What's New

In the past couple of weeks, we haven't had major entries to make, but there have been some things going on along with our daily Portuguese lessons, our three hour team meetings, and our other parts of daily routine. In other words, things are going on, but we haven't had the time to sit down and write a lot about it. So, I'll just take a few minutes to post some different pictures and write a few words about what is going on with us.

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.

Sorry, no picture for this one. One day I was traveling down one of the most used streets in Salvador on a bus. The Military Police here are known to set up "blitzes" here where they empty cars and busses and search everyone on board. It was my turn. We filed off (me with no form of identification and heart pounding) and proceded to assume the position to get patted down for contraband. The women stayed on the bus and handed over their purses and bags to a female officer. We were then allowed back on the bus to resume our ride. I guess it could have been a lot worse. Most of the guys seemed annoyed but were in good humor afterward.

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.






Mary took us out to a very nice park last Saturday and were blessed to be surrounded by God's creation. We decided to hike the bicycle trail thinking it would only be a couple of hour hike with lots of rest breaks to enjoy the scenery. It took us 4 hours to complete the entire thing, over 12 miles. We were pretty tired by the end, and hungry. We saw over 21 monkeys on the trail, one was no more than 3 feet from Mary's face. The park has a couple of lanchonetes and we sat down and had a quick lunch (well, it really wasn't quick, even by Brazilian standards) and sipped or guzzled a few bottles of water. It was a great day, despite the sunburn I got ON MY HEAD. The hair is a little short now.

Today we attended church with Russell and Valerie at Itinga, the church we painted. At the end of the service we were asked to sing a song for them in English. We sang "Listen to our Hearts." The preacher said it was a blessing to see us worshipping God. It didn't matter what language we were doing it in, they understood what we were doing. It was good to be able to minister to them in this way, and I know we will have many opportunities to minister to our brothers and sisters in Itinga while we are living here.