an open door

We spent the day with Valdilene and Maria Zilinha. We were able to story with them and enjoy a couple of hours in their home. We also met Valdilene's mother and father. They were so welcoming and we feel that through this family we will be able to have many contacts to the rest of their community. Her husband takes a bike each day into a nearby town and works as a youth counselor. They have 3 other children as well and we ask that you join us in praying for all of them and the opportunity to continue taking the Gospel into their Quilombo.


Below are several photos of the homes that the Quilombola people live in. The floors are typically dirt as well but they keep their homes very clean.

The HUGE beehives that are on almost every tree.
I HATE BEES


The bridge that thankfully withstood our BIG TRUCK

The fruit hanging off this tree is called Jaca or, in English, Jack Fruit. They are in season right now and you see them everywhere in the interior. We are not big fans of the taste but supposedly this is the largest fruit to grow on trees in the world.

We ARE huge fans of bananas and coconut water so when offered these treats
we never pass them up. I think I'll be making banana bread for awhile.

Jayden's Blog Updates

Click here to see what's been going on in Jayden's world.

new friends and pumpkin pie

Today we celebrated Thanksgiving with the Nichols' Family, the Konings, the Gills and David Henson. We were once again reminded of God's sufficiency as he gave us great people to fill in the void left while being away from family in the states. The food was as American as it gets with pumpkin pies, sweet potato casserole, dressing, corn pudding and all the typical Thanksgiving treats!!! The boys swam with friends and wrote on their table all that they were thankful for. Each family shared some of our holiday family traditions. It was a spectacular day and we have made some amazing new friends. Here are some photos from the day. I seem to have one of everyone except myself and Julie, the wonderful hostess. Oh well...maybe next time!

The Nichols' Family (our hosts) made a pinata from scratch and the kids all took a whack. The boys have decided this is a great new tradition.

Jesse getting ready for her turn

the Konings sharing what they are most thankful for

David and Mike

The Gills

Pumpkin pie

pumpkin muffins with cream cheese icing

life among the Maranhense

I'm embarrassed at how long it has been since I've blogged! I'm going to try and catch everyone up with what all that has been going on in our lives since we arrived in São Luís. Homeschooling along with learning how to live in a new city has kept me swamped. I went through a rough patch with my health as well but I'm doing so much better now. I thank you for your prayers as my energy has returned and I'm feeling like my old self again.

I drink one of these almost every day now. It took awhile to love them but I'm there now. I'm REALLY there...maybe even kinda addicted but hey they are so good for my belly.

São Luís (Saint Louis) is an island in the São Marcos bay and it's as wonderful as it sounds. We have amazing breezes to keep us cool and there are days you'd never know we're living at the equator. We are in the dry season now so the rain isn't making life too difficult. This means our clothes can dry very quickly which always make me enormously HAPPY! (It's the small things, right!) The dry season will end around January when mold and mildew become our adversaries.


I recently put several photos of the historic part of São Luís on facebook. I'll share some of them again on here. This area is only a few miles from our home and is absolutely beautiful. All the original buildings are still there from when the city was settled back in 1615 by the French. The old buildings make for some great photo ops.




The area we live in looks quite different from the rest of the city. Every time we get further and further from our home we are astonished at the poverty all around us. We've seen poverty but just not to the extent we're seeing it here. In the short walk (less than a block) from our apartment to the beach, we will usually come upon 3-4 homeless people.

an example of the homeless living on the sidewalks next to our apartment

One area is truly remarkable where a type of shanty town has built up over the actual water. It's amazing to see the tiny wooden shacks balancing on stilts. I'll get a picture of this soon for you to see.

Beside us, the rocky beach is home to several folks that hang their hammocks next to the stone wall that lies between the sand and the road. Here, almost everyday we see signs of the many idols linked to the practice of umbanda and candomble. We see beautiful red roses (the BIG DARK red ones that cost a fortune in the states) thrown out into the ocean and trampled by the waves on the sand. They do this as an offering to the goddess of the sea. The other day we came upon a small black statue of a little boy with candles all around him. I still need to research the significance of this particular idol and what it symbolizes.

Needless to say, we are seeing up close and personal many hindrances to the Gospel. The scariest part is how most people will combine these practices with Catholicism or even any version of Christianity they've heard of. They want to make sure they cover all their bases, so to speak. We know that Jesus is the Way, Truth and Life and yet having them understand that Christ cannot be put on the shelf with these idols is quite difficult.

Mike is traveling today to work with some young believers that are working with Q's. His desire is to train them on how to share with the illiterate through the "storying" method. In these instances, we have to deliver the Word of God to people through short Bible stories, one at a time. What a challenge and yet great responsibility! Pray we overcome all the obstacles in our way and tell the stories from the Bible accurately in another language. At this point, Mike is memorizing the stories in Portuguese. He's doing great but pray that God would continue giving us the words that we need. Our language always seems to be the biggest hurdle in life here.

my kitchen

Tomorrow we will celebrate Thanksgiving with 2 other American families that live here along with a new friend (David) that is working with an international company doing a project. We will also be with other missionaries from The Netherlands. They are getting to enjoy Turkey Day for the 2nd time. We look forward to all the "fixins" and the belly ache that we know will follow. Our bodies have adjusted to a diet of fresh fruits, beans, rice, and all things NOT-PROCESSED. On days like Thanksgiving we are reminded how heavy our American diets were! I kinda can't wait!! he

On Saturday we will go into the interior and meet some new Q's and if I remember my camera I will post some photos on here.

Last bit of news...we are going to Kentucky for Christmas. We leave in 3 weeks and we are counting down the minutes...literally!!! We should have a little furry creature, we have not seen in 2 years, waiting on us at the airport! I get teary-eyed just thinking about it!!!

Thanks for reading this overly long post and continuing to pray for us even when we're bad at communicating our needs to you! I hope you all have a blessed Thanksgiving.

angelica

A few weeks ago we spent the day with some Brazilian friends. They feel called to reach the same people group that we are working with. He and Mike are sharing lots of information and have taken several trips together to the interior. He is a great resource for us and we are so blessed to work alongside them.

They also have one of the sweetest little girls on the planet. Her name is Angelica and I thoroughly enjoyed having her in our home for the day. She was absolutely precious. Here are some of the photos we took that day of her and her mommy.

paved, gravel, dirt, sand, and moon-cratered

We've been here in Sao Luis now for about a week and what a week it's been. I can finally say all boxes are unpacked. NOT that everything is exactly where I want it but we have pulled off an extraordinary amount of tasks in one week along with beginning a new school year with the kids. We were crazy enough to start things up on Monday in order to keep them from getting behind. Our boxes and furniture arrived on Friday which was just a few hours after we had gotten here, thanks to our little set back.

I won't go into much detail about the 34 hour trip that was supposed to take only 12 hours. I'll only skim over the highlights. Granted, several of those hours involved us passed out in a hotel room weary and stubbornly giving in to the realization of exhaustion. Or, at least some of us were with the comforts of a mattress and a/c window unit. Mike's night went down a bit different as he was reclined in the driver's seat of our extended cab truck. He got a few hours of sleep outside in order to keep a watchful eye on all of our belongings.

Maybe I should back up just a bit. On DAY ONE of our travels things started beautifully. We had made some great time on the roads, stopped and had a bite to eat for lunch, and all three of our "growing bigger by the minute" boys were sharing their tight space in the backseat of our truck nicely. (Kudos to the boys really quick...cause they were pretty much perfect the whole trip with only a few moments of chaos.) I guess kids know when they better hold it all together.

Anyway...Mike's idea was to ENTER in each city on the GPS as we passed through the prior city in order to not have any funny things happen with our little mapping device. The night before we had left, the neighbors that lived above us had come to say goodbye and the older gentleman had shared with Mike about all the state roads versus the federal roads. State roads, typically, are in much better shape than the federal roads because of the funding. SO he and Mike talked over the best route to get about halfway to Maranhao.

I guess that's where the problems started, about half-way there. We were in a small town and Mike decided to stop putting in the "next" city into the GPS and instead skip ahead a couple of cities because, afterall, what would it hurt.

Extremely LONG story short...in one of the cities Raquel, as Mike likes (liked) to fondly call the Portuguese voice in our GPS, took us down a road we really had no business being on. It went from pavement to stone to gravel to dirt and finally to sand. After seeing some gentlemen looking rather concerned about us being in their "parts" of the world, we turned the truck around and unfortunately had to drive past these said men again in order to leave this miserable town. On the way back past the men, they decided to line both sides of the roads with guns in hand and stare us down. What did we do? What any good gringo does. We smiled really big, waved, acted completely oblivious, and Mike pushed the pedal a tad bit harder.

After finally getting on the road that RAQUEL wanted us to be on, A STATE ROAD, we drove one hour going about 10 mph. The road had potholes so large that a Volkswagon could have literally been swallowed up. Literally, in all Mike's trips to the interior...he'd never seen a road this bad. Everyone in the car began missing the dirt paths we had been on only hours before. We all kept our cool and just prayed we would eventually come out to a better surface but after an hour and the sun setting and everything looking pretty glim, Raquel (GPS) decided to go haywire. We appeared to be completely on the wrong side of the city that we were trying to leave. It ended up being just a glitch in the GPS (probably a GOD glitch)because we were on the "right" road but we decided the "right" road for us would be one in which we could go over 20 mph. SO, we turned the truck around, backtracked the hour, drove about 3 hours south, out of the way but on GREAT roads, and found a place to crash.

The next morning which is where you see us on the train bridge in the video, everything went so much better. Literally PERFECT day with PERFECT roads. I took lots of photos of those beautiful roads so you could see them. Our new motto will always be GO OUT OF THE WAY AND DRIVE EXTRA MILES FOR THE GOOD ROADS. I love smooth roads. I will never take the road department in the USA for granted ever again, EVER. EVER.

So we're here. We love it...potholes in the road and all! It is beautiful in every way and we feel God's presence around us completely. It feels so good to be HOME, or at least what will serve as our home for this next season of our life. We celebrated Jayden's 9th birthday last Wednesday and the boys are all adjusting so wonderfully. Keep praying. I beg you. We have seen what prayer can do and we know and feel when you are all interceding on our behalf.

Enjoy the video. Make sure you watch the last few seconds so you can get a taste of what Raquel considers a perfectly good ROUTE. ha

quick note

We're all well and celebrating Jayden's 9th birthday today. Our boxes arrived and we are getting settled. We are still waiting on internet. I promise to update everyone as soon as I can get on here for more than a couple of seconds at a time.

São Luís Bound...FINALLY

We're all packed up and ready to head out BRIGHT and EARLY tomorrow morning. The movers put the last box on the truck around 5:00. It felt great to be DONE with things on this side. This being our 8th move in 3 years, 2nd time THIS year...I really am beginning to feel like an old pro at this transitioning thing...REALLY I AM. (she's lying. she hates to move)

We need to hit the road by 5:00 a.m. in order to get every second of sunlight possible. Interior Brazilian roads aren't very fun in the dark. Praying the truck gets us there safely and our furniture arrives shortly thereafter...we're hoping for Friday. That would be miraculous!

Also today...
I caught Jackson and Jayden sweeping their newly emptied bedroom and snapped some photos. I couldn't, for the life of me, understand why they were so concerned with getting the floor cleaned NOW. I planned on sweeping all the scraps from the boxes up later but was tickled to see them tackling this one chore for me.

And then I came back and saw this.
OF COURSE~

We're all sleeping in hammocks tonight, as our beds are gone. This is what is going on in the other room as I type this around 9:30 our time. Everyone should be fast asleep but instead folks are enjoying their last night in Fortaleza with a movie.
I'm not waiting up with them tonight. Mom's tired and headed to bed (or should I say hammock?!?)
These two tired grown-ups are DONE!














And for the sake of keeping it real...

LoWdOwN on the guys

I called my mom today and as I was sharing a story about life in our house, I found myself calling our dwelling place a frat house. It seemed a fitting title for this home since I live here with 4 guys. As these young men grow and get bigger and louder, at times I find myself feeling like an outsider. It's funny because the opposite is true for Michael. He seems to have an almost permanent grin of pride plastered on his face as they tell their weird jokes and continually find ways to make noises with their bodies that are completely unpleasant. Eww. Such a camaraderie they have at times. sigh.

To totally change the subject...

This week Mike will be joining another team from the states to work in a community about 2 hours from here. They asked him to bring one of our boys with him so Jackson will be joining him this time. He is SO excited. He worked ahead in his school work and got his teacher's permission. ha

They are meeting the team at the airport today and will head out on Monday morning to join up with them. Pray that all goes well for all involved as they work really hard this week in the town of Cascavel. On Friday, JohnMark, Jayden and I are hoping to be able to join up with everyone for a short time. I'll try to keep you posted and will ask Mike to get some photos for me so we can post them on here.

I'm about 2 weeks out on the move and trying to tie up all the loose ends here in the house and with the boys school year. So far...so good.

JohnMark is doing really well and will begin 8th grade as soon as we get to Sao Luis. He is enrolled in an online school with many other kids that live overseas. He's been given the opportunity to co-lead a Bible Study amongst the kids online. He's writing it and setting it all up. I am so proud of all the hard work he's been putting into it. Kids from all over the world will be connecting via skype to study God's Word together! How cool is that!!!

All of Jayden's blonde hair has reappeared, thanks to this strong Fortaleza sun! He turns heads everywhere we go. He is growing tall and eating us out of the house. WAIT...all three of them are doing that. Seriously, our grocery bill is frightening. I can go buy 20-30 tangerines in the morning and attempt to go into the kitchen to partake of "said" tangerines that same afternoon and ALL, I repeat ALL tangerines ARE GONE!!!! FOR REAL! I haven't resorted to hiding food for myself yet but I won't say it will never happen. (I'm recalling life with Matt Lovelace right now....hmmmm.)

Anyhow, the boys are healthy and geared up to move again! They are beyond excited about our Christmas plans. We have tickets to a beautiful destination on December 13 and we foresee some pretty special time with some pretty special people. Granted...the time there will be short BUT we plan on enjoying every single second!

In the photo below the boys are holding some of the goodies that came in with the team!
THANK you so much Ronnie and Carl! The boys will feast on s'mores very soon!