Blessing and Becoming Brazilian

We praise God for his wonderful gift of bringing us here to Brazil. We are really enjoying our time here and feel filled with the joy of the Lord.

First off, Paul and I are going to try to take a yellow Labrador puppy home with us!
They breed them here at the school to raise money for the ministry. Paul and I have wanted a dog for awhile especially since we are going to wait to have kids. When a litter of puppies was born I thought it would be so cool to have a dog from Brazil. That way we could always remember this trip and how the Lord provides for us in so many ways. We wanted to give him a Brazilian name and we finally found a perfect one: Bênção. It means blessing in Portuguese. The only thing is that it is really hard to pronounce! Paul and I have been asking how to say it but we have to practice it a lot to get it right. It kind of sounds like Benson but a little different. He will be seven months old tomorrow. We praise God for our new blessing!

Paul and I feel more and more Brazilian every day. Carpina is about 3 miles away and we only get to go there about once a week for groceries and such. We have to either get a ride from Jeff and Lindsay, take the bus, or walk. This week we found out that there is a bike here that we can use to ride into town. But yes, only one. We needed to get some things in town so we decided to try something we see many other Brazilians doing.....the man pedals and the woman rides on the back. It was great! I had such a lovely time. Paul was all sweaty and tired, but it was great for me! Plus we really enjoyed the freedom of being able to go to town by ourselves and buy groceries! It was a great time!

Secondly we are getting a bit more comfortable with the language and are able to communicate a least a little bit with almost anyone. It is still frustrating at times, but we have improved in leaps and bounds since we got here. We have been talking to lots of Brazilians and making new friends too. We went to two different Brazilian homes this week which were both great experiences. We had dinner at a good friends house last night. The night before all the Glory Soccer coaches went to the home of one of the boys who plays soccer here. His mom has terminal cancer so we shared some scriptures and prayed together which was hard but good.

We appreciate and value the culture here. I especially like the way things are laid back and relaxed. They aren't so worried and uptight about having good manners like we are. They seem so friendly and comfortable with us from the very beginning.

Lastly, the Preschool class dressed up for a birthday party this last week and I thought they were all so cute so I had to share the picture.