Colonel Mustard in the Library with the candlestick?

Could it be....no, just my wonderful husband in the living room with a hanger and a hot dog cooking dinner! For those of you who assume that because it is called SOUTH America it can't possible ever be cold, you are wrong. They have winter too. And finally it has gotten cold enough to use our fireplace. We had a wonderful picnic one evening this week...Hot dogs, mac and cheese, steamed broccoli all set out on our living room rug in front of our fire. One silly thing about Sao Paulo is the weather is very unpredictable and everyone will tell you that you can have all four seasons in one day...or at least all in one week, which did happen this week. Monday and Tuesday were freezing (low 40's) and then Wednesday was a little warmer, and then Thursday and Friday we were back to the high 70's. An interesting side note about the way construction is done here is everything is made out of concrete and central heating and air don't exist even though it gets hot enough and cold enough that it should. So when you get a couple of really cold days it cools down the apartment and traps it in, so many times we have to open up all the windows and doors on the warm days to allow the apartment to warm up again. This picture below is just a quick recap from last year on how cold it really got in Uruguay! And for those of you who can't tell what I'm wearing, I have on a t-shirt, a long john turtleneck, a heavy wool turtleneck sweater, a polartec fleece jacket, and a wind repellent shell, a wool scarf and gloves, a fleece ear protector, my hood and a blanket on top of that, all to ride a bus to a little colonial town and we still froze! But we still loved it!

Lights, Camera, Sing!

This past week was super busy for us. So much so that most of it is a blur. But one of the more exciting events was Joe helped shoot/produce a music video, and I got to tag along and keep the singers wives company! I guess I always assumed that to shoot a music video you started from the beginning of a song and sang it all the way to the end. Nope, it is chopped up into sections and different parts of the video are done at different times and different locations. They started the shooting process early on Wednesday at a studio designed to look like the inside of a house, with a baby grand piano(I didn't participate on Wednesday.) But I did on Thursday...We went to the beach to shoot. The day started with the alarm going off at 3:30am...yeah I know, Early. We hopped into the van, grabbed the rest of the people going and met up with the camera crew. After the two hour trek to the beach, the camera crew immediately starting dragging generators, lights and a jig(a crane arm that you mount the camera on, this is how they get really cool sweeping shots) out on a string of rocks surrounded by the ocean, that we used as our stage. Technically speaking we filmed two videos at once, one in English and the same song in Portuguese. The song was originally sung in Spanish by Ricardo Rodriguez, he himself sang it in English this past week and then Paulo Baruk sang the Portuguese version. All in all it was an amazing experience. Both couples, singers and their wives were interesting to get to know and spend time with.

Suffering for the Lord

Recently a terrible thing happened in the Mott household. I (Joe) was being a good husband and washing the dishes after dinner. It was a quiet evening. Music was playing in the background. All was well until the coffee pot slipped in my hand and cracked! Tragedy was brewing. Joe without coffee is like...well I’m not really sure. There's no analogy to properly describe what would happen without a coffee.

My loving wife suggested, as if it was no big deal, "Well, we'll just get another one when we go back to the states at the end of the month." She smiled. Apparently she thought this was a viable solution. She must have thought, "it'll be good for him to cut down on the coffee for a little while.”

I looked at my wife with a confused expression. "That's a month away," I reasoned, "You want to just not have coffee for a whole month?" The caffeine headaches seemed to already be arriving. In the back of my mind, I began to worry about the future of my marriage. After all, for her to just flippantly think it's no big deal not to have coffee, clearly shows a lack of understanding in our relationship.

Now you must understand. In the US we would simply by another coffee pot the next day at Wal-Mart. We'd spend 15 bucks, and it'd be no big deal. However for some odd reason, certain things have obscene prices here in Brazil. A 15 dollar coffee pot, runs for a good 45 dollars here. And I just have issues with paying 45 dollars for a piece of plastic, that doesn't even heat the coffee up to a respectable temperature.

Long story short…my wife, while not personally affected by this tragedy, out of the love of her heart hunted for the cure to my problems. This picture shows the short-term solution. That's right; the missionaries are suffering in the third-world country. Have pity on us. Life is hard. ;)