Tocantins

We woke up early this morning in order catch our early flight through Brasilia to Palmas in the state of Tocantins. When we left Sao Paulo, it was cloudy and about 70 degrees. When we arrived in Tocantins, it was 95 and it seemed like about 150% humidity. Getting off the plane, we were immediately drenched in sweat.

Jared's friend Kleber, who was a young man in the ward when Jared was here, picked us up from the airport. We went back to his house and ate lunch with his family. His in-laws are visiting from the south and his sister in law is visiting from Curitiba. We enjoyed getting to know them, and soon after lunch, we went to visit another young man from the ward where Jared served named Jonatas. He had served a mission, ironically, in Las Vegas. When he returned to Palmas, he became inactive in the church, and started working for the university in Palmas. We visited with him for a bit, and invited him to church with us on Sunday. He accepted the invitation, and we arranged to meet him later that evening at the local open air market.

On our way back to Kleber's house, we stopped at a few hotels and chose which one we felt would be the best. Back at Kleber's, we started some laundry that needed to be done and the got ready and went out to the open air market.

There, they had all sorts of different fruits, vegetables, candies and goods. We walked through trying different things and checking out the local specialties. They have a type of plant here called capim dourado from which they make hats, purses, jewelry, and lots of other stuff. We browsed through everything and purchased a few things we liked, then bought some paçoca de carne for dinner and headed back to the house.

During dinner, I talked with Deborah and Michael from Curitiba, and discovered that they had lost a baby last year who had only lived for two months. He had been born prematurely and had not been able to develop his heart and lungs properly. We shared our stories of losing our children so early in life, the difficulties we've had, and the blessings we have seen in our lives since then. I don't know how to explain, but even before I knew about their story, I felt some sort of closeness to them that only comes with shared experiences. And when they shared with me what they had been through, I knew at once that was why.

After we were finished with dinner, Kleber took us back to our hotel, where we immediately turned on the a/c. No way we were going to sleep without it.

- Posted from my iTouch