A lot’s been going on around here, so I thought I’d share a little!

We are in the countdown to the end of language school!!  We have 5 weeks to go, and boy are we counting down!!  I was thinking yesterday about the amount of hours we spend in language study and I realized it is the same amount of hours as a full time college student.  Then I thought about how ready I am to be at home with my boys again!

Nathaniel and Jackson started 4th and 2nd grade yesterday. They are studying with one of our colleagues, Carol (they studied with her last year) for about 5 weeks until I graduate. Then…I become a homeschooling mom.  Those are not words I ever really thought I’d hear myself say (or see myself type), but I am really looking forward to the challenge.  Owen started kindergarten with Julia yesterday.  This morning he told me that he can pour his own milk on his cereal now, because he’s older. He’s pretty excited about this growing up thing.  Me, not so much

After viewing more houses online than I can count, and visiting over 25, we finally found a house to rent in Gravataí (the suburb where we plan to work)!!  It was definitely a challenge to find something within our price range that wasn’t falling apart or way too small for our family.  But, as He always does, God provided!! I will post some pictures once we get moved and settled. We have quite a bit of paperwork to do, plus we have to outfit the kitchen ourselves (countertops, cupboards, appliances-which is totally normal down here), get our stuff out of storage, clean this house, etc.  We have quite a bit to get done(with school on top of it all)so we are hoping to move sometime next month, preferably after we graduate.

We have a group from Crossway Community Church in Altoona, Iowa here right now. They are doing a missions trip to the church in the Rincão(the name of the neighborhood) in Gravataí where we plan to be working.  They have been a great encouragement to us and definitely to Pastor Geferson and his wife Márcia. I will try and post some pictures next week after they leave…really, I will

So, for now…Até mais!!! (Until later!)

I am fully aware of my neglect of this blog.  My dear sister-in-law solidified it for me today in an email when talking about my blog she said, “Um, it’s time to update it.”  So Christi, here I am updating it!

There are soooo many things that have happened since I last wrote on this space. Lucas’s parents came to visit…AWESOME, we went to Florianopolis, aka the Hawaii of South America…AWESOME, Julia got her gall bladder out, and we have continued to rob our minds of any space left in them by filling them with more and more and more portuguese…oh so awesome.

No, really though, we seemed to hit a wall, which we were told we would, around the 6 month mark of being here.  I have caught myself thinking now and then, “Ok, this missions trip has been a blast. It is time to go home yet?”  There have been points along this 6 month journey when it has felt like we are on the missions trip that never ends, and its not always a fun missions trip!  But, God is still good in the midst of our doubt. He always reminds us that He brought us here. He tends to remind us on the weekends when we are with our small group or at church in the Rincão.  We have a purpose in being here, we just need to learn the language to do it!!

The highlight of the last couple of weeks was this past weekend. Our small group wanted to meet at our house. Seeing as how most of them don’t have cars, the Kombi served as a bus!  I made homemade american style pizza and Lucas shared the devotional(which went great!).  It was definitely a great reminder that we aren’t just here to be students again, but we are here to serve the brazilians! It was an awesome night.

Julia had her gall bladder out last week. We had a bit of a scare building up to it, though.  She was very sick and in a lot of pain and we didn’t know why!  After a 9 hour day at the hospital, it was confirmed she had 30 or more gall stones.  So, a week and a half later, out the gall bladder came!  Everything went super smooth and she is recovering great!

The same day as Julia’s surgery, Nathaniel and Jackson’s teacher, Carol, had surgery in her esophagus.  Her surgery also went great and she is recovering well.  As a result, last week I got a taste of what it will be like to homeschool the boys (although Carol had the lesson plans laid out for me).  It was a little crazy with my own schoolwork and classes in the midst of it, but, all in all, I really enjoyed it!  I’m not sure the boys did though…:-)  What really matters is that we survived and the boys resume class at school with Carol today!

It was such a blessing to have Lucas’s parents visit a few weeks ago!  We had a great time just hanging out and touring things around here. It was hard to see them go.  But, another blessing is right around the corner, my mom comes next week!  We are really looking forward to having grandma here!

There is a quick recap of the happenings around here in the last month.  I know I’ve said this before, but I’m going to try harder to write on this thing, Christi, I promise!!!

So, I think I’m officially the worst blogger ever. But, I’m going to try harder now-blog more often with smaller entries…I promise??

We have gone back to school after a 7 week summer break. At the beginning of the break, I was like, “7 weeks! I don’t want to miss school for 7 weeks!”. The week before we returned to school I was like, “7 weeks!! I don’t want to go back to school after 7 weeks!!”. It was so nice to have a break from studying and just be a mom and wife. We had a great break. We traveled the area a little, visited the beach a few times, even had a group come down from one of our supporting churches. It was really great to have visitors.

Well, we have completed 2 weeks since we returned. I think we’re adjusting well to jumping back in. Yesterday, I gave my first devotional in portuguese for class. It is certainly a different experience giving a devotional in a language that I speak like a preschooler. Really what it consisted of was thinking in english in words I could translate into portuguese and writing them on paper. It was more of a 3 minute testimony about a passage that is dear to my heart than it was a devotional. I actually thought it was way too fluffy and it seriously annoyed me, but it was as far as my current portuguese would take me! Then the actual presentation itself was simply reading the written out devotional in portuguese. I’m not sure how I did, but it was kinda cool to talk about the Lord in a different language! Lucas gives his this coming Friday…

We are settling into a church, which is great. It is “Comunidade Crista” in the Rincão bairro. (A bairro is like a village or neighborhood in cities. Cities here are all broken up into bairros.) We love it. We love the people. We love the pastor and family. The first time we visited in November we really felt like it was where we belonged. I’m sure I’ll share more about it in blogs to come.

If you would like to see a video of highlights of Crossway Community Church’s visit here, you can go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX3_G6loaZA .