Temple Tour - 2017

With our temple closed for the next two weeks, we decided to visit a couple of other temples "in the area", so six of us (the Franças, Browns, and McClellans) crammed ourselves into this adorable little Fiat and headed northeast.

Stop #1 - São Paulo
It's only 416.8 km (5 h 40 min) through the mountains to the most populous city in Brazil (over 12 million) as well as in the Southern Hemisphere. I should probably mention the driving experience - Don did a fabulous job squeezing our way through the congestion, honking, and motorcycles that worm their way around all the other traffic.

We made it to the temple just in time for the 3:30 session.

The São Paulo Temple is the 17 operating temple of the Church and 

it was the first LDS temple built in South America. It is also the first temple to use the single story, single spire design. 
(We were sooooo grateful we were able to make it there alive!)


Because São Paulo is so hairy-scary, we choose to drive on to 
Stop #2 - Campinas


Go northwest 98.1 km ( 1 h 28 min) on pretty good roads and there you are!

We spent the night in the temple dorms. (Note to self - Never do that again!) The Campinas Temple is beautiful. This is the 111th operating temple of the Church. On its hillside location, the beautiful Campinas Brazil Temple is visible from many parts of the city of Campinas. We know this to be true because we passed it at least five times trying to find our way out of the city! And every time we passed it we commented on how visible it was!!!

This city only has a population of about 2 million and we even found a Taco Bell!! 
Yes, I know that on our previous mission I hated our Taco Bell lunches with the Elders. It's amazing how things change, isn't it?


And then, for some reason, we all decided to go home again, home again. Seven hours later we were back in our own little beds. 

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz