Earlier in the day, we were hiking waterfalls and crossing suspended bridges, and visited hidden historical areas (forts, gold mine, hidden serene beach, first church, slavery quarters, etc). Though we were caught off guard when we were approached to go to a farm for whiskey tasting, we had heard of wine tasting but this was a first for us, we graciously declined.

You are probably asking if this trip is over yet, nope…onto Thursday…we spent the day in Campos do Jordao, Brazil”s highest city. It is similar to Solvang here in California…just a majestic town with a Sweden/Danish style. There was a chair lift that goes from the inner area of the town to the top of nearby mountain. We were being treated to the day by the family we were staying with. Later in the evening, we had an official authentic Portuguese meal and attended an amazing outside classical musical concert. Afterwards, we attended a classical musical concert at the National Symphony orchestrated by a Christian maestro. Oh, and along the way we swung by the governors palace, where he stays several months out of the year (no pictures were allowed, sorry).

It was this day, July 19, 2007 that Tracy, Bill and Linda gave up chocolate. There is a chocolate shop every other shop, kid you not. This was a specialty, so I decided initially to go for a banana dipped in chocolate…somehow it became 8 slices of banana in about a quart of two different kinds of chocolate, AND then they gave me a straw. Bill and Linda follow suit. Only Bill tried using the straw which he quickly did away with. I love chocolate, but this was very very rich. We went bobbing for our bananas – we all suddenly had flashes of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and the chocolate river…by the 8th piece of banana we each had to discreetly discard our quart of chocolate…and so this is why you will not see us eating chocolate anytime soon.

The following day, we met back at Saddleback, Brazil where we were requested for a meeting with the children ministry regarding the prayer rocks that we had created earlier in our trip and had passed along several to the youth minister who we had pray over the rocks. We were told by the children’s director that when she had heard of us and seen the prayer rock and what we were doing with it she literally cried. She had said that the church had attended a conference recently and the subject was about prayer with the youth, and that they have been struggling ever since to implement the teaching, and here we come with this prayer rock. We discuss the prayer rock, the teaching, the implemented uses, prayer boxes, etc.. over a 1-1/2 hour meeting and left with the ministry having direction and eagerness to implement and teach the youth prayer. Boy, the Lord doesn’t miss a beat.