Happy new year!! This year started off great…with an invitation to go to the park with one of our neighbor families!! We have lived here for about 3 months now and have really only gotten to know the kids in this neighborhood. One boy, Lucas, is over quite often and we will have the occasional “Hi, how are you?” conversation with his parents. Yesterday, Lucas came over to swim and his dad, Jiro, came in and chatted for a little while(as much as our portuguese will allow). As he was leaving, he invited us to go to the park with the 3 of them for soccer and snacks. Once we figured out what he was saying, we said sure! (shortly after he left, we went back over the conversation to make sure we had understood and were really invited to go!)

Off to the park we went!! It was a great time. Lucas, Jiro, and the boys played soccer while Miriam and I set up the picnic. We were there for about 2 hours getting to know each other. We even talked about doing it more often when they return from vacation next week! They also said their son Lucas can spend the night at our house sometime! That is huge considering 2 months ago none of the kids parents would even let them come in our house to play! We are so grateful to finally have opportunity for some relationship building and potential ministry! It’s been way too long!

What’s in store for the rest of 2010? Of course, we don’t know. Lord willing we will finish language school, learn where God wants us to serve, where He wants us to live, continue to build relationships with our neighbors and see fruit, watch our kids grow in the Lord, and grow our relationships with the Lord. We just want to continue to seek the Lord’s will for our lives and make Him the Lord of our lives daily! For some reason, society tends to focus on the new year bringing new opportunities and a fresh start-new year’s resolutions. But, God’s Word says we have that each day!!

“Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” -Lamentations 3:22-23

Praise the Lord for that, right? Instead of new years resolutions, I am going to seek to make Christ the Lord of my life each day and look at each day as a new start. I mess up way too much to only start over once a year!! Praise the Lord for Lamentations 3:22-23.

Happy new year!!

We have officially celebrated our first Christmas in Brazil. I think it was a success. It was certainly different. This was our first Christmas ever without our families. We most certainly missed them! Christmas eve was particularly hard for me, but, we were praising the Lord for technology as we talked with everyone on Skype-I don’t know what I’d do without it! It was also different because the temperature was around 90 degrees-that is certainly new! It made it very difficult to get into the “christmas spirit”. To be honest, I was a little bit of a grump. The constant sweating and lack of relief (we don’t have air conditioning) was really getting to me. I’m not supposed to be this hot at Christmas unless I’m sitting by a fireplace drinking hot cider!!! Then I woke up on Christmas morning and God reminded me, “Excuse Me Teresa, but why are you so concerned with feeling the ‘christmas spirit’ and not concerned with making sure the birth of my Son is being celebrated in your house??”. It hit me like a ton of bricks. While its a bummer, its ok that our families are far away, its ok that we’re hot-that doesn’t change why we celebrate this holiday!! It was such an attitude check for me and the day totally changed. We had a great time reading the candy cane story by Max Lucado to the boys and having little talks about what Christmas is. It turned out to be a great day. We tried to celebrate like we did at home-lasagna for dinner, cinnamon rolls and hot cider for breakfast (yes, hot cider in 90 degree weather!!), the sweet treats our mom’s make every year. The boys didn’t skip a beat, they had a great day. We are soooo thankful that our container was released from customs to the boys could have their christmas gifts. Their grandmas and grandpas were so generous, the boys were so excited!!! Santa surprised us with a pool for our patio so we can have some relief from the heat (there aren’t public pools here), it has been a great blessing the last couple of days!!!

Yesterday we had our first brazilian visitors for the weekend. We have made some friends with some of the teens (age 14-25) in Gravatai, a city nearby where some missionary friends of our serve. Yesterday, 3 of them took the bus and came to our house for the day! It was so fun! We hung out and spoke lots of portuguese since they don’t speak english. It was really nice to entertain again, and we were right in our comfort zone with college age people(except for the no english part)!!! It made me get an itch to get language school done and get on with ministry!!! Next fall can’t get here soon enough!!

Até mais…

As I write this, I’m eating a yummy bowl of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. This is the super healthy dinner that was preceded by a lunch of peanut butter sandwiches and peanut butter spread on cookies. Yes, it is as unhealthy as you imagine, but it is also better than you could imagine. Why, you ask? Its just mac and cheese and peanut butter! But for us, it is a taste of familiarity. Skippy and Kraft never tasted so good!!! As you have probably gathered, we finally got to access our container contents today. It has been a long and tedious process, but better than its been for some!! We did not bring everything back to our language school home because this house is already furnished, so some stuff is in storage. But, we thought since we are constanly surrounded with so many things that are foreign to us, it would be a relief to come home at the end of the day to a place that feels familiar. We ended up bringing a little more than we thought we would, but the Kombi proved its worth!! It functioned like a truck as we packed stuff into it. All in all, it only took 4 trips! Now we are unpacking and trying to find a home for everything. It may seem crazy to go through all this to live here for another 10 months, but we think it will be worth it!!

Today marked the end of 9 weeks of language school. We are now on summer break, or in portuguese, férias. We will not have any school for 7 weeks. That has its pluses(no studying) and its minuses (no formal learning). We are looking forward to having some time off to explore our city and surrounding areas. We have definitely learned a ton in 9 weeks with even more yet to learn!! The last 2 days, we have been reading a short story about these silly, slow moving turtles. We read the story at home, then today we discussed it and had to answer some questions to check comprehension. We were able to comprehend quite a bit of it, but there were still alot of words and verb tenses we didn’t know. I asked our teacher, Pri, where she got the story…it is from a 3rd grade reading textbook!!! Slightly humbling, yet at least it wasn’t a kindergarten textbook!!!

Bom fim de semana!!!

I just ventured out, by myself, to a grocery store about 15 minutes away. It was a great 15 minutes. I decided to put on a little Chris Tomlin “Arriving”. As I was singing along with my buddy Chris, it was as though God said to me, “this is what you have been missing”. In all the hustle and bustle of new city life, new language, new culture, new people(pretty much new everything), taking care of the kids, school, house, etc., I had forgotten about the way God uses music in my life. I have been reading His Word, but something has been missing-until my ride to the grocery store. As I cranked “God of this city” and sang at the top of my lungs, tears flowed down my cheeks. I ended up sitting in the Kombi in the parking garage because I didn’t want the music to end! How could I forget the connection I get with God when I worship Him in music??!?

Its amazing how when we lose just one portion of the means God has given us to grow in our relationship with Him, we can completely lose the ability to function in a God glorifying manner. The last couple of weeks have been filled with some difficulties that have, at times, pushed me over the edge. The shouldn’t have pushed me over the edge, but it was as if I had no ability to think rationally. I know now it was because of a lack of worship in my life. I think God uses different modes of worship to speak differently to each of us. For some, it is the study of His Word, for some it is sermons, for some it is a good book. For me, it is music. Having the opportunity to be alone with God, not cleaning, not getting a snack, not studying-just me, some music, and God.

God spoke to me today. It wasn’t through the specific words of Chris Tomlin, but through my act of worshipping Him through “Arriving”. I am so thankful for that 15 minute drive to Bourbon Shopping Country where the Creator of the Universe, Who was with me in Iowa, reminded me that He is right here with me when I feel so far away from everything familiar. I guess I’ll have to ride around by myself in the Kombi more often…

We took the Kombi in last week to get a few things done to it. Tinted windows, security system, and we installed a sound system that belongs to some friends of ours who are going on furlough Wednesday for a year. Lucas said it only took him 13 years and moving to Brazil to get his dream car. I must say, it is pretty cool. Anyway, on Friday he left language school to take the bus to the city (Gravatai) where our car was, so, I had to take the bus home with Nathaniel and Jackson without Lucas. I was a little nervous, but we’ve done it enough times now that I knew what bus to take and everything. We’re at the bus stop, and up rolls 721, the bus we had taken that very morning and many days prior. We get on, the kids slide under the turnstile (they are free) and we get our spot to stand. All goes well. Until…the bus does not turn on the street by our house. I’m thinking, you have got to be kidding me!!! Again?!?!?! With the little portuguese I know, I tried to ask the lady next to us if this was bus 721. It was. Then I tried to ask her if it went on a different route. I don’t know the words for that so I think I said, “Bus go different street?”. She again said yes. Then she started moving her hand in a circle like it was going to circle around to the street. I asked her, “Men work this street?” , trying to find out if there was road work. I don’t think that one translated right. (We took the road not travelled last night. It had a whole new blacktop on it.)
Anyway, I held my breath and waited to see something familiar. I did not. Next thing I know, the bus is getting empty, just like last time. Nathaniel looks at me and says “Mom, where are we?”, I knew then I had to try and talk to the cashier. So, here we go…
“Forgive me, I speak a little portuguese. Is this bus 721?”
“Sim”
“Bus go different street?”
“Sim”
“My house, I don’t know”
He just smiled and asked me where I live. I know that phrase!!
“I live on 03 de Outubro (our street name). Bus not go near my house today.”
Again, he smiled. I tried to tell him the name of the street the bus always goes on, but I couldn’t remember the name. So then I just started naming street names. I don’t remember how the “conversation” got there, but we decided the bus driver would take me to a street near my house that has a creek, we both knew that street. We chatted a little longer about where I was from, why I’m here, the difficulty learning portuguese. When I say chatted, I mean choppy sentences related to those topics followed by, “Understand?” in portuguese. He was so, so nice. I am so thankful that God put such nice people on the buses He knew we’d get lost on!! So, we are driving along and I see our neighborhood!!! I think I may have started jumping like a cheerleader, I’m not totally sure. I told him my house was right over there, the bus stopped at the stop where we had gotten on that morning, I thanked him a bunch of times, and we walked home, never to ride the bus without Lucas again.

THE END

Today we complete our 7th week of language school. I can’t believe its been 7 weeks already! Each week we are able to converse a little more, which is great. However, there are time we’ll want to say something that we don’t know how to say, and our teacher will tell us how to say it. Then she will say, “that’s in lesson 24” or something like that. I look at my book and we are in lesson 4!!!! Those times remind us that there is sooooo much we still have to learn. 2 more weeks and we get 7 weeks off for summer break!!! We are really looking forward to those 7 weeks!

We had to ride the bus yesterday. :-( We are getting the windows tinted on the Kombi so it is in the shop for a couple of days (I know what you’re thinking-its gonna be super sweet!). It was not the best bus experience we’ve had, nor was it the worst :-) We made it home but not without some harassment for from some young boys for being “americanos”. (I want to clarify, it is not the norm to be harassed like that) We get little reminders now and then though that we are the “enstrangeiros” (foreigners) here. It can be discouraging at times, but there are lessons to be learned in everything–more compassion towards “estrangeiros” in the U.S., extra graciousness to those who welcome us, more love towards those who don’t…we are, after all, here to tell people about Christ!!! Aren’t we all estrangeiros in this world anyway??

We are really praying that our container is released from customs soon. We are so thankful for the furnished house we moved into, but it will be nice to have some of our own things around. The boys are getting bored with the few toys we brought on the plane and have started getting more creative which usually means more trouble :-) Check out Lucas’s facebook or Twitter to see a video of yesterday’s all day long toy. All of our Christmas decor is in the container, plus it’s summer here, so it is NOT beginning to feel a lot or even a little like Christmas! So, by the advice of some friends, we are going to do some paper decorations this weekend! Lucas is thrilled, seriously thrilled.

We met the Gecko last night. I suppose we should name him or something. Anyway, Nathaniel went upstairs to go to be and yelled, “The Gecko!! I see the gecko!!” So of course, we all ran upstairs. It darted behind Nathaniel’s bed so he pulled it out and it started running towards the stairs, where I was standing. Yes, I screamed about a little, tiny, harmless gecko. Brave Lucas got a piece of wood and tried to get the gecko to climb on it. Instead, it got on his hand!! Again, I screamed, just a little. It somehow got on the wall and climbed up to the ceiling where it camped out for a while. That was an exciting 5 minutes, let me tell you. Needless to say, Nathaniel slept downstairs with his brothers. :-)

Until next time…

It’s been a while since I’ve written. I think I need to write about less stuff more often. Anyways, here’s what we’ve been doing the last couple of weeks!

We’ve almost completed 5 weeks of language school! Next week will be the completion of our first term!! That seems so crazy! Last weekend we had our first take home tests. They went great! We will have take home tests every weekend from this point on. Our study time is starting to increase, as we expected it to. Our need to have Julia here is increasing as well, and will continue to as the weeks go on.
There have been a few “encouraging language moments” for me this week. We are getting to know the ladies that work at the bakery near our house pretty well, one of them is named Ana Paula. Anyway, the other day she told me, in portuguese, that my portuguese was getting better! It was a small thing because “better” could mean lots of things, but she said better!!! It was great to hear of some progress in my language learning!
We have been venturing out quite a bit. We visited a beautiful park on the other side of the city this week. Its called Parque de Moinhos do Vento. It is located in a beautiful neighborhood, very lush for being downtown. Tons of people were walking and running and there were kids everywhere. The kids played for about an hour on a zip line they had at the playground. We loved it and plan to visit it again soon.
We ventured to an outdoor market a couple of weeks ago. Its called Brique do Rendençao. There were a bunch of vendors setup selling handmade stuff-shoes, jewelry, household stuff, artwork. I got a bracelet and a ring for the equivalent of 5 USD. Gotta love it!!
We’ve been out to several restaurants, all good and most of them all you can eat!! All you can eat is so common down here. We have been to all you can eat fresh sushi (amazing), all you can eat churrasco(rotisseried meat, also amazing), all you can eat pasta (oh man) and a couple of buffets. There is also call you can eat pizza, all you can eat filet mignon cooked different ways, all you can eat pasteis (like an empanada only better), all you can eat just about anything!! The thing about all you can eat here is that you don’t usually go up to a buffet, you sit and they bring the buffet to you one item at a time!!! They most certainly know how to do restaurants down here!! If you want to see some pictures of some of the food we have eaten, follow the link to check out Lucas’s facebook page or twitter. He’s been picture journaling our food journey!
In the midst of all the eating and studying, we’ve been visiting the area ABWE churches and getting to know all the missionaries we’ll be working with down here. We look forward to getting to know them better!
That’s all for now, hopefully I’ll start writing more often. Later!

That’s right, we got lost today and we don’t even have a car yet!

We took the bus to school today. Its not very far and we had a list of the different bus numbers we could take to get to the 2 different stops that are near our school. We had to be at school by 2:30. Just to be safe, we left to go to school at 1:15. It went so smoothly! We stuck our hand out, the bus picked us up, and it let us off just where we thought it would. Even with walking from home to the stop and from the other stop to the school with a potty break along the way, we got to school by 2 pm. So, you’d think that the ride home would go just as smoothly, wouldn’t you?

Not so much.

We left school at 4:30 to walk down to the stop. We stopped for a quick snack (which now I think was a prompting from the Lord) and proceeded to the bus stop. There were several bus #’s we could choose from that supposedly drop off at the stop we got on this morning, so we got on #727. So far so good! The bus started down the road, kept going, kept going, right on past our neighborhood. Then it kept going, kept going, and kept going. Soon it started to turn into some neighborhoods like we were in some kind of maze. Each time it stopped, more people got off until we were the only ones on the bus! Jackson was thrilled, “We have the whole bus to ourselves!”. Well, there was a reason for that. At the next stop, the bus turned off and the money taking dude said something to the effect “this is the end of the road”, acutally it probably wasn’t that because it was all in portuguese and I really have no idea what he said. Don’t forget, WE DON’T SPEAK PORTUGUESE!! Neither the cashier nor the driver spoke english, so we played a mean game of charades complete with Lucas, several times, doing the international symbol for “missed our stop”-which is “pare” which means stop combined with him quickly moving his hand like a zooming car while making the sound of a zooming car. Apparently it is not an international symbol, because they had not idea what we were saying!! Then, Lucas tried pulling out some words we had spoken in class-we haven’t been taught what they mean yet, so he was just going off of what he thought they sounded like. He tried to say “we forgot our stop” by saying “foguete pare” which sounds like “fogechey” which sounds like forget. After we got home, we found out “foguete” means fireworks!! So, he said “fireworks stop!” Somehow we communicated that we missed our stop and did not know what to do. I’m guessing they figured it out merely by the looks on our faces which were most likely priceless.

Apparently the place we stopped was a hub for the buses where they check in between routes, so the bus driver took us to a man in an office. We played some more charades, threw out the few portuguese words we know, and then said the key thing: Center Lar, which is a shopping center near our house. It all made sense to them after that. The poor, lost Americanos were not even close to their home!!! At this point they talked amongst themselves and then told us, I think, that they would find a bus to take us to the Center Lar. Just a reminder…WE DON’T SPEAK PORTUGUESE!!!

We then sat at this hub place for about 1/2 hour when the nice man pointed to a bus, said a bunch of words mixed in with “Center Lar”. So, we got on the bus, the ticket dude watched us to make sure we knew what we were doing, gave us a thumbs up when it was time for us to get off, and we made it home!!!

God is so good, isn’t he? Even with a GIGANTIC language barrier, God provided a way for us to communicate and got us home. We were blown away by the kindness and helpfulness of the brazilians along the way! They really went out of their way to help us. We got home (2 hours later), looked at a map of where we were, and realized we would never have found our way home without the help of these men(we were quite a ways away). We are so thankful that God was in control of the situation even when we had no idea where we were, how to communicate, or how we were going to get home! He just wanted us to have a little adventure on the bus before we have a ton of them in our car!!! I’ll just have to remember this story and how God got us home when we start exploring and we are lost in our van in the middle of the city…

Well, we finished our first week of language school. I think we are going to enjoy it! Our teachers are great, patient and super nice. So far, we haven’t had any homework. In fact, when we asked if we should go home and practice our words and sounds, our teacher Monica said very emphatically, “NO!!”. It is very important that we learn these sounds correctly, the wrong sound can totally change the meaning of the word. There are several sounds that are not typical in the english language, so it gets a little frustrating at times when our teachers say a sound, we repeat it, then they repeat it again because we didn’t get it right, then we repeat it, but its still not right, but we can’t tell it wasn’t right….AAHHHH!!! But, despite the frustrations, we are looking forward to really getting into school. In fact, I think I can even say that we are looking foward to having some homework!! (I say that now, but I’m sure it will change later.)

We are DYING to communicate better with our neighbors. You can tell they are used to Americans living in this house, they are really patient with our lack of portuguese! On Thursday night, Julia and I were sitting out front watching the kids play, and several of the neighbor kids came over to talk to us. There names were Julia, Bianca, Bruno, and Jon Victor (there were a couple more, but I can’t remember their names). We sat out there for about 1/2 hour talking bad portuguese and a little english getting to know each other. I think we successfully communicated why we are here, that we are not just visiting, and that we are studying portuguese (all with the help of Bruno who speaks pretty good english). After I went back in the house, Julia sat outside with them for another hour and a half! They are very intrigued by our family and they love our kids, so there is a great potential for ministry, starting now! I also met several moms this week, which was great. There is Luciana-her son is Lucas, our boys play their Nintendo DS’s together. 2 doors down is Miriam and Jiro-their son is also Lucas who is 8, they were friends with the missionaries who lived here before us have been awaiting our arrival. I met Sandra-she also has a son Lucas, he is 4. I am looking forward to getting to know these ladies better as our kids interact!

Today, Lucas is running a 5k somewhere around here, I’m not even sure where he is! As far as the rest of our day, we’re hanging out here-the no car thing again. :-) Lord willing we will get a car this week and next weekend we can start exploring this beautiful city!