It's been a while...

Yes, it has been a while since I've written a blog post and I apologize.  So if there is anyone out there who stills bothers to check for updates, here's how life in Gama is going right now.

Sunday- We have sunday school at 9:30 and an evening worship service at 6:00.  I usually spend the rest of the day in my house because it's the one day that the family is all there.  My oldest host brother (who lives nearby) and his wife and daughter usually come to visit as well.

Monday- Monday is our day off and Dani and I often use it to visit old friends in Samambaia and Ceilandia or visist Ottis and Betty in Brasilia, or just hang out in Gama.  There's also a bible study that we attend if we have the chance.

Tuesday- English class at 10:00 in the morning, then another class for children at 7:00, followed by a class for adults at 8:00

Wednesday-Advanced English at 7:00, and I try to help Dani teach spanish to children at 8:00, (though really, my biggest contribution is just crowd control.  That and trying to explain to the younger students that they speak portuguese, I speak english, and now we're trying to learn spanish)

Thursday- The same schedule as Tuesday, with an evening prayer service at 8:00

Friday- The same as Wednesday with a prayer vigil from 10:00 to midnight.

Saturday- I give guitar lessons from 9:00 a.m. until 11:00.  The rest of the day is free.

And that's how I've been spending my weeks here in Gama, although after today we will have only two more.  We leave the Federal District on the 29th of June to start our trip to Paraguay.  That's really hard to believe.  It won't be easy leaving all everyone, but we'll see some of them in Paraguay and I'm starting to get excited for World Conference in July.

Last Day in Ceilandia

Last Saturday my parents arrived in Brasilia.  I spent most of last week with them, showing them around (with lots of help from Betty and Ottis) and trying to translate for them.  They left yesterday.  It was really good to get to see them and to connect with home, but now I'm back in my home in Ceilandia enjoying my last rainy day here.

     

The time has come for us to move again.  The team reunites tomorrow to take a bus to Goiania (a city about 3 hours south of the Federal District) to spend a week there.  When we return to the capital, Dani and I will be in Gama and Sheralynn and David will move to Ceilandia to begin our final two months here.  Dani and I have spent these past two months living with and getting to know the members of the church and the community here in Ceilandia, but now it's time to leave once again.

And I've decided that while it's not all that easy having to start over again every two months, just after I'm really starting to really feel at home, it is a sort of blessing in disguise.  It's nice that no-one will remember mistakes that I've made or their opinions of me.  It's like getting to start over, this time knowing more Portuguese and more about Brazillian culture.  Every time we've made the change, it's been difficult but in some ways always a relief.  I'll just have to keep trusting in God and look for ways to serve in my new location.

(This blog has not pictures, obviously, but I've put some new albums up.  The links are over on the right)

Sunburns, Dehydration, and Bee Attacks: Team Vacation in Recife (Plus the week spent in Goiania)

Once bible schools had ended, it was time to start our team retreat in the Northeast.  We spent the first few days in the MCC house in Recife, then left for Porto de Galinhas to hit the beach.  We spent about four relaxing days there, where we discussed how the program had been for us and how we had been seeing God in our time in Brazil.  Porto de Galinhas is a beautiful beach with a reef about two hundred meters out from the shore.  The reef is not only an interesting place to swim to to see lots of bright, tropical fish, it also acts as a barrier for the waves, leaving the water calm up to the beach.  The days were passing us by in the most uneventful and relaxing way, until we decided to enhance our time of reflection with an all-day fast on the beach (there may also have been a financial aspect to this decision.  The locals had been keen to take advantage of four naive gringos, and the team card had also stopped working).  As it turns out, lying in the sun all day while abstaining from food and drink is not really a good idea.  We discovered this later that night, when it was time to break the fast with some tradicional northeastern tapioca and everyone got sick.   Other than this, our stay at the praia passed without incident and we returned to the MCC house in Recife by bus.

We then had the opportunity to travel into the interior with a Brazillian MCC worker Andrea, and two SALTers from the States named Mike and Joel. (For anyone is confused by all of the acronyms in this blog, MCC stands for Mennonite Central Committee.  It's a Mennonite organization that offers social assistence to communites in need around the world.  SALT is a program that's pretty much like Radical Journey, but through MCC instead of MNN, which stands for Mennonite Mission Network).  We spent three days traveling in and around the town of Brejo da Madre de Deus, (in English this means Swamp of the Mother of God), getting to see the work MCC was doing there.  We slept in the apartment of Betty, the MCC volunteer who leads the work in Brejo, and spent the evenings playing Rook and watching soccer games.  It was a great chance to see another, more rural part of Brazil and to get to see how MCC is working in the Northeast, which is the poorest region of Brazil.  

On our last full day in Brejo, Betty decided to take us to see a friend of hers who was raising bees.  We were all eager to go and meet the bees, it just turned out that the bees weren't really all that happy to see us.  To make a long story short, I was stung four times, David twice, Sheralynn had at least six and also fell while fleeing the bees, and the MCC workers all suffered a few bee stings; only Dani was able to escape unscathed.   Luckily, no one was seriously hurt and the swelling in my face receeded after a few days (I don't think anyone got a good photo, though).

The following day we returned to Recife to spend the rest of our team vacation relaxing and exploring the city with Andrea and Mike, but too soon it was time to say goodbye.  Our retreat in the Northeast ended when our plane landed in Brasilia.  We then spent a few days visiting with our host families and staying with Betty and Ottis (retired MNN workers and our leaders here in Brazil) preparing to leave to spend a weak in Goiania, a city two hours to the south that has three Mennonite churches.

I won't say much about what we did in Goiania; our time was mostly spent hanging out in houses of church members and with Nata, Dani's boyfriend from Argentina who had come up to visit for the week.  I'll just say that during our week there the team had the opportunity to, among other things, assist in some exorcisms by praying with the pastor performing them and to visit some homes for homeless children that the church worked with.  We also got to shooot volleyballs from a cannon at children as they tried to cross a bridge at the biggest birthday party for a four-year-old that I've ever seen!  (All these things are hard to explain in a blog, so I apologize for the lack of details).  The team then returned from Goiania to be separated again and to begin our two months in our respective towns.  Dani and I are currently in Ceilandia and David and Sheralynn are working in Samambaia.  We will stay here until the end of April.  

Photos, starting from the top: 1)Goiania, 2)Brejo da Madre de Deus, 3)A cistern built by MCC near Brejo.  MCC is working with the Brazilian government and other NGOs to build cisterns in the Northeast, where water is scarce during the dry season, 4)Andrea, a Brazilian MCC worker and Mike, a SALTer from the States, in a historic section of Recife.  These two where our "tour guides" in the Northeast, 5)The beach at Porto de Galinhas

Bible Schools!

Continuing with the theme "Things that Happened Months Ago", I have finally found time to write about the month of January.  We have been moving around so much since the year began that it has been hard to find time to sit down and blog, but now that I am stuck in the same town (Ceilandia), at least until May, I  hope I will be able to write more regularly.

After the holiday festas in Samambaia came to an end the team was reunited to begin working with  the bible school in Gama.  Monday and Tuesday were spent planning and spreading the word around the town.  We went door to door distributing information to the households with children near the church.  Bible school then began on Wednesday and ended with the Sunday evening church service.  The team and I, with lots of help from the Brazilians, helped to lead music and with the dramas and games.  Our theme was "Heroes of the Bible" and the stories were about Moses, Ruth, Peter, and Jesus.

The following week we moved on to Samambaia to do pretty much the same thing again, except the theme there was the story of Daniel.  After Samambaia we came to Ceilandia where we stayed for two weeks, first helping with the bible school of the Mennonite church here and then with a church plant in Sol Nascente.  There were predictions of close to three hundred children that were going to attend the bible school in Sol Nascente, but I don't think we ever had more then eighty,  while at the other towns we had between 30-50.  In general the turnout was lower than expected at each location, but there were still enough kids that we were all ready for our team retreat when January came to an end.

Photos, from bottom to top:  1)Kids watching a drama inside the church at Gama.  2)Playing capture the flag in the street in front of the church in Samambaia.  3)Acting out the story of Daniel in Ceilandia.  4)Most but not all of the kids in Sol Nascente.  5)Keeping the smaller children entertained in Sol Nascente. 

The Brazil Holiday Blog...oops

Well, the holidays have come and gone here in Brazil, and though January has also ended by now I still feel compelled to, like many of my fellow Radical Journeyers, write a blog about the holidays. And so, here is my Brazil Holiday Blog. My first christmas away from home really began on Christmas eve at about 9:00, when the extended family members began to arrive at my house. Then there was music and conversation until midnight. As soon as 12:00 arrived conversations ended as everyone was greeted with a "feliz natal" and a hug from there neighbor. Afterwards the party moved to the kitchen, where lots of tradicional Brazilian holiday foods like turkey and chicken, special salads and noodles, and of course, the ever-present rice-and-beans had been waiting. After the meal we all participated in a gift exchange, for which I had already bought a small backpack to give away and from which I received a Brazillian t-shirt (with English writing on it... oh well). After the gift exchange people gradually began to leave to go home and get some sleep, and I watched soccer on tv with some of the young adults until they too tired and left for home.
The following Christmas day was mainly spent cleaning out the church and getting ready for the Christmas service, after wich Dani and I rode the metro in to Brasilia to spend Christmas night with David and Sheralynn at Ottis and Betty's house.
New Years Eve was spent in the church. The service began at around nine thirty and went until about 11:45. At that point, everyone got on there knees and began to pray a prayer that lasted up until 12:15. Afterwards was another gift exchange, this time with the whole church, and after that more food. Things wound down by around three when people began to leave for home.
Overall christmas was spent without much of the commercialization of North American Christmas, with less emphasis on gift-giving and more emphasis on being together with familiy and freinds, and though it was definately not the same as spending Christmas with my familiy back home, it was still a great time and the people there made me fell right at home.

Finally Some Pictures

Just to let everyone know, I finally put my pictures online and I´ve posted the links to my albums on the side of this page. Hopefully I will keep adding albums as I take more pictures, so check for new links if you want to see them.

A Breif Respite in the City of Mangos

Belem, we where we spent the last ten days, as seen from the lighthouse by the river

Let me begin this post by following up on some my previous posts. Firstly, I said before that it looks like we would only be staying in Samambaia for one month, but that ended up not being true, only a miscomunication between the pastors of the different churches. We will be spending two months in a row in each of the three locations (Samambaia, Ceilandia, and Gama) like we had originally thought. Secondly, the preaching at the Thursday service went well and was well recieved by the congregation. It wasn´t very long, but it turned out fine.

The Monday after that service, Dani and I had the opportunity to go with Rosalina (the pastor here) north to Belem, to visit her sister and her family. We spent ten days with them, exploring the city and the surrounding area and visiting some beaches. Unlike Brasilia, which was founded only about 50 years ago, Belem is an old city that was built by Portuguese colonizers in Brazil. It´s a beautiful city with lots of old churches and cobblestone streets and parks and open-air markets. We spent several days just exploring the city and surrounding towns with Rosalina and her family.

We also had the opportunity to visit some amazing beaches nearby. One day we visisted Mosqueido, an island in a river near the cost, and over the weekend we went to Salinas, the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. It was even better because it isn´t considered to be beach season in Northern Brazil so there wern´t many people at all. There where also some huge dunes behind beach that we decided to explore...

The view from the top of the first dune

We (Dani and I and Rosalina and her sister and her husband) walked to the top of the first dune, where we looked out across the beach and ocean to one of the most beutiful sights I have ever seen (see photo). Once we had caught our breath (from the climb and the view) we continued down the other side of the dune on a path that cut through the dense tropical undergrowth. After resting at the bottom we continued along the path up towards the top of the second dune. The climb was steep and the sand made walking difficult. After we had climbed three-quarters of theway we stopped for a brief rest and a photo, which I took (and here it is).

While we were resting, a man came up from behind us on the dunes. His head was wrapped in a red t-shirt and in his hand was a large knife. He stood next to Rosalina´s sister and held out the knife. He told us to give him all of our money. He wasn´t interested in cell-phones or cameras, he said, just money. None of the Brazillians had brought their money with them, but Dani had her purse and I had put my wallet in my camera case, instead of leaving it at the hotel. Dani emptied out her purse and handed her wallet to the man. He tooked the money and asked if we had more. Elvis (Rosalina´s brother-in-law) asked me if I had any, and I reluctantly pulled out my wallet and gave it to him. Elvis opened it up and gave the man 100 reais (brazilian money, equivelant to about 45 american dollars) and handed it to the man. He asked for more and Elvis pulled out 10 more and said that that was all, showing the man the inside of my wallet. The man then seemed satisfied that we had no more cash and made his way quickly back down the dune (Elvis managed to save about 60 reais that was hidden behind some papers in in my wallet). Shaken, we continued up to the top of the dune, where we stopped and sat down to try to catch or breath and to try to grasp what had just happened. (While it had happened it seemed so surreal. For some reason I wasn´t scared at all and my only thoughts were, "I really hope he doesn´t take my camera" and "this should make for an interesting blog entry") We all prayed together and thanked God that no-one had been hurt and we prayed for the man that had taken our money. The view from the top of the second dune was almost as beautiful (maybe more, you decide) as the first had been, and after we had rested we made our way down the dune, back toward the beach.

The Top of the Second DuneDespite this incident, the ten day break was very nice. It was a good chance to see a different part of Brazil and make new freinds and form relationships in a new place. We flew back to Brasilia very early Thursay morning and got right back into the old grove. We went to the school that morning at nine, despite having only about three hours of sleep on the airplane. It was strange flying into Brasilia and feeling like I was coming home, but that was how I felt. And it´s good to be back here with people I know, in my home-away-from-home.