Skype Week

I am taking a week off for writing a weekly email for the most part because I got to Skype home this week.... Its the perfect excuse to be lazy about emailing!

Christmas here was.... Well.... Unique like last year, but something I will never forget. We did a lunch with members (all of them treat us amazing) and then we did a District Christmas lunch that was nice. A mini family dinner of sorts. It was a mix of happy and kind of trunky... Overall good though.

Next week I will give an update on everything better.

Thanks for all of you who support me though your emails (and those old fashioned letters too!)

---Elder Howell

Member Christmas lunch.

Christmas dinner with the district.

Santa?

Christmas Skype!!

Christmas Day Skype was the best!  Elder Howell is doing awesome!

House Hunters International: Nampula

The big thing from this week was going to Nampula for a few days again. We showed up, got a car this time (smart, very smart move) and headed to the current missionaries house. We got unpacked then headed out for the day with the house finding person (who after two visits and a stupid amount of time together looking at houses I still cant remember his name). We right away headed to where a the new 'chapel' -retrofitted house- is going to be.

House 1:

The house had no windows.... The roof was made of metal sheeting with nice holes in it for star gazing and ease of entrance for mosquito and lizards. No running water in the house to get in the way of things and there was no kitchen or bathroom in the house.... It was also filled with the largest spiders, and spider webs I have ever seen :) What a magical place! Super low rent and great location.

House 2:

Located close to the chapel again, also low rent but with some nice modern twists. This house had electricity and 4 bedrooms! The bedrooms all even had their own bathrooms... But the rooms where about small enough for 1 twin size bed and a chair... The "kitchen" area was a common area for the whole, yet partially developed, building... Oh, it was 100% made of cement too! Super nice. The highlight of the house was it having over 4,000+ units of energy (we maybe buy 600 for 2 months). That and the random ladies living around making food were real wins.

House 3:

We showed up to a store front, close to the chapel, super safe area, easy access to the main chapa stops... My money sense was tingling feeling the price rising. We then get escorted through 2 full metal doors and gates, down a hall to another 2 set of metal doors.... Up a flight of stairs to anther door, hall way and then the door to the house... At this point I just wanted to see what was so magically hidden and gated in but I was sure the price would be outrageous. We entered into this super nice apartment. New paint, tiled floors and nice wooden doors. 2 really nice bedrooms and a nice, yet small bathroom and kitchen. Then comes the upstairs. A massive roof top patio thingy with a cover over looking the city. It was a magical view. With sadness I asked about the monthly rent waiting for a horrifying price just to be told a price less than a forth of what I thought..... Wow.


In the end we got House 3 ---Obviously, it was a miracle to find that house. We saw several other houses that I can just picture missionaries sending photos home and them very quickly getting ordered home by their parents. Thankfully we found that awesome house and one other!

This week we also had "Natal Branco". We did a choir with the stake and it turned out pretty great in connection with the "Light the World" campaign thingy going on right now.  We did two "shows" for people on Saturday and Sunday which was interesting, thankfully it went smoothly.

People update:

Fei and Ana are doing well and were at church along with Chul and this other new person. We will hopefully be having Chul's baptism this week (I havent talked about him much, we kinda 'adopted' him as an investigator from that Elder with toe problems). He is Pedro's friend (Pedro was my first baptism in the office). Hopefully all goes well this week!

I look forward to Skyping my family and to seeing photos and such from everyone's Christmas fun. Enjoy the snow and cold for me...and some Tacos.... and slushees.... and good hot cocoa!

Love

Elder Howell

Weekly Email---As Required

Hello Everyone,

This week was a bit different than most because we were living in another dupla's house and on Monday we picked up an Elder who was headed home. He stayed with us in a strange version of a tripla for the week. We kind of mixed around between Elder Skraba, that Elder and Elders Lemmon and Godfrey (the other dupla we were living with). For a few hours I would go off with Elder Lemmon to the bank, money changing or making purchases then I would pick everyone up for lunch or would grab another Elder to do other tasks. Elder Godfrey is healing up well but he is supposed to avoid walking or sitting for too long.

A few key things from the week:

1. Flavia and the twins actually got baptized this week.... Finally. We had good member support and everything... Both twins required doing the actual baptism twice because they kind of freaked out as soon as they started going into the cold water.... One literally ran away, the girl I baptized just kind of angrily glared at me in the font looking like she was going to slap me for needing to get dunked again in cold water (though it was her fault for flailing her legs out of the water...) In the end it all worked out, everyone got baptized and confirmed on Sunday.  They are doing well an the twins aren't too upset at this point.

2. Elder Skraba totally organized my desk during one of my "You come with me *grabs closest Elder and runs off to do something" moments... So that was nice. Though my 'organized chaos" is now just organized, I will relearn it.

3. Ummmmmmm *flips through photos* Yup, nothing else super big.... Um, we dropped of that Elder yesterday... Matilde is back today, finally not sick.

Alrighty. Have great weeks you peoples.

Elder Howell

6 Months to Go

The timer has started. There are just 6 months until I am the one boarding the plane, not the one dropping everyone off. That is insane. The last however many weeks and months have felt like eternities, days or even just brief moments at times. I honestly can’t explain it. But I am excited for whatever time I have left. 

Due to some unforeseen things happening I just got home, very much late (but doing what I was asked to) So, this email will be very quick. 

The baptism of Flavia and her twins didn’t work out. There was a train wreck of 23+ people getting sick at a wedding (including the bishop), a canceled primary program practice and no water at the chapel.... That left us with no water to baptize in, no one to conduct (that we wanted to conduct) and no members there to support.... We pushed it back a week. 

Elder Gumbo is still far far way (plane ride then 9 hour train ride) in Marromeu —the dream land for missionaries, but I am white so I can’t go— but we were with two other elders this week because one really really messed up his toes. He got ingrown toe nails, the hospital botched the surgery and he can’t walk for 2-3 weeks.   The toes are infected really bad and gross.  #Africa  But he is healing up well but needs a lot of help. 

We did get an awesome new family this week though! Fe and Ana, and their 8 month old. Ana is a member since 2012 and her husband just started coming to church. They are super smart and after just 2 visits I love them to death and I am super impressed not only by how smart they both are but how awesome of parents they are and how well they follow through on commitments. Awesome investigators #Referrals 

​Tchau!

Elder Howell​

This is Elder Skraba and I emptying the baptismal font.

This adorable baby is the kid of my favorite family.   

This Week Was.... Destroyed

So, the biggest (in terms of literal size) thing this week was the 15 months of financial documents I had to destroy.... Boxes and boxes and boxes of papers, receipts and so forth... It was a pain. My awesome 12 papers per go shredder with a tiny wastebasket wasn't handling it well... So we got past the safety thingies (exactly what a mother wants to hear) and put it on a large trash can, got a small AC unit blowing on it and away I went... For 3 days..... Suffice it to say I got a lot of Mormon Messages, Conference talks and Face to Face videos watched. After 3 days, 3 burned out shredders and 20 large black trash bags I finished the task... Thankfully that is over, sorry to Matilde for the massive mess it made.... Oops.

Other than that we had 2 big things this week: Leadership Counsel (where all the Zone Leaders in the mission come together, and the office elders to talk over mission stuff, study and get training).... Not sure why the secretaries go as its mostly aimed to help each Zone, but Sister Senna cooked so it was worth going. We also got to have everyone at our nice little house... That only has 2 AC units and 1 small bathroom with a 4 gallon water heater.... It was, majestic.

We then had another 'leadership counsel' but for all the Branch Presidents in the mission (9 of them). It was, well, a flipping ton of driving. Way too much to and from the airport at all hours. But, once again, Sister Senna cooked and we got to enjoy the spoils of our 'labors'. Thankfully only 1 person missed their flight but we got them on a plane an hour later, everyone got back without any problems.

Some other random things from the week:
1. Flavia and her twin daughters will get baptized this week... For real this time.
2. We are switching houses---Finally! That means we will probably live in the office for a few days--as if we don't pretty much already live here
3. The time flies when you get little sleep and have tons to do!

Until next week!
Elder Howell

PS: Included is a photo of "Elder Howell's Gelo"... Its my unofficial cup at President Senna's house (he is probably the only person in Mozambique with an ice maker).... Anyway, this week I kinda, well, borrowed it and got my name engraved on it.... Thus making it officially Elder Howell's cup.

PPS:  The guy in the photo is Celso, he was one of my first investigators baptized in T-3 (3rd transfer). He and his two friends friends got baptized and are super active. They are in the bishopric or doing ward missionary stuff. It is awesome to see. I missed getting a photo with the other two but they are all doing really good.

Another Week, but in Queliname

This week was a bit abnormal---which is always nice when getting into a routine that can get very boring at times. The week started out pretty normal a very relaxing P-Day followed by Tuesday when we dropped off the mission president at the airport (stupid early at like 4 am, why are flights here always at like 4 am???) to go to South Africa for a training. After a nice nap we got going with the day: visiting house owners to figure out issues with paperwork/rent, getting supplies to missionaries and of course lots of spreadsheets and numbers. The day was broken up a bit around 14:00 when it got really dark then started dumping rain. Not raining, that implies rain drops, it was just waves of water raining down. We were doing "House Hunters: Mozambique" as we looked for a new house and had just left it. We got soaked to the bone after 10 seconds running to the car. The streets flooded with more than a foot of water in some areas and little cars were dying from getting flooded. We were fine in our truck and I enjoyed driving around because the whole city was like one giant puddle to drive through!

On Thursday we headed out of Maputo. Do I love plane rides? Yes. We flew out to a city called Quelimane. There is a branch of members there. We just took out the missionaries from there temporarily (hopefully just a transfer or two) and we had to help with some housing issues there and Elder Gumbo (my Mozambican comp) was training the branch presidency on some church system stuff.
We landed early afternoon to be told it was 43 degrees C.... About 110 F... If I could have I would have stayed on the plane and flown back right then. It was nightmarishly hot the first day (and the house didn't have a really working AC unit). We baked. That city does have very cheap coconuts for sale so we stayed hydrated well! We spent an hour riding around on bikes (glad I don't normally have to do that, its annoying) and about 2 hours hunting for "Frango zambaziano"... This type of chicken that the province was known for... NO ONE sold it, sad :(

The next day we had a family night with members though! We thought it would be this little family... Nope! They brought 30+ people who the missionaries were teaching or who had been taught... It was incredible. Best family night I have ever been to. We sang, gave a spiritual thought and played games (Including that 'Black Magic' game that blows everyone's mind). It was great. The beans and rice after were not too bad either. To top it all off they have a pet monkey... Its a racist monkey that doesn't like white people, but it was still fun to try and hold.

All in all it was a great few days there. We got back just in time to sleep for a few hours on Saturday night before taking the mission president, who had gotten back a Saturday morning, back to the airport at 4 am (I swear all his flights are at 4 am....) to go to a city called Chimoio. Then it was off to Stake Conference where they tried showing a broadcast from the Area... It didn't really work, but I got to see a bunch of recent converts and members from T-3 and Mahotas that I really love! Awesome people!

That's it for my week! Thanks Mum for the package and the letters (The true MVP here)

---Elder Howell

PS: Oh, someone got a 107 lb package, they have a friend at FedEx or something.... Anyway, we got the package surprisingly quick, but the rats got to it first... and when we got it to the office we found that one was still enjoying the snacks within... The chaos in the photos shows the fun we had dealing with it.

Transfers, Zone Conferences and the Hospital

This week was just kind of constant chaos until Friday....

It started off with transfers on Monday. For most missionaries that means hoping to stay or leave an area... For us that means the airport every 20 minutes and lots of late late nights and early early mornings. I probably went to the airport 15 or more times this week. It was a lot of driving people around. Say hello to the Mozambique Maputo Mission Uber driver :)

Once the insanity of transfers calmed down we had 3 straight days of Zone Conferences for the Maputo (my zone), Matola and Nampula zones. This means that we were running around getting people, picking up ingredients for the lunches and doing my normal office/area work. Normally this is tiring but this week was worse because about Saturday or Sunday I started feeling sick... Not good right before transfers. By Tuesday I was kind of a zombie, Wednesday or so I gave in and went to the hospital. Oh, not for the cold, but because a worm was growing in my foot. Yeah, gross right? Even more gross when you wake up because you can feel him (Jeff) moving around.
Dont panic, he is already dead. One nice thing about creepy African sicknesses is that they also know how to kill them off pretty dang well. Now I am in pretty good health other than being tired, but thats just mission life.


Quick update on our area:

We are teaching a woman named Flavia and her twin daughters. She is dating a member and they are super cool, going through with all the invites and are actively coming to church. They accepted a baptismal date for the 24th.

Berta, Rita and Nira. They are 3 young women we are teaching who are friends with or live with the family we just baptized. They are also progressing well and have been coming to church for weeks or months. We are just slowly making sure they are totally ready. They had dates for last week but Rita's father passed away. They are re-marked for the 24th also now.

Pedro, our first baptism here in the office is doing great. He got the priesthood a week ago and passed the sacrament this week. He has a lot of friends at church and we are going to visit two of his friends who he brought to church last week!

Thanks for all the love, see you soon!


Elder Howell

 This is my parasite.  You can see where she entered in and then moved to the middle and had babies. .  

 My desk at the office. 

5 To Go

Today marks my 5 transfers left day. Get ready Mozambique, I have lots to do with you before I go!

Today is transfers which means my life is crazy. We have been at the airport late at night and back at 3 or 4 am the last 2 days. I am kind of sick *Thanks Africa* which isn't helping. I totally crashed >not the car thankfully> today on the floor.... 4 hours later I came back to life with no idea where I was. That kind of 'nap'. Hopefully I am better fast. We have people to pick up from the airport 'tonight' (12:25am) and then about 4 other runs to the airport tomorrow to do..... Thankfully we have a secret weapon..... Elder Gumbo!

We got a new person in the office!!!! Whoooooooaahhhh yah. Mind you, I love Elder Skraba. But 3 transfers is a long time (4.5 months) with just one person.... We will be together for probably 5 (7.5 months) So, this new guy is a nice change of pace. He is from Beira, Mozambique, 23 years old and awesome. He was the Stake Secretary in Beira so he knows the church systems already. Sadly he is only here for a few weeks because he will be serving in the Dominican Republic once his visa arrives. For now he will help us here in the office/area but also he will travel to each of the missions branches to map members housing (they do that to help organize boundaries and chapel purchases).

As far as the area this week it was a mess. We only got 1 real lesson. We had multiple lessons marked each day with members/their references but everyone flaked. It was bad. This week we have transfers and 3 zone conference to watch over or be part of so it'll be tricky.
*****Oh, with that we will also have 23 people living in our tiny house for 3-4 days.... With no water.... Pray for us*****

We have 2 really awesome referrals we are working with Flavia and her two daughters who really want to be baptized and a young man named Chul---A friend of Pedro who literally walked up at church and said "Hi, I am Chul. I have been coming a for a few weeks and want to be baptized like my friend Pedro, it's important to me".... and that folks is why this mission has a ton of success....

Thanks for the emails, photos, letters and packages! I love each and everything that comes from the States digital or physical!

Elder Howell

These are MY TREES from Mahotas. They are huge! You can eat the papayas off it now. When I arrived there the plants were about 2 inches tall. 

Okay, it is kind of already super late for me (almost 21:00, time to be home) because today has been kind of crazy (4 hours of sleep then a... supply run to Nelspruit, South Africa) but we had a productive week to justify today's little fun! 

This week was the baptism of Antonio's family! That was definitely the highlight of the week for us. Things were going very well, everyone flew through the interviews... Then we realized that we were short, well clothes for every single one of them. After 2 hours of driving around everywhere in the city we finally rounded up enough clothes for everyone. 

The day came on Saturday and the baptism started awesomely........ Because we got a call saying the baptismal font was filled with dirt and nastiness..... After we ran a few errands we came back to find Elder Lemmon and Elder Godfrey had cleaned it all up and were trying to fill it up as fast as possible. This included the tap on, a garden house running through the window into the font and us doing a bucket chain of sorts from the kitchen sink. 

After about an hour and a half of panicking to fill the font, everyone from the two wards, investigators and missionaries all showed up we got things going along. The baptisms all went well given everything (Mozambican's really don't like cold.... getting dunked in cold water isn't too fun for them), thankfully most of them went smoothly. 

Oh, fun side note,  you can see in the photos that all of Antonio's kids are wearing just shirts.... We had to share the baptismal suits, the kids were small, we had extra shirts laying around.... It worked. This is Africa.

I hope everyone had a great week!  

Until next week!

Elder Howell

 Baptisms!

 Baptisms of Antonio and Esmeralda and some of their children.

 The FedEx mail room, imagine the regular post office ;)

 Snack stop on our supply run to Nelspurit, South Africa with President and Sister Senna.

 A little fun in Nelspruit, South Africa.  

Elder Skraba, Elder Howell, Sister Senna and President Senna.

Another super fast week

This was another super fast week. We are still working with Antonio and Esmeralda to get baptized this week. Everything is all lined up for Saturday, fingers crossed.

Everything this week was normal but with lots of copy making.... we were printing hundreds and hundreds of invites, manuals and other things for the creation of 2 new branches and a district in the province of Nampula. Once we had finished preparations we headed out on Wednesday.

We flew in Wednesday night to beautiful 33° C..... Good start... The next day was spent walking around the city looking for houses with a local guy. We probably saw 20 or so houses ranging from super cheap, beat up, half destroyed to mansions. It was interesting. It was hot. It hit 38° C and I have never drunk so much water....and Coke.... in my life during an 8 hour period. The following day was the same for the first 4 hours then we found two good houses. The following 24 hours was a mess running around between the two houses to get all the paperwork filled out to rent the houses with speratic meals with people.

All in all the work paid off and we have 2 more houses in Nampula. We had lots of things to do but it all worked out, I got to see the place that I wanted to go (and now don't....) and got to try some great, and some awful, foods.

This week will be a lot of visiting with our investigators to make up for last weeks absence.

Have a great week!

Elder Howell

PS: Coke is doing a promotional thing here kinda like McDonald's Monopoly.... but with the underside of caps for Coke, sprite and fanta to win bikes (once you collect the 5 parts) and you can win 2L's and other stuff.... Elder Skraba and I will win a bike!

PPS: Lots of photos as promised

Quick Update

Hello people,

This week was, well, just another week honestly. No big or exciting events.....

Lots of organizing documents, payments, records and contracts. We got some new filing cabinets.... yay. That took way too long to organize all the 2017 stuff, but now it's easy to keep up.

We got a new Sister from Angola this week- Sister Silva. That was a bit of a random thing because it's mid transfer but she finally got her visa. Now we have 7 sisters, odd numbers are bad... but it will all work out.

Pedro is doing well and his sister is still happy as ever to have her brother along for the life journey on the straight and narrow path. We still owe them a "cake for maheu" trade... No idea how to spell that Xangana word, but it's this white fluffy drink. Anyone who knows me knows I love trying all new drinks. This one scares me. It's kind of like semi fermented corn flower, sugar and water..... in a reused soda bottle. If done wrong it's alcoholic. Thankfully the member is a pro.... updates to come.

António and Esmeralda's baptismal date is getting pushed to the 28th because we will be out of town this week. They are actually getting the lessons down a lot better than we thought. Third times the charm for each lesson I guess!

Have a great week! Enjoy the cold for me!!

Elder Howell

Monday Again?

This email will be really fast given that it's 23:20.... We just got home from dropping off 10 elders in 4 different cities.... it was a long drive.... I only got pulled over twice, so that was a tender mercy. Things are always hectic when 'plans' get made last minute. But learning to deal with last minute changes will be a good skill to have I guess.

We got to watch Sunday's General Conference this week which was cool. Elder Koch's talk was especially fun to see and he hasn't really changed at all! The rest of the talks on Sunday were also really great. I also saw Elder Uchtdorf's talk from Saturday which I also enjoyed. Pedro was a trooper and was at all of Conference! Our newly weds were also there which is great. They are marked for baptism on the 21st, hopefully all goes well!

That's all for this week, I really need to sleep!

Tchau!

Elder Howell

PS: oh, we went to Swaziland which was.... unique.

Another Week Another Transfer

This week was a bit of pure insanity as all starts of transfers are for us. The list of things to do just doesn't fit on a page anymore and we are constantly bouncing around. There was a nightmarish mix of transfers and 3 zone conferences this last week which made our lives overly hectic. But it all worked out in the end (even though the to do list is still 2 pages long and growing). I am alive, my comp is alive and I had an ice cold Fanta today so everything is okay.

My time in the office has probably been the fastest 3 months of my life. The time is flying by (sleep deprivation, tons of work, stress and still lessons to mark and teach seem to make the time disappear). This week a lot of that sleeplessness and stressing paid off with the baptism of Pedro :)  His sister has been a member for 7 years going strong by herself, but now part of her family is there with her. She was SO excited and happy at the baptism. Many many tears of joy for her.

Hopefully here in a few weeks that couple that got married will be getting baptized with their kids. The parents are pretty much ready but they want their older kids to learn everything and get baptized at the same time so we pushed things back a month but it should all work out great!

Thats all for now. Thanks for all the love, emails and letters.... I just got a letter and package from July :0 Yay African mail!

Tchau!

Elder Howell

Another one down

Today we had transfers.... That means that this last week was virtually totally devoted to getting all the flights and other travel arrangements made for everyone to get to their new areas and companions. We had a bit of an insane night Sunday running back and forth between cities and the airport to get all the missionaries who were leaving to the mission presidents house. We were supposed to have a dinner at 16:00 but one Elders flight kept getting delayed so finally at 01:00 he arrived.... We drove him to the mission home, took the "tchau photo" for all the leaving people, dropped some people at home then went to bed..... for 3 hours before waking up to take that same group to the airport to all go home. Thankfully all of those flights went well and we had no problems. With the messed up "night of sleep" I took nice 2 hour unconsciousness on the floor at the office then got back to stuff.

As far as our area:

Pedro will be getting baptized this weekend! He is doing super well and we are excited for him! His sister is helping a ton given his reading problems.

Antonio/Ezmarelda + family will be waiting just a bit longer. We had trouble getting enough time to visit them enough last week to get them prepared but hopefully next week our schedule and their work schedules will work out better.

All for now! Until next week,


---Elder Howell

Another Week Complete

Well.... kind of like last week it has been another week here. We had a rough start to our week with a missionary going home for family things but the rest of the week was very calm.

I had a mountain of paper work to get done this week... and about 8 months of backlogged print outs, contracts, payments, bank documents and so forth to file away..... As you can assume it was extremely fun and entertaining!
I get asked a lot:

1. Do you even do missionary work?
2. What is your normal day like?
3. What's going on with your investigators-if you have any


Here are the answers:

1. We try to split working in our area (finding, teaching, reactivating) after 17:00 or 18:00 each day. That gives us 4-5 hours in the office to handle the logistics of the mission and 3-4 hours to handle our area. So yes, we do "missionary work". But we also do the "behind the scenes" stuff so that the other 96 missionaries get to their areas, have a house, water, gas, energy, items and supplies to work without worrying about all of that.

2. HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA normal day. That's funny. We never have 2 of the same day. I work mostly with finances: finding/vacating houses, repairs, dealing with house owners, doing anything with money for missionaries or the Mission President and I do all the medical, running a "missionary taxi service" of moving everyone around to where they need to be. My companion does the logistics (flights, schedules, record keeping of baptisms, numbers and so on)

3. Our main focus is on those who progress really well because we have about half (or less) time in the area than the normal Elders. Our main focus is Antonio and Ezmarelda (the couple who just got married) and a jovem (young man) named Pedro. We are working to get the couple, their three kids and Pedro ready for baptism on the 30th of September. We plan on using the mission offices pool. The only issue is making sure they are solid before we baptize them. They all have been coming to church for months but we want to really make sure they are ready. I will give updates on them each week.

Hopefully that answers the general questions. I enjoy your emails and such each week!

Love you all,


Elder Howell

Weekly Email

Well, my P-Day is kinda over, so this email will have to be really quick today (an email was sent to my Mum, the most important weekly email sent).

This week the real highlight was the wedding of Antonio and Esmeralda. If you flip through the photos they both kind of looked like they hate their lives during the wedding.... It was super hot, crowded but the choir was super awesome. Thankfully they both really cheered up once we got to the house party. The music once again was super African, loud, and upbeat. The food was pretty typical but the atmosphere was awesome. The strangest part of the wedding was the cake though.... Once the newlyweds fed each other they then went around feeding every single person... Well over 100 people.... It was strange and the fork contamination was insane, but when you are there you just kinda have to eat the cake.

Now that they are married things will keep moving along well for them. They are marked for bapitism (and 3 of their kids of age) for here in 2 weeks. We are trying really hard to get out and work with our people these weeks. We are hoping that the work pays off for them and a few other people in the coming weeks!

Today for P-Day we got to do something awesome.... SAFARI!!!!!!!!!!!! I got to be one of the drivers which was super fun. We had a guide leading us all around this massive reserve to find giraffes, elephants (one kinda almost ran over my car, that would have ruined all the fun), hippos, monkeys and a bunch of other animals whose names I didn't know in English let alone Portuguese. It was a blast! Like 11 hours of driving to, around and back but super super worth it! All the photos are in the Drive!

Love all of you people,

Elder Howell