Patricia has a new bike!!!

I have been encouraging to her to do more exercise, and a good way would be to ride her bike to school with me. She accepted the idea, and yesterday we finally found her a bike. Of course, finding a bike for her is not simple because it has to be the right size, a woman's bike, and most importantly the right colors. We went to a three or four different places with no luck. On the way home from school I saw a bike store that I'd never seen before and found a bike that fit at least the first two criteria. yesterday we went there to check them out. After looking at a few different bikes, Patricia was only considering one of the bikes. The bike was not the right size, so the salesman had to go get another bite that was 2 inches larger. When Patricia asked him to go get the other bike she said that if it fit well she just go ahead and get that bike, though she showed no enthusiasm for the bike. The poor salesman was rather discouraged with Patricia and her apparent lack of enthusiasm. He didn't even want to go get the bike because he is so accustomed to people coming in so excited to buy a bike. He went and got the boss who turned out to be Brazilian. He was a great guy and quickly Patricia started to show more interest. Also the larger by turned out to be gray and white instead of black and gray, which Patricia liked a lot better. By the time we left Patricia was so excited about her new bike.

Of course, we had one more task to do. We had to find the right helmet, which meant the right colors and small enough to fit her head. We ended up buying a pretty pink and gray helmet that was made for an eight year old. So now Patricia is ready to bike to her heart's content (I hope it's a lot).

Life in a Married Ward

The last time that I was in a married Ward was when I was 18, living in Yuma. Patricia, of course, has never experienced anything other than our YSA branch. So in reality it is a new experience for both of us. I like having a complete Ward with children, youth, and old people. We have an excellent Ward. Patricia loves having children around. Today was fast and testimony meeting (because stake conferences next week) and Patricia loved hearing the three little girls and a boy who bore their testimony today. Even the mother with the three psychotic young boys who never stopped going crazy during sacrament didn't affect Patricia's opinion that children are all darling. this lady went up to bare her testimony, which meant two of her boys came with her. They were running around screaming, while the bishopric was trying to calm them down and in reality catch them first then try to call them. Patricia just thought that they were funny and cute. The rest of the church wanted to strangle them. It must be nice to be a new member of the church when everything is new and lovely. Everyone is so impressed with Patricia and her vibrant testimony.

I also enjoy not having a calling. In my previous YSA branch I was a clerk for the last 2 1/2 years and a teacher for 1 1/2 of those years, so church meetings were always very busy. An average Sunday was eight to nine hours at the church, but now I go for three hours only. Unfortunately but happily our Bishop has been prompt to give us new callings after only two weeks. Patricia is the Young Women's secretary. She accepted the callings promptly without even knowing what exactly she was accepting. However, today the Young Women's president explained the responsibilities of her calling, and luckily she is still excited. One of the young women is Brazilian and does not know English well. She is so self-conscious that she feels embarrassed to come to church. Patricia will be a big help to this Brazilian girl especially, but I think she will be an excellent secretary and an asset to the entire program. The Primary and the Young Women's organization duke it out for her, and I guess the Young Women's organization won.

I am the assistant clerk, which I think is an ideal calling, because I do not have the early-morning meetings and the responsibility of doing all of the reports. My principal responsibility will be maintaining the membership records, which is a large task in itself. The Ward clerk Has no assistant clerks, so he does as much as he can do himself, which is basically to take care of the financial records. I'm excited to be in the clerk's office again.

Patricia's two little kids

A fellow grad student decided to get rid of his bearded dragons, so he sent out an e-mail to the grad students offering them to whoever wanted them. Patricia got excited about the prospect of owning these lizards, so I sent him an e-mail right back. However, another grad student had already claimed them after just 10 minutes! Patricia was already excited about getting bearded dragon, so we looked into buying one. Then Patricia changed her mind and wanted to buy her own snake. This plan was short-lived after she saw my snake eat a rat. Normally my snake quickly kills the rat, but this time it took about five minutes. It was rather gruesome because the rat was bleeding through its mouth and nose, while it was gasping for air. After that traumatizing experience she no longer wanted her own snake.

Fortunately today I was talking to the grad student to claim them, and told her that she was just a few minutes faster than us. Now Patricia is going to buy one. She then said that we could have them if we wanted them still. She is the type that has many turtles, lizards, dogs, and many other types of animals, so she could do without two bearded dragons. Patricia was so excited.

Now Patricia has two new little amusements. They receive a mixture of love and torment or what Patricia calls kindness. As soon as we got them home, Patricia gave them both a bath in warm water. The female (on the right) was calmly sitting in the tub of water, but Patricia thought she wasn't moving around because the water was too hot and she was dying. She got so worried that she already killed her lizard. However, these lizards spend most of their time motionless, and the female was just relaxing and enjoying the bath. Thanks to Patricia they have a nice clean cage with a heat lamp and a UV lamp, and a little perch ... everything they need.

They produced a clutch of eggs last year, so I am hoping they will produce another clutch of eggs this year. Maybe in the next six months we will have another 20 dragons.

Part 1: Meeting the in-laws

(I placed the Botucatu and Avaré pictures on Picasa.)

The last few weeks before going to Brazil we spent all our time outside of work moving into our new apartment. The morning of the day we were supposed to leave for Brazil, we left the house at 7am to wash clothes and my car was missing! I could not find my car anywhere. Finally I found it parked blocking the entrance to the condo complex. The car was still warm meaning that at most a few hours before someone took the car for a spin and ditched it blocking the entrance. Thank goodness nothing was wrong with the ca, except the spare change container was missing. We counted our blessing that nothing happened. We then went to the school to wash 13 loads of laundry. Yes, nearly everything we owned was dirty. Fortunately were able use all the washing machines at the dorms, so 13 loads only took a few hours.

We packed for Brazil a few hours before catching our plane. Needless to say it was a frantic dash to get everything done. We did not have time to finish straightening the house or finish unpacking before leaving for Brazil. Thank goodness were able to get everything done the first week we were back in Miami.

I got to know another part of Brazil. Before I was in relatively small city of 750,000 people in Florianopolis compared to 20,000,000 people that call São Paulo home. We stayed in São Paulo from Saturday July 19 until Tuesday July 22. We were able go to church because it was conveniently ~10 blocks from the Vendramini's apartment.

On Monday Marlene (Patrícia's mother), Patricia, and I went shopping. To arrive at the shopping center required taking 3 subways. The subway was not that full of people because it was the winter holidays. If it had been a normal working day there would no room to stand let alone stand. Thank goodness because I wouldn't have liked to be packed in there like sardines without even space to raise my hand to my head. Shopping does not mean going to the mall and idly checking out the goods. Shopping in downtown São Paulo is outdoor mall of sorts. Each side of the road is lined with 100's of small shops, selling jewelry, tools, shoes, every type of pirated goods from clothes, glasses, and a myriad of other useless things. The streets are so full of people that we could barely move our arms let alone walk down the street. Marlene said that it is so nice to go shopping during the holidays and during the week because the place is nearly empty. I couldn't imagine how it would be if the place was actually full. I was holding the bags of goods with a death grip because the place is full thieves that can steal practically anything without any chance of being caught. For this reason I didn't take my wallet or camera (for this reason I do not have photos of the shopping area). Marlene was the only one with money, and she put it in a little pocket in the front of her pants.

The purpose of our trip was to buy shoes, belt, and tie for me and earings for Patricia. The earings are to be used with her wedding dress, so they were the most important item. We went to about 10 jewelry stores on one street before we arrived at a shoe store where I bought 2 pairs of shoes. Then we were off again looking for more jewelry stores. Most of the stores stuff for women (makes sense, considering who it is that goes shopping). The place was full of jewelry stores. We went to all of them trying to find one pair of earings! After going to 60 jewelry stores (60, no joke), we didn't find the special pair of earings. I thought that she was going to start all over again. I almost died because I was already so tired from walking and carrying bags the whole day, and I was sure Patricia was going to say that we would have to return to all the stores. Luckily she had bought one that she liked but wanted to still try to find one she wanted more. Thanks goodness we were able to go home finally. By the end of the day, I only wanted to sleep. While I slept, Patricia had to fix her dress. I was so happy to not be the bride.

The next day we went to Botucatu where Patricia's family lives. On the way we stopped at a place that makes everything out of corn. They had soup, ice cream, juice, and pie all made from corn. The ice cream was not bad.

The first thing we did was introduce me to Thor their dog. He is a massive English mastiff that is friendly to family and hates strangers. Luckily we adopted me into the family (I gave him frequent snacks to bribe him). Believe it or not, he loves fruits. I fed him papaya, watermellon, oranges, and bananas. I was hoping to have some relaxing days, but that was not on the agenda. There was still numerous things to resolve, people to talk to, and appointments to go to. Finally Friday we all went to Averé where Patricia's family has a vacation house on a reservoir. Unlike the West it is hydroelectric power that is the principal purpose of the reservoir and not water.

The first day we took the boat to explore part of the reservior, which is extensive. The temperature was around 70°F and Patricia and Marlene were wearing jackets and were wrapped in a blanket. On the way back the wind nearly froze them to death. The water was, of course, too cold for swimming (70-75°F). I don't like the cold, but Brazilians who don't have cold weather cannot tolerate the cold not even a cool breeze.

The next day most of her aunts, uncles, and cousins on her mom's side (total 8) came. I'm not accustomed to small families, but it is nice because the house wasn't too loaded with people. Patricia's family likes to eat, so I haven't felt hunger (or anything less than full) in 2 weeks. In Averé we ate so much that I began to think that I better start eating less or I wouldn’t be able to button my tux pants. Patricia's family is really cool and fun to be around. Of course, on Saturday we had a churrasco (Brazilian barbeque) with all the fixings.

I brought my camera and took ~850 pictures...mostly of birds. I took a few pictures of people, too. I was so excited at the variety of birds that I was able to see. I took pictures of probably 15 species of highly colorful birds. I spent 3.5 hours looking at birds in a small patch of trees next to the neighborhood. I had no need to go further because I didn't even see all the species there.

As soon as I can I'll talk about the wedding (Part II) and our honeymoon (Part III).

Moving adventures

First I want to start with a question. How long does it take to move from one apartment to another? If you had asked me that question last week, I would have said 1-2 days. I definitely would not have said 1 month. Well here is the little moving adventure that has consumed our lives for the first 3 weeks of July.
I moved out of my old apartment on 30 June. Patricia helped me move into our new apartment 2 days before. While I was packing boxes, Patrícia was cleaning. I could hear Patricia grumbling and giving me an occasional disgusted look. She said that my apartment was too dirty. She made it clear that our new apartment would remain clean from day 1. I won't argue that my apartment was spotless but it was not that bad. We packed everything in 16 hours on Saturday and moved everything to the new place on Monday. On Monday we just had to mop the floors in my old place and I could turn over my keys. Patrícia was quite the trooper and did most of the cleaning, while I packed everything.
Our new apartment is a large one-bedroom apartment with a carpeted living room and the rest is tile. The kitchen is rather large, which is a must for me. Also it has a balcony facing east for good plant growing. I plan on first putting my orchids there and starting a small herb garden. The place was furnished, which needless to say helped us out a lot. Patrícia said that she wanted to first clean the place before unpacking. I thought this was unnecessary as the place is usually cleaned when one moved out. Nonetheless Patrícia wanted to clean everything. I thought that we could give a quick clean and start unpacking the same day. Much to my sadness, the other tenant moved out the day before and did not clean the apartment well, though it was not filthy and definitely not to Patricia's standards. It only took a few hours to pack all the boxes and furniture and move it all into the new place. However, it took a week to unpack one box. First we scrubbed down the kitchen, which took 6 days. I was up until 1-4am every night cleaning, fixing stuff, and recaulking the sinks in the bathroom and kitchen. Both sinks were leaking, so I recaulked them. After doing that I decided to recaulk the shower too because it was in need, too. Man, it was hard to stay awake in my leadership meetings the next morning after sleeping only a few hours.
After cleaning the kitchen we moved on to the closets that we all in need of a good dusting. The dust here is not like Western dust. It looks like lint and is sticky. It only comes off after scrubbing. None of this dusting with feathers. One closet was full of our landlady´s stuff, which I had to repack because it was so horribly packed. Thankfully the condominium has storage available where we were able to store her stuff to free the closet space. I still think that it is rather discourteous of a landlady to leave personal belongings in the house she is renting out. We are renting a full apartment, not a part of an apartment. After clearing out and cleaning the bathroom, closets and bedroom that are all tile, we started to mop the floor. Mopping is defined at me on my hands and knees with a scrub brush and a bucket. I was in this position for nearly 4 hours. My legs, back, and arms were so tired and sore. The slightly beige, spectacled tile turned out to be pure white… go figure.
We are now in Brazil but we still have not unpacked everything. We still have to finish unpacking odds and ends and clean the living room, which has become a staging area. The place is looking really nice, and I hope that it will only take another week to unpack. I have never taken so long to unpack, but I am glad for Patricia's meticulous nature because I appreciate a clean house.

New evidence of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon

Here are some notes that I took during a talk the mission president of Ft Lauderdale, Pres. Reynolds (former director of FARMS) gave. The talk showed physical evidence that the Book of Mormon is legitimate. The evidence consists of Herbraisms, chiasmus, wordprinting, and geography.
Hebraisms are fossil references left over from Hebrew that do not translate well to English. For example Moroni 10:4 says "ask God if these things are not true". In English one does not ask if something is not true if it is true. However, this negative style of expression makes sense in Hebrew. Another example is the English usage of "if, then" in comparison to the Hebrew usage of "If, and" as seen in Helaman 12:13-21. Another example is plates of brass in Hebrew but brass plates in English.
Chiasmus is a style of writing that starts and ends in a parallel style and the main point is in the middle. Basically an ascent to a climax or focal point then a descent to the end of the story. By the predictable nature of the chiasmus the reader knows exactly what the principal point of the story is. Nephi loved chiastic writing style and used in all his writings. Other Book of Mormon writers did not use them. First Nephi is one large chiasmus made up of several large internal chiasmus. Nearly all stories written by Nephi are chiasmus. First Nephi chapter 1 is one long chiasmus & chiasmus answers questions that the words alone don't answer. Many ancient cultures use chiasmus. In Yugoslavia bards used chiasmus to remember oral histories. Also the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew cultures frequently used them. In the Old Testament there are many. However, chiasmus writing style was only discovered in 1850, while the Book of Mormon was published in 1830. Some non-Nephi examples are in 2 Nephi 29:13, Alma 36, and Mosiah 3:18-19. There is no better example of chiasmus writing than the Book of Mormon, and this writing is ancient.
Wordprinting is a statistical calculation to distinguish different writing styles and therefore different writers. Because writers have specific writing styles, what words are used and how they are used creates statistically detectable patterns. This statistical method is accepted in the scientific community. It was used to detect different writers of the Federalist Papers and the collection of the English philosopher Hobbs' work. The research found that the work attributed to certain Federalist Papers writers does indeed match their writing style. All of the writings attributed to Hobbs were separated from works published with his. Wordprinting identified 7 distinct writers in the Book of Mormon, but none of them match Joseph Smith or any of his associates.
Geography of the Book of Mormon is probably the best evidence. No one at time of JS believed that Arabian peninsula had inhabitable oases & mountains. Now it is known to be like Book of Mormon says. Three places found mentioned by Nephi have been found on the Arabian peninsula. First is the camp where Lehi first camped. The route Nephi followed was the only route one can follow because mountains border the beach. The traditional path used by Arabs and merchants in the spice trade was the trail on the east side of mountains. At this place Lehi described a small perennial stream (named the river of Laman by Lehi) in a huge, solid valley (named the valley of Lemuel by Lehi). This stream was said not exist because no streams empty into the Red Sea. Recently a small stream was found that does empty into the Red Sea because too small, so it goes underground when it reaches the beach. However it is perennial stream as explained by Lehi (1 Nephi 2:6, 8, 10).
Nephi said that Nahum was where Ishmael was buried. It was a place where their route went from south south east to directly east. French archaeologists found a large cemetery at this exact spot before WWII. They hypothesized that the cemetery was a common burial site that was used to bury people who died along the route. People were not buried in the sand along the way because the burial site would never be found again. That would explain why Ishmael was buried here. However this place did not have the name Nahum nor did any city in Arabia have this name. An Arabian tribe in the area for last 100's years called this place by name of name Nahum. In the mid-1990's archeologists found 3 altars (made during Lehi's time) at exactly the right place that have the name Nahum written on them several times. Archeologists say this is better evidence than all other evidence of the authenticity.
Bountiful, another place mentioned where Nephi built ships to go to the Americas, has mountains went all the way to the beach (1 Nephi 17:6), has running water, high quality iron ore (1 Nephi 17:7) is found in the mountains (1 Nephi 17:7). This place was found in Oman on the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula. The area meets all of the criteria. Though the mountains and lowland areas are no longer forested because of deforestation and intensive goat-grazing, both the mountains and the marginal lowlands at the base of the mountains were forested. Today all are deforested and not allowed to regrow because of extensive goat-herding.
All these evidences leave the places where the Lehi's family crossed the Arabian Desert very clear. Along with the names Lehi, Alma, Nahum, and others, the story of Lehi appears ever more true by hard physical evidence.
Numerous speculations both published and unpublished have surfaced over the years to explain where the Nephite/Lamanite lands were located. At least 80 theories have been published. Some said that the lands north and south of the Isthmus of Panama is the Nephite land. Others thought bigger thinking that the land to the north was North America and the land to the south was South America and the narrow strip of land was Mexico and Central America. One far fetched idea put the Nephite lands were in the Great Lakes region. Even Joseph Smith speculated on their location after book by Stephenson & Cartwood about the recently found Mayan ruins on Yucatan Peninsula and Guatemala was a good place to start.
Any valid theory must include the descriptions found in the Book of Mormon. Any theory must have a narrow strip of land with the annihilated civilizations of the Nephites (600BC-400AD) & Jaredites (2,000 BC – 300 BC) to the north and Lamanite civilization (600 BC - longtime) to the south. Contrary to popular Mormon belief the Hill Cumorah is not where the golden plates were buried. It was the location where all plates that Mormon used were stored (Mormon 6:6). Also it is absolutely conceivable that Moroni walked to upstate New York in the 36 yrs from time he received plates from his father till time he buries plates in New York (In Mormon 6:6 Mormon gives the gold plates to Moroni in 385 AD and Moroni 10 was written about 421 AD).
As a side note, the story of Joseph & Oliver seeing Mormon's Cumorah in vision comes from 6 3rd- and 4th-hand stories of this experience. It appears that they saw the room in vision. The Book of Mormon promises we will receive all of these records in the last days. Also contrary to popular belief Moroni brought the sword of Laban and several other things, but the stone box only had the gold plates and Urmmim and Thummin.
A book written in 2000 called Mormon's map by John L. Sorenson calculated the distances between Nephite cities to determine the size of the Nephite/Lamanite nations.
1. Nephi to Zarahemla - max 180 miles
2. Nephi to narrow neck 340 miles max
3. Nephi to Cumorah 400 miles max
4. Max size Nephite/Lamanite lands 500 miles length & 200 miles width
Only one location fits description, and it was found 2-3 yrs ago. Olmec civilization is the first city- building civilization in the Americas and dates to the start of the Jaredites civilization and ends precipitously approximately 400 BC. The Highland Maya (pre-classic Maya) dates from 600BC to 400AD and disappeared suddenly. The Lowland Maya (pre-classic Maya) occurred during the same time and was large and had tribute kings (Lamanites had tributary kingdoms, e.g. Lamoni was a tributary king under his father, Limhi was tributary king under the Lamanite king). Also approximate population size of Olmec and Highland Maya civilizations as discovered from the ancient records and archeological findings matches neatly with the population size of the Jaredite and Nephite civilizations. The evidence that these civilizations were the Nephite/Lamanite lands is overwhelming. Pres. Reynolds then said that it is time to quit debating the location of the Book of Mormon lands and accept the fact that they are found.
President Reynolds (former director of FARMS) still had another hour of talk left when he decided to end because he was losing his voice and he had already talked for 1 hour and 15 minutes. He still had genetic information about the Native Americans and many other things that were unknown that have now been discovered (FAIR has a good article on this). As with anything that is authentic, time is on its side. As we learn more, the Book of Mormon will be proven by more and more evidence to be an authentic book of an ancient American people and that Joseph Smith translated the book as he testified and was not its author. Of course, the fact that it is scripture depends on the spiritual witness that everyone can and will only receive through the Holy Ghost.

More pics

I put up pictures from Santa Barbara, CA when I attended a research conference. Afterwards Jarom and I went hiking in Santa Barbara and visited Hollywood. Later I'll put captions o all the pictures.