General Conference

We just finished watching General Conference. It was especially interesting for three reasons. 1) Elder Mazzagardi spoke. He is in the Area Presidency here in Brazil. He often comes into the ICS office and we have had several deep gospel discussions. 2) Elder Anderson mentioned the faith of Zuleika from Alegrete. I knew her on my first mission to Brazil when she was 15. She is currently serving with her husband who is the mission president at the CTM (MTC) here in São Paulo. 3) A temple was announced for Belém, Brazil. Last October while we were doing training in Belém we rode past the lot that had been purchased for the temple. We really enjoyed the conference.

Other than conference this has not been a very eventful week. Diane had physical therapy on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings. Her foot seems to be getting better. It is the end of the month and quarter so she has been busy preparing reports.

Wednesday morning we were able to go through an endowment session at the temple. The session was full of missionaries from the CTM and we were asked to be the witness couple. When we finished we were invited to lunch at the Outback with the ICS department to celebrate Wagner's birthday. They forgot about us and all left so we caught a bus and met the group there. We got back just in time for the Portuguese class.

On Friday night we went with the other senior couples to see Batman vs Superman. It was about 3 hours of special effects with little redeeming value. I was reading the website of my author nephew, Jeff Wheeler where he talked about the concept of "virtus" the defining characteristic of a true hero. There was no "virtus" demonstrated in the move about super heros.

On Saturday morning we decided to take a little walk before General Conference (which starts at 1pm here). One of the things we miss is taking walks and seeing a little greenery.

City park

Exercising in the park

House on the way back from the park

Back alley on the way back from the park

 After getting back we checked at the health food store to see if they had any gluten-free bread. They haven't had any for a long time. The store is owned by church members. We were able to pick up the weeks groceries before conference started.

At the health food store

Steps along a sidewalk. These steps are actually sloping toward the street.
It looks like they are level but they are not.

Step by step we are making a little progress, but there is still a lot to do with little time to do it.