" to go out on the river. After leaving the port of Manaus, which is capable of handling ocean-going vessels even though it is nearly 800 miles from the coast, we traveled down the Rio Negro to where it joins the Solimões and becomes the Amazon River. The place is called the encontra das aguas (the Meeting of the Waters) and is distinctly visible because the black waters of the Rio Negro and the light brown of the Solimões do not mix for many miles downstream. It is a most fascinating site.
Afterward we also saw and did many other interesting things in the jungle. For example, we saw some giant lily pads called vitória régia (Queen Victoria, so named by the English explorer who first found them), ate lunch on a floating restaurant, fished, went out into the jungle and got the boat stuck in a marsh, saw a crocodile, many colored birds, some scary spiders, a huge snake, monkeys, a large turtle, and such things. An adventuresome day.
Back in Maceió, we stopped at the mercado, visited some friends of the Pintos, toured the school where Álvaro and Marta take night classes at the university, and ate dinner. Afterward we prepared for our 12:15 flight to São Paulo. Francisco and Marlene, whom Michael baptized four or five years ago, came to visit and took some of us to the airport.
Thursday, June 4
At 15 minutes after midnight we left Manaus on an international flight coming from Caracas and going beyond São Paulo to Buenos Aires. For the first time, we were in five different rows on the plane, and someone was already in Mary's and my seats. The plane was full, but the stewardess found us other seats. We arrived in São Paulo around 5:00 a.m.
We had three hours, we thought, between flights, so some ate breakfast (having slept through the meal on the plane), Camilla, Eliza, and I mailed 12 postcards, Rachael and I got more money from the Bradesco ATM, and I called Sandra Amato about our coming to see them next week.
Our 8:00 flight to Curitiba was late in leaving because fog had closed the airport in Curitiba. We waited a while, were bused to another part of the airport, and finally left São Paulo at 10:30. After the normal one-hour flight to the capital of Paraná, we circled Curitiba for an additional 30 minutes before we were cleared to land. It still looked pretty foggy, and I hoped the pilot knew what he was doing and would not hit the ground until there was actual runway beneath him.
There is a new terminal since we flew through Curitiba two years ago on our way to Foz do Iguaçu. We took a large taxi (something like a Volkswagen bus) from the airport to the mission home at Praça Joseph Smith in the Portão area of the city. The mission office is a part of the large meetinghouse that houses the Portão stake and three wards.
We had planned to stash our luggage and ask the office elders what we could do until time to meet Talmage (around 4:30 or 5:00). But, to our surprise and his, Talmage was there, and we excitedly greeted him. It was good to see him again.
Talmage and the other five missionaries being released were taken to the mission home for their final meal and testimony meeting with President and Sister Adhemar Damiani, whom we had an opportunity to meet. (President Damiani was sustained at the April general conference as an Area Authority Seventy and will become a member of the Brazil South Area Presidency in August.)
A member named Tony took the girls and me to a nearby shopping mall to eat lunch in the food court. Mary, Eliza, and Camilla had pizza. Rachael, Tony, and I selected a buffet.
We went back to the church and found that our luggage was locked in a room, and everyone with keys had gone. So we sat in the courtyard of the church, trying to ward off the cold by staying in the sun, patiently waiting for all the missionaries to return. The girls were all exceedingly tired because we had not really been to bed for two days.
Since we planned to spend all night traveling on a bus from Curitiba to Foz do Iguaçu (a ten-hour trip), it didn't seem to make sense to arrange a hotel until we returned Saturday morning. Some of the girls needed a shower before Saturday, so they decided to take a cold shower at the church even though it was quite cold already. I thought they were either very brave or very desperate.
After the missionaries returned and Talmage was officially released to our care, Talmage and I walked over to a little travel agency to buy our bus tickets to Foz do Iguaçu. We were surprised to discover the tickets were far more expensive than we had anticipated. As we considered the cost, how bushed everyone was, and how cold it was, we decided not to go to Iguaçu tonight and go find a hotel instead. We walked back to the church and told the girls our decision, and they all seemed relieved. We thought they might be upset that they all took cold showers for nothing.
We called Tony to come haul us to some hotel and, while waiting for him, got hamburgers from the lunch counter on the corner. Tony took us to half a dozen or more hotels, trying to arrange the best deal for us. Everywhere we checked required us to get two rooms. The final place we found was a suite that would hold all six of us on the 13th floor of the Hotel Tibagi, located on Rua Candido Lopes just a few blocks from Praça Tiradentes, in the center of downtown Curitiba. The room was the cheapest we found and was one of the few that had air conditioning, which in translation meant it was heated, and which it turned out was very important to have.
Friday, June 5
Talmage took us today visiting members and investigators he knew in Vila Tebas. They all seemed happy to see him again. On the bus ride to that part of the city, Camilla turned white as a sheet and nearly passed out on us. A lady on the bus is the one who noticed first and quickly invited Camilla, who was standing at the time, to take her seat. She seemed to survive the rest of the day, although we could tell she was not feeling well and probably had a fever.
Saturday, June 6
Talmage took us today visiting in Pinheirinho and Jardim da Ordem (his final area in Curitiba). It is pleasing to see how much he cares for the members, and how much they care for him. Every home we visited, of course, offered us either something to eat or drink, as these dear Brazilians are wont to do to express their hospitality. Here in Curitiba, fortunately, it is actually safe to drink the water.
The last member we visited owned a car and drove us back into the center of Curitiba, first to the rodoviária to purchase our bus tickets to São Paulo, and then back to our hotel.
Camilla has a fever and definitely appears to be sick.
Sunday, June 7
Today was fast Sunday, so we did not eat breakfast in the hotel restaurant as on the previous two days. We decided to have Camilla stay in the room all day and rest. She has a fever and a sore throat and just looks sick. Rachael stayed with her. It appears our decision to skip Iguaçu was a good call.
Talmage took Mary, Eliza, and I to church in the Almirante Tamandaré Branch. It took us three buses to get there, and buses don't run as frequently on Sundays, so we got there a little late, just in time for Sunday School to start. Talmage and I went in the class for new members. Mary and Eliza went in the youth Sunday School class.
One of the two missionaries serving in the branch was an Elder Sandberg from Bountiful. His little sister plays on Eliza's soccer team. His father was one of Talmage's seminary teachers in high school. The elder wrote a quick letter to his family for us to carry back to Utah, and we took a picture of him and his companion.
Fast and testimony meeting in the branch was very nice and turned into a eulogy for Elder Cleverly. It was clear, as it had been among all the members we've visited the past two days, that Talmage is held in highest esteem among these good people.
After church we went to the branch president's home to eat Sunday dinner put together by three different families in the branch. They even had a birthday cake for Talmage, who turned 21 last Tuesday.
Talmage also wanted to take us to visit some members in Santa Felicidade, including the Amato family, a brother of the Amato family we'll be staying with in São Paulo, but we ran out of time and energy.
The temperature both yesterday and today was delightful, much warmer than on Thursday when we arrived here, and the skies were clear and beautiful. It reminded me of being in southern California at Christmastime.
Back at the hotel, we found Camilla still alive (for which we were grateful). She and Rachael had spent a quiet, restful day. We tried calling home tonight, but we couldn't get our calling card to work from the hotel's phone system.
Monday, June 8
This morning we checked out of our hotel. It had been a nice home for the past four days. It had cost us R$128 per day (approximately US$114), plus the mandatory 10 percent service fee that is added to that price. Two taxis took us to the rodoviária to catch our 12:00 noon bus to São Paulo. The countryside through the states of Paraná and São Paulo was very pretty, somewhat mountainous, and generally forested or under cultivation of some kind.
The ride itself became quite scary, however, after the divided highway leaving Curitiba turned into a narrow two-way road. The bus driver was a suicidal maniac who was bent on our destruction. He would pass entire lines of slow-moving trucks, often without regard to whether we were rounding a corner or cresting a hill and could not see what oncoming traffic we might plow into. Talmage and I had the misfortune of being in the front two seats directly behind the driver and could clearly see everything coming at us. Despite what we considered a few very close calls, the driver delivered us safely to São Paulo six hours later. (The trip from Curitiba to São Paulo was six hours, just as we had been told, but that did not factor in the additional two hours it took to get from the edge of São Paulo across the city to the rodoviária.)
The Amatos, whom we had called last night from Curitiba, had told us to take the metro from the station next to the rodoviária to the Saúde station near their home and that they would pick us up there. We did as they had said and made it without incident to that portion of the city. The metro was clean, not too crowded at the time we were riding it, and delivered us in about 40 or 45 minutes. Talmage got talking to a young man, 21 years old, who was a law student and who that very day had broken up with his girl friend. He was unable to get him to agree to a visit from the missionaries.
After we called the Amatos, they came in two cars, picked the six of us up, and took us back to their home. Homero Amato had been Cade's mission president in the Brazil Salvador Mission. Sandra Amato, his wife, was not feeling well and was already in bed by the time we arrived around 9:00. She had been at the hospital much of the day having medical tests. Their oldest child, Cláudia, lives with her husband Joel (a returned missionary from the Manaus mission) in Provo, where they are just finishing up from BYU. Daniel, now living back at home, is a returned missionary from the Texas Dallas Mission. Eduardo is now on a mission in the Georgia Atlanta Mission. Miriam, age 14, looks very much like her older sister Cláudia did when she came to live with us back in 1993. Homerinho, the youngest, is now eight years old.
After we got to the Amatos, Talmage went with Daniel to a pizza place to get our supper. We ate and visited and e-mailed people at home and looked at new little Caleb's home page and saw our first pictures of him and finally bedded down for the night. Their home actually has a basement, unusual for a Brazilian house, and we slept on mattresses spread all over the floor. Camilla is still sick. We finally took her temperature, and it is rather high. The Amatos gave her some medicine to help bring it down.
Tuesday, June 9
A beautiful day in São Paulo. The skies were clear. The temperature just perfect.
We called home to Utah and talked with Mom. She was very sad that we had not gone to Iguaçu but understood when we explained about Camilla's not being well. It was wonderful to talk to her again. She will make a doctor's appointment for Camilla for Thursday afternoon after our return that morning.
This morning we had planned to go to a museum not far from the Amatos' house, but we were all too slow in getting started for the day. Toward midday Sister Amato and Daniel drove us in two different cars to a bus stop, where we caught a bus that took us to the temple. We had wanted to go through the temple, with the girls doing baptisms for the dead, but the temple had closed for its winter break after the sessions on Saturday. We were able to take some pictures in front of the temple.
We went into the area office next door to the temple and visited with Elder W. Craig Zwick, the Area President. His first counselor, Elder Claudio R. M. Costa (who was Michael's first mission president in Manaus), was away on assignment. Elder Zwick arranged for someone to take us out to the new MTC facility later in the afternoon. First we went to the shopping center across the street to eat lunch and to allow Eliza to look for a wooden monkey like Mom had purchased there two years ago, but the girls couldn't find any.
We met some elders from the Brazil São Paulo North Mission, who said their mission office was just a couple blocks away, so Talmage and I went with them to see if we could meet President Fenton Broadhead, who had served with me as a young missionary. Unfortunately, President Broadhead would not be returning until after we had to be back to the area office to catch our ride to the MTC.
The missionary training center was dedicated last year and is the largest facility the Church has built outside the United States. Michael's second mission president, Aldo Francesconi, is now the director of training at the MTC. He met us and gave us a tour of the marvelous facility, showing us parts of it that even the missionaries in residence never get to see. He also gave us a few cases of shampoo and Pringles potato chips that Proctor and Gamble had donated large amounts of to the Church.
President Francesconi told us that tomorrow Elder Russell M. Nelson, of the Quorum of the Twelve, would be in town and would be meeting with all of the mission presidents from all over Brazil.
Our driver took us back to the Amatos' home, and we spent a quiet evening visiting. President Amato and Daniel went off to a meeting of the BYU Management Society, which they had invited Talmage and me to attend with them, but we stayed to visit with a former missionary that Michael had known in Manaus, Sister Bittencourt, and her husband. A pleasant evening.
Wednesday, June 10
Our last day in Brazil. We went over to a shopping center that was within walking distance of the Amatos' house and bought a few final gifts for people back home.
At the various places we had been staying here in Brazil, we had given the members either a CD or a cassette tape of the Tabernacle Choir's latest release Faith in Every Footstep, which everyone seemed to especially enjoy receiving.
At noon we joined the Amatos and some of their friends in watching Brazil's opening game in the World Cup, which is being played this year in France. Daniel had set up equipment that projected the TV on the wall. (Four years ago Daniel had gone with us to San Francisco to watch the opening game between Brazil and Russia.) We handed out cans of Pringles potato chips to each person there.
Brazilians really take their soccer seriously, and it was a cultural experience in itself for the girls to get to see and hear how they watch a game. The final score was Brazil 2 and Scotland 1, so there was major jubilation in the streets, and this city of more than 20 million people largely shut down for the rest of the day (of course, it was also the eve of a national Brazilian holiday tomorrow). This worked greatly to our advantage later in the afternoon because the traffic on our way to the airport was not too bad.
When I was a missionary in Brazil in 1970, Brazil became the first country ever to win its third title in the World Cup. When Michael was a missionary here in 1994, Brazil became the first country to win its fourth title. Now that Talmage has been here in 1998, we hope that helps Brazil win its fifth title.
Late this afternoon the Amatos drove us to the Congonhas airport, which is relatively close to their home. There at 5:30 we caught an express bus for an hour-long ride to the Gaurulhos airport on the other side of the city, and went through the lengthy process of getting out of Brazil. Finally, at shortly after 9:00 p.m. São Paulo time (which would have been 6:00 back in Utah) we lifted off and were headed home. Our wonderful adventure and Talmage's mission were coming to a close.
Thursday, June 11
We arrived in Chicago early this morning. It was raining. After going through immigration and clearing customs, we took the train to the terminal where our final flight would take us home to Utah. That flight was late because the plane we'd be flying on didn't arrive from Florida until half an hour after it had been scheduled. While we were waiting, I finished reading the second of the three books in the Lord of the Rings. I had started rereading the trilogy when our trip began. (Once before, during my freshman year, back before my mission, I had read the tales of Hobbits and the other creatures from Middle Earth and the mighty struggle between the forces of good and evil.)
After we were finally on the plane and had pulled away from the gate, the pilot came on the intercom to tell us that there were 12 planes in front of us waiting to take off and that we'd be delayed at least 15 minutes if not more. Not many minutes later he came back on to say that all flights going west from Chicago were grounded because of severe weather and that we would just sit on the runway until further notice.
The lady in the seat next to me was from New York State and was going home to Bountiful to visit her father. She had grown up in Bountiful in the same ward that Marv Gardner and Phil and Dorothy Johnson live in. She loved to talk, and I felt like I had known her all my life by the time we were even in the air.
Finally, we were cleared for take off and, as we flew west across the mid section of the country, had some of the worst turbulence I ever remember. We touched down in Salt Lake about two hours late, and the girls had made Talmage agree to be the last one off the plane (so they could take his picture). It was a joyful reunion and, even though we had had a marvelous trip, we were all glad to be home.
During the 17 days we were gone to Brazil, the girls and I rode on 12 separate airplanes (pretty good for young travelers who were flying for the first time) as we visited five different regions of that vast country. Other forms of transportation included cars, a school bus, a boat, taxis, buses, and trains. And a lot of walking.
Camilla, who was noticeably sick during the final days of our trip, went to the doctor a few hours after returning home and found out she did have a strep infection. No one suffered any ill effects from strange food or water.
All of the family gathered to greet the returning hero, Talmage, who was meeting two nieces (Meghan and Miriam) and a nephew (Caleb) for the first time. We all returned from the airport to our house, where we had six-foot subway sandwiches and drinks and opened the gifts we had purchased on the trip.
Talmage was officially released from his mission at 6:30 Thursday evening by President Larry Veigel. He went to the temple for the first time on Saturday morning, reported to the high council Sunday morning, and spoke to the ward Sunday afternoon. His fluency in English steadily returned each day he was home.
Tuesday, May 26, 1998
The adventure began this afternoon at 3:45 when our United flight to Chicago lifted off from the Salt Lake airport. It was the first time Camilla, Eliza, and Mary had ever flown that they can remember. Rachael, of course, is an experienced world traveler.
The flight was rather routine, although bumpy from turbulence. We arrived in Chicago after nearly three hours, just as evening was coming on. An hour later we were on a second United flight, this one a ten-hour non-stop to São Paulo. We called home from the airport in Chicago (which Rachael thinks is the nicest airport in the country, perhaps even in the world), but Mom had not heard anything yet from Michael and Shauna about their new baby. (Shauna had gone to the hospital just a couple hours before we left.)
Wednesday, May 27
We landed at the Gaurulhos airport in São Paulo about 9:00 local time. It took little time to clear customs, and we had no checked luggage to wait for, so we mostly just waited for our 12:15 VARIG flight to Belo Horizonte. Mary and I wandered about the terminal until we could find an ATM that would accept my VISA debit card. We had eaten twice on the plane, so we were not hungry but bought drinks at the McDonald's in the airport. I also spoke to three American missionaries on their way to Porto Alegre.
After an hour's flight to Belo Horizonte, we were in the capital of Minas Gerais, the first time I had ever been in this part of Brazil. Arlen Woffinden, who has been president of the Brazil Belo Horizonte Mission since last July, met us and drove us the 30 km back to Belo. He took us to a point where we could overlook much of the city of some 4 million or so people and where the girls took their first pictures. We visited at the mission home with the Woffindens (Arlen, Debi, 17-year-old Danny, and 14-year-old Avery), called home to Mom (and learned that Caleb had been born last night), showered, and ate a delicious Brazilian dinner (of pork chops, fried potatoes, rice, beans, a Brazilian variety of broccoli, and salad) prepared by the maid Rosa.
Before dinner, Avery took the four girls over to the shopping mall across the street from the mission home, which is on the third floor of a 17-story apartment building, and Arlen took me to the mission office, which is about three blocks away on the 10th floor of a 10-story office building.
After dinner Arlen and I went to a member-missionary fireside in Sete Lagoas, about an hour away from the mission home. The two assistants also went with us. We left Belo later than we had planned, the roads were wet from rain, and the elder who thought he knew where the chapel was helped get us lost, so we arrived about an hour after the meeting was supposed to have begun. Everyone was just standing around waiting, and no one seemed to mind. Even after we began, people kept wandering in throughout the meeting.
It was an enjoyable evening. Arlen invited me to bear my testimony during his talk, which I did in Portuguese. The girls were all asleep by the time we returned to the mission home after 11:00 (8:00 p.m. back in Utah).
Thursday, May 28
This morning we went to the correio [post office] and mailed 427 copies of O Casa News, the newsletter Michael does for former missionaries of the Brazil Manaus Mission, to all the people on his mailing list who live in Brazil. Our mailing the newsletter here in Brazil saved Michael several hundreds of dollars over what the postage would have cost from the United States. We then drove with Debi and Avery out to the American school where Danny (a junior) and Avery (an eighth grader) go to school. President Woffinden is in interviews and zone conference all day.
This afternoon the four girls and I drove out to Ouro Preto (which means Black Gold), the colonial capital of Minas Gerais. It is about an hour and a half from Belo Horizonte through very lovely countryside. The city, which is a nationally protected world heritage site, looks much the same as it did in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is filled with old churches. The one we toured—Nossa Senhora de Pilar—was ornately decorated with gold and silver and old paintings and statues. The guide said it was the most lavish church in Ouro Preto and the second richest in all of Brazil.
We also wandered through some of the many gem shops and jewelry stores and bought several souvenirs and gifts in the open-air soapstone market. A very persistent peddler obnoxiously kept trying to sell us some semi-precious gems from the area and kept hounding us wherever we went. He apparently did not understand the word não. At the soapstone market, the girls got brave enough to inquire about prices and make purchases without my standing at their side to translate for them.
It had threatened rain all afternoon but did not rain until we were driving the 90 kilometers back to Belo Horizonte. It was dark already, and the road was harder to see, but we didn't get lost and were able to follow the directions the Woffindens had given us.
Back at the mission home, we ate dinner, a Brazilian version of chicken stroganoff, vegetables, rice, and beans, and spent the evening visiting. It has been wonderful to be with such dear friends as Arlen and Debi.
I placed calls to Irmã Virgínia in Maceió, not knowing if she had received my letter saying we were coming (she had), and to Marta in Manaus, who thought at first I was Michael calling (which I was not).
Friday, May 29
A pleasant final day with the Woffindens. This morning we sat visiting with Arlen and, after he left for a meeting at the mission office, with Debi. We did laundry and repacked our bags. The soapstone we had purchased and a package we need to take to the Woffindens’ son in Salvador filled up the space we emptied in three bags by mailing Michael's newsletters and giving the Woffindens the stuff we brought from the States for them. Avery, who has been home from school this week with a bad cold, had gone back to school part of yesterday but was home again today.
At about 1:30 Arlen returned home and we ate spaghetti that Debi had prepared. Then all of us went walking down to a central market, which was quite an eye-opening cultural experience for the girls. They were disgusted, for example, with the way unrefrigerated meat was handled and the smells of everything. They were especially grossed out by the pig head or pig tail that was being sold.
We returned to the mission home, said our farewells, and rode to the international airport with Debi. It had been a delightful three days for us, and it was great to see dear friends again.
Our flight from Belo Horizonte took us to Brasília, the nation's capital. After a 50-minute layover we took a second flight to Maceió with a stop in Salvador. We arrived in Maceió at 11:05 p.m. and were met by Betânia and Sônia (Virgínia's daughter-in-law who is married to Tiago). Rachael, Camilla, and Mary went home to Betânia’s house, and Eliza and I went home with Virgínia and Sônia. It had been raining, and though Sônia felt it was too cold, we all sweltered in the warm humidity.
After a little midnight supper of Virgínia's famous chocolate cake, some cheese, and drinks of guaraná, Eliza and I went to bed.
Saturday, May 30
Betânia and her husband Chico have a vacation home a ways south of town in Barra de São Miguel, where they used to live when their children were smaller. All of us went there this morning, riding either in Betânia's car or in a school bus (a Volkswagen bus) driven by Inez’s friend, to go to the beach there. The girls enjoyed playing in the water. It was a beautiful place.
We returned to Virginia's house late in the afternoon, and pretty much all of her family were gathered: Inez (who had gone with us to the beach), Alexandre (who runs an English school and is not married), Betânia, Andre, Adriano (whom I baptized in 1970 and who is now a counselor in the stake presidency), his wife Amélia, and some of the younger children that Virgínia adopted after I was here as a missionary: Tiago, Pedro, and Lucas. Nine rambunctious grandchildren were also here, and the place was pretty noisy.
Tiago and Lucas are now married and, with their wives, live here with Virgínia. Tiago's wife Sônia is receiving the missionary discussions and plans to be baptized. She seems like a very nice person. Lucas is 17, his wife only 15, and they are expecting a baby in August.
After eating, some of the group went over to Betânia's apartment and, after Chico got home, went to the Shopping (a mall) and to the feira along the beach. Rachael found a darling little shirt for Caleb, who is now four days old.
Tonight Eliza joined the other three girls at Betânia's house. I stayed alone at Virginia's. It must have been near midnight that she and Sônia fixed me a "little" midnight snack (two hamburgers and some suco de something). I was very tired when I went to bed.
While we were at Betânia's house after dinner, I called home to Claudia.
Sunday, May 31
This morning we attended meetings in the Farol Ward. Virgínia and I went at 8:30, even though the sacrament meeting didn't begin until 9:00, so that she could attend choir practice. Only one other sister came for the practice. Betânia came with the four girls a little before church was to begin. Virgínia is the ward organist, and Betânia is a counselor in the Relief Society presidency. Adriano, Amélia, and their two little boys—Aldo and Mateus—also came, even though they are in another ward. Adriano is second counselor in the stake presidency.
Sacrament meeting was very nice, although the girls got little out of it. Even with the language barrier, the members did a wonderful job of making the girls feel welcome.
Rachael and I attended the Gospel Doctrine class together. Camilla, Eliza, and Mary went to a youth Sunday School class.
During the final hour the adults met together in a combined meeting of the Melchizedek Priesthood and Relief Society, which Rachael and I attended. Camilla, Eliza, and Mary went to Young Women, where Elder McLaughlin interpreted for them. In our combined meeting, the bishop invited me to bear my testimony, after which he led a marvelous and animated discussion on the four cornerstones of a happy marriage as taught by President Hinckley.
We met a lady in the ward originally from Feira de Santana in Bahia who knows Jailson da Rocha, Michael's first missionary companion. We hope to see Jailson in Salvador tomorrow. I sent him a telegram Friday afternoon from Belo Horizonte.
Most, if not all, of Virginia's family gathered at her house after church for Sunday dinner. We had a lovely visit.
Later in the afternoon Virgínia, Inez, Sarah, Alexandre, Betânia, and the five of us went to visit Nádia and her aged mother. They were delighted to see us and, after her nearly talking our leg off, we left sometime after dark. From Nádia's apartment, we had a lovely view out one direction of the city, a lighthouse (the farol after which this part of Maceió is named), and the sea. From the other direction, we could see the building in which the Brazil Maceió Mission will have its office after the headquarters transfer in July from Recife. The mission up until now has been known as the Brazil Recife South Mission.
Virgínia went to choir practice at the church, and everyone else went home to eat again. The two missionaries—Elders McLaughlin and Borelli—were there. Elder McLaughlin had made two apple pies for the occasion, which he had brought by yesterday afternoon before we returned from the beach.
After more visiting, Eliza and I went to bed around 10:00 so we could get up at 4:00 tomorrow morning to catch our early flight to Salvador. Eliza affirmed that it had been a stretching, growing, tiring weekend, but one she had really enjoyed. It reminded me of what Claudia had observed after being in Maceió two years ago, "This is the hardest vacation I have ever enjoyed."
Monday, June 1
Eliza and I awoke at 4:00, got ready, ate Virginia's last breakfast, and were ready by 4:30 when Betânia and the other three girls came to pick us up to go to the airport, where we caught a 5:40 flight to Salvador. Eliza had feigned sleep on the airplane so she didn't have to eat breakfast a second time.
For me it had been a wonderful reunion with these dear people here in Maceió, and the girls seemed to enjoy the visit.
In less than an hour we arrived in Salvador, the capital of Bahia and the colonial capital of Brazil from 1549 until the early 1800s, when the capital was moved to Rio de Janeiro at the time the Portuguese royal family came from Europe to take up residence during the Napoleonic wars.
Brad Sheppard, president of the Brazil Salvador Mission, met us at the airport. One of his new assistants, Elder Rómulo Mello, was on his way to São Paulo for a week for some kind of medical treatment and to be sealed to his family in the temple. (We didn't figure out until tonight that this Elder Mello was Renata's brother from Manaus.)
The Sheppards originally had invited us to spend the night at their home, but they had a sister with what may be rheumatic fever who had to use the only extra room, so President Sheppard put us up at a little hotel near the beach that they use to house groups of new missionaries.
We freshened up before he returned at 9:00 to drive us up to the old part of the city, where we spent several hours touring the cathedral, many other old churches filled with gold and silver and old paintings, and the Pelourinho, where all the houses, shops, and other buildings have been restored in colorful fashion to their sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century splendor. We saw where Jorge Amado, a famous Brazilian author, had lived and worked. We visited the H. Stern jewelry store, which included a walk through a Disneyesque mineral mine and a sales pitch to buy some beautiful but expensive Brazilian gems.
It rained on us a couple times, once quite heavily, and we had to stand in a doorway until it lessened.
The churches we had seen reminded us of a passage in the Book of Mormon: "Behold, the gold, and the silver, and the silks, and the scarlets, and the fine-twined linen, and the precious clothing, and the harlots, are the desires of this great and abominable church" (1 Nephi 13:8).
The African slaves were required to build the many churches in Salvador but were denied access after they were completed. The prophet Nephi had also seen that in vision: "Because of pride, and because of false teachers, and false doctrine, their churches have become corrupted, and their churches are lifted up; because of pride they are puffed up. They rob the poor because of their fine sanctuaries" (2 Nephi 28:13).
Our guide for the day, Carlos, did a thorough job, was a pleasant fellow, and we hope really should have been paid the R$100 (US$89 total or R$20 a piece) he charged us.
We took the municipal elevator the 700 meters or so from the cidade alta (upper city) down to the cidade baixa (lower city) and spent a couple more hours in the mercado looking for and buying Bahian souvenir gifts for those back home.
While we were waiting for President Sheppard to pick us up, I conversed with a British couple that was visiting Brazil from London. Like us, they go tomorrow to Manaus.
President Sheppard took us to the mission home (the same one Rebecca lived in for three months in 1993 when she came to Brazil with Cláudia Amato), where we met more of the Sheppard family. The mission home is on the third floor of a seven-story apartment building and has a large balcony that overlooks a lovely little tropical forest that has birds and monkeys and such.
Bruce Harper had called me from work, so President Sheppard had me call him back, then invited me to call home to Claudia. They ordered pizza from Pizza Hut, a nice change of pace for the girls, who have bravely tried a lot of Brazilian foods.
During dinner the heavens opened and dumped a lot of rain. Many of the streets turned into rivers and lakes. Mary and Eliza played sliding games with the two youngest Sheppard girls on the wet tiles of the big balcony overlooking the monkey jungle. President Sheppard then drove us back to the hotel through the torrential downpour. The street next to the hotel was a river.
Tuesday, June 2
Talmage’s 21st birthday. We will be seeing him in just two more days.
President Sheppard picked us up from our hotel at 6:00 and drove us to the airport to catch our 7:10 flight to São Paulo and then back north to Manaus. The two flights were uneventful, and we arrived about 1:30 this afternoon in Manaus. Álvaro and Marta Pinto came to meet us, along with one of Álvaro's counselors in the stake presidency who has a Volkswagen bus.
We went to Álvaro and Marta's house, where we ate. Álvaro, who is one of several stake presidents here in Manaus, works for the Church Educational System as a coordinator for northern Brazil. He and Marta visited the United States for the first time last September, when they stayed with Michael and Shauna. They have three boys: Éneo (age 18), Olípio (age 14), and Plínio (who will turn 4 on September 2, Michael's birthday). They are trying to arrange for Éneo to come to the United States this coming December to study English.
After we were through eating we went to the Manaus opera house or Teatro Amazonas, as it is known here. The famous landmark was built in 1896, during the height of the rubber boom in the Amazon basin. We got to the opera house just after it closed, so the girls did not get a chance to see inside. (I attended a performance here four years ago when I came to pick Michael up from his mission.) We also visited the nearby praça and an old church built a hundred years ago (new in comparison with the Salvador churches). It was raining lightly.
Next we went out to Ponta Negra2 and walked through the little zoo at the Hotel Tropical and down to the river. It is a beautiful spot. A lovely sunset occurred while we were there. Then we came home and ate again, after which we went to the Shopping.
The four girls slept in Éneo's and Olípio's room, and I slept in Plínio's room. Just before retiring, Marta had us call Mom and Michael and Shauna.
Wednesday, June 3
This morning, leaving about two hours behind schedule, we got in a little ten-passenger boat named "Cláudia" to go out on the river. After leaving the port of Manaus, which is capable of handling ocean-going vessels even though it is nearly 800 miles from the coast, we traveled down the Rio Negro to where it joins the Solimões and becomes the Amazon River. The place is called the encontra das aguas (the Meeting of the Waters) and is distinctly visible because the black waters of the Rio Negro and the light brown of the Solimões do not mix for many miles downstream. It is a most fascinating site.
Afterward we also saw and did many other interesting things in the jungle. For example, we saw some giant lily pads called vitória régia (Queen Victoria, so named by the English explorer who first found them), ate lunch on a floating restaurant, fished, went out into the jungle and got the boat stuck in a marsh, saw a crocodile, many colored birds, some scary spiders, a huge snake, monkeys, a large turtle, and such things. An adventuresome day.
Back in Maceió, we stopped at the mercado, visited some friends of the Pintos, toured the school where Álvaro and Marta take night classes at the university, and ate dinner. Afterward we prepared for our 12:15 flight to São Paulo. Francisco and Marlene, whom Michael baptized four or five years ago, came to visit and took some of us to the airport.
Thursday, June 4
At 15 minutes after midnight we left Manaus on an international flight coming from Caracas and going beyond São Paulo to Buenos Aires. For the first time, we were in five different rows on the plane, and someone was already in Mary's and my seats. The plane was full, but the stewardess found us other seats. We arrived in São Paulo around 5:00 a.m.
We had three hours, we thought, between flights, so some ate breakfast (having slept through the meal on the plane), Camilla, Eliza, and I mailed 12 postcards, Rachael and I got more money from the Bradesco ATM, and I called Sandra Amato about our coming to see them next week.
Our 8:00 flight to Curitiba was late in leaving because fog had closed the airport in Curitiba. We waited a while, were bused to another part of the airport, and finally left São Paulo at 10:30. After the normal one-hour flight to the capital of Paraná, we circled Curitiba for an additional 30 minutes before we were cleared to land. It still looked pretty foggy, and I hoped the pilot knew what he was doing and would not hit the ground until there was actual runway beneath him.
There is a new terminal since we flew through Curitiba two years ago on our way to Foz do Iguaçu. We took a large taxi (something like a Volkswagen bus) from the airport to the mission home at Praça Joseph Smith in the Portão area of the city. The mission office is a part of the large meetinghouse that houses the Portão stake and three wards.
We had planned to stash our luggage and ask the office elders what we could do until time to meet Talmage (around 4:30 or 5:00). But, to our surprise and his, Talmage was there, and we excitedly greeted him. It was good to see him again.
Talmage and the other five missionaries being released were taken to the mission home for their final meal and testimony meeting with President and Sister Adhemar Damiani, whom we had an opportunity to meet. (President Damiani was sustained at the April general conference as an Area Authority Seventy and will become a member of the Brazil South Area Presidency in August.)
A member named Tony took the girls and me to a nearby shopping mall to eat lunch in the food court. Mary, Eliza, and Camilla had pizza. Rachael, Tony, and I selected a buffet.
We went back to the church and found that our luggage was locked in a room, and everyone with keys had gone. So we sat in the courtyard of the church, trying to ward off the cold by staying in the sun, patiently waiting for all the missionaries to return. The girls were all exceedingly tired because we had not really been to bed for two days.
Since we planned to spend all night traveling on a bus from Curitiba to Foz do Iguaçu (a ten-hour trip), it didn't seem to make sense to arrange a hotel until we returned Saturday morning. Some of the girls needed a shower before Saturday, so they decided to take a cold shower at the church even though it was quite cold already. I thought they were either very brave or very desperate.
After the missionaries returned and Talmage was officially released to our care, Talmage and I walked over to a little travel agency to buy our bus tickets to Foz do Iguaçu. We were surprised to discover the tickets were far more expensive than we had anticipated. As we considered the cost, how bushed everyone was, and how cold it was, we decided not to go to Iguaçu tonight and go find a hotel instead. We walked back to the church and told the girls our decision, and they all seemed relieved. We thought they might be upset that they all took cold showers for nothing.
We called Tony to come haul us to some hotel and, while waiting for him, got hamburgers from the lunch counter on the corner. Tony took us to half a dozen or more hotels, trying to arrange the best deal for us. Everywhere we checked required us to get two rooms. The final place we found was a suite that would hold all six of us on the 13th floor of the Hotel Tibagi, located on Rua Candido Lopes just a few blocks from Praça Tiradentes, in the center of downtown Curitiba. The room was the cheapest we found and was one of the few that had air conditioning, which in translation meant it was heated, and which it turned out was very important to have.
Friday, June 5
Talmage took us today visiting members and investigators he knew in Vila Tebas. They all seemed happy to see him again. On the bus ride to that part of the city, Camilla turned white as a sheet and nearly passed out on us. A lady on the bus is the one who noticed first and quickly invited Camilla, who was standing at the time, to take her seat. She seemed to survive the rest of the day, although we could tell she was not feeling well and probably had a fever.
Saturday, June 6
Talmage took us today visiting in Pinheirinho and Jardim da Ordem (his final area in Curitiba). It is pleasing to see how much he cares for the members, and how much they care for him. Every home we visited, of course, offered us either something to eat or drink, as these dear Brazilians are wont to do to express their hospitality. Here in Curitiba, fortunately, it is actually safe to drink the water.
The last member we visited owned a car and drove us back into the center of Curitiba, first to the rodoviária to purchase our bus tickets to São Paulo, and then back to our hotel.
Camilla has a fever and definitely appears to be sick.
Sunday, June 7
Today was fast Sunday, so we did not eat breakfast in the hotel restaurant as on the previous two days. We decided to have Camilla stay in the room all day and rest. She has a fever and a sore throat and just looks sick. Rachael stayed with her. It appears our decision to skip Iguaçu was a good call.
Talmage took Mary, Eliza, and I to church in the Almirante Tamandaré Branch. It took us three buses to get there, and buses don't run as frequently on Sundays, so we got there a little late, just in time for Sunday School to start. Talmage and I went in the class for new members. Mary and Eliza went in the youth Sunday School class.
One of the two missionaries serving in the branch was an Elder Sandberg from Bountiful. His little sister plays on Eliza's soccer team. His father was one of Talmage's seminary teachers in high school. The elder wrote a quick letter to his family for us to carry back to Utah, and we took a picture of him and his companion.
Fast and testimony meeting in the branch was very nice and turned into a eulogy for Elder Cleverly. It was clear, as it had been among all the members we've visited the past two days, that Talmage is held in highest esteem among these good people.
After church we went to the branch president's home to eat Sunday dinner put together by three different families in the branch. They even had a birthday cake for Talmage, who turned 21 last Tuesday.
Talmage also wanted to take us to visit some members in Santa Felicidade, including the Amato family, a brother of the Amato family we'll be staying with in São Paulo, but we ran out of time and energy.
The temperature both yesterday and today was delightful, much warmer than on Thursday when we arrived here, and the skies were clear and beautiful. It reminded me of being in southern California at Christmastime.
Back at the hotel, we found Camilla still alive (for which we were grateful). She and Rachael had spent a quiet, restful day. We tried calling home tonight, but we couldn't get our calling card to work from the hotel's phone system.
Monday, June 8
This morning we checked out of our hotel. It had been a nice home for the past four days. It had cost us R$128 per day (approximately US$114), plus the mandatory 10 percent service fee that is added to that price. Two taxis took us to the rodoviária to catch our 12:00 noon bus to São Paulo. The countryside through the states of Paraná and São Paulo was very pretty, somewhat mountainous, and generally forested or under cultivation of some kind.
The ride itself became quite scary, however, after the divided highway leaving Curitiba turned into a narrow two-way road. The bus driver was a suicidal maniac who was bent on our destruction. He would pass entire lines of slow-moving trucks, often without regard to whether we were rounding a corner or cresting a hill and could not see what oncoming traffic we might plow into. Talmage and I had the misfortune of being in the front two seats directly behind the driver and could clearly see everything coming at us. Despite what we considered a few very close calls, the driver delivered us safely to São Paulo six hours later. (The trip from Curitiba to São Paulo was six hours, just as we had been told, but that did not factor in the additional two hours it took to get from the edge of São Paulo across the city to the rodoviária.)
The Amatos, whom we had called last night from Curitiba, had told us to take the metro from the station next to the rodoviária to the Saúde station near their home and that they would pick us up there. We did as they had said and made it without incident to that portion of the city. The metro was clean, not too crowded at the time we were riding it, and delivered us in about 40 or 45 minutes. Talmage got talking to a young man, 21 years old, who was a law student and who that very day had broken up with his girl friend. He was unable to get him to agree to a visit from the missionaries.
After we called the Amatos, they came in two cars, picked the six of us up, and took us back to their home. Homero Amato had been Cade's mission president in the Brazil Salvador Mission. Sandra Amato, his wife, was not feeling well and was already in bed by the time we arrived around 9:00. She had been at the hospital much of the day having medical tests. Their oldest child, Cláudia, lives with her husband Joel (a returned missionary from the Manaus mission) in Provo, where they are just finishing up from BYU. Daniel, now living back at home, is a returned missionary from the Texas Dallas Mission. Eduardo is now on a mission in the Georgia Atlanta Mission. Miriam, age 14, looks very much like her older sister Cláudia did when she came to live with us back in 1993. Homerinho, the youngest, is now eight years old.
After we got to the Amatos, Talmage went with Daniel to a pizza place to get our supper. We ate and visited and e-mailed people at home and looked at new little Caleb's home page and saw our first pictures of him and finally bedded down for the night. Their home actually has a basement, unusual for a Brazilian house, and we slept on mattresses spread all over the floor. Camilla is still sick. We finally took her temperature, and it is rather high. The Amatos gave her some medicine to help bring it down.
Tuesday, June 9
A beautiful day in São Paulo. The skies were clear. The temperature just perfect.
We called home to Utah and talked with Mom. She was very sad that we had not gone to Iguaçu but understood when we explained about Camilla's not being well. It was wonderful to talk to her again. She will make a doctor's appointment for Camilla for Thursday afternoon after our return that morning.
This morning we had planned to go to a museum not far from the Amatos' house, but we were all too slow in getting started for the day. Toward midday Sister Amato and Daniel drove us in two different cars to a bus stop, where we caught a bus that took us to the temple. We had wanted to go through the temple, with the girls doing baptisms for the dead, but the temple had closed for its winter break after the sessions on Saturday. We were able to take some pictures in front of the temple.
We went into the area office next door to the temple and visited with Elder W. Craig Zwick, the Area President. His first counselor, Elder Claudio R. M. Costa (who was Michael's first mission president in Manaus), was away on assignment. Elder Zwick arranged for someone to take us out to the new MTC facility later in the afternoon. First we went to the shopping center across the street to eat lunch and to allow Eliza to look for a wooden monkey like Mom had purchased there two years ago, but the girls couldn't find any.
We met some elders from the Brazil São Paulo North Mission, who said their mission office was just a couple blocks away, so Talmage and I went with them to see if we could meet President Fenton Broadhead, who had served with me as a young missionary. Unfortunately, President Broadhead would not be returning until after we had to be back to the area office to catch our ride to the MTC.
The missionary training center was dedicated last year and is the largest facility the Church has built outside the United States. Michael's second mission president, Aldo Francesconi, is now the director of training at the MTC. He met us and gave us a tour of the marvelous facility, showing us parts of it that even the missionaries in residence never get to see. He also gave us a few cases of shampoo and Pringles potato chips that Proctor and Gamble had donated large amounts of to the Church.
President Francesconi told us that tomorrow Elder Russell M. Nelson, of the Quorum of the Twelve, would be in town and would be meeting with all of the mission presidents from all over Brazil.
Our driver took us back to the Amatos' home, and we spent a quiet evening visiting. President Amato and Daniel went off to a meeting of the BYU Management Society, which they had invited Talmage and me to attend with them, but we stayed to visit with a former missionary that Michael had known in Manaus, Sister Bittencourt, and her husband. A pleasant evening.
Wednesday, June 10
Our last day in Brazil. We went over to a shopping center that was within walking distance of the Amatos' house and bought a few final gifts for people back home.
At the various places we had been staying here in Brazil, we had given the members either a CD or a cassette tape of the Tabernacle Choir's latest release Faith in Every Footstep, which everyone seemed to especially enjoy receiving.
At noon we joined the Amatos and some of their friends in watching Brazil's opening game in the World Cup, which is being played this year in France. Daniel had set up equipment that projected the TV on the wall. (Four years ago Daniel had gone with us to San Francisco to watch the opening game between Brazil and Russia.) We handed out cans of Pringles potato chips to each person there.
Brazilians really take their soccer seriously, and it was a cultural experience in itself for the girls to get to see and hear how they watch a game. The final score was Brazil 2 and Scotland 1, so there was major jubilation in the streets, and this city of more than 20 million people largely shut down for the rest of the day (of course, it was also the eve of a national Brazilian holiday tomorrow). This worked greatly to our advantage later in the afternoon because the traffic on our way to the airport was not too bad.
When I was a missionary in Brazil in 1970, Brazil became the first country ever to win its third title in the World Cup. When Michael was a missionary here in 1994, Brazil became the first country to win its fourth title. Now that Talmage has been here in 1998, we hope that helps Brazil win its fifth title.
Late this afternoon the Amatos drove us to the Congonhas airport, which is relatively close to their home. There at 5:30 we caught an express bus for an hour-long ride to the Gaurulhos airport on the other side of the city, and went through the lengthy process of getting out of Brazil. Finally, at shortly after 9:00 p.m. São Paulo time (which would have been 6:00 back in Utah) we lifted off and were headed home. Our wonderful adventure and Talmage's mission were coming to a close.
Thursday, June 11
We arrived in Chicago early this morning. It was raining. After going through immigration and clearing customs, we took the train to the terminal where our final flight would take us home to Utah. That flight was late because the plane we'd be flying on didn't arrive from Florida until half an hour after it had been scheduled. While we were waiting, I finished reading the second of the three books in the Lord of the Rings. I had started rereading the trilogy when our trip began. (Once before, during my freshman year, back before my mission, I had read the tales of Hobbits and the other creatures from Middle Earth and the mighty struggle between the forces of good and evil.)
After we were finally on the plane and had pulled away from the gate, the pilot came on the intercom to tell us that there were 12 planes in front of us waiting to take off and that we'd be delayed at least 15 minutes if not more. Not many minutes later he came back on to say that all flights going west from Chicago were grounded because of severe weather and that we would just sit on the runway until further notice.
The lady in the seat next to me was from New York State and was going home to Bountiful to visit her father. She had grown up in Bountiful in the same ward that Marv Gardner and Phil and Dorothy Johnson live in. She loved to talk, and I felt like I had known her all my life by the time we were even in the air.
Finally, we were cleared for take off and, as we flew west across the mid section of the country, had some of the worst turbulence I ever remember. We touched down in Salt Lake about two hours late, and the girls had made Talmage agree to be the last one off the plane (so they could take his picture). It was a joyful reunion and, even though we had had a marvelous trip, we were all glad to be home.
During the 17 days we were gone to Brazil, the girls and I rode on 12 separate airplanes (pretty good for young travelers who were flying for the first time) as we visited five different regions of that vast country. Other forms of transportation included cars, a school bus, a boat, taxis, buses, and trains. And a lot of walking.
Camilla, who was noticeably sick during the final days of our trip, went to the doctor a few hours after returning home and found out she did have a strep infection. No one suffered any ill effects from strange food or water.
All of the family gathered to greet the returning hero, Talmage, who was meeting two nieces (Meghan and Miriam) and a nephew (Caleb) for the first time. We all returned from the airport to our house, where we had six-foot subway sandwiches and drinks and opened the gifts we had purchased on the trip.
Talmage was officially released from his mission at 6:30 Thursday evening by President Larry Veigel. He went to the temple for the first time on Saturday morning, reported to the high council Sunday morning, and spoke to the ward Sunday afternoon. His fluency in English steadily returned each day he was home.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
