Two Busy Amazing Months

Well today marks eight weeks since our first day in the Provo MTC. We've already been on our mission for two whole months. That's amazing to me. We certainly stay busy. We just completed interviewing all 172 missionaries in our ten Zones. It takes ten full days, one zone per day, to interview every missionary for the recommended ten minutes each. We will do these interviews once every three months. Before July 1st of this year, mission presidents were asked to interview each missionary once every six weeks. I don’t know how they did it. I think many couldn’t and didn’t. It is both a wonderful and draining experience. We picked up the Assistants at the Mission Office, were on our way by 9 AM and got home at the end of the day between 7 and 9 PM. One Friday we did two zones back-to-back, Americana and Botucatu. It’s a one hour drive from the mission office to Zona Americana and is an additional three hour drive from there to Zona Botucatu, the district which sits at the far western end of our mission. I packed a lunch and we ate on the road as we travelled from one zone to the other.

We finished a long day of interviewing around 8 pm and before heading home we took the Zone leaders and Assistants out for their very favorite food, Pizza Fritta, fried pizza. I could see the excitement and anticipation in their eyes. They were sure that we would love it, too. I had heard a lot about this culinary specialty. All the missionaries crave it so much that there was a rule in the mission limiting them to eating it no more than twice a week for whatever reason. Well, I think twice every ten years would be plenty for me. Take a large pepperoni (chunks, not slices, scant cheese) pizza, fold it in half, deep fry it for five minutes and you have fried pizza. To be able to sleep comfortably after consuming that for dinner you need a strong, young stomach used to eating whatever you can find. But give me three more years and I may light up, too, at the mention of Fried Pizza. We ate it while driving home and three hours later around midnight, groggy and still stuffed, Marsh and I finally pulled into our driveway, called it a day and woke up the next morning to do all over again (minus the pizza).

The two assistants travel with us when we do the missionary interviews and they conduct training while the missionaries await their turn to talk with the president. We’ve got it down to a system now so that not even half a minute passes between one interview and the next. I am Marsh’s official timer and give him a signal when he has two minutes remaining, but often those interviews go much longer when a missionary needs more time, as many do. In one zone Marsh averaged twenty minutes per person and there were twenty missionaries. That’s over 6 ½ hours of solid listening and counseling. During that time I have the chance to talk with the ones waiting and to learn about them and their families, to hear about their mission experiences, and ask about their living conditions and their health. It’s been a blessing for me to get to know each of our missionaries better.



In the seven weeks that we’ve been here we have put 5,000 kilometers, or about 3,000 miles on the odometer. That is like travelling from LA to New York City. Many of those miles are driven on winding undivided two lane roads. We drive, drive, drive, criss-crossing the mission for Marsh to counsel with missionaries who are discouraged or having problems, to conduct baptism interviews for investigators with special circumstances, to meet in the evenings with stake and district presidents, or to speak on Sundays in the stakes and wards and branches. Fortunately, the tollroads, or rodovia, in this area are well maintained and pot-hole free, much better than the bumpy, patched ones we bounced along on in Sao Paulo.

At night, the freeways become more dangerous. They are dark and unlit and the headlights of our SUV only illuminate forty or so feet ahead. You must always, day and night, be watchful of pedestrians who wait by the side of the freeway for a chance to run across, often with children or bikes in tow. But at night you cannot see anyone until you are upon them. We barrel into the dark; rounding curves, peering ahead for what may be there. The freeways are always crowded with semis and old, poorly-lit trucks creeping up the hills. More than once a motorcycle or car with no taillights has loomed out of the dark as we’ve rushed up on it. I need eyes like Superman, not Mr. Magoo. Somehow we always manage to arrive home safely.

I do not mind the long drives because the countryside is so beautiful. Crowd us humans into a city and we tend to be pretty messy creatures, but get us out in the country and oh, what a thing of beauty we can create, and Brazil is a land of breathtaking beauty. On a clear day its colors are vibrant; deep red earth, blue skies, billowing white clouds, vegetation in every shade of green, and vividly colored blossoming trees. We drive past miles of white-fenced orange groves and vast fields of sugar cane. The dirt country roads that cut through the fields are deep red gashes in the green and the gentle hills are blanketed with a patchwork of crops and orderly rows of furrowed red earth. At times it reminds me of the rolling hills of New England, especially Pennsylvania, except that these hills are dotted with white Brahmas and the fields are broken up with tall swaying palm trees and feathery clumps of bamboo. Ragged spiky banana plants grow everywhere, both wild and cultivated. Tucked among the fields here and there are small, white-stuccoed, Monopoly-like farmhouses with worn and blackened terra cotta roofs. These homes are rustic and picturesque but are often very poor dwellings. Occasionally, a house will be painted bright yellow or as red as the earth. While driving to Socorro, a small city way out in the country, we spotted two toucans flying along side of us, and we were told there were monkeys in the trees in town, though we didn’t see them this time.


Right now wherever we go the air is hazy blue with smoke from burning cane fields. Cane grown on hillsides has to be cut by hand and the fields must first be burned to be able to be harvested. The fires are not only cane fields. Small blazes are everywhere, seemingly uncontrolled, and no one seems concerned. At the off ramp near our home we drove past an unattended fire that was so close to the road that we could hear it crinkling and snapping. Yesterday, a fire broke out near our house. It burned for a few hours and the air became so thick with white smoke that we needed to close all the doors and windows so that we could breathe comfortably. The air is always smokey and I think we smell like a campfire. But then, I imagine everyone else does, too. We need some rain to clear the air and make the colors sing again.

The First Six Weeks

We have had an incredibly busy first six weeks. It is really true - long days, short weeks. From everything I'd heard I was expecting it to be so. We had a wonderful and intense four days of training in the Provo MTC. We began each day early in the morning, filled our notebooks full with all we were learning and dropped into bed late at night ready to start it all again the next morning. There was always a spirit of peace and sweetness and encouragement. Every day a member of the First Presidency, several of the Apostles, and other general authorities spoke to us, visited our classes and ate meals with us. As we kept learning more about just what it is to be a mission president and feeling the weight of the expectations and responsibilities we would have, they kept saying 'you can do this, you can do this, you can do this.' I think they know that there will be many times when we need to know that it can be done like it should be done. We keep that in mind when things seem overwhelming as they already have at times.

On Monday morning, June 28, Marsh, I and other presidents and wives boarded a big white bus bound for the SLC airport. It looked just like one of those old prison buses. I thought as we barreled along the freeway that passing motorists must be wondering what those poor people had done to get themselves into such a situation. We were wondering the same thing.

Our flight to Dallas was delayed by over an hour and left us with barely enough time to make our connection to Brazil. Dallas was stormy and flights had been cancelled and delayed all day long. When we were about a half hour from landing the pilot reported that the airport had been closed down and he had been directed to fly an hour back to another city where we would gas up and try again to land at Dallas. This couldn't be. We had eleven mission presidents and their wives and families on that plane, all of whom would miss the flights to their missions throughout South America. It would a day before many of us could catch another plane and Marsh and I would miss the Area Training planned for the new Brazilian mission presidents. We needed that training. I think a mighty prayer went up immediately. I know it did from me. I felt sure that if Heavenly Father wanted us to make our flights He could control the weather and make it possible. Within a few minutes the pilot announced that the airport had okayed him to land which we did five minutes before our next flight was to depart. Once the jet doors opened we hurriedly said our goodbyes to the other couples, disembarked, ran like crazy and made our flight to Sao Paulo just in the nick of time.

We arrived in Sao Paulo about 9AM and were met by Brother and Sister Andrews whom we had served with two years before in the CTM. They were back in Brazil serving now as the Area President’s Executive Secretary. It was de je vu. Same people, same smells, same sounds as before.


Early the next morning, June 30th, we were driven about an hour North to Campinas where we met the outgoing president and saw the place that would be our home for the next 3 years. It is a lovely home in a gated and guarded community. As always in Brazil the house is surrounded by 15 to 20 ft walls topped by electric fences and razor wire. There is a heavy spiked iron fence in front that opens and closes remotely. The mission home is light and airy inside. We have three levels, 4 bedrooms, each with a grated glass door leading out to a sunny balcony. The windows are all barred and the glass doors all have a second metal barrier behind them that we bolt tight at night. We have a security system, too. The Church tries hard to keep us safe and I feel that we are.



After talking with the outgoing president for an hour or so, he introduced us to the Mission office elders, gave us the keys, wished us well and left. We had lunch with the assistants and then they drove us to a nearby chapel to meet our new zone leaders. I was nervous. I wondered if they were feeling sad to have their young energetic mission president and wife leave. Would they have difficulty making the switch to us old new ones? As we walked down the hall to the cultural center where they were gathered I felt very much unlike a mission president's wife and very inadequate for this job. Before we reached the room they began to sing 'Called to Serve' in Portuguese and when we walked in they were facing us in a wide semicircle, smiling and singing for all they were worth and I felt my heart fill and my fears evaporate. They are great young men and I love them all.



One of my responsibilities is to handle missionary health problems. At the Mission Office an elder gave me a fancy spanking new cell phone and the first time it rang (about ten minutes after it was put in my hand) my heart jumped into my throat. How in the world would I know how to help those sick missionaries? How could I even understand them, or they understand me in my broken (really non-existent) Portuguese? I felt panicked and frozen, but since then I've lost count of the calls (it's often my early morning wake-up alarm) and now I feel like I've been doing this for a lot longer than just five weeks. We've had an elder with a hernia operation, one with kidney problems that sent him home for surgery, chicken pox, seizures, heart problems, migraines, infected burns, sprains, tons of flu and colds and sinus infections, and on and on. I'm getting pretty good at helping them help themselves. Thankfully I have Dr. Richard Hill, an Area Medical Advisor doctor in Sao Paulo, who is fabulous and diagnoses the hard cases. We've gotten to know each other well and he is on top of things.


We had our first transfer 5 days after we arrived. Two elders went home and 16 new missionaries arrived. Previously our mission had only closed areas, never opened any, so this was new for everyone. The president hadn’t worked out the details yet because he had no idea how to do it. It seemed overwhelming to open 7 new areas, find 4 new apartments and outfit all seven places with new fridges, washing machines, beds, and on and on, besides identify and train 16 trainers, and prepare an orientation, all in just a few days. But we have four awesome elders in the office who worked so hard and it all came together. The main thing is that this is God’s work and if he wants the work done he does help you get it done after all you can do. It’s pretty amazing to experience. We've also already had three days of Zone Conferences and three weeks of missionary interviews and met all the rest of our elders and sisters. Our days, especially Marsh's are packed to the brim. He never stops working, writing, taking calls, thinking, planning, counseling. So far P-day is just an idea for him. But I think he will get his arms around this assignment in a few months and it will be manageable.