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!!

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