Whoop!

Carol is here!!! I've been waiting a month for this girl to get here and God finally sent her my way :) We picked her up from Sao Paulo at 4 am this morning. Oh it was an adventure! haha The hotel we stayed at looked like it belonged in an airplane. You had to back your way into the bathroom, shower was see through, and the shower door opened up right beside the double bed which had a single bed directly over it. Kinda like a bunk bed. It was great and we laughed and laughed! Ali, Manu, and I picked Carol up from the sketch bus station wearing party hats. Manu protected us, no worries. It has been a packed day and now we are off to play pool. I have a roomie tonight, be excited!!

View from my apartment window! 4th Floor!

Mark & Ali- the couple I work under!

My place is right by a hospital so I get to hear sirens all the time haha Also even though I am a dog lover there are a couple of dogs I would like to ship off to the other end of the earth! The front desk staff is so sweet! Btw my roomie gets here late tomorrow night!! Whoop!

The Lar

I'm so so excited to have the opportunity to serve at the orphanage, The Lar, that is about 20 minutes outside of Itu! We went to visit to talk about getting some people from church involved and while we were there I had so much fun. The kids didn't care if I wasn't able to speak Portuguese and they weren't looking to have an in depth conversation, they just wanted someone to love on them, play with their hair or swing them around. That I can do :) After we left I had a strong desire to get more involved than just every few weeks or going with a group to put on a program. I wanted to really spend some quality time there. So Mark and I talked and then set up a meeting with the new director to see how I could be more involved. Earlier in the week before meeting up with the director, a sweet girl, Deborah, came to Sunday school. She spoke English pretty well and I soon found out that she was from The Lar! Her parents are house parents and so she lives at the orphanage pretty much 24/7. We became great friends and she has decided to be involved with the youth group on a regular basis, praise the Lord! Deborah came in this past weekend and stayed with me so she wouldn't miss out on all the youth activities. Fun bonding time!! She has to ride the bus anytime she wants to come to Itu and the route stops running right about the time youth activities start up. It was such a blessing she stayed with me because she had no problem with me picking her brain about how I could serve the orphanage the best and what the kids truly needed. So I came up with the plan to work directly with the houses, rotating every week I go. This way I have a smaller amount of kids I can focus on, help out the house parents with their daily routine or anything to help catch them up and I go straight to them for anything they need me to do. The worry was, even though I want to go to serve it would be difficult to provide relief being that no one would want to give me chores to do. Mark and I talked with the director, he was very excited and said he would meet with house parents and run it by them and let them know I was there not only to play with the kids but help them out. I love it! This Thursday I will be headed to The Lar and Deborah will be showing me around and helping me become more familiar with how things work. Hopefully the director will give me the go ahead :) He just filled the position last week so things are a little crazy around there! I will be riding the bus there and then a guy from the church, who works in that city during the day, will be bringing me back. I'm sure the bus will be an adventure, Mark is going to make sure I can handle it though. We already went over where it stops and such so I'm not too worried :) Keep me in your prayers that it will all come together and to give the new director the strength to get things on track and running smoothly. I know this transition is very stressful for him!

Clarify

Okay guys, especially a great uncle of mine who loves to pinch me, if you look at the map I don't live by the beach. The beach pictures are from a weekend I went with the Yuppies (young professionals group) to the beach. So Uncle John you get an extra pinch from me next time you see me. I heard about your comment ;) I do love you!

Beach Pics

Beach group, most of them, plus fanny pack pic!




The view from outside my window

Questions from Stephanie...

My roomies from last semester each chose a day to write me every week. I know, they are pretty fantastic! One email I got this week had a list of questions and I thought they would be great to blog about.
1) how are you? Well Im doing great! No health problems except a slight sunburn at the beach, mom and dad dont kill me. I actually used the 70 sunscreen or whatever ridiculous strength, and the Brazilians thought I was so cool. They had never really seen sunscreen you can spray on. I re-applied all throughout the day just as you have taught me. But... being that I did, I ran out the second day. I was able to cover half my body and borrowed some the rest of the day and made sure to stay under the shade. Unfortunately it didn't quite do the trick and I got burned. Ouch. Just wanted to make it known to everyone I did indeed try so no nonsense when you see my beach pictures. okay good :)
2) are you having fun? I am having a great time. At the beach this weekend it fully hit that I am in Brazil! I am fulfilling the dream that I have had since high school. I am incredibly blessed to have this opportunity! wow
3)who is your best brazilian friend, and why? My best friend is Pedro. He is a close friend of Mark and Ali's and an engineer. It is interesting to hear how his mind works. His way of working things out is very different than mine. Grandpa Jim I am better understanding you ;) P, as we call him which sounds like pay, will be interning for this month at the church. Exciting. Some projects he will be tackling are putting together a website, making a video for our ministry fair and making a CD of songs to pass along to other beginning churches.
4) would i like them? Steph you would love him, very real and intelligent. haha Also sarcasm is not known in Brazil at all, but Ali has been introducing it to him for the past year so he is pretty much the only Brazilian you can be sarcastic around. He can dish it out too. haha very much you!
5) what is your favorite brazilian food? One of my favorites is Asai, which I don't know if I spelled that correctly, but it is a slush time drink. You can add basically anything you want to it, like powdered milk, any fruit, peanut butter type stuff (peanut butter is not common here) or chocolate. Tons of things. Another thing that makes it my favorite is that it is purple!
6) how cool am i? ummm uber cool. You make me laugh so so much and are the only person I know that takes 30 min showers.
7) what do you do in your free brazilian time? I usually try to spend sometime by myself. It is probably the thing I miss the most. Every day I am around someone at all times which is good but everyone needs a little time to themselves. Other than that I try to catch up on my budget, emails or talking on skype!
8) what does your typical day look like? Because I love what I am doing it is kinda hard to separate free time from working. I get up and Mark makes me eggs. For you those that know me, you know I hate eggs so huge deal that I eat his. Every day is different. We worked on the calendar today. I can give you a brief summary...
Sunday- church, do Sunday school, sports in afternoon with youth and go to Sao Paulo for a college bible study.
Monday- day off! weekends are crazyyy, last weekend we had 5 people staying at the house not counting the people who just hang out.
Tuesdays- drug rehab place, and bible study in a dentist office. also Tutor Tuesday for the youth!
Wednesday- business day, and play pool with some people from the english school
Thursday- Youth day/ devo at night
Friday- team meeting, planning for upcoming week, orphanage starting up in March
Saturday- always different! weekend is whatever our guest want to do or help out with

9) what is your favorite thing about brazil? My favorite thing would be the friendliness of the people.
10) name three things that you have learned while in brazil. They would be... how important it is to hand things over to God, you can love on people without communicating and everyone here loves Obama
11) name every single way that i can be praying for you. Okay first off to have an open heart and mind for how God wants me to serve him, being positive even when things get tough, leadership in our youth, and an ear for the language. Just to name a few ;)
12) do you miss me like i miss you? Of course! I love my updates, silly ones or not
13) free-write for 5 sentences. I had no idea how looongggg this blog would be. If you read the whole thing than way to be champ! It has been raining like crazy all day, love the occasional rainy day. My new favorite music right now is Coldplay. Lately I've been obsessed with finding out as much as I can about the Holy Spirit and am going to start reading The Holy Spirit by Billy Graham. Last but not least, I love you all!