"For Worthy Friends"

"For worthy friends whose lives proclaim devotion to the Savior's name,
Who bless our days with peace and love,
We praise Thy goodness, Lord, above.     (Each LifeThat Touches Ours For Good)

In the past couple of weeks we have said hello and goodbye to wonderful people who mean so much to us.  I love the "hellos", but I'm not very good at the "good-byes."

Our daughter Jenna surprised me (David knew) with a visit right before my birthday!  I was told we were at the airport to pick up a visa waiter missionary who got her visa.  This often happens so I didn't think anything of it until I saw that the "missionary" we were picking up happened to look just like Jenna!  What an amazing surprise!  I had no idea that she had been in Brazil for work and decided to come and see us too!

When she arrived at our house the monkeys came out in record attendance to greet her at our window.

She spent five wonderful days with us.  She was here for the biggest transfer day we have ever had with 25 new missionaries arriving.  We've started bringing all the missionaries in that are being transferred to help welcome the new missionaries so it was the first time we had held Transfers at the Institute Building instead of our home and their were a lot of moving parts to it all.  Over half of our mission was there. She was such a good sport and got right in and became an honorary member of the Salvador Brazil Mission.  She even happened to be on the same flight home as our outgoing American missionaries and she helped shepherd them through connecting and missed flights!  What a blessing it was to have her here for them and for us!

Here we are celebrating my birthday Brazilian style with some of the Elders.

We took Jenna to my favorite place here.  It's a 100 year old Ficus tree.  I call it the tree of Life. "A Árvore da Vida!"

But oh how hard it was to let her go!

We've been here long enough now that it is also very hard to see some of these missionaries leave us. It was also hard to say good bye to Elder Hollingsworth who was the Assistant when we first arrived. It was time for him to go home too. I received an email from his mother with a picture of him at the airport in San Diego telling me he had arrived home safely.  I smiled as I thought about how the tables had turned.  I had just emailed the parents of all the newly arrived missionaries to let them know that their son or daughter had arrived here safely, and now this mother was doing the same for me regarding her returning missionary. We moms take care of each other don't we?

We also had the privilege of having some great friends visit us.

Anderson and Carlos Destro (Who meant so much to us on our mission to Italy and who are from Brazil) and Catherine Larsen, our dear friend from work.

Our wonderful friends, Steve and Sherma Tew and Sue and Paul Harman also added a few days to their already busy trip to Rio to come say hello. David taught Paul Portuguese in the LTM (MTC over 40 years ago when he went on his mission to Brazil)

And then at the Stake Conference on Sunday where we were speaking we were surprised when one of our Elders came up to us and said there were some non members visiting the meeting who said they were there to see us.

10 people from Portugal and other parts of Brazil who are distributors with 4Life that we have never met came to our Stake Conference. They had been in São Paulo for a meeting. They stayed for all of Stake Conference raised their hands for the sustainings!   It's been a week of many surprise visitors!

As hard as the "goodbyes" were I am so thankful for the "hellos".  I guess in this life we cannot have one without the other.

There was a hole in our hearts after everyone had left. We came home and even the monkeys were no where to be found.  I tried putting bananas out but they didn't show up. But this morning David came into the bedroom as I was waking up and said, "Your little friends are back".  They had returned, reminding me that good friends are never gone for long.

We welcome with open arms any of you who want to come see us too!

Until next time.  Até logo