When we took my parents into Curitiba I discovered two new reasons to dislike driving in Curitiba.  First, as I was arriving in the city I noticed a new street sign that they have decided to torture me with.   It said “Mão Inglesa” or English Way, (as apposed to One Way).  It seems that they now have a few two way streets in which you have to drive on the wrong (left) side of the road.

My next discovery happened at an intersection that is hard to describe, so I made a little diagram of it which you can find below. Basically, the North/South road is one way and the East and West roads are both one way – but pointed at each other. There are 3 ways to get into the intersection and only one way out.  The intersection has stoplights to control the flow of traffic. So far so good.

I entered the intersection from the west.  The east/west stop lights were red, and the north to south traffic was moving through.  Then their light turned red and my light green.  As I moved into the intersection I noticed that the lights on the east side of the intersection also turned green.  So now there were two one way roads that ended face to face, both with green lights.  One road had three lanes, the other two.  We both had to merge into three lane road, all while avoiding head on collisions.

Thankful we arrived safely and were able to spend some with my parents relaxing in Curitiba.   Below you will find the diagram in the intersection and some night pictures from the top of the hotel we stayed in.

On Saturday we (Bill & Debbie, Abbie and Jake) headed off to the Red Swamp, the village where my adopted brother grew up.  It is a long trip past the paper mill and down unpaved roads.  While we were there we met up with Jeremiah’s god-father Lino and his family (who Jeremiah lived with for a while after his dad died).  We sat on Lino’s front porch and drank chimarrão (yerba mate) and talked about Jeremiah.  They were impressed that not only does Jeremiah own a car, he also rents it to his sister, (Lino does not own a car).

After talking to Lino we headed further down the (muddy) road for another 25 miles to Salto São Francisco, a 620 foot water fall. Because of a recent rain the road conditions were pretty bad and it took us about an hour and fifteen minutes to make the last leg of the trip. While the recent downpoor made traveling difficult, it did make the the waterfall all the more beautiful.

To put it in perspective, the Illinois River drops about 550 feet from Lake Michigan to the Gulf of Mexico.  Salto São Francisco falls that, and more in a matter of a few feet.  It has only recently been made a tourist destination.  The last time my dad was at Salto São Francisco, in 2006, they had just begun to install guard rails around the cliffs surrounding the waterfall.  Six years later the guard rail is finished, the road to the falls from Guarapuava is mostly paved and they have built a nice welcome center with a restaurant.

On Wednesday we (Jake, Amanda, Bill, Debbie and Abbie) went out to a local Fish ‘n Pay, where you fish in a well stocked pond and they cook it up for you.  This fish ‘n pay also has a couple of pools to swim in as well.

We had a good time swimming and fishing – even though we only got two fish.

Late New Years Eve we received some special visitors,  Bill & Debbie and Abbie arrived for a visit.  Their travels went well and their luggage arrived safely.  Bill and Debbie will be staying with us until the 11th and Abbie will be here for four months.  Abbie will be helping out at the orphanage, as well as helping with Noah while Amanda does evaluations and grocery shopping for CLM.

CLM Turvo has a large (25 acre) backyard, full of things to be explored.  The kids and I have started to map it.  So far we have mapped the trail that Mike made.  We soon will be taking pictures of the plants and wildlife and adding them to the map.  I have made a page where you can go to see our progress.

You will find two maps there, one made with Google Maps, that is a 2D map with poor satellite images.  The second map is only viewable if you the Google Earth browser plugin installed.  The Google Earth map has much better satellite images, though you may have to load the page, then refresh it to get the better images to load.

Here is a short video of Noah opening his first Christmas present:

This has been a year of changes for us. We have been blessed with a beautiful, happy little boy. We are also excited about our new ministry at CLM – Turvo. We thought we would add one more change to  close out the year and begin a new blog.

You may have noticed that our old blog was updated less and less frequently. With the demands of the ministry, Jake was left with very little time on his hands and I just simply couldn’t figure out all of the “code” to efficiently write posts and post pictures on our previous website.

So, we have switched to a more “user-friendly” website that will hopefully allow us to post more easily. We want to be able to share more frequently about our ministry and invite you to walk this journey with us at CLM Turvo. If you want to see previous posts, you can still visit our old website at www.teaters.com/oldblog.

Merry Christmas

Click here to see our December Letter