On February 21-25 we joined our colleagues here in south Brazil at the Hotel Peninsula in Avaré, São Paulo. This is normally a 7-8 hour drive but, well...we won't talk about how long it took us. We missed turns, the car overheated and the GPS was even confused a time or two! A highlight for alot of us is the choir, led by Paul Van Loh. What a joy to sing beautiful songs of praise to Him! Little John Farlow was the only baby there so he got passed around from one set of arms to another! And, yes, I had my turn. I think most of the grandmothers there got their "grandma fix". Thank you, Barry & Ellen, for allowing us to spoil your baby. OK, so I have two pictures of Johnny. Here he is with two of the hotel workers. Such a good baby! The scenery there was beautiful. This is from the windows in the conference room. I have several scenery pictures (there are a couple on my blog) but I'll just put one more here. This is Johnny admiring a huge eucalyptus tree. It is obviously quite old. The black at its base is some sort of fungus. Amazingly, the tree is still living. Well, all good things must come to an end, so they say. But we all returned home thankful for the spiritual and physical refreshment of those four days.
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It was a VERY long trip to the state of Minas Gerais where we were in meetings for 4 days. We had some delays going there which made it longer so the total roundtrip was about 32 hours. We had to stop at about 32 toll booths...no kidding, but I guess that helped to keep us awake! The scenery was beautiful and varied along the way... from eucalyptus (seen in this photo) and orange groves to coffee plantations and fields of sugar cane, corn, bananas and sunflowers. The states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais have very rich soil! We finally reached the small town of Vargem Bonita which sits only a few miles from the Serra da Canastra seen in the distance here. The church is small and the town is laid-back...definitely with the small, interior town feel to it! We stayed with the pastor and his wife who are seminary graduates, Luiz Miguel and Débora and their 11-month-old daughter, Agnes. Come now, Agnes, give us a smile, please... ...there you go -Thank you! We enjoyed being with those who attended the services. The theme of the conference was about the family and there were several families there. It seems that everyone adopts little Agnes! On Saturday we went to visit a 186-meter-high falls, the Cachoeira Casca D'Anta, the main tourist attraction in this area. Sorry, but you only get one photo of it. We have many more but there isn't room to post them all! |
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