Ron and Georgia Freitas came for our six month checkup at the beginning of September. We spent some time with each of them one on one and as a couple. They spent a couple of days with our team as a whole and helped us stay on track and continue to keep the vision for what we are doing here.
I once complained that they were always playing dominoes across the street from our apartment. It can be a very loud game when played as they do on the street, slapping the dominoes down on the table at all hours of the night (been woken up at 2 am before from it). I now know it was all for a purpose. I don't know who the winner was, but I hope it was someone from our neighborhood. We met a nice guy from our building who seemed to have been sent home. I doubt he won.
We use quite a bit of microwave popcorn in a week, and Mary had the idea to save the unpopped kernals from all of our bags for a while. We recently ran out of microwave bags, so I improvised and popped all the unpopped kernals. They all popped up nicely on the stove in a little oil. A little salt and it was good eatin'.
We found a Brazilian Mexican restaurant that serves good burritos, as well as other good stuff. We'll be staying away from the taco salad though.
This week we were blessed by two of our family members. What a great week! Mary's momma and cousin Ashley came to town for a (too) short visit and got to experience life in Salvador. Dona Cindy spoiled us while she was here. She made sure we were getting settled in, feeling comfortable, and starting to be at home in our new culture. We saw lots of sites (some of which were new to us), took lots of pictures, and still had pa-lenty of time to shop. Our walls are no longer bare. Our home is starting to feel more like a home than an apartment we rent thousands of miles from home. They even got to have a Portuguese class with Mary's teacher one morning. 
Matt and Mary Virginia, along with Travis, went with Christians from 7 congregations around Salvador to Muritiba, a town in the interior of Bahia, on Saturday, August 13. We left the city about 7:45 and arrived in Muritiba around 9:45 where we met up with our good friend Nilton and the other missionaries living there. They dropped us all off at various locations in the village to hand out invitations to join free Bible classes they will be holding this month. Iracema and Carlos were our partners (seen in the pictures above) for handing out the flyers. The Muritiba church had already received many calls from interested people by lunch time, and we still had two more hours of inviting after that. They served us all lunch at 1:00 and a short afternoon snack after our work was done. We arrived home late that evening and slept well. To see more pictures of the day click here.
We have “saudades” for you! To have saudades has a meaning close to “I miss you” with a little stronger connotation. We pray that all is going well and hope to hear some news about the ministries there soon. It is amazing the connections that the God provides his children through His Holy Spirit. We feel it when we hear news of other churches both at home and here in
Our main goals these first nine months are: to learn Portuguese as best we can, support our teammates through culture shock and get settled ourselves, befriend Brazilians in our neighborhood (keeping a list of all evangelistic contacts), do cultural research, and build relationships with the existing Churches of Christ in our city. The last goal is what I am writing to you about now…
On Friday the whole team went to a very small and very poor congregation, the Itinga Church of Christ, on the other side of the city (about an hour bus ride). They have needed their small church building painted for a long time, as much of the walls were black from dirt and mold. And they as a church spiritually said that they were trying to make a fresh start and wanted something to remind themselves of this. So, our mission team, seeing the need and wanting to minister to our brothers and sisters there, took time to paint their building together.
It was as much a team building project for us as it was a project on their building. We broke out in song while we painted and worshipped together during our service to the
P.S. To see pictures of the Itinga church and of the pet monkey of one of the families there, click here.
The latest pictures are from our language school. One of our teachers at the school, Erica, is moving to
So, yes, after just one year of marriage, I poisoned my husband. But like Adam and Eve… Adam was there too. Eve just offered it, Adam didn’t have to take it. Right? The next morning (Friday) after he had started taking it, he woke up with eyes the size of golf balls and the color of a fire engine. By Saturday his eyes were the same and he had splotches of red on his neck and in between his fingers. Sunday was the same story, so we spent most of Monday at the doctor’s office. The allergist (after over 3 hours of waiting to see her) pointed to a “T” word on the label and said that people who are allergic to aspirin are typically allergic to this… which was explained on the label (Ooops! I didn’t know the scientific name for aspirin). She then made a list of things never to give him and a prescription for prednisone. Today we go back to the doctor to make sure the prednisone took care of it all. He’s feeling and looking much better now! We’re having Mom bring medicine that we’re more familiar with, when she comes next month. Have a swell day everyone!!!
The month of June has been a busy one for the Maberys in
Mary Virginia had a birthday early in June and we had our first wedding anniversary just a couple weeks ago. We were able to take some time and spend a weekend at the discovery coast to celebrate together.
We had a wonderful experience at the home of Mary Virginia’s professora de Português, Jaci, on a Saturday night. Her teacher invited us to come and share about our lives and something from the Bible with some of the teenagers she tutors for free on the weekends. Little did we know that we would be meeting a few students and most of Jaci’s family when we arrived. Visiting a Brazilian home, especially for the first time, is a big deal. There were six of us from our team visiting, and we all brought with us some little snack or a bottle of Coke to add to the treats offered. We spent about an hour sitting together on the porch getting to know each other (the six of us and about 20 of them), and then the food was laid out for us to try. There was everything from a flan type dish topped with prunes to boiled peanuts. We talked and laughed some more and met everyone else that we hadn’t already met. It was such a warm, welcoming and fun atmosphere that we hardly knew what to do, so we just joined in.
We met Jaci’s nephew, Mateus (Matthew). He wanted the rest of his family to meet us, so when his father arrived he introduced us and said we would have to come back and have dinner with him and his mother, whose name happens to be
Pelourinho: (L-R) Marina's Boyfriend (tour guide), Marina (Matt's teacher), Jaci (Mary's Teacher), and Us
Oi Everyone from
It’s also an adjustment to think in two languages and not be sure about which one needs to come out – response time in conversation is much slower at the moment. Of course, with Mary, her response time is faster, but she never knows if what she’s saying is Portuguese or her own language (a mixture of Portuguese, English, Spanish, and Italian). Good thing Brazilians are patient with us!
We’re almost a month into language school and already we see how much we have to learn. It’s overwhelming and exciting at the same time. Learning to think in a different way means adding new meaning to what you already know. Take the English word “hope” for example… In English, the definition of “hope” is more of a wish or desire. We “hope” that our shipment gets here, but right now we think maybe the boat sank. In Portuguese, the word “esperança” is awaiting something desirable and connotes a strong expectation. Spiritually, we hope for heaven; we hope for Jesus to return. Are we hoping with expectation? When we expect something to happen, we take action accordingly. What would that kind of spiritual hope look like in our lives?
God is teaching us many things lately. Thank you for sharing in our work, our joy, and our “esperança” for the church here.
Well, our first month was about finding and securing an apartment and getting all of our documents processed so we could live here in
Language school starts this week. We’re ready to get some help. Did I mention earlier in the list of two’s that we also have two cell phones? The second one was delivered last week. When the delivery man opened the box, we didn’t know what to say. We were expecting a land line phone for our apartment. You see, our realtor, Helena, said she would help us get a phone. So we let her call for us and set it up. Apparently there was a slight miscommunication. Our team thinks this is pretty funny. They call our new cell phone our land line. We had a good laugh about it and moved on. All of us have stories to tell now like this one and it helps to share these experiences with each other.
Our team has been very important to us since we’ve been here. In fact, they’ve been our life line. Without each other, this experience of moving to another country to live as missionaries would be much more difficult. All of us Christians are on a team. Satan makes it easy for us to feel isolated when we are going through a trying time. But it is especially during such times that we must remember, the church is our team. Remember your team goal. Take care of each other along the way. We miss you all very much! Keep us informed about the ministry there! mabery@missionsalvador.com
For the past three weeks we have been working on living as citizens of
First, we were obliged to travel across the city to the Policia Federal to register with the Federal Police of Brazil. This took two trips, one to find out what paperwork we had to have with us, and the other by the whole team to stand in line to pay to have our papers processed and then to stand in line again to actually have them processed. We had three small children in our group and they were more than happy to move our process along, especially when all three decided to start screaming at the same time.
In order to rent property or buy any large items, we are required to give a CPF number, the equivalent of a social security number in
For the next week we hunted apartments. We have now all found our apartments, signed contracts, and should all be moved in by the end of the week. It helps to remember something that is true whether we are in
Well, we made it safe and sound! We're here in Brazil to begin this long awaited journey and adventure! We arrived on Sunday night and our first two days have certainly been eventful. Many of you have asked about MayVa stories from Brazil like the ones I sent from Europe. So, here's the first one... We have a kitchenette in our hotel room and the Porter family and Matt and I were trying to cook our first meal in Brazil, a frozen pizza. (We wanted a meal that didn't take three hours to cook or three hours to wait on at a restaurant.) Jennifer had packed a pan and we had done well for our first trip to the supermarket on our first day in Brazil. The only problem was that we couldn't figure out the gas oven since it was different than any one we had ever seen.
Therefore, I was nominated to call for help. I called what I thought was the front desk and explained in broken Portuguese / Spanish that we needed someone to come and light the oven. The woman I was speaking to transfered me to the front desk and I explained again. The man at the front desk didn't know what I was talking about so he handed me off to someone else. Finally, someone who spoke English. When I explained he said, "Okay, I send someone up." Thirty minutes later, two maids arrived carrying pots and pans. Through sherades we communicated what we really needed and the laides radioed their supervisor. Matt and the two ladies found instructions (in portuguese) and while they rattled off things in portuguese that he couldn't understand, Matt lit the oven - just before the supervisor arrived. By the time all of our visitors left and we cooked the frozen pizza, it was still a typically long Brazilian meal.
As I think about how many miscommunications we'll have while we're here, I'm reminded of how our heavenly father understands us no matter what. He knows what we're going to ask for even before we ask it and it doesn't matter what language we ask it in. God understands us and knows us better than we know ourselves. So when you have one of those days when you feel like you can't communicate your thoughts and feelings, even in your own language, remember that God understands and is waiting for you to come to Him.
P.S. Thank you for the wonderful send-off and the gift that you gave us! It means so much to kwow that we have such a caring church behind us. We miss you all already.
