New Years

Happy Belated New Years!

As you can imagine, New Years is celebrated a little differently here in Brazil.  New Years is actually more anticipated and much more celebrated than Christmas.  

While a majority of Brazilians celebrate New Years on the beach, watching fireworks and jumping over 7 waves for good luck, we stayed in the country with about 45 youth from church.  

New Years Eve started with a lot of cooking.  There were probably 10 people in the kitchen from 2 or 3 pm until midnight.  Everyone else just rested, hung out in the pool, and helped cut vegetables when they requested help.  

At 11pm we had a little devotional.  At midnight, we shot off fireworks, everyone hugged and said happy new years.  Then we had a secret santa with chocolate and then we all ate dinner!

Look at all that food! It was delicious!

Then we all stayed up for a few more hours and some people even stayed up until the sun came up.

You may have noticed all the white? It is traditional to wear the color of what you hope your new year will be filled with.  White represents peace and is the most traditional.  

Você é Linda!!

For the months of October and November our normal Wednesday night classes took a break.  Annika and I and our friends Gil and Edivane started using the book Redefining Beautiful by Jenna Lucado (Você é Linda is the title in Portuguese which literally means "You are beautiful") with the middle school girls, and Alisha, along with Sandra and Natalia started using Every Young Woman's Battle by Stephen Arterbum and Shannon Ethridge with the high school girls in our new Wednesday night series.  We had large groups of very interested learners who were excited to be talking about inner beauty and sexuality.  As we continued the weeks lessons, I heard a few different stories about girls that were more willing to open up to their families about their lives and their own walks with God.

The middle school girls at one of our Wednesday night classes.

 The high school girls at one of their classes.

With the middle-schoolers, we practiced a special way of holding hands during the prayers that they loved.

At the end of the class, we had a big party where all of the girls and their moms came together for a celebration, prayer and snack time.  The girls loved it and it was a good time for all of us to be together as a group.  Annika made some beautiful "letters from God" for all of the middle-schoolers to take home as a reminder of the great love and promises He's made to them.

Valeska showing off her "letter from God"

Capoeira

One day I was walking through the city and came across this in the middle of a park area.  It's called capoeira and is a very traditional Brazilian type of martial art that focuses on dance and music.  Pretty neat.

And here's a picture of our very own Alisha practicing capoeira the first time she came to Brazil almost 3 years ago.

A Smith Family Visit

My dad and grandma were here for 6 days last week.  Arriving on Thanksgiving day.  I decided to take them to paradise for a day or two.  We relaxed on the beach, drank coconut water, tried to watch the sunrise (it comes up way earlier than I thought), held a sea urchin, and even got to walk out on some reefs and found one natural pool that is shaped like Brazil.  

The sunrise that was still beautiful even though we missed it.

Me holding the sea urchin.  It tickled a lot.

Grandma, Annika and I at dinner. 

Grandma made a friend at Derby and even taught her a word in English-- "hug". 

I got to introduce them to one of the ladies, Riso, who donated her time when we first arrived to teach us Portuguese and has continued to be an awesome friend. 

We had an amazing lunch with the ministers and deacons in the church in São Lourenço and their families. A fun afternoon had by all.  Including coconut water, fresh fruit juice, yummy food, and lots of translating.  

We even got to see a few museums and get to know the culture a little better.

Thanksgiving: Brazilian Style

We all knew that being in Brazil for Thanksgiving was going to be a little bit weird.  I mean, for one thing Thanksgiving is during the fall...not the spring.  For another, Thanksgiving is all about Pilgrims and Indians.  I don't even know the Portuguese word for 'pilgrims' (Annika does, and has been great about sharing the true Thanksgiving story)...it's just not one of those words that people use everyday.  Anyway, many, many months ago an awesome missionary family invited us to spend Thanskgiving at their house.  We eagerly accepted.  A little about their family: Dennis, an American, married Germana, a Brazilian, and they have two beautiful half Brazilian/ half American daughters, Paulina and Victoria.  However, they all joke that Germana is the most American one in the family when in comes to Thanksgiving.  She was so excited that we all got to spend the day together.

We started planning the menu and set a day on our calendars.  We were even going to invite my dad and grandma who were going to be visiting me and could bring us some of those coveted "Thanksgiving ingredients" that don't exist here in Brazil.  However, plans didn't work out quite that well, and we ended up having the dinner before my dad and grandma arrived.  So, on Tuesday morning, we gathered in Germana's kitchen to try our hand at our planned Thanksgiving foods.  While we didn't have all of the ingredients to make our traditional thanksgiving foods, we did pretty good and even added in some foods that just reminded us of home.  We had a feast of delicious food as we brought both American and Brazilian together to give thanks for what God has provided for us (too much of a stretch trying to connect it back to the original Indians and Pilgrims?).  

Annika made a delicious corn casserole.

Alisha made dressing and I made fried okra.

Annika created a beautiful fall table setting.  Doesn't it just make you want to sit down and eat!

And we all sat down to enjoy or Thanksgiving meal.  We even invited Germana's mom and neice to join or celebration. 

Our menu consisted of chicken, gravy, dressing, biscuits  fried okra, mashed potatoes, corn casserole, salad and passion fruit juice.  With strawberry cheesecake and apple cobbler with cinnamon rolls on top for dessert.  

Yumm!

Jabuticaba

Anybody ever seen a fruit that grows on the trunk of the tree?!

Now you have.  It's called Jabuticaba.  It's a sweet, gooey fruit that takes over the trunk of the tree.  You break the skin, eat the sweet, gooey inside and spit the seed out.  The darker and bigger the fruit the sweeter it is.  Those green ones aren't ready yet and are still pretty bitter tasting. 

Wonderful People

 We went to our first Brazilian soccer game, the national team was playing against China. They won 8-0! It was a huge stadium filled with energetic fans and waves of yellow and green. Here we are with our friends Camila, Diogo and Nicole.

One Wednesday night we had a huge group, we talked about Daniel and the Lion's Den, made these bookmarks on which we wrote phrases to help us remember to trust in God

 We helped our friend Riso teach an English class for adults.  Some of them were shy but they also asked us lots of questions and we ending with singing God is so Good.   Afterwards one of her students took us quickly by several different beaches

 We went out to sushi with some of our friends from Portuguese class, we had a mix of Japanese, Australian, French, Colombian and Brazilian friends all speaking Portuguese. 

We had our new neighbors, the three couples from church that live in the same apartment complex, plus a few other friends over for a big mexican dinner. One batch of our enchiladas was too spicy for some of them.  It was a lively night of community and laughter. We're thankful for these friends, they've been helpful with getting us set up in our new place.