Business Trip Extraordinaire--Day 22

If everything goes well, this will be my next to last blog post for this trip. I am now in the Rio de Janeiro Galeão airport, waiting for my flight home through JFK. Unfortunately, I can't tell whether the Internet access is free or not, and to find out I would have to provide my driver's license number and many other unnecessary and inappropriate pieces of personal information, so I'll pass. Therefore, you probably won't see this post until I actually return, though I'll adjust the date so you may not even notice.

Day 22 started very nicely, as I went to church this morning in the Ala Botafogo (Botafogo Ward) of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The last time I was able to go to sacrament meeting was March 20, so it's about time. There is a meetinghouse very close to the Botafogo metro station, and the metro trip was very quick and I arrived quite early.

Capela da Ala Botafogo

The ward members were very welcoming and friendly. Attendance was low today, but they told me it was lower than normal because of the upcoming Holy Week culminating with Easter. A lot of people have gone on vacation. Sounds like Spring Break, and I'm glad the people in this part of Brazil have that luxury. Botafogo seems like a nice part of town.

After church, I wandered the building a little bit. This church building has three stories, as well as an additional flight of stairs with roof access. I snapped a couple of photos from the roof:

Part of Botafogo in Rio de Janeiro, taken from the roof of the Botafogo LDS chapel looking west

Part of Botafogo in Rio de Janeiro, taken from the roof of the Botafogo LDS chapel looking southwest

I returned to my hotel via metro. By the way, if you use the Rio metro "Pré-Pago" (prepaid) card, be aware that you can only recharge it with at least R$5. I made a mistake and ended up leaving a few reais on my card. I'll use it next time I'm here, but I'm sure the fare will be higher then.

This afternoon, I was tired and needed to pack, so I took it easy and made it a true day of rest in my hotel. That was nice. By the way, I can recommend the Premier Copacabana Hotel in Rio de Janeiro. My room was generous. It wasn't the newest and looked a little dingy, worn, and dim, but it was also clean, safe, and comfortable. There was an ashtray on the sitting room table, but the room didn't smell like smoke (or anything, for that matter). Breakfast was really nice every day, one of the best free hotel breakfasts I have had (not as good as Hampton Inn though). They allowed me to stay Sunday afternoon before my flight for a small fee that was well under the daily rate, and that was very helpful. There was a slight snafu at checkout, when they played the Famous Minibar Trick, in which they accused me of taking items from the minibar (which I never do). I have been through that before at other hotels, and today they took me at my word when I said I didn't take anything and did not charge me.

Good news from home: Tracy is on the mend, and the kids are healthy. Many thanks to Ott and Tera for helping with the kids a couple of days ago, and thanks also to Miguel and Ellen for taking the kids to church today. Tracy is usually so healthy, but it's just my luck that I'm not around to help when she needs it. But I'm grateful for good friends who are willing to help.

Tomorrow I will conclude this 23-part series, which hopefully will be the end of the longest business trip for the rest of my life.

Business Trip Extraordinaire--Day 15

Today is Sunday. If you read Day 1 and Day 8, you know that my last two Sundays were unusual for me. Today I was grateful to have a chance to go to church.

I could have gone to a ward closer to my hotel, so I decided to venture out into the "bairros" (neighborhoods) and attend the Tancredo Neves Ward. I decided to take the bus, so I headed to Terminal 1 (T1), the city center bus station. I asked how to get to Tancredo Neves. "You can't get there from here," the moneytaker said, "but you can get there from T2, so catch a bus to there." T2 looks out of the way on the map, but I trusted this advice and waited a long time for a bus to T2. Arriving there, I asked how to get to Tancredo Neves. "You can't get there from here," the moneytaker said, "but you can get there from T4 or T5, so catch a bus to one of those."

At that point I realized I was going to be late for the 8:30 church meetings, but it could have been much worse. I waited and along came a bus going to both T4 AND T5. "Either way, I can't lose," I thought. Besides, I had Google Maps on my bricked Android, which is not a brick when WiFi is available, and it caches maps! Yes! So before I left this morning, I cached up all the maps I would need. The GPS works without any signal or WiFi, so I could see where I was going. This bus went to T5, which was getting close to the church. I confirmed with the driver where he was going after T5, and sure enough, the bus went right through the neighborhood where the church is located.

I got off the bus and started walking up the side street where the church should be. When I was here, it was a rented warehouse, with temporary dividers and a portable baptismal font (we always went down to Coroado to do our baptisms though). But they don't meet in that warehouse anymore. Now they have a chapel next door.

Capela da Ala Tancredo Neves

Capela da Ala Tancredo Neves

Basketball/soccer court and satellite dish behind the chapel

The warehouse that used to be a rented chapel for the Tancredo Neves Ward

I was very happy to know there were enough members in the area to justify a meetinghouse. I went in and found two brothers in suits. I asked if there were meetings, and they said it would be stake conference. It's a stake center. I thought I was 15 minutes late for 8:30 meetings; it turns out I was 1 hour 15 minutes early for 10:00 conference. I chatted with a few people for a while, none of whom I knew or knew me. One is a bishop who has been in the Church for five years. Another is a stake presidency counselor who has been in the Church for four years. It's different here, where the Church grows by leaps and bounds in every demographic except adult males. If you're a man and active in the Church, they're going to put you to work.

I sat with some missionaries and an investigator of theirs who was going to be baptized that afternoon. They don't have a Portuguese-only rule anymore. And each companionship has a cell phone now. Other than that, it sounds like missionary life is very similar to how it was for me.

The conference was really nice, though when they turned on the fans it became too noisy for me to understand the last couple of speakers very well. I saw someone who I thought I recognized but turned out to be someone else. After the meeting, two or three people approached me to say they recognized me. I had to apologize for not recognizing them. But it's okay. When people get too attached to the missionaries, it can cause problems. If people become converted to the missionaries instead of converted to the gospel, they can lose their testimony when the missionaries leave (and they always leave!). I served, worked hard, helped a lot of people, and then faded away. I knew that with great members in Manaus, my converts were in good hands. (I did try to keep in touch with a few people, but that was before widespread email in Brazil, and when people stopped replying to letters that was pretty much it.)

I noticed more kids and youth at church than I remember. I also noticed that in general, everyone looked healthier and better dressed than in 1997. Also, the parking lot was full. Yes! Granted this was a stake conference, but when I was here usually only one or two families per ward had a car to drive to church. I noticed this outside my time at church too. It looks to me like the people of Manaus are turning a corner and making a better life for themselves.

After conference and chatting with several people, I took a walk to see the house where I lived in that neighborhood. I didn't take a photo because there were people in front and they probably would have thought it awkward. But I snapped a shot of a little market a few doors down:

This is typical of what you see in the neighborhoods. People sell stuff out of their house. Something I never realized about Manaus is how hard people work. Everyone is selling, working, going to work, etc. Like I said, they're turning the corner. This is a special place with special, hard-working, kind, generous people. I am overjoyed to see the improvement since I was here. Yes, there is still poverty, but there is a rising tide lifting all boats.

I caught a VERY full bus directly back to the city center. I don't blame the guys at T1 and T2 for not knowing about it. You can't know all the buses here. But any bus that says "T1" or "Centro" makes life a lot easier.

Late tonight, I go to the airport to fly to Rio de Janeiro, where I will work at a conference for the week. My time in Manaus is nearly done. I have had a great time, and I would be remiss if I did not thank a couple of those who helped make it that way:

• Go Inn Manaus. It's a hotel with a funny name but has everything I needed (except shampoo). My room was small but clean and neat, with two comfortable twin beds, a safe, a mini-fridge, (drumroll please) hot shower, and (another drumroll please) American-style power outlets (220V but all my chargers work with 220V). The hotel was modern, and I felt very safe and comfortable. I have a view of the dome of the Teatro Amazonas and I'm convenient to lots of shops, supermarkets, and the T1 bus station. Note: Google Maps has the wrong location for Go Inn Manaus. It is on Rua Monsenhor Coutinho, but it's between Rua Ferreira Pena and Rua Eduardo Ribeiro.
  
• Clive Maguire of Maguire's Guesthouse, whose Visit Manaus guide was invaluable. All or almost all the info in the book is available on his website, but having a printed copy is a good idea. Clive ended up shipping a second guide at no charge when the first was lost in the mail. I only regret that I did not have time to stop by and thank him for his help. I suspect a stay at his place would been even nicer than the Go Inn, but it's pretty far away from everything that I came to see and do.
  

What a wonderful visit I have had in Manaus, and I look forward to a good week of work and fun in Rio de Janeiro.

Business Trip Extraordinaire--Day 14

Today I visited the temple I helped build.



A lot of people have worked very hard to put a temple in Manaus. Church members here are faithful to the Lord and to their families, and they share the gospel with everyone. They travel for days to get to the current temple and back. Missionaries here endure heat, humidity, rain, and disease, and their families have supported them and have had to wonder what kind of place this must be if it takes letters three weeks to get home (not that letters are written anymore now that everyone uses email). But the Lord is pouring his influence out on this city, and they are escaping physical and spiritual poverty one day at a time. The Manaus Temple will be a huge blessing for this region.

I arrived at the Manaus Temple on bus 120, which goes from the Centro to Ponta Negra. This is a small temple, and the bus went so fast that I almost missed it. Thankfully, I knew that the streets on the other side all had names of countries, and a street sign caught my eye, so I got off. By the way, the four streets closest to the temple (other than Avenida Ponta Negra itself) are named Itália (Italy), Inglaterra (England), Alemanha (Germany), and Pais de Gales (Wales)--the four countries from which most of my ancestors came. Coincidence? Probably, but I thought that was neat to have a reminder of my ancestors across the street from the temple in the city where I served.

I have a lot of photos, but the bandwidth is dreadful here so I'll upload what I can now and put the rest on Photobucket next week or the week after.

The temple and housing for traveling temple patrons are both under construction.

Constructions workers on the roof

Sign at the temple site

Artist's rendition of the completed temple. I reached as high as I could to avoid the wall enclosing the temple site, but I guess my billion-dollar arms were not long enough.

A view of the east side of the temple. The front faces north, i.e. toward Salt Lake. Coincidence? I guarantee it.

The only bad news:


For those of you who don't falam português, this is a sign for a visitor center. I didn't know there was one! The reason it's bad news is that it lists hours for Monday (Segunda-feira) through Thursday (Quinta-feira) and Friday (Sexta-feira), but not Saturday (Sábado), which is today. Que pena! I'm flying away early Monday morning and won't have time to see it. But that's okay. I saw what I came to see.

Plants with little velcro-like pieces stuck to my shoes in the median of Av. Ponta Negra while I was taking photos of the temple.

After the temple, I went to the same bus stop where I got off the bus. The bus shelter had an ad:

"Small Prices."

I beg to differ. R$8.00 is about $4.80, and R$5.00 is about $3.00. That makes your Big Mac, small fries, and small drink about $10.80. ("It's just a McDonald's ad. Who cares?," says you. "Be patient," says I.) But I am curious about where the McDonald's is located. There famously was not one in Manaus when I lived here.

Near the temple was also a Coca-Cola ad (which made it into my first temple photo by mistake; deleted), as well as a billboard for a "motel," which means something quite different here. Let's just say that temple patrons would not choose to stay at a "motel" in Brazil.

Back to the main subject. The reason I went to the same bus stop was to head further west through Ponta Negra in order to visit the Museu do Seringal. ("Museu" means "rubber," "do" means "plantation," and "seringal" means "museum.") I wasn't sure exactly how far out the bus went, but I found out after about two minutes when the bus did a U-turn and started heading back toward the city. I got off the bus immediately. I was then at the Praia (beach) da Ponta Negra. Interesting place. I didn't go all the way down onto the beach since I wasn't dressed for it. But I wandered down near the food vendors to find a restroom. I found a typical Manaus facility, which means that you, gentle reader, have never seen a bathroom like this. Use your imagination. But the city is revitalizing the area, as you can see in some of the photos, and the natural beauty is evident:

Praia da Ponta Negra, on the Rio Negro, one of the two main tributaries of the Amazon (the other being the Rio Solimões (say SO-lee-MOINGS)). The gray and red thing on the right is one side of an arch that is part of the revitalization project. The building in the center is a hotel I believe.

Rio Negro, taken from Ponta Negra. The city center is downstream/left/southeast of here.

At Ponta Negra, the top of a wrecked gazebo. I can relate.

I'll bet you didn't know there was a bridge across the Amazon, did you? Neither did I. They must have built it in the last 13 years. Wow. Now maybe they can make the highway to the south passable, and suddenly Manaus will be connected to the rest of the country. The left side is somewhere in Manaus, on the north bank, and the right side is on the south bank.

Maybe the revitalization project will address these steps. But maybe not. No ADA, no problem!

After visiting Ponta Negra briefly, I decided to try walking to the Marina do Davi, where I could supposedly catch a boat to the museum. I had a map and probably would have made it, but not two minutes into my walk, a nice-looking couple offered me a ride and I gratefully accepted. I am not one to hitchhike, and I did not, but in northern Brazil I trust people who offer rides. I wouldn't do it in Rio, which is fine because they would not offer. This very kind couple was going to the Marina as well, and they even showed me exactly which boat to catch.

Marina do Davi, near Ponta Negra in Manaus

The motorboat I rode really cooks. I don't know how fast it was, but faster than I expected. It can hold about 30 people when it's full, and the driver would not leave until it was full. We made lots of stops at various beaches and villages before the museum.

One of the beaches where the boat let people off

The forest growing in the Rio Negro. This time of year is high water, though many of the beaches have usable space this year.

DUUUUUUUDE! No wonder so many people go motorboating.

After about half an hour of dropping people off at various places up various creeks upstream/west of Manaus, we arrived at the museum. To my surprise, I was the only one to exit the boat there.

My boat, leaving the museum, with a few passengers left to drop off.

This made me wonder if maybe the museum wasn't such a good idea. But it looked interesting enough, and besides the boat had already left, so I gave it a try.

Museu Seringal Vila Paraíso from the boat dock.

The museum turned out to be immensely interesting. A gentleman greeted me on my way up to the buildings, and he called out to someone, "Ele tem português" (literally, "He has Portuguese"). Unintentional best compliment of the day. Thank you sir!

The someone he was calling turned out to be my tour guide. She spent a long time showing me the whole facility and knew all about it. It's a replica that was built for a movie, and they have kept it running as an actual rubber plantation, except that they only have a few people working it. The real plantations were owned by rich Europeans and/or Brazilians, and they were worked by basically slaves from northeastern Brazil. It was a horrible life. They lived under a tiny shelter, where they also had to make the rubber, which involves pouring the rubber milk onto the mass of rubber while turning the rubber, and then putting it over a fire. Remember, this is inside their living quarters. They also had to collect the rubber milk from the trees in the middle of the night, because that's when conditions were best. They were not free to leave and had no chance to escape.

The owner of the plantation would trick them out of their meager salary. For example, he had a chapel built for one of the Catholic saints, and once a year they would have a party for a month in honor of this saint, where food and drink were provided. Little did the workers know that the owner was keeping track of the food they ate and counting it against them!

Nowadays, it's run by my tour guide and her husband. They live there, in modern quarters apparently, and the rest is built to look like an authentic rubber plantation.

The owner's dining room

The owner's kitchen. The disc on a rope is to keep scavenging animals from getting the fruit. They would grease the disc, so that if an animal climbed down the rope, it would slip on the disc and lose its balance and fall. You probably think that's overkill, because you have never lived in northern Brazil.

The company store, one of the multiple ways the owner would trick the workers out of their money. The gray cylinder with a hole through it is a replica ball of rubber. The replica weighs 8 kg. A real one weighed 50 kg.

The private bath for the owner's daughter. Not quite so private, because it faced the river, where the workers bathed.

Rubber milk dripping from the tree and running into a little cup, which a worker would empty every night and then carve a new groove

Home of the top worker, selected by the owner as an incentive to work hard

Home of a regular worker. The little tower in the middle is a fireplace. The rubber ball is over it. They would sleep wherever there was room. I will never complain about bringing work home with me again.

My tour guide (I forgot her name but she was great), showing a simple Indian device for drying out manioc flour (farinha). Put the coarse flour in, pull the ends, and the moisture is squeezed out. Indians' only involvement with the rubber industry is that they would sometimes attack and kill the workers. (If you think it's politically incorrect to call them Indians, go to Brazil sometime and ask them about "native Brazilians" and enjoy the funny looks you will get.)

The European device for drying out manioc flour. The workers who couldn't handle working in the jungle were assigned to make manioc flour.

Cupuaçu (COO-poo-ah-SOO), the most glorious fruit invented. It's hard to describe what the pulp inside tastes like. I guess it's a little like a very sweet banana, sort of? Help me out, MBM alumni. Anyway, it is found only in the Amazon region. You can't export the seeds, so there is no cupuaçu of any volume anywhere else.

This tour was awesome, definitely a highlight of my trip so far. The tour guide was very informative, and also patient with my slow understanding of Portuguese nowadays. When the tour was done, she put up a big white flag to indicate to the boats that there was a passenger ready to go. I was the only visitor the whole time I was there, so it was just me. In about 15 minutes, a boat showed up. It was empty, except for the driver and attendant. They took me straight back to the Marina with no stops. It was early in the afternoon, so most people were probably not done for the day and heading back yet. The point is that this was a private boat for me, ala Where the Wild Things Are.

I could get used to this.

Arriving at the marina, it was about 2:00 and I was hungry. There are lots of little shops along the road that ends at the marina. There is also a small outdoor restaurant. I approached and ordered. The choices were beef, beef, chicken, fish, fish, or fish. They talked me into a popular regional fish, tucunaré. I'm on the banks of the world's largest river; I have to have fish sometime. It took a while, but when it came, wow:

Now that's what I call almoço. Left to right: macarrão (noodles), salada de alface e batata (green salad with potatoes), arroz (rice), feijão (beans), limão (lime), e tucunaré (tasty fish).

This was just like meals that church members would feed us for lunch when I was a missionary. When they would serve fish, they would cook a huge one for the whole family and the missionaries, instead of individual small fish like you see on my plate. Otherwise, it was just the same and brought back a lot of memories. I added a 600 mL (20 oz) guaraná soda, and the total was R$10 (about $6). Let's see, $6 for a full home-cooked delicious meal, or $10.80 for McDonald's.

I think this was a family-run restaurant. I asked the man about getting to the bus stop (remember, I hitched a ride to get there). He said to wait a while and there would be a free bus to take me to the bus stop. I waited a long time and then, when he wasn't looking, I decided to walk. I had my map and knew it couldn't be more than half an hour. About three minutes into my walk, I met a group of ladies and asked if they knew where a bus stop was. "Right here," they said (in Portuguese). But this was to catch the free bus that my lunch host recommended. They said if I were in a hurry, I should start the half-hour walk. If half an hour is a hurry, I figured I'd better start. Sure enough, two minutes after I left, I saw the bus coming, so I ran back and got laughed at a little. They were very nice and explained how it worked. Soon I found my way back to the city center.

In U.S. public transit, you're not supposed to eat or drink anything. That is also true in Brazil on the actual bus. But in a bus station, you can eat and drink, and there are a multitude of vendors to help you do so. I loved the smell of the cupuaçu at the museum so much that I decided to seek out a cupuaçu picolé. Picolé is like a popsicle but better because it's made from actual fruit pulp. It's like a fruit pudding pop. They only make them from local fruits, so I think the only one you would encounter in the U.S. is banana.

Picolé de cupuaçu. Mmm.

After cooling off and drying off briefly in my room, I went to the Palacete Provincial. It has been a lot of things over the years, but today it houses five different museums. I spent a couple of hours there and it was very enjoyable and free of charge. The most interesting of the museums was the one for the Amazonas military police (Polícia Militar), where I learned a lot about the history of the region. I'm told that all the docents speak enough English to pass a test before starting their job, so you can probably see this without much trouble. They don't allow photos, but here is a photo of the entrance:

Entrance to the Palacete Provincial

I left when they closed at 7:00. Walking back to the hotel, I went through yet another attractive square. This one was next to the Palacete Provincial, and the palace and square were both restored at the same time in the last 10 years.

Fountain in Praça Heliodoro Balbi

Final photo of the day (I can't begin to explain this):

Punched-up Mickey Mouse fun bus

I think the character hanging on for dear life was supposed to be Mickey Mouse, but he looked more like the Travelodge mascot, which Tracy once described as a punched-up Mickey Mouse.


I had a great day! The people of Manaus are friendly, patient, and generous, and it is a wonderful city to visit. I can imagine that it might not be that inviting if you don't speak Portuguese or you don't want to experience part of the developing world. Plus you can probably see all there is to see within a few days. But I sure enjoyed this day.

Tomorrow I plan to go to church in a couple of different wards and possibly see some people I knew when I lived here. Then I'll have time to kill before my flight. I won't likely be able to blog much if at all, but I'll write it up and then post it on Monday. It will likely be much briefer than today's entry. Thanks for reading!

Business Trip Extraordinaire--Day 12

Whoa, I'm halfway there. Twelve days (mostly) down, eleven to go.

Thirteen years ago this week, I came home from Manaus, Brazil, where I served as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Today I am on my way back to Manaus for the first time since my mission. This is a personal stop in the middle of my business trip. I haven't been back to my mission yet since I came home (unless you count my visa wait in New England), so I'm excited yet nervous. I haven't kept in touch with anyone in Manaus, so if I see anyone I know that will be nice. But if not, at least I'll get to see the temple (under construction) and do some of the tourist things I didn't and/or couldn't do as a missionary.

My flight out of Ontario today was delayed by a bad engine. I was a little nervous, because a missed connection would get me to Manaus at least a day late, but they got it working and we were underway about two hours late. My layover in Dallas was scheduled for four hours, so this works out nicely. I'm not looking forward to the 10-hour flight to São Paulo though.

By the way, DFW airport has free wifi! Just connect to the tmobile network and it works great. Last time I was in an airport with free wifi, it was Columbus, and it was dreadful. Here in Texas they do everything bigger, and apparently that includes bandwidth.

I'm going to try to blog daily, but it may get tricky now that I am off to Brazil. Thanks for reading, and I hope to blog with photos soon.

Business Trip Extraordinaire--Day 8

This was a very unusual Sunday for me. I worked for most of the day. As a Latter-day Saint, that is very unusual for me. We believe in keeping Sunday holy. We also believe in getting the ox out of the mire, and since I did not have the option to skip work today and keep my job, I considered this an ox in the mire. It wasn't the most effective day of work, but it wasn't bad. I'm grateful that I get to go to church next Sunday.

I missed General Conference, but tonight I made time to watch President Monson's Sunday morning talk. I was pleased that he talked about the Manaus Temple. It was announced in the news media four years ago, rather than in conference. Some of you probably know that I served in the Manaus Mission in the days when members traveled seven days each way to go to the São Paulo Temple. For example, I knew a faithful man who was getting ready to SELL HIS HOUSE to raise the money to take his family to the temple. Once. It was probably their only chance to go. Now they'll be able to go every week. Of course, they'll probably volunteer as temple workers a few hours a week too.

At work today, the company president came into the auditorium where we were working to chat with someone (not me) about our work. This is that important of a project, hence working the weekend.

Two days until the Main Event. After that, we start post-event activities on Wednesday: reviewing what went well and what we can improve, preserving the work we did and the demos we built, etc. On Thursday, I fly out of here. I still have fifteen days until I get home. But eight days are done, so I am now one-third of the way through my business trip extraordinaire. Right now I hope I never have to do this again, but at the second half of my trip should be infinitely more enjoyable than this first half.

Business Trip Extraordinaire--Day 6

My temporarily one-dimensional life continues for the sixth day. I got some work done today, but there was also some discussion and setup for the Main Event coming up on Tuesday, and it wasn't as productive as I would have liked.

The good news is that I said good-bye to the freezing U-shaped server room and moved to the meeting room where the Main Event will take place. Now that I shouldn't need my jacket until I fly home, it's hanging over the edge of my hotel room's mostly useless jacuzzi, and there it will stay until Thursday.

The bad news is that I will undoubtedly miss most if not all of General Conference this weekend. For those who aren't aware, General Conference is a twice-a-year worldwide meeting of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in which the leaders of the Church, who we consider to be prophets and apostles, teach us. Most active LDS make it a priority to watch or listen to the conference, which takes place in Salt Lake. You can watch it online, either live this weekend or archived later.

I don't think I have missed conference since my mission in Brazil, where live conference coverage was not available at that time. Now I have it available on a computer, a phone, maybe the TV in my hotel room, and a few miles away at a church building, yet I'm going to miss it because I have to work. I always thought this was the kind of thing I could avoid with a college education and a professional career. And until tomorrow, I have avoided it. But I'm grateful to live in a time when technology will make it relatively simple to watch it any time I want over the coming weeks and months.

Tonight I joined several colleagues for dinner in a loud pub-type place. The food was good and they had root beer (memo to Least Coast restaurants: there's this new thing called root beer! Serve it!). The conversation was heavily about business, and since it was about my team in particular I felt compelled to stay the entire three hours or so, though I was not very interested. They're all visionaries and I'm a worker bee, and I like it that way, though apparently I'm not supposed to.

Six days are in the books. It looks like I miscounted originally, and this trip will include a total of 23 days, so I have 17 to go. Will I ever get home? Will I remember both backpacks and all three phones? Will I get stuck on a tarmac somewhere for nine hours? Only time will tell.

Holy Thursday!

We just received Jonathan's Catholic kindergarten home school kit. He missed the kindergarten deadline by a few days, but he's ready. If we do accredited kindergarten for him, he will have the option next year of entering first grade or repeating kindergarten at school. The only accredited home school kindergarten in the area is affiliated with the Catholic church.

As you probably know, we belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Tracy called the school before we ordered the kit to find out about how "Catholic" the materials are. The man on the phone said not to worry; there may be an image here, a sentence there, but for the most part the materials are strictly academic and non-religious.

I'm sorry to report that the gentleman, perhaps unknowingly, broke the ninth commandment. Or the eighth commandment, depending on your denomination. Whichever one says "liar liar pants on fire." (Okay, I don't think he meant to deceive us. It's all about your point of view.)

Actually, it's not that bad, and we can substitute those materials that are not in harmony with the gospel with materials of our choosing. And we have had a few good laughs already. For example, if you're Catholic, you might not find anything funny about the term "Luminous Mysteries," especially when appearing in a kids' coloring book, but believe me.

As another example, there was a rosary in the box. For our non-Catholic readers (which I believe is all of you), a rosary is a bead necklace that helps Catholics count the prayers that they recite. It has a crucifix at the end of it. We focus on the resurrected, living Christ so we don't even use crosses, much less crucifixes, so Jonny may or may not have seen one before. His reaction to the rosary was priceless:

"Why did they send me a dead Jesus necklace?"

The Split

At church yesterday our ward was split, along with five others in our stake. They made six wards into seven plus a branch, for a total of 11 wards and one branch in the stake.

For our non-LDS friends, think of it as redistricting in the LDS Church. In the LDS Church, you don't pick a church or congregation. You attend the congregation to which you are assigned geographically.

Yesterday's split was done very neatly. Everyone met in their old ward's building and there was a webcast with handouts. The handout had low-resolution hand-drawn maps that must have taken hours (note: next time, call me!). But it also had lists of who is in which new ward.

The most common rumor--that the new boundaries would more or less follow next year's high school boundaries--turned out to be true, at least in our part of town.

They asked all the members of each new or reorganized ward to stand and sustain the stake presidency in the changes. When our new ward (which is the new ward in the stake) was asked to stand, we were almost the only ones in our building who stood. There was also a single woman and a visiting high counselor and his wife. This in yesterday's congregation of 400+ (two wards).

We live in a town where we used to live, as you may know if you were a frequent reader of The Short Sale Shimmy. We're actually going to be in a ward with more people we know than we knew in the short time we were in our old ward since moving to the new house in September. So we're pretty happy about it, though we made some good friends in the old ward too.