For all our loyal followers(6), sorry we're late. We have a good excuse, we were lazy.
This past week was the week of rain. The Cachoeira river that runs through Itabuna is not much of a river. It is about 80 meters (we are in Brasil) wide and about 2 meters deep. It moves very slowly and from here to the ocean (about 25 km) it only drops about 100 meters. It flows over what appears to be lava, which means there is not much of a river bottom as far as dirt and mud goes. It moves so slowly, there are a lot of water lily like plants that grow in it. At times it looks like the river is filling up with these plants. Last week, things changed. It rained.

It had rained a number of times since we have arrived here, but last week, the number of times and the intensity increased a lot. It rained every day, at times very hard and usually it rained during most of the day. The water level in the river went up about 2 meters. As this occured, all the water lilies plants came floating down the river and there was a lot of it. Much of it got caught on the concrete posts supporting the main bridge. It kept piling higher and higher. Normally there is about a 5 meter clearance from the underside of the bridge to the water, but as the water lilies continued to pile up, they acted like a damn and the water level on the up river side of the bridge kept rising. The clearance of the underside of the bridge to the water lilies was reduced to about 1 1/2 meters. The city closed the bridge and brought in a big back hoe type machine with a claw like thing on the end. It would pick up the water lilies and lift them across the bridge or put them on the banks of the river. After 4 - 5 hours of this, most of the problems were taken care of and the bridge was reopened. It was quite interesting and created a lot of national attention down here. This happened on Wednesday but the rain continued throughout the week. there just weren't any more problems.
On Saturday, we went to our twin city, Ilheus. We just wandered around the downtown area. It really is a pretty city. There is a large cathedral right on the edge of downtown. It is very well maintained and very beautiful. We will post some pictures latter. that is Janet's job, so if you don't see them soon, talk to her.
Monday night, the missionaries came over. Janet taught them the animal game. The one where candy is hidden and there are teams, with each team being an animal. When candy is found, the person has to make the sound of there animal until the captain comes and picks up the candy. I'm not sure who enjoyed it more, Janet or the missionaries.