Church in Brazil

If you are reading this and do not belong to or are not familiar with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints you need to know a couple of things before reading this.  First of all, we are organized geographically by our homes into congregations called wards.  Several wards make up a stake.  Often 2-3 wards meet in a building at different times.  A bishop is someone called by the Lord to lead and take care of a congregation or a ward without pay. Primary is a meeting during church geared specifically for the children.  Hopefully, that helps you make sense of some of what I am about to say.

When we first arrived in Joinville, my mission companion's niece, Carla told us that building that we would usually meet in was in the process of being renovated and so our ward was meeting in a different building, which happened to the same one her ward meets in. Yay!  So she showed us the building that first Saturday.  Well, it took us so long to get ready Sunday morning and then as we were still orienting ourselves to Joinville, it took us such a long time to find that building again, that we missed the first part of our meeting.  We decided that we'd just go to Carla's ward instead, since her son, Joao (John), could help our kids feel more at home in Primary.  So our first Sunday we went to Carla's ward.

The 2nd Sunday, November 30th, we were in Guaratuba staying at the beach house with my former mission companion and her family and so we went to church there.  Even though Guaratuba was a half hour drive from Joinville, the ward there was part of the Joinville Stake.

Guaratuba Building--Us with the De Souza family

Back: Mario, Daniele with Sophia (Dani for short), me, Papai.  

Front: Felipe, Henrique, The Boss and Safari Girl

On our 3rd Sunday. December 7th, we made it to the ward that we thought was ours but after we sat through all the meetings and then talked to the bishop we discovered that the Joinville 1st ward was NOT our ward--we were really supposed to be in the Joinville 2nd ward.  They had just recently split and the two wards were sent to separate buildings while theirs was being renovated.  So now we had to search for our actual ward at a new building.

On our 4th Sunday, December 14th, we figured out online the new building and time that our actual ward, Joinville 2nd Ward was supposed to meet in.  It was on a hill, and the steep,narrow driveway up to the chapel made me nervous.  But we drove up it in our little stick shift car and made it.  It turned out it was Stake Conference and we had only made it to the last hour or so.  Papai sat on a chair with one of the kids and then because the place was packed, I sat on the back stage with The Boss most of the time.  Now we had found the right building, we just needed to be there at the right time.

On our 5th Sunday, December 21 we were visiting my friend and former mission companion, Daniele Buss de Souza in Curtitiba (about a 2 hour drive north of our city of Joinville) so we didn't make it to our actual ward.  Daniele's husband is the bishop of their ward and it was fun to see him in that calling.

On our 6th Sunday, December 28th, we finally made it to the correct building and went at the time listed on line.  Unfortunately, it turned out that time was for Sacrament meeting, which at home is usually the first meeting but frequently in Brazil the wards meet so close together in time that it is often the last meeting.  And for the ward we were trying to attend, it was the last meeting.  There we met this awesome older guy, Antônio Maria Rodrigues Lemos, who invited us over to his house for lunch.  He also informed us that we weren't at the Joinville 2nd Ward--that ward had already met and gone home.  So we had yet to go to the correct ward.  Instead, we had gotten to know yet another ward in our stake.  Antonio's grown son, Vitor and his family were in town from Sao Paulo for the holidays and they were excited to meet us because Vitor and his wife lived in Provo for several years while Vitor studied at BYU.  Their youngest son was actually born in Provo.  So Vitor and his wife Viviane spoke English.  We went to Antonio's house for lunch and there I saw this little girl named Bianca that I recognized from Primary from the ward we attended on our 3rd Sunday.  It turned out that Antonio's grown daughter Raquel and her husband Elton live in that ward.  I remember meeting Elton--I think he was in the bishopic and Raquel said she tried to ask me my name and all I did was smile and turn away.  How embarrassing!  I even remembered the incident.  The hallway was loud when she asked me and my Portuguese rusty and my kids were pulling at me.  I think my brain was too overwhelmed to actually comprehend what she asked.  At least we were able to have a good laugh about it.  From then on Raquel and I became friends.  She talked my ear off in English and we were able to get together a couple of times after that.  I'll have to write more about our lunch at their house sometime--This family was absolutely top notch hilarious to hang out with--especially Antonio.His wife, Sheila is from Recife where I served her mission and was a sweetheart.  She visited recently and brought home fresh graviola (a mango-sized fruit with green skin and pokey spikes on the outside, and white flesh and black seeds on the inside) and made me some juice.  What an angel!  That was my favorite juice on my mission!  Anyway, I digress.  That was our 6th Sunday.

Back Row: Cesear Lemos, Vitor Lemos, Viviane Lemos, Elton Fausto, Antonio Lemos--the father and owner of the house,
Front Row: Papai and The Boss, Me and Safari Girl, Sheila Lemos (full name--Helga Sheila Goncalves Lemos) and Bianca Fausto, Raquel Lemos Fausto and Julho Fausto.

On our 7th Sunday, January 4th, our friends Daniele (Dani for short) and Mario were staying with us for the weekend and we finally made it to the right building at the right time.  With our stay in Brazil already half over we finally found the correct ward!!!  We joked with everyone that we took a tour of the entire stake first before making it to the right place!  I think we literally did!  I got to go to Relief Society for the first time (the meeting for women) while Papai took a turn taking the kids to Primary.

Our 8th Sunday, we were back in Curtitiba again visiting Dani and Mario so we went to their ward again.  That was really fun because we got to see some of the people we got to know at the Christmas camping activity.  It was eventful, too when the little girl in the row in front of us somehow got her entire lower arm solidly wedged in the slot that holds the hymnbooks.  It took several men and women, and some oil and water to get that little girl's arm out.  All right during a very motivating talk about missionary work!  I don't think that little girl will ever put her arm near one of those slots again!

From our 9th Sunday to our 12th (January 18th, 25th, and February 1st and 8th) we managed to stick around town and go to our correct ward.  By then the renovations on our actual meetinghouse were done and the church was only two streets over from our apartment.  We could have walked if it wasn't so darn hot and if church didn't start at 8:30am!!!  I never did get over that fact.  If two wards met in a building one ward started at 8:30 and the next one started (with their meetings in the reverse order) at 9am.  Really?  These party animal Brazilians could get up that early?!?!  But I think the schedule had more to do with their culture of eating their main meal of the day at noon.  Everyone wants to be home for their main meal of the day--LUNCH!! 

Now for the really cool thing about the building that was our actual meetinghouse--it was being renovated because it was the very first LDS church building in all of Brazil.  How cool is that?!?!  We got to be a little piece of church history!  It has a little plaque out in front and everything describing the first congregation that met there.  It has been renovated several times and this last renovation was to restore it to how it originally looked.  I'm not sure if that means the lay-out or the style or what but it is beautiful now.

Panorama of the building (it's not really curved the way it looks in the photo).

This plaque reads, "First Chapel of the Church in South America--On October 25, 1931 this chapel was dedicated by President Karl Bruno Reinhold Stoof, of the South America Mission, from Buenos Aires.  There were 98 people present.  At this time the Joinville Branch numbered 46 members baptized since the first missionary visit in 1927."


You can definitely tell that the church is relatively strong in Southern Brazil. I think Joinville (city of 600,000) had two stakes.  Every ward we went to had an actual church building (no houses or rented buildings or anything) and they all had air conditioned sacrament rooms!  Several of the buildings were two stories high with the sacrament meeting room on the 2nd floor.  The building in Guaratuba had recently been renovated to have an elevator up to 2nd floor! Other main meeting rooms in all of the buildings had several ceiling fans each.  Many buildings had under-the-building parking (oh, those coveted spaces in this summer heat).  All of the buildings had large basketball/soccer courts that were used as additional (much needed) parking.  Other than that and some general layout differences, the churchs there had all the same basic stuff you'd expect at a typical LDS church in the United States.  They had kitchens, bathrooms, cultural halls, large meeting rooms (Relief Society, Priesthood, Primary), smaller classrooms, bishop's offices, and drinking fountains.  I guess another main difference is that they had tile floors rather than carpeted ones and so frequently the sacrament meeting rooms were tucked on one end of the building-or on the 2nd level--so people don't have so much distraction of all those high heels clicking on the tile floors.  I think the sacrament rooms may actually have been carpeted now that I think about it.  But no where else was.  Benches in the sacrament rooms were much more rectangular--tall backed, wider, padded like in the States, with high arm rest on either end.  There was more space between them, too.  When the boys passed the sacrament they did so with one arm behind their backs and brought the tray to each person individually on every single row.  They must have been trained that way because every ward we went to did it the same way.  They hardly knew what to do when Papai tried to take the tray from them and pass it down the row--and always with the non-serving arm folded behind their backs.

Safari Girl in front of our newly renovated building--such pretty purple plants!

As for actually attending church in Brazil--church was like coming home to me.  Besides being the one place where I could most easily understand all the vocabulary, it was a place where I also got to just sit and listen for several hours and practice understanding the language again without having to actually try and respond in Portuguese (for the most part).  It was really good practice.

It felt like home, too, because at church it was easy to see that even though our cultures are different and even though we speak different languages people really are essentially the same.   In Guaratuba they had Primary and then Sacrament meeting so we were there for the Primary Program practice and the actual Program and I could see--the kids were just like kids are--they goofed off and were silly, some of them misbehaved, some of them listened really well during the practice.  The teachers taught, tried to discipline and help the kids behave, rolled their eyes and got a bit frustrated when things got too out of hand and in the end, when the kids performed they did their best and everyone in the audience loved it and felt uplifted.  When we went to Stake Conference parents brought snacks and toys for their kids and shared them with each other when they noticed another person's kid getting restless.  People brought notebooks and scriptures and followed along and took notes.  Parents of restless kids walked the halls.  The differences in language and culture melted away as we saw people interact with each other at church.  It was a humbling and unifying feeling.

Even more amazing and testimony building to me, was to see that our church on a whole different continent was the exact same church as at home.  I'm not sure why this struck me so deeply this time.
 Maybe because when I was a missionary I was the one running around and trying to teach people about the church and how it runs and what it's all about.  Whereas this time, I came as a visitor and everything was already in place and running and it was all the same as at home.  For me, to see that the church was run exactly the same even in another country partway around the world helped me feel how true this church is--that it truly is the church of Jesus Christ--organized in His way and kept in such order that all the same principles are taught to each of His children all over the whole world. That is no small feat to organize and manage a worldwide membership!  It's miraculous, really!  It was a testimony to me of it's truthfulness--to see that even though our bishops and leaders are UNPAID clergy, no one was varying from the gospel truths and preaching their own ideas--in any of the various wards we visited.  We had the same lessons from the same manuals that we do at home, we learned the same Primary songs and sang the same hymns.  We learned the same principles.  People bore testimony at testimony meeting and people gave talks each week just as they do at home.  We were able to attend the temple in Curtitiba and it too, was run the same way and taught the same principles.  This especially hit home for me when we returned to the States and attended our home ward for the first time in three months.   The Primary President taught sharing time (a lesson geared toward children) and referred to a story they talked about last week about a man in a pit and someone coming to get him out with a ladder and about how that related to the Savior and his atonement.  We had heard that exact same story last week in Primary in Brazil!  I don't know of many other churches that maintain so uniformly between their congregations the same teachings and doctrines.  I know The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is able to maintain this order because it is run by Jesus Christ himself through a living prophet and living apostles just as it was when Jesus Christ was on earth.  Our experience in Brazil really solidified that feeling and certainty in my mind and heart.  It was incredible!!

The Reality of the Weekdays in Brazil

We are home from Brazil now and I have had a lot of people express near envy at the experience we had in Brazil.  From Facebook to my blog it looks like all we did was explore and spend our time at the pool and the beach.  We did a lot of all of that and this experience has been the chance of a lifetime that I'd do again in a heartbeat and I wouldn't trade for ANYTHING.  By far the weekends and our Christmas break were the best parts of the whole experience.

BUT...

Just to make sure there is no disillusionment about the experience as a whole....let me tell you about our typical weekdays.  The weekdays were definitely a reality check.  Here's a peek into what our weekly schedule looked like:

SCHOOL and PRESCHOOL-3 hours/week if I was good.
When we arrived in Brazil, Brazilian kids only had 1-3 weeks of school left before summer break.  As I understood it, the kids who did well got out a couple of weeks earlier than the kids who were struggling.  Anyway, they didn't go back to school until the week before we went home so Safari Girl had a 2nd summer break.  Luckily, I talked to Safari Girl's teacher before we left, who gave us all the math her class would be doing through the middle of February. She said just to have her keep reading--Safari Girl already knows what they'd be working on until February.  It worked out that we had about 3 math pages per week to do.

Missing school was what Katelyn was most sad about when we left.  She absolutely adores her teacher and cried for several days when she learned we'd be going to Brazil for three months.  However, shortly after our arrival she realized something positive about it--being in Brazil and not going to school meant that she got to play ALL DAY LONG!  Soon it was quite a chore for me to get her to do even a half hours worth of math three times a week.  She was NOT happy to leave her play even for that short time!  She finished the last page on the plane on our way home.  Oh, we also brought a 1st Grade work book and I had her do several pages from that each day as well--or at least when we did school....

We didn't keep up with reading as well as I would have hoped either.  Safari Girl loves the Cam Jansen series and reads the "Young Cam Jansen" books on her own.  We brought two of those and three of slightly harder Cam Jansen chapter books that we own.  (Since I taught school I have an extensive library of children's books!) She read all of those multiple times motivated by the incentive that if she did she could get a new game on her iPad.  I had planned on us reading e-books that we could check out from our library and read on our iPads but the library didn't have as many children's books on her level as I thought it would so we really didn't read as often as we should of.  At least we got scriptures in most nights....Safari Girl took a reading test when she got back and scored slightly higher than she did before we left so luckily she didn't lose any of her reading skills!

For The Boss, I bought a wipe-off letter printing book from Costco and I brought our "How to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" to work on.  The Boss wasn't much of a fan of taking a break to do "preschool" either.  We only got to lesson 14 in our three months there but at least he got some practice in.  By lesson 14 he was already reading words like "sat, mat, rat, sit".  I was impressed.  Hopefully, teaching him by this method doesn't mess with his head when he gets to Kindergarten.





So during the week, if we were being really good we got in maybe an hour of school every other day.  It might have gone better if we did it in the mornings but it was just SO HOT that if we were going to go out during the day at all, outing HAD to be in the morning.  Otherwise, we'd melt.  Even swimming had to be in the morning because the in afternoon the pool was too warm to be refreshing.

UNO-5 hours a week.  The Boss loves to play games so when we found UNO at Big for R$12 we bought it.  I ended up playing Uno with The Boss for an hour EVERY DAY.  Literally. Yep, that deck was well loved by the time we left.

WASHING CLOTHES-5-8 hours/week.
I thought I'd have all this free time there but instead I spent a lot of time doing chores that I have machines to do for me at home-washing dishes by hand, rinsing, wringing, and hanging clothes to dry, and making a lot of food from scratch.  We did have a washing machine.  It was so simply made, we installed it ourselves in like one minute.  We just screwed the hose up to the faucet on the wall in the laundry room.  To do a load, I had to turn the faucet on and wait for the machine to fill up and then turn it off.  The kids will be sure to tell you that at least twice I got distracted and let the machine overflow.  So fun.  It has a little manual dial timer that I always turned to the maximum time, which was only about 20 minutes.  When it was done, I had to empty the water bucket by bucket into the sink.  Then I'd rinse the clothes, rinse them in a fabric softener, wring them out one by one, and hang them to dry on the clothesline.  One large load, which was smaller than a load of wash in my machine at home took me 1-2 hours from start to hanging it on the line.  I tried to do a load 3-4 times a week.  That means I was doing wash from 4-8 hours a week.  I didn't mind the work so much since I didn't have much else to do but it was a little stressful to me making sure I did the right load of wash at the right time so that we didn't run out of clothes.  Because of the humidity, each load took a full day or two to air dry so if we discovered suddenly we were out of underwear, we were out of luck for at least another couple of days.  The other difficulty with doing laundry was that up until the last couple of weeks, the laundry sink pipe had a leak.  I did a typical Brazilian type fix--found a container skinny enough to fit under the sink to catch the water but I didn't dare try to duct tape the pipe or anything because I had this feeling from my Brazilian friend that rental rules here are pretty strict.  Which meant that even with the container catching water, I still had to mop the floor after every 5-10 minutes of rinsing clothes or I'd be wading in water.  I was so happy when Papai finally replaced the pipe for me sometime in the last few weeks before we moved.

I forgot to close the window during a rainstorm once and came home to a filthy laundry room!

 

During Christmas break we were so busy for two weeks straight that I couldn't keep up with the wash and we ended up having to take all our laundry to the laundromat.  It's tough to find a laundromat there where you can do it yourself.  Instead, you drop off the clothes, pay a fortune and come back a day later to your laundry washed, dried, ironed, and folded for you.  It was kind of heavenly but it cost us over R$200 for just 5 small baskets.  That was about US$80!!!!  Just for 5 small loads!  Still, it was heavenly to have our towels and sheets completely dry.  I always had to enlist Papai's help to help me wring out the towels more completely in hopes that they would dry all the way before developing that gross mildewy smell, but even with his help I feel like the towels were always somewhat smelly.  The air was just too humid to let them dry quickly enough to NOT have that smell.

Other random laundry fact:  I still have a callous on my hand from wringing the clothes.



Doing all the laundry by hand did have it's benefits though.  I had visual evidence of my hard work for a couple of days while the clothes dried.  Seeing my line full was like a big pat on the back for me! Totally rewarding?  __________________  for me.  Also, I think I sweat off several pounds while doing laundry. It was in a part of the house where the air conditioning didn't reach so each time I did laundry I was a sweaty mess after.  Like--rivers running down my back, the sides of my face, behind my ears and sometimes into them.  Ew!  And my chest was a huge puddle. I didn't know it was possible for me to sweat that much and in some of those places!  By time I finished, whatever clothes I was wearing needed a good washing.  Gross, I know but between the heat, the humidity, and the arm workout that wringing clothes is, I know I lost a pound or two just by sweating. Another bonus of doing the laundry by hand is that our house alw.ays smelled like clean laundry!

SWIMMING--4-5 hours/week.  Some weeks we only went once for a couple of hours but the last month in particular we tried to go 2-3 times a week.  We'd only last about an hour and a half before one of us had to use the bathroom and I didn't discover there was a bathroom near the pool until the last week so when someone had to use the bathroom we were done.  But the pool was definitely the best entertainment!  We usually went in the morning because in the afternoon the "sun was so strong" (as the Brazilians put it) that we burned easily even with sunscreen and the pool wasn't very refreshing because the water was so warm.

Me not getting in the pool lasted all of two times.  In this picture I was positively roasting!  Then I saw that they really do clean the pool and you couldn't keep me out of it in that heat!

 

OUTINGS to Zoo/Shopping--1-2 hours/week.   When I first found out the location of our apartment I could see on Google Maps that we had a nice zoo/botanical garden within walking distance of our apartment.  A little research showed the zoo was even free and I knew that for sure that we would be spending a lot of time there.  What I didn't count on was that it would be so hot!  Between the heat and the fact that we had to walk anywhere we wanted to go because I didn't have a car, we ended up not getting out of the house very often.  We had to walk a little under a mile to get to the zoo and I could hardly ever convince the kids that it would be worth it.  For my own sanity, I tried to push them to go at least once a week but it really was just so hot when we went.  I took before and after pictures of poor The Boss.  After just 45 minutes, his head/hair was drenched in sweat.  It's no wonder they didn't want to go very often.  The same with shopping--not that they like that much anyway but we had two shopping malls within walking distance AND we were right IN downtown so there was all kinds of shopping to explore but I could hardly ever convince them to do it because it was so hot.  They were willing to walk halfway down our street to this well-known bakery to get some pigs-in-a-blanket to eat.   One time I made them walk to Big (basically, their Walmart) to try and get some grocery shopping done during the day instead of having to wait until Papai got home from work.  I think they'd tell you I tortured them.  It was only a mile to the store but I made them each carry two sacks home.  We had to stop a bunch of times for them to rest and by the time we got home I was afraid of eating the few refridgerated or frozen items we bought because I worried they had spoiled in the heat since it took us so long to get home.  So basically, we didn't end up leaving our apartment much--it was just too hot for the kids.

The closest mall--Casa das Flores (Flower House).  The entrance makes it look so small.  When we discovered it was an entire mall we were shocked!!  The building is in a plus shape so you only see one end of the "plus" from the street.

Koi pond inside Casa das Flores Mall.

Poor kid is drenched with sweat after only 45 minutes outside!  Bakery goodies.


WATCHING NETFLIX and PLAYING iPADS--the whole rest of the time.  Yes, literally.  That's pretty much what we spent our weekdays in Brazil doing.  Netflix has some different shows in Brazil than it does in the States.  The kids loved watching this British show called Mister Maker that was this silly young guy with a British accent showing how to make kid crafts.  The kids loved it and we would have had lots of fun making the crafts but it was nearly impossible to find the very basic craft supplies he used.  On the rare times we ventured out of the house, I searched for craft supplies in any store I thought might have something but the best we found were some colored pencils, colored paper and glue.  We eventually found some glitter that we had fun with but that was about it!  No pipe cleaners or pom poms or clay or acrylic paint (we found some tempera that was cheap and watery) or even construction paper. We only found either scrapbooking type cardstock which was really expensive or this pack of regular paper but it had four pastel colors.  That's what we went with.  I did find a yarn store and we did a little project making little hat ornaments but that was pretty tricky even for Safari Girl.  The kids had a few toys we brought (Hotwheels and some track for The Boss, Palace Pets and Zinkies for Safari Girl, plus some Legos they got for Christmas and whatever toys they got from KinderEggs or from McDonalds) that they played with but that was it.  They loved using the tons of pillows from the couch to build forts and "zoo animal cages" but I had to consciously force myself not to stress about that too much since the couch wasn't ours and they were dragging these pillows all over the dirty ground (no matter how often I cleaned that white tile we always had a layer of black silt on the floor!) and jumping all over the pillows ruining their shape.  Other than those few activities, they were really on their iPads or watching TV ALL DAY LONG!  I had to make a rule they could only download one free game per day.  The Boss was thrilled that Paw Patrol, a show his closest friend loves, was on Netflix.  I couldn't even name all the seasons of shows we watched or all the movies.  You can imagine by the end of the day when Papai came home how restless and irritable the kids could be on some days having done next to nothing all day.  We were usually okay until about Wednesday.  The weekends were SO MUCH FUN that they carried us through Tuesday.  But then Wednesday hit and we were clawing at the walls and at each other half crazy with boredom and heat and lonliness.  I was like, "Um SERIOUSLY people!?!?  It's been two hours!  Why haven't you posted something NEW on Facebook!?!?!?!"  I was NEVER so thankful as I was in Brazil when Friday rolled around.

The Boss and his cars.


Safari Girl and her toys--this was after she lost a tooth and set all her toys up like this with her tooth in the Squinkies Cinderella carriage for the tooth fairy.  The tooth fairy brought her two reias.  You can see her Zinkies and her McDonald's Mario toys.

We found a yarn/fabric store.  We definitely had the stuff to crochet or sew if we had wanted!  But other types of craft materials were harder to find!

TV/computer/Netflix set-up

Literally plugged in!

The iPad Mini's were the kids' early Christmas presents.  That was not something we ever thought we'd give them but we weren't sure how else to entertain them for 12 hours on a plane when we couldn't bring much with us. It definitely entertained them for 3 months in Brazil!

Sometimes I got to Skype with my Brazilian mission companion living in Curtitiba.  This was pretty common in Brazil. The internet is actually really good there-sometimes better than the phone service so a lot of people would Skype rather than call.  Plus, Skype is free!

Oh, and here's more Netflix time...

The Magic of Santa, Another Story of our Christmas

While we were having our Brazilian "camping" Christmas, the kids kept talking about what Santa left us back at our apartment.  Good thing Santa knew where he should deliver our gifts.

Safari Girl was asking us lots of questions about Santa Claus like, "Is he REAL?" this year.  I never came right out and said one way or the other--rather I distracted her with my own questions like, "Why are you wondering?"  It turned out she had a paper Christmas tree she was working on and really wanted bring it home but knew that if she tried to bring it on the plane it would get smashed.  She really just wanted to know if Santa was real to figure out if he could solve this dilemma for her and deliver her paper tree to our house!

Anyway, as this could be the last year that she believes in Santa we decided to make it special.  One night after our typical Tuesday evening grocery shopping, Papai dropped me off downtown close to our home and then headed home with the kids.  Unloading groceries when you live on the 10th floor is quite a production plus they had new toys from McDonald's to be excited so I don't think they even noticed I was gone.  I was able to get some shopping done--picking up this stuffed leopard that Safari Girl was absolutely in love with and a few other cheap little things at another store and then I walked home with the goods.  I don't even remember how they didn't see them when I came in but they didn't!

I wrapped everything while they were sleeping, plus some things I bought from home and then when we left for our Christmas camping we were really tricky.  We had the car all packed and ready to go and just as everyone was headed down the elevator to leave I proclaimed, "I have to use the bathroom.  Go ahead and I'll be down there in a minute!"  As soon as they were gone, I whipped out all the presents and set them out under the tree.

When we arrived home and Safari Girl saw presents under the tree it was MAGICAL!
"Now I know Santa is real!" she proclaimed, "I was with you every time you went shopping and I never saw you buy those gifts!  AND, we were gone and you were with us the whole time so you couldn't have put those presents under the tree!"  She was so excited!

We have a believer for one more year at least!

Watching the kids open presents was so fun for us.  Safari Girl LOVED her leopard and a few other small things and The Boss was SO excited for this silly little pool table that cost R$2 (less than US$1).  His "big" present was a Hotwheels wiggle car set which he also was so excited about.  The kids were kind and shared some of their Brazilian candy out of their stockings since Mom and Dad didn't get any presents or stockings.

Safari Girl the next day with her leopard.

We did get to have Stollen though--from the little bakery on our street.  I sent Papai to buy it and I guess it was late in the season so all they had left was this kind with marzipan down the middle.  It definitely wasn't as good as homemade Stollen but I was grateful to continue our tradition in a foreign country even and I didn't have to make it!

It was a very Merry Christmas, even if it was a bit different from our typical Christmas!