The Blessings of the Gospel

We have a missionary that just arrived at the Brazil MTC. He is a grandson of some people we baptized on the last week of my mission! He is learning Japanese here and will be serving in Japan Kobe. I am overwhelmed with joy for the blessings the gospel brings to the world. Thank you Heavenly Father! Here are pictures of me putting on his missionary name tag, Him emailing his family from my computer and elder Michelisa at the entrance to the Brazil MTC!!

Elder Whitaker putting on Elder Michelisa's Missionary Tag! The joy this brings!

Elder Michelisa emailing his parents. This is one of the first things that we have missionaries do.

The first day at the MTC.

He could be my assistant while here! Yet maybe not, he has Japanese to learn in NINE weeks.

Oh what joy this picture brings!! Please look real close.

New Elder with Elder and Sister Whitaker.

Trip to the Country

P-Day trip to the country!

Today we ventured outside the City of São Paulo to the Northwest to "Parque Maeda."

It took us about an hour and a half to get there from the MTC, located in the part of the city called Casa Verde.  We spend six days a week at the MTC working with missionaries and have been told we need to get away for a break once a week.  We don't take photos of the missionaries, so our photos are taken on our P-days when we leave the cement city of 20 million people and get out to experience the countryside and the Brazilian culture. The countryside has green rolling hills with lots of vegetation. There are nice freeways with great rest areas where you can get gasoline, shop for snacks or have lunch. 

Parque Maeda has many features: a large tree house, train rides, horse rides, carriage rides, helicopter rides, a large water park, large fishing ponds, a Japanese garden, suspension bridges, chair lift, paddle boats, water bumper boats, a very large restaurant and shops.

We are standing in front of a very large and old tree house. You climb steps and platforms up toward nine levels; about 4 stories up.  

This is a photo looking up to the higher levels on the large tree house.

This is a water feature near the tree house.

We passed through a tunnel and into the Japanese garden.  The walkways are pavers made of granite stones.  The garden has a large variety of sculptured trees and scrubs, along with some Japanese structures.  The flowering bushes are vivid and beautiful. The sculptured scrubs were in every shade of green.  

There are a series of wooden stairs and walkways that descend down to the river. It is a heavily foliaged area. There were small ponds with large orange, black and white fish. We saw several water wheels in varying sizes. 

We took this photo especially for our grandson, Jordan.  He likes cars and can usually identify each car.  This is an old car used by the workers here.  Will he figure out what kind it is?

These two photos are two of the three large fishing ponds located at the resort.  We watched a man catch a very large fish as he sat along the edge in one of the marked off spaces for fishermen.  

These are some of the flowers that we saw while in the Japanese garden.

We stopped the a cute little town on our way back to São Paulo, Itu.
There was a charming town square with this stately church at one end.  It had intricate stained glass windows inside, each one depicting the life of the Savior.