More from Brasil!!!

It has been awhile since I have blogged, not for lack of interest or anything to say but definitely for lack of internet time and availability. So, with that said and a little block of time I will give you all some of the happenings since I last wrote.

Several of our team members have been going through a rough patch. Let me say right away that no one told us (me and Pauline) about “Culture Shock”, which is a very real thing! Some say, “well you should have know that”! Well, I for one, have only been on one other “mission” trip and that was for 10 days (2 of those days were traveling) and my friend Pauline had never been on one, yes, she had been out of the USA but only for pleasure and not for a period of time we are talking about here. So, one of our team members recently said that they did have a class about it right from the very start and she was wondering why we hadn’t remembered that class. We didn’t get here to Brasil until about 10 days after all the others arrived and they had that class without us. So, that is why we were unaware of the evil “Culture Shock”.

There was a period of time when 4 of us had to go to the emergency room for various ailments. I had a chest cold, Sidney and Andre had fevers and another one of our pastors here also had a fever. Now, these were ailments that had been going on for some time. Our team here in Brasil don’t just go to the ER for any simple reasons. ER’s here are seriously different than in the USA. Sometimes (most of the time) the wait time is about 8-10 hours. We, on the other hand, that night had God’s favor we, all 4 of us were in and out within 6 hours. Most of us ended up with IV’s and Sidney was thought to have “Dengue” fever, that is from mosquito bite, the symptoms are severe headache and high fever. Fortunately that was not the case, because it takes several days to get better and he had already been sick for 2 days with this high fever.

God is so good, He makes sure that He is with us even though at times we think He is far from us during times of illness or sadness or homesickness or “Culture Shock” situations. We, our team, have all been through it but God in His goodness and mercy seen to it that not all of us went through it at the same time but individually, so we had each other to cling too along with Him and His unfailing Word. I praise Him and thank Him for my team members and my best friend Pauline, she always puts things into perspective for me J

We have adventures as well. One of them being a trip to the Campinas Mall and I think I already wrote about that, how we got off the bus at the wrong stop only to take another bus and was made to get off that one and ended up deep in the Favella (slum) and had to walk up a mountainous hill(the locals call them hills I call them mountains)Fortunately it was early in the morning and not at night or in the dark J We were also looking for one of the team who was supposed to go with us but decided not to and sleep in instead, but because of the lack of phones and communication being what it is here we didn’t know that until later that day. We had a great day the 3 of us, all women, who ended up with loaded back packs with shoes, food, juices and many other such items.

Last night we were invited to Sidney and Eli Ruama’s house for dinner. A special time for us because we don’t get to go out much during the week and they are very busy with being the directors of the Social parents (they are the ones in charge of the boys) so, it was a pleasant time with great food and fellowship. After dinner we watched a movie and didn’t get back to our house until around 11 PM. Pictures will be posted with this note.

That is it for now, more to come soon…….