We are in the countdown to the end of language school!!  We have 5 weeks to go, and boy are we counting down!!  I was thinking yesterday about the amount of hours we spend in language study and I realized it is the same amount of hours as a full time college student.  Then I thought about how ready I am to be at home with my boys again!

Nathaniel and Jackson started 4th and 2nd grade yesterday. They are studying with one of our colleagues, Carol (they studied with her last year) for about 5 weeks until I graduate. Then…I become a homeschooling mom.  Those are not words I ever really thought I’d hear myself say (or see myself type), but I am really looking forward to the challenge.  Owen started kindergarten with Julia yesterday.  This morning he told me that he can pour his own milk on his cereal now, because he’s older. He’s pretty excited about this growing up thing.  Me, not so much :-)

After viewing more houses online than I can count, and visiting over 25, we finally found a house to rent in Gravataí (the suburb where we plan to work)!!  It was definitely a challenge to find something within our price range that wasn’t falling apart or way too small for our family.  But, as He always does, God provided!! I will post some pictures once we get moved and settled. We have quite a bit of paperwork to do, plus we have to outfit the kitchen ourselves (countertops, cupboards, appliances-which is totally normal down here), get our stuff out of storage, clean this house, etc.  We have quite a bit to get done(with school on top of it all)so we are hoping to move sometime next month, preferably after we graduate.

We have a group from Crossway Community Church in Altoona, Iowa here right now. They are doing a missions trip to the church in the Rincão(the name of the neighborhood) in Gravataí where we plan to be working.  They have been a great encouragement to us and definitely to Pastor Geferson and his wife Márcia. I will try and post some pictures next week after they leave…really, I will :-)

So, for now…Até mais!!! (Until later!)

There are soooo many things that have happened since I last wrote on this space. Lucas’s parents came to visit…AWESOME, we went to Florianopolis, aka the Hawaii of South America…AWESOME, Julia got her gall bladder out, and we have continued to rob our minds of any space left in them by filling them with more and more and more portuguese…oh so awesome. :-)

No, really though, we seemed to hit a wall, which we were told we would, around the 6 month mark of being here.  I have caught myself thinking now and then, “Ok, this missions trip has been a blast. It is time to go home yet?”  There have been points along this 6 month journey when it has felt like we are on the missions trip that never ends, and its not always a fun missions trip!  But, God is still good in the midst of our doubt. He always reminds us that He brought us here. He tends to remind us on the weekends when we are with our small group or at church in the Rincão.  We have a purpose in being here, we just need to learn the language to do it!!

The highlight of the last couple of weeks was this past weekend. Our small group wanted to meet at our house. Seeing as how most of them don’t have cars, the Kombi served as a bus!  I made homemade american style pizza and Lucas shared the devotional(which went great!).  It was definitely a great reminder that we aren’t just here to be students again, but we are here to serve the brazilians! It was an awesome night.

Julia had her gall bladder out last week. We had a bit of a scare building up to it, though.  She was very sick and in a lot of pain and we didn’t know why!  After a 9 hour day at the hospital, it was confirmed she had 30 or more gall stones.  So, a week and a half later, out the gall bladder came!  Everything went super smooth and she is recovering great!

The same day as Julia’s surgery, Nathaniel and Jackson’s teacher, Carol, had surgery in her esophagus.  Her surgery also went great and she is recovering well.  As a result, last week I got a taste of what it will be like to homeschool the boys (although Carol had the lesson plans laid out for me).  It was a little crazy with my own schoolwork and classes in the midst of it, but, all in all, I really enjoyed it!  I’m not sure the boys did though…:-)  What really matters is that we survived and the boys resume class at school with Carol today!

It was such a blessing to have Lucas’s parents visit a few weeks ago!  We had a great time just hanging out and touring things around here. It was hard to see them go.  But, another blessing is right around the corner, my mom comes next week!  We are really looking forward to having grandma here!

There is a quick recap of the happenings around here in the last month.  I know I’ve said this before, but I’m going to try harder to write on this thing, Christi, I promise!!!

We have gone back to school after a 7 week summer break. At the beginning of the break, I was like, “7 weeks! I don’t want to miss school for 7 weeks!”. The week before we returned to school I was like, “7 weeks!! I don’t want to go back to school after 7 weeks!!”. It was so nice to have a break from studying and just be a mom and wife. We had a great break. We traveled the area a little, visited the beach a few times, even had a group come down from one of our supporting churches. It was really great to have visitors.

Well, we have completed 2 weeks since we returned. I think we’re adjusting well to jumping back in. Yesterday, I gave my first devotional in portuguese for class. It is certainly a different experience giving a devotional in a language that I speak like a preschooler. Really what it consisted of was thinking in english in words I could translate into portuguese and writing them on paper. It was more of a 3 minute testimony about a passage that is dear to my heart than it was a devotional. I actually thought it was way too fluffy and it seriously annoyed me, but it was as far as my current portuguese would take me! Then the actual presentation itself was simply reading the written out devotional in portuguese. I’m not sure how I did, but it was kinda cool to talk about the Lord in a different language! Lucas gives his this coming Friday…

We are settling into a church, which is great. It is “Comunidade Crista” in the Rincão bairro. (A bairro is like a village or neighborhood in cities. Cities here are all broken up into bairros.) We love it. We love the people. We love the pastor and family. The first time we visited in November we really felt like it was where we belonged. I’m sure I’ll share more about it in blogs to come.

If you would like to see a video of highlights of Crossway Community Church’s visit here, you can go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX3_G6loaZA .

The last three months have been filled with so many adventures. We’ve had many bus adventures. We’ve had many mini-bus, I mean, Kombi adventures. (BTW, I think I could be a bus driver when we come home on furlough in a few years…) We’ve had many, many language barrier adventures. Even going to the grocery store has been an adventure!

We’ve experienced some serious bugs and lizards. The really uneasy part about that statement is…we ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

We became students…again.

We experienced christmas in shorts and new years at the beach.

We’ve experienced the realities of being more than a quick plane ride away from those we love…but I won’t get into that.

We’ve watched our children make friends without the ability to communicate with words.

We’ve watched God use our children to build bridges between us and our neighbors in a way that we couldn’t.

We’ve worshipped with Brazilians in their churches and in their language. Its beautiful.

There have been days when we have asked ourselves, “What are we doing here?!?!?!”. God continually reminds us the He brought us here. He has a reason for us being here. We just need to patiently wait and let Him reveal everything. He will do it in His time. He’s already done so much!!

So, when our break from language school is over, we will return to being students. We will continue to study this new language. We will wait and listen to God and let Him lead us. We will wait and let Him do His work and try not to get in the way.

We will continue to have more adventures, of that I am certain…

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!!

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…

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!!!

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 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…

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!