Part II

Then immediately head to the meeting, which had already started. Realized I forgot toothpaste, ewww dirty teeth. Reached the church and meet everyone, so warm and friendly! The meetings all day were sooo great, Jerry and Gail are kind of like the mentors for these three missionary couples, all from Sao Paulo. A lot of the meetings are about teamwork and leadership qualities, everything I learned in college. You can imagine how excited I was, finally working with something I know. They told me to jump in if I wanted to, and Gail translated for me. One meeting was about the conflict they were having with each other and the 2 couples that were in charge of leadership of the church. (5 couples in all). It was neat hearing about struggles and really being able to see peoples true feelings and personalities.

The rest of the trip went fantastic! Junior and Patricia the couple letting my stay at their house were wonderful. They treated me like a little princess. One point I wasn’t sure what juice I wanted to Junior ordered me FOUR. By the end of the trip I was calling them Mom and Dad! They showed me the sites, I post most of my pictures on facebook but will try to get a few on here. This blog is a pain when it comes to uploading pictures! Brasilia is known for its architecture and it being a planned city. The city is in the shape of an airplane and is divided up into sections. All the government buildings in one area, all the apartments in another and so on. Also the apartments (just have apartments in the city) can not have balconies and all are off the ground. Cool huh? Each couple made lunch for my at their house, all amazing cooks. Those couples were such an encouragement and so uplifting to be around. I was able to hear their stories and about their life now and wow they are on fire for the Lord! They have been in training for 2 years and are so excited to get things going!

Birthday Bash

Bus trip to Brasilia

I am so glad I was able to come here, it has been really uplifting so far, feeling a bit recharged. The bus ride here was quite an adventure, good and bad. So Phyllis wasn’t able to take me and I had to take the bus from itu to campinas. Ali dropped me off and right before leaving Thomas insisted on going as well. When we got to the bus station he helped me get all my luggage and such to the bus…side note on the way back to Maktub from the Circus Bruno and Thomas insisted on walking us the short way to our apartment. So sweet! Anyway so he takes me to the bus platform and then hands me a little velvet red bag. I opened it up and it was a thin gold bracelet! It was my birthday present! I thought my heart would burst! I couldn’t believe he got me a birthday present awwww. After that great moment my bus doesn’t show until 20 minutes past the original time. haha and then we switched buses twice. The whole time I am so confused but am paying attention to people that seem to be in my group, ended up working okay but I was quite nervous, I admit.

So take the bus to Campinas get off at their big bus station, take the escalator to the shopping/ eating area and walked around, with my rolly bag, the thing 3 times trying to find the bathroom haha. Find it and then stare at the sign for at least 5 minutes seeing how much I have to pay to use it andddd I have to bust out the Portuguese phrase book! embarrassing but little did I know it wouldn’t compare to getting dinner. After handling that I decided to get something to eat and I only have an hour. I look around and the lines are crazy long! I pick an Italian place that has the shortest line. Get in line and after 10- 15 minutes a lady comes up with a menu and asked me what I would like. I tell her I want lasagna. Well it happens to be a place where you pick out every ingredient! Ahhh. We try to communicate, unsuccessfully, and then she just tells me when I get up there to point at things. Oh and by this time everyone in line is aware I only speak English and am holding up the line so I am getting a few dirty looks along with “oh that poor girl” look as well. I get up there and somehow find out they don’t have lasagna! Then the cook lady starts losing her patience and starts speaking very harshly to me. I want to just run away and go somewhere else but by this time I only have 20 min and am to the point of extreme frustration. I am not about to let this lady be rude to me and run me off, I have stood in her line for over 30 min and I am going to get food! haha The woman behind me and the lady who takes the orders in line both help me and somehow I get through the line. It was a horrible experience! Then I get my food and it doesn’t even taste good but I eat most of it knowing I won’t have another chance to eat for 13 hours. haha at this point I just want to cry and hurry and get on the bus. The lady was incredibly mean!

Then I go to get on my bus and you have to go through a little security thing and the guy realizes or guesses I am American so he tries talking to me and makes sure I know where to go. This guy doesn’t even speak English well and I don’t even ask for help and he cares enough to double check that I am okay, goes out of his way. So after that I am able to smile again and be okay. Well I get down and my platform says 14-17, something the guy had pointed out, thank goodness. I had thought I was suppose to go to the number which was actually my bus seat. haha

Wow this thing is long

I end up getting help from a very nice bus driver, he tells me to just look at the sign on the bus to know which one to take and then he winks at me. I love it when people wink at me! He was a cute older man. haha this is so much I know but it just doesn’t end. So my bus comes about 10 min late and I go to get on and a grouchy old man who takes the tickets to board points at a part of the ticket I am suppose to fill out and he won’t let me on or help me/explain. So I get out of line and see some bus drives standing out and one of them talks to the guy trying to convince him to let me on. No luck so he finds someone who speaks English and that guys fills it out for me. So nice. Then the guys taking tickets still won’t let me on and so both of them are arguing with him. One of them pushes me on the bus and the old grouchy man just rolls his eyes and lets me on. O goodness it was a mess. But I was mainly just excited I had people who were taking care of me! They were great.

So I get on the bus and a guy in his thirties sits beside me and he doesn’t smell bad so I am relieved. haha He doesn’t try to talk to me either which I am grateful for, exhausted by Portuguese at that point. The bus ride was okay besides the fact that it is FREEZING! I was in a ball in my seat trying to stay warm. I had brought a light jacket but it wasn’t enough. At the next stop I get one of the guys to get my luggage out from under the bus and I get a long sleeve shirt and another t-shirt. Try to sleep but can’t, I even have my laptop case on top of my legs to help keep me warm and then my backpack leaning up against my legs. I looked quite silly. Around 2 am we stop at a rest stop and I jump off and buy a ski jacket looking thing. Pink by the way haha. not much of a selection, the only one in my size. Good price but I wasn’t too worried b/c I was miserable. Get back on the bus and it helped a lot, still not able to be warm enough but I caught some sleep here and there. Had a conversation with the guy beside me in Portuguese. That was cool, and found out he was freezing too, awww and he bought me a water at one point. Cool guy. Get to Brasilia and Gail is waiting for me. Yay no problems there.

Brasilia Team

April 7th! Birthday!!

Today is the wonderful day I was born and also the FFA land judging contest. Good luck to Texas FFA especially MP and Chapel Hill :) I have to share my birthday with FFA every year since my dad has to take his team to compete. Something came to mind this morning when I woke up, how wonderful it is I have had another year to live. My friend Corey had such a short time here and I am very blessed. It reminded me to make the most of the time I have here. I could go on more but we are off to look for dresses. My birthday party is tomorrow. Girls' night, wear your favorite dress, dinner, and then bowling. Any yes you can go bowling in a dress, I say so ;)

Carnival- Camp

As many of you know, Carnival is a huge deal in Brazil and supposedly a thing that pops into your head when you think of Brazil. In Brazil when Carnival comes around most churches go on a retreat somewhere away from festivities. I have to admit I was a bit sadden to not get to go see Carnival but I trust every single person that told me it is incredibly crazy party and there are lots of things that I would not want to be a part of or see. Soooo we took our youth to a camp about 8 or 10 hours away. The reason I can't tell you exactly how long is because we never made the trip there or back in one solid chunk of time. You know what conclusion I came to? If at least one thing does not go wrong in anything we plan then we would have no idea what to do with ourselves. haha We had about 16 kids go and we took two cars and van which happen to be an old Volkswagen. Hilarious. Okay so if any of you have ever seen Little Miss Sunshine then you can somewhat imagine what we went through. That van broke down so much! So many good times. So the biggest time was the first break down. We were only about an hour and an half out when we smelled this intense burning smell. We ended up having to pull over and the guys pushed the van to this car dealership. There some guys looked at it and told us it was only a small repair, they would call a guy they knew and have us back on the road in an hour. Hahaha yea right! The guy comes from his house and looks at it and tell us he needs to pull us to his shop not to far away. We soon found out he meant to pull us with his little bitty car. He attaches us to his car by a rope and off we go. Somehow we made it to his shop, the rope only broke once but his shop was on a hill so he had to gun it up the slope in order to pull us up into his shop. There happen to be a car sitting by the drive and when he gunned it our van ran into the car and scrapped along it. Thankfully the car the van ran into was already totaled and the guy promised to touch up our van. He said he wouldn't be able to finish before 10 that night so Pe, a intern for the month, called his family who lived nearby and we stayed with them. Crazy, right?! We got to the camp a day late but all was well. The kids had a blast, not at first though. The camp was very conservative. The theme was something about Discipline, not exactly the thing teens what to talk about. Ali and Mark pointed out the importance of pouring into others not just being poured into so the youth took that and changed their attitude. It was a really proud moment of us, seeing the youth make the most the situation :) So many stories but way to long. Some of favorite memories from that camp would be hanging out with a bunch of 7 and 8 year old girls. I had decided to skip a lesson because I was reaching my breaking point with portuguese and these two little girls just come up to me and start talking to me. After realizing I didn't speak Portuguese, they each grabbed one of my hands and took off, from there is history. They were great and their grandmas were cooks so I got extra goodies and servings! We even played soap soccer on a blow up thing which I hope to get some pics of from Carol's camera and post on here. Fun sight, me with a bunch of little girls slipping, sliding, and busting it non stop. It was fun and meet lots of cool people. The director also asked me before I left if I would consider coming to work for his church and their youth after I finished in Itu. He was a great guy and I was honored he asked me to look into it. After a fun filled time at camp we headed back. Had one other big break down with the van. Luckily a guy at the gas station had a used part of the piece that we needed in the back of his car, thank you Lord, and after that we made it back safe and sound. It was such a neat trip though and had good quality bonding time. Yayyy for bonding!

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!!