Are We Ready?

Brother & Sister McKinney - Sept. 26, 2012
This is the back side of the Curitiba Temple.

On Monday, September 24^th, 2012, Andrew and Cami patiently waited for me to finish packing bags and packing up our household belongings.  They both looked concerned that I was so slow getting ready.  I am grateful for their loving care in driving us to the airport and helping us check in our numerous bags. We rarely take more than carry-on luggage when we travel so it was quite an experience to move for two years to a foreign land.  It wasn’t like the young missionaries who were confined to one bag and then are later supplied with a place to live.  We have to supply our own household and consequently had more luggage. 

We left Salt Lake City about 1 pm and traveled to Atlanta.  We left Atlanta in the evening and arrived in São Paulo Tuesday morning.  The international airlines took good care of us by serving dinner in the evening and breakfast in the morning.  However, John would probably have traded one of the meals for some extra leg room.  There we said goodbye to the Wilkins who had traveled with us and we transferred our luggage to a local plane to go to Curitiba. It was 24 hours from leaving the Salt Lake Airport that I typed this information.

[John and I attended Language Training at the Provo MTC for four months. I studied the Primary songs in Portuguese as well as the Language.  We have been blessed to have 3 different instructors—all wonderful in their own right.  Elder Torgan started us off, Elder Destro then taught more nuts and bolts of the language, and then lastly, Talita Bejarano made us communicate.  Her rapidly moving hands, drawings on the board, music handouts, and TV news broadcasts from Brazil all made it easier for me to learn in a “no English allowed classroom.”  We were now in an environment where we could see how much good those lessons were.  John is doing fantastic and, of course, I have a lot to learn.]

President and Sister Cordon

We were met in the são paulo aereoporto by a young woman that travel services had sent, who guided us through customs and helped us get our luggage transferred to the flight to Curitiba. 


When we arrived in Curitiba and retrieved our luggage, we were met outside by President and Sister Cordon who took us to the mission home for a two night stay.  They had two cars with them and John and I split up and got to know these two wonderful mission leaders better. 

During our stay at their home we shopped at Sam's club for food and household items. We stopped at another local store for comparison shopping purchases where Sister Cordon bought items to stay in our apartment as part of the on site belongings. 

Wednesday morning we rode the bus to the Curitiba Temple were we were privileged to be the witness couple at our first Portuguese session. This was a special missionary session and we were able to meet many young Elders and Sisters as well as another mission couple, The Biehns. Afterward we were able to shop at the LDS distribution center on the temple grounds and pick up our Portuguese Bibles and other supplies.

We were delighted to meet Angelica Pereira da Silva during our mission home stay. She serves as the cook and housekeeper for the Cordons. We had some delicious meals during our stay.  I had to give John a haircut before temple attendance since his hair was a bit long for mission standards.  She washed up his clothing while we were gone and had it folded sitting on the bed when we returned.  She was warm and giving and will be a special new friend.