A Not So Sweet Smelling Savor...

Sunday morning led me directly where it should have, to the door of the hall in the Planalto. With Caroline and William following behind me, we had left Lobster Road with 30 minutes to get to the hall. The streets of Natal are empty on Sunday morning. Nobody is up! Most people go to church on Sunday Night, so they take the opportunity to sleep in on Sunday morning. It took less than 20 minutes to get to the hall, which was the quickest amount of time that I had ever made there in. We pulled in directly behind Lillia and Luis. After we first exited the car, Lillia instructed me that I should move to give the other neighbor more room to pull out of the driveway.

I did as she asked, and parked in some tall grass to the side of the road. We went into the hall and morning meeting commenced soon afterward. About 5 minutes into meeting I began to notice a smell. I looked around wondering which member of the church had failed to use deodorant. The closest one to me was Raimundo, but Raimundo is Mr. Hygiene himself, so that did not make sense. The rest of the people relatively close to me were women, and if it was one of them it had to be the worst female body odor I had ever smelled in my entire life. The smell continued to permeate the air throughout the remainder of meeting. Sometimes it would be stronger and other times it would be weaker. I couldn't figure it out.

After meeting I was shaking hands with everyone, and Neto came over to me and put his elbow on my shoulder. "You have poop on your shoe", he told me in his thick accent. Slightly embarrassed after seeing the brown trail my shoe had left behind, I slinked outside and casually scraped the bottom of my sneaker on the dirt road. I checked the grass near where I had parked and found a newly squished pile. I sarcastically thanked Lillia silently in my mind for the mental disruption that had been caused during that mornings service.

Caroline, William and I left after the Sunday school singing. There was no point in sticking around if we couldn't understand the language. We went back to the house to change before lunch. We had a bit of time to spare since we were meeting Lillia and Luis. I took the opportunity to blog for a bit. Caroline was feeling ill and didn't even want to go to the restaurant for lunch, but I forced her to go. We met up with Aunt Lori and Uncle Mark, Lillia, Luis, Dona Nier and Pietro shortly thereafter. Caroline and I left abruptly after another delicious Sunday lunch of meat, beans, rice, cheese and grilled pineapple. We went home and I floated in the pool on Uncle Mark's raft for a while. I got sick of keeping my finder over the hole in the seam, so I soon abandoned that plan and just went inside to take a nap.

William came home about 20 minutes later. They had stayed at the restaurant for another hour, which caused me to regret not asking William to come home with us too. Poor kid was stuck with the adults and Pietro for an extended period of time. He likely did not hear anything other than Portuguese. After I woke up from my nap I got ready for meeting. Uncle Mark had headed back to Santa Maria to preach the Gospel that evening. I packed an overnight bag, since I was sleeping at Neto's that evening, then hopped into the Gol and headed back to the Planalto. Meeting went by super slowly, as is the custom when you don't speak enough of the language to get what the speaker is saying.

After meeting I joked around with some of the kids, and went to find Dudu to give her the pictures that she had directed me to take after the distribution on Friday. Her mother thanked me for them, and now it seemed I had a friend for life in Dudu. After I refused to sing La Bamba as one of the kids played it on the guitar, Paulo and I loaded the sound equipment and instruments in the Gol to drive them the short distance to Suzete’s house. We could not have fit another thing into the car if we wanted to unless Paulo had walked. We drove back to the hall and picked up Paula and Neto who were still talking with Luis. After we had all our passengers present and accounted for, we headed to the Pastel place next to Luiz's for dinner.

We were joined shortly thereafter by 20 others. All of the young people at the hall minus Suzete and Rodrigo, who were in Santa Maria, had come out for pastels. I had a great evening with everyone. We ate, laughed, joked and allowed Neto to translate for us all. When the bill came I couldn't believe it. Every single one of us was stuffed. These pastels were huge and stuffed with whatever filling you desired. It was basically a much lighter calzone. We each had had at least one pastel and Coke and yet the cost for everything was only 60 Raies ($30 American Dollars). When is the last time you have seen 24 people stuffed full of food for a price less than $30. I don't think I ever have!

We gave some of the girls a ride home, then Neto, Paula, Chiquinho and I headed to Neto’s house. Chiquinho went to bed shortly after getting home, but Neto and I stayed up to work on creating the logo for the cooperative on the design programs that were installed on my computer. We finished the logo, stationary and mailing labels around 2:30 AM, and retired to bed for the night. I had to be up at 6:30 the next morning in order to get the car back to Ponta Negra in time for Uncle Mark to leave for the hall by 8:00. It didn't help the "falling asleep situation" that Chiquinho, whom I was sharing a room with, snores louder than my father...

Dudu Hides Behind her Napkin

Hernique's Wife, Elezabete, Gleisse and Adriana

Dedu Shows Off His New Hair Style

Paulo With a Mouthful

One End of the Very Long Table

Life on the Other Side

I Wish I Chose a Different Pastel

Mall Rats...

I wasn't anticipating good weather for Saturday, but often it can be a pleasant surprise when you receive something you don't expect. This was the case this day as well. The rain clouds that filled the sky when I awoke at around 10:00, the latest I have slept in until in almost four months, were gone by 11:00. The only ones left were fast moving cotton looking compilations of condensed evaporated water. I had planned on blogging at 11:00, but I didn't want to waste the opportunity of the perfect weather, since it can change in an instant here for the worse as well as the better.

I decided to collect my thoughts for Friday's blog while getting some sun by the pool. I made my way to the patio and spread my towel on the stone. I soaked in the rays while mentally outlining how the lengthily blog post would flow. I was still enjoying the sun after about an hour, so I went inside and got a book to read while lying out. Even though reading isn’t the most comfortable task to do while trying to obtain maximum body exposure to the sunlight, I made do and continued doing this for another two hours. At that point I felt exhausted. It was only 2:00. I had only been up for four hours, but it felt like I hadn't slept in weeks. The sun has the ability to drain the energy out of someone.

About halfway through my tanning session, Uncle Mark came out in his bathing suit to take a well deserved break. Saturday was his day of rest, and he still had to go to Santa Maria, a neighboring assembly about an hour away, to preach later that night. He got to the pool deck and noticed that his floaty had a leak. In fact, he noticed that the cheaply made material was totally flat. It hadn't taken much for some of the kids to puncture the raft one day while they were playing in the pool, but Uncle Mark was not happy. He yelled for William to get the pump, and William and Caroline both searched the house looking for it. After several minutes without locating the device, he began to yell for it some more. At this point the amount of airflow that was leaving his lungs in the direction of the children and the time spent waiting for the pump to be found could have both been used to fill an entire armada of chair-shaped floats and set them sail for Spain across the Atlantic. Needless to say, the pump was found, the float was filled and Uncle Mark enjoyed a nice relaxing day floating in the pool with his finger over the tear in the seam.

I blogged later that afternoon. Aunt Lori went shopping for some much needed groceries while William took time to study his new English/Portuguese parallel Bible that his parents had given him. Caroline kept to herself most of the day, until I told her that we would be going out that night when the parents drove to Santa Maria. They had no idea how far the other assembly was, or how long the meeting was going to be. Aunt Lori had suggested that we stay home rather than having a Portuguese preamble to the lengthy Sunday that was before us. I decided it would be good to take the kids out for the evening, so I took the keys to Uncle Mark's car for a night on the town with Caroline and William.

After the kinds and I cleaned the house we headed out the door toward Midway Mall, the largest Mall in Natal. I wanted to do some souvenir shopping and Caroline wanted to get some credit on her cell phone so she could text message her cousins and friends. We hit the food court as soon as we arrived. The kids each got a Subway sandwich, which actual looked just like the picture. Caroline has been impressed ever since she first went to the Midway Subway that they actually "fan the meat". I wandered around the food court until I found the sushi that I had been craving for so long. It was an a-la-carte sushi place, with several kinds laid out sorted by price. I tried one of each of the 15 varieties they offered and wound up paying a sum equal to $7.50 in the states. This was some of the best sushi I had ever had for a price that it would cost to get 6 pieces of California Roll back at home. Delicious!

After dinner we went for desert. There were four ice cream places to choose from. The kids decided to go for the one that seemed most American, since we were not even close to being fans of the Brazilian subspecies of ice cream. Brazilian ice cream is like a really bad mutt of a dog. If ice cream in the United States or Canada could be considered the golden retriever of frozen milk products, then the Brazilian counterpart would be more like a deformed Mexican hairless. Hollywood Ice Cream wasn't as good as the gelado place we had went to before, but it was pretty decent. We each got a medium and hit the stores as soon as we finished. The mall seemed to be laid out in sections. Clothing took up most of the second floor, electronics took up about a quarter of the first floor, shoes another quarter, drug shops another and so on. I couldn't find any souvenir shops, so as soon as I got some needed fuses, Caroline got her cell phone credit and William spent his not so hard earned Raies on a compass we were heading back for home. The entire way home William would shout our updated direction constantly from the back seat. Good to see he was putting his compass to use.

I worked on some personal projects when I got home. William helped me for a while and got bored, so he retired for the evening to watch some Dukes of Hazard. Caroline listened to music for a while, and they gladly obliged when I sent them to bed at around 10:30. Their parents got home around 11:00. Uncle Mark had wound up being the only speaker there, while a man from the Santa Maria assembly named Alial had translated the English to Portuguese. Luis and Lillia had taken many of the Planalto Christians to the meeting that night, which was a birthday celebration for the church. They had rented a bus so they could fit more than the five or ten that could have went if they had just taken Luis's and Lori's cars.

I went to bed around 11:30 that night. Uncle Mark and Aunt Lori were going back to Santa Maria in the morning so Uncle Mark could do ministry. I was going to go to the Planalto, and the kids wanted to stay with me so they could see their friends. Seeing as this wasn't a problem for me, I agreed to take them. I checked my e-mails and the weather before heading to bed. Sunday's forecast looked to be sunny and hot, which was usually the case except for my first weekend in Brazil. This forecast meant that the hall would transform into a larger scale Easy-Bake Oven. It was very hot that night, and I found it difficult to get to sleep. This was partly because of the heat and partly because there was a soccer game going on in the stadium behind our house. When I finally did drift off, I had an uninterrupted sleep. Uninterrupted if you don't count the fireworks that went off at about 1:30 AM. I don't think these people have any concept of time here in Brazil...

The Pool Looks Cool and Inviting on a Hot and Sunny Saturday

The B-I-B-L-E, Yes Thats the Book For Me...and Me...and Me...

On Thursday evening both William and Caroline were planning on going with Uncle Mark on Friday morning to scrub and paint roof tiles. However, when I opened my eyes at about 8:15 that morning, I saw William still sound asleep in bed. Mark usually leaves at around 7:30, so I knew the boy had "missed the bus" and would be here for the morning. I worked on my blog for a while, and it was around the same time that Caroline stumbled down the stairs. She had also overslept and had not been awake to go with her father. Aunt Lori and I talked a little that morning about some stuff that had to get done that day and completed before we all left in 10 days. I went about my normal morning routine, until Aunt Lori came in and asked if I wanted to go to Gilgal, the Bible bookstore.

I was in the middle of a workout at the time, and dripping with sweat. I told her I would if she went after lunch, but Caroline volunteered to go instead. I got ready for the afternoon. I planned on going with Aunt Lori for the afternoon for a change of pace. Uncle Mark returned home about 1:00 and told me what was being done at the hall that day. Luciano had finished most of the exterior painting, and was now working on the plastering inside the bathrooms. Damião was finishing the concrete work on the stairs and preparing to tile them during the next week. Uncle Mark had started building one large vertical cabinet for the kitchen, in hopes of finishing it by the end of the day. Most of the others had spent the day washing and painting roof tiles, which was the most monotonous and time consuming task of all.

After lunch, Caroline and William left with Uncle Mark and I headed off with Aunt Lori. In the back of the Gol we had 530 bibles. A shipment of 500 of them had just been picked up that day. We decided to head to the hall and pick up Neto, so we could get the clothing out of his house and begin distribution. Aunt Lori and Caroline got to work labeling the Bibles while I drove Neto and Paula the two miles to their home. As we approached their neighborhood I needed to stop to let a large bull cross the street in front of Uncle Mark's car. We turned and took the same road that the bull was roaming. He meandered in and out of several yards on Neto's street before reaching the end of the road and letting out a loud "MMMMOOOOOOOOOOOOOO".

Neto's house was small, but very clean. I sorted through a box of clothes to pick out the most appropriate clothing for the neighborhood we would be heading into. We had a huge dishwasher box full of children’s clothes and four smaller boxes, two with woman's apparel and two with men’s. After cleaning and organizing the back of the car, we loaded all the boxes, and literally following in the other Gol behind us.

We went to Inacia's neighborhood first, where we distributed a lot of clothing. Many people took multiple items and were more than happy to take the Bible as well. We loaded the clothes on the back of Lori's car, and I turned around in time to see the dishwasher box literally walking away. One of the women had asked Lori if she could have the box, and her grandson had put it over his head and walked toward the house. All you could see of the young lad were his two sandal clad feet on the ground. After giving out about half the clothes, and maybe 40 Bibles, we headed to the next stop. At this point we had only been distributing for maybe 20 minutes or so.

The next area was kind of a "back road" neighborhood in the Planalto. Many women holding babies came out first to get whatever smaller clothing we had left. Neto and I handed out the Bibles. We had a visit from a young girl from the hall named Dudu, and I put her to work sticking more labels on the front of the Bibles and slipping a tract in the pages. We were about 45 minutes into the distribution and almost out of clothes. I noticed a man at the end of the street who had received some clothes, but no Bible. I took off after him, and reached him as he turned the corner unto the main road. I handed him the Bible and turned to head back toward the crowd surrounding the two Gols.

Moments later I heard a commotion and turned around to see two little boys leading a multitude of people toward the cars. We were out of clothes and all we had were Bibles, but that is all they wanted. Before this point we may have given out 100 Bibles, but now people were coming. We gave out about 100 more at that location, and then decided to take our show on the road. Praying all the way down the street, we parked the cars near a soccer field where some young men were playing a game of soccer.

We distributed a few Bibles to passers by, and within minutes they had gone and told their friends and family about the gift they had received. People began running toward us wanting a Bible. We could not keep up with the labeling them with the stickers that had the hall information on it. Dudu and her mother, Elizabete, were labeling while Caroline and Liese stuffed them with one tract each. I passed them out as quickly as I could, but the seven of us could not keep up with the immediate demand. The soccer game abruptly ended, and all of the players came over to get the Book for themselves. A swarm three or four people deep were surrounding Lori's car. Bible's were going faster than I could have ever imagined. Empty box after empty box was thrown to the side of the car as we continued to label. stuff and give out the Bibles.

Some people would want and additional Bible for their son, husband, mother or father, and we would gladly give them one to pass on. I tried to get out of the crowd now and then to snap some pictures of the unbelievable scene that was before me. It was less than 30 minutes before the remaining 300-400 Bibles were completely gone. One man came peddling up on a bicycle huffing and puffing. He told Lori that he had ridden all the way from the other side of the Planalto after he had heard there was Bibles being given away. We didn't have anymore. Every box was empty. Lori prayed while I tore apart the cars looking for the "one that got away". Tucked away in a side compartment of Uncle Mark's car was a single blue Bible. I slapped a label on it and handed it to the elderly man. He shook my hand and smiled at us as we smiled back.

Caroline was crying over the fact that God had answered the prayer that quickly. More people began to run up to us. Then I remembered we had given Luciano two cases of Bibles, 64 in total, to take to his assembly. I got in the car and kicked it into gear. I splashed through puddles, and went over grooves until I reached the hall and asked Luciano for the Bibles. He gave them to me, and I headed back to the location we were just at. Aunt Lori had wound up telling everyone looking for a Bible to come to the hall Sunday night and they would get one. We decided to keep one case for Sunday, just in case, and Neto and I went door to door around the hall to give people the remaining case full of God's Word. We finished around 5:45. In an hour and a half we had given out a car load of clothes, and exactly 502 Bibles. I was extremely surprised, though I shouldn't have been, and greatly encouraged.

Uncle Mark let me drive his car home so I could learn the way, since I would be on my own that coming Sunday. By the time that I got home I was completely exhausted. I did some work uploading and labeling pictures, which has wound up being the most time consuming task of the blog, before getting ready for bed. William wasn't really tired and I was rather restless, so he developed the brilliant idea of letting me use him as a punching bag. He girt himself with a huge purple "reading" pillow and I took a few jabs at him. We laughed for a while before he fell asleep, then I read a little bit before calling it a night myself. There was not much planned for Saturday, so I decided not to set my alarm clock and just let my body wake up on its own...

Aunt Lori with the Gilgal Girls, the Women who Run the Bible Bookstore "Gilgal"

Aunt Lori's VW Gol is Packed With Bibles

Some Christians Working on the Hall

Luciano Looking Like an Old Man with the Plaster Dust in His Hair

A Bull Roaming Around Neto's Neighborhood

The First Crowd of People We Encountered

Aunt Lori and I Trying to Keep Up with the Group of Women

Caroline Dressing a Previously Naked Child

Caroline Giving Clothing to a Half Clothed Child

Caroline, Neto and Aunt Lori Sorting Clothes

A Cute Little Girls with Her New Skirt and Hat

Birds Eye View of Some Clothing and Bible Distribution

Dudu Putting Labels on the Bibles

More People Coming for Bibles with Smiles on their Faces

We Could Not Keep Up with the Distribution

Swarms of People Come to the Gol for Bibles

Dudu and Her Well Earned Raies

Coconut Water of Life...

Thursday's weather was supposed to be gorgeous. In fact it was supposed to be so nice that weather.com had stated there was a 0% chance of rain. Weeks before while I was at home, Trista and I had a discussion that there is always at least a 10% of rain listed on weather.com. We attributed the fact to the weathermen wanting to cover their bases in case some rouge storm hits that they had not foreseen on their radar systems. I found it extremely odd that I would see this 0% in the precipitation column for the first time in a place that had rain almost every day for a least a short period of time. William and I were on our way to the beach early looking to make the best of this joyous 0% precipitation occasion.

We distributed some tracts on our way down the hill, and once we had arrived on the beach we hit the water. There were not an overabundance of waves, but the ones that were rolling across the top of the sea were quite large. I would say a few of them were close to 12 feet which is pretty big for body surfing. We stayed down on the shore for about two hours, alternating swims in the water with some time reading time on the beach. We walked back home and went to work vacuuming the dirt of the bottom of the pool. Junior had done his job and the water was crystal clear, however the dirt that had been floating in the water had now all sunk to the bottom and needed to be extracted. I worked on blogging for a while until Aunt Lori and Caroline came home.

They had made a trip to the Bible bookstore Gilgal to check on the order of 500 Bibles that were scheduled to arrive the next day. Including this order, Aunt Lori had ordered over 2,500 Bibles during the almost three months she had been here, and had given out all but 20 of them. The remaining 20 were still on our shelves waiting for the next clothing distribution. On their way to the store they had stopped at a coconut water stand that Paul had frequented on his trip here due to his love of the beverage. They had given the young attendant there several tracts over the course of their visits. When Aunt Lori pulled her VW Gol into the small parking area, he raced over to them. He told Lori that he was very thankful she had given him the papers. He was unable to read, but he had taken them home and had his wife had read them too him. He had realized he was a sinner and needed to have Christ in his heart if he was ever going to be in Heaven. Because of a simple Gospel tract, a man was on his way to heaven. Praise God!

This was an encouragement to us all. Thousands and thousands of tracts had been given out since we arrived. Yes...we only know of one who trusted Christ because of reading one, however, we will never know how many others may have come to the same conclusion as this man. There may be none. There may be hundreds. All I know is that God used this one man to be an encouragement to us and show us that we were doing the right thing by passing out these tracts and showing people the love of Christ. This should also be an encouragement to everyone else who is reading this. You never know what effect that a single simple action may have on someone’s eternal life. A tract, a simple word, telling one person the word who passes it on unbeknownst that this is what they are doing... Even the smallest action can have the greatest eternal reward for someone else.

Uncle Mark came home from the Planalto for lunch, as usual. He had found a place that made kitchen counter tops. Much thought and discussion had gone into deciding what to do for these counters. He had been contemplating slate and concrete, but a talk he had with Luciano now had him considering granite. He had visited the granite place and learned that the whole kitchen could be done for $350 American Dollars. This job would have easily cost $3,500 just for the materials back at home. Since they mine and refine the product right here in Brazil, the cost was 1/10 what it would be in the states. William, Caroline and I went with him back to the Planalto after lunch. Uncle Mark went to work finishing the cabinets for the kitchen and making the template to bring to the counter place. Caroline and William began scrubbing and painting the roof tiles as I went around doing whatever odd jobs they had for me. I scrubbed, painted, moved large pieces of plywood from one area to another and helped get the tiles back on the roof.

After a long afternoon, everybody began winding down. Luciano had spent the day doing the final coat of exterior paint. Damião had built a beautiful handicap ramp. Raimundo had finished tiling the kitchen floor and was now working on the door frames for the kitchen and bathrooms. Neto had untiled and re-tiled the roof. Liese and Rodrigo had scrubbed and painted tiles. Everyone had worked long and hard in the hot Natal sun. Rodrigo and I played some catch at dusk while Uncle Mark finished up something for Luciano. It was the first time he had ever played, and he cheered for himself when he caught the ball for the first time.

I had not had the opportunity to play baseball that day as planned, due to the kids staying away from the hall in fear of being recruited to work. William was too tired to go off and recruit the kids, so I had just stayed and painted...even though I had promised some guy’s father that I would be playing that day. I didn't want to go alone, and appear to be luring children over to play the game. It would have been one thing had three or four kids already been with me, but it would seem rather suspicious and creepy if I had just been standing in the middle of a field with a bag of baseball equipment waiting for James Earl Jones to walk out of a cornfield.

I gave Dona Nier (pka Mama Luis) and Neto's wife Paula a ride to their homes, since Luciano had forgotten them and left them in the Planalto. It was only my second time driving down here.

It had been a while since I had driven a stick shift, and it was a baptism by fire to drive amongst the crazy Brazilian drivers. I used the common courtesy seen in the states and allowed people to cross at crosswalks. Every time I did this, I could see a look of shock on their face as if to say "is he really letting me cross". This is never seen down here. If you are in the middle of the street, they come faster, making you cross faster and get out of the way of all the drivers who apparently had somewhere to be RIGHT NOW!

We returned home at about 7:00. I ate a small dinner and just hung around for the evening. Bedtime came, and I wasn't going to complain. I was tired, cranky and covered with orange paint. I would wash that off on the morning since at this moment all I could think about was a pillow....

The Coconut Water Man

Neto and I Moving All the Plywood

Luciano at Work Painting the Outside of the Hall

Caroline Doing Some Scrubbing

Damião and Rodrigo Work on the Handicap Ramp

Everybody at Work

Uncle Mark Building a Cabinet

Neto's Having Fun

Raimundo and His Door Frames

Liese Doing Some Cleaning

Rodrigo Taking Out the Garbage

Examining a Tile Before Liftoff

Up and Away

Nice Catch Neto

I'd Like to Buy a Utility Please...

The cable guys showed up at 7:50 in the morning, which was earlier than expected! They had assessed the situation on Friday unbeknownst to us, and realized that they needed to do some preliminary work on the cable outside the house. They spent Monday morning doing this, and had told Paul before he left the day before that they would be by on Wednesday to do the installation.

Lori had left for a doctor’s appointment that morning, which left me as the best person for translation in the house. This is bad news for anyone who needs to relay an important message. They said something about a wire and a connection and some type of extension, but truth be told I didn’t know what they were talking about. I nodded, pretending to understand whatever it was they were saying. After an hour the cable was up and running and I spent another hour of my morning getting the wireless router from next door and hooking it up to this system.

Junior also came by that morning to treat the pool, which had grown a familiar shade of green over the past few days. I was blaming this discoloration on the rain and or the fact that the pool had been filled to the brim by William and Eric who had left the hose on all day on Sunday. New chemicals were needed to equalize something or other, and he was going to return later that afternoon after he had the correct supplies.

About eight minutes after the cable had been hooked up for the internet, lights in the house on Lobster Road flickered out one by one. I thought I had put too much power on one circuit when I plugged in either the modem or the router, but an unfamiliar figure on the other side of the front gate made me think we actually had a power problem. I still was the only person who could relatively speak Portuguese and English in the house so I went outside to see what they were doing. It so happens that these two gentlemen were from the power company, and that they had come to cut our power due to lack of payment.

They shut the outside power box and drove off, leaving me powerless to do anything. I told Caroline to call Aunt Lori, who was unreachable at the doctors. Uncle Mark was working on his cabinets some more in the Planalto, and he didn’t know what to do either. Inacia went to work cooking lunch on our gas stove and I settled down with a book on the couch while the kids tried to think of something to do without any TV to watch or pool to swim in.

We took freezing cold showers, and I contemplated using the last 40% of my computer battery to get up to date with my blogs, in which I was falling behind. I decided against it in case the power was off for days and I needed that 40% for something else. Aunt Lori got home and got the rundown from Inacia what the problem was with the power. Apparently Saint Adelmo next door had failed to pay his power bill, and they had shut the power off for both of the man's properties. He had run to the Pharmacy, which is apparently the location where all business is done in Brazil, to pay the bill and we were told the power would be up that afternoon.

We had a delicious lunch of chicken something or other, before Uncle Mark headed off to the cabinet supply place to get what he needed for the job he was currently doing. Aunt Lori had another appointment that afternoon, and the kids didn’t want to go with either parent on their errand. Seeing someone needed to wait for the power guy, and I was a good 8 hours behind on my blogs I decided to stay on Lobster Road and wait.

He came shortly before 2:00 and turned on the power to our house. The kids made up for lost time in front of the television, while I managed to log on to the computer since the first time the beloved cable was installed. I spent the remainder of the afternoon working on my blogs, and still was not finished by the time dinner came along. I watched Bridge to Terabithia with the kids, where I learned the important lesson that it should in fact be “free to pee”. After the movie I went to work answering a pile of work E-mails that had built up during the past few days.

William asked me to transfer some songs from my computer unto his Ipod, and we spent an hour so selecting some music that he liked, or that I thought he may like. I had given him a day planner when I had arrived here the second time and written under the “Thursday; August 23rd” tab was “Go to Beach with Alex”. I thought this was so cute. I had promised him that I would take him at some point during this week, so I planned on getting up extra early the next day to work on some things before heading to the beach for a few hours.

William was asleep by 9:00 that night, and I wasn’t feeling too good. I decided to call it a night, and slipped my laptop under the bed. It felt good to do what I needed to do in the comfort of my own bed. Now I had the opportunity to work wherever on the property I wanted seeing the router was located directly under my bed. When the morning came, I could hear the sound of Dukes of Hazard from the living room. That meant that William was up bright and early, which is exactly what happens every time he goes to bed before 10:00…

A Walk to Remember...

I learned something new about myself on Monday night. Apparently, I sit up in my sleep. The night before, I had moved my bed closer to the wall, to restrain me from falling off in the middle of the night. I woke up several times before dawn by whacking my head off of the concrete ledge when I sat up. Waking up the next morning with several small lumps and a headache would be enough to keep my air mattress away from the wall during the future. That wouldn’t be necessary since Paul and Patty’s family was leaving that day and I could move back downstairs with my little brother William for the remaining two weeks of our stay here.

I knew Tuesday was going to be an emotional day for me and I was mentally prepared for the worst. From the moment I got out of bed and took a warm shower, I immediately just wanted to get out of my present location and just go somewhere else where there wasn’t anybody. Paul and Patty’s departure made this difficult to do, seeing as I did not want to be rude and disappear on their last morning there.

Uncle Mark had gone off to the Planalto, where he spent the morning working on making some cabinets for the kitchen at the hall. Paul and Patty spent the morning packing their belongings. They left us a printer to print any photo’s we deemed necessary, and Aunt Lori and I brainstormed how we could use photos to benefit the English Class. We thought about the idea Paul had given us of taking pictures of a room, or a group of items, and labeling the item with the English word. This would give them 4X6 flashcards that showed the object and the word, and they were small enough to on hand.

Paul asked me to give him a brief Facebook tutorial, which I did right before he left. The cars were loaded, and they said their goodbye’s to Inacia. I thought that this would be a good point to leave myself, so I strapped on the backpack that I had stocked with what I may need for my day alone, said my goodbye’s to the family and started off walking down Lobster Road. With my trusty Ipod I just kept walking and spent the remainder of the morning and the early part of the afternoon just walking and thinking.

I treated myself to a 45 minute massage, which cost less than fifteen American dollars here, and then stopped by a supermarket to get a popsicle. It was at that point that I realized how far I had walked. I was about 3 and a half miles from home and still had to go back. I decided to take the bus, since the ligaments on the back of my knees were starting to hurt. I would ask the driver of every bus that came by if this bus was heading to Lobster Road and they kept saying no. Finally one driver said yes, so I climbed on and took the bumpy ride back to Ponta Negra.

The bus made one final stop, and everyone got off. I decided to follow rather than stay on the bus by myself. I then realized where I was. I was at the end of the village in Ponta Negra about two miles from our house. I looked upward to see if I could make out the silhouettes of the two huge condoplexes next to the house. I could see the brightly colored design of the top of one in the distance. This put the bearings in my mental compass into action. I passed out tracts to anyone I saw on the way home, but I was tired, grumpy and hot. I cooled myself off a bit with another popsicle stop before continuing the rest of the way home.

I collapsed on the couch just in time to see Aunt Lori, Caroline and William pull up. They had dropped everyone off at the airport earlier, and while they were there they ran into several Brazilian national athletes. At the airport they also saw Eriberto, the young man at the hall who is good at everything he does athletically. Some conversation had been made with him before the rest of them headed to lunch. Uncle Mark had returned to his cabinets in the Planalto, and after making a few stops to get some necessities for the cooperative and for our home, Lori had returned with the kids.

It was 4:00 by this time, so we went out for an hour or so before returning home. Aunt Lori told me she wanted to take me to dinner so I agreed, and quickly changed. Uncle Mark and the kids relaxed at home for the evening before retiring to bed. Meanwhile, we had a great seafood diner and just spent a few hours talking about some things that were on our minds, some ideas for distribution, Va Livre website topics and other miscellaneous items. We returned home and went to bed. It felt good to sleep on an actual mattress, in an actual room with NO actual sunlight. I had to be up relatively early to greet the cable guy that had told us he would be there before 8:00. It was time to see if these cable guys were more punctual than the ones we have in the United States…

Rain, Rain Go Away...

I had just drifted off to sleep Sunday night when the sound of a car woke me. It was loud and obnoxious and seemed to have stopped right outside of our house. I could tell from the sound of the engine that it was the old 1970s Volkswagen Beetle that resided in a driveway a few doors down. The owner had been puttering with it for a few days and we had seen it make some brief appearances before. On this night however ol’ Herbie was revving its inefficient engine. It backfired several times, and each time that I heard the loud pop, I prayed it was someone putting a bullet through the engine block of the car ending the awful noise once and for all.

Relief never came. The noise continued for at least an hour maybe more. It lightened up for a short period of time, while the owner probably took a bathroom break, before the car resumed its torturous noise. It was loud enough to make even the toughest of soldiers break down to their enemy captures, and we should all hope that North Korea and Iran do not get their hands on a beat-up VW bug or we are all in trouble. The eventual silence of the car gave way to the normal crowing of the rooster at about 3 AM. I tossed and turned on the half flat air mattress, before finally deciding to risk suffocation and sleep with a pillow over my face.

The pillow blocked the rays of sun early in the morning, so I was able to regain an hour of lost sleep. I made my way downstairs at about 8:00. Uncle Mark, Patty and Stephanie had already left to work on the hall. I started working on my blogs, posting the pictures and doing what needed to be done on my end. Every time I left the computer running to load the pictures and go do some other task that needed to be done, the internet would crash and I would lose everything I had loaded. This happened throughout the morning, and I would up having to redo what I had already done four or five times.

There is no worse feeling than having to start over after you put a lot of time into something. When someone tells you that maybe God is having you start over for a reason, the comfort and reality that you should be feeling is quickly replaced by further frustration. By 1:00, neither of the two blog posts I had been working on all morning was finished. I angrily shut my computer and headed off to the Planalto with Uncle Mark to work on the hall.

It had rained pretty hard that morning. Torrential rains which reminded me of my first few days here in Natal back in June were not what I needed to get over my anxiety and irritability. When I left for the Planalto the sun was breaking through the clouds and I was hoping for a nice afternoon. I needed a nice afternoon! Aunt Lori and Paul had spent the morning at the Bible bookstore getting Bible’s for that afternoon’s clothing distribution. William, Caroline and Eric had spent some of the morning packaging some children’s clothes and diapers to be passed out in the Planalto later on that day. Now the time had come to hit the streets with Bibles, tracts and clothes for everyone who was in dire need of the materials.

I got to work as soon as I arrived at the hall. Neto brought me to the bathroom to give me my task of sanding the concrete walls in preparation of Luciano’s plastering job. I worked an hour on that job, getting covered from head to toe with concrete dust. Caroline begged me for pictures of how filthy I was, so I agreed and lent her my camera for the afternoon. It started to rain hard outside, as I took on the next task of washing the roof tiles. Within a few minutes I was soaking wet. It was only 3:30 at this point and I still had a long way to go before I went home for the day.

I assisted the man who Patty hired in the task of re-tiling the roof. He had returned for another day’s work even though Luciano had told him that he would not be receiving any money this time and if he wanted to work for God then he was more than welcome to. So he had returned, and he worked hard even though he stopped for 20 minutes to try and sell me some prehistoric shark teeth. I found them interesting but wasn’t about to shell over 75 Raies for one. I was freezing cold, soaking wet and in a worse mood than before, but the day wasn’t over yet.

In another part of the Planalto, Aunt Lori, Paul, Patty, Steph, Caroline and Amy were giving out clothing, Bibles and tracts to people in need. Shakinjo and Neto had taken them to some needy neighborhoods to make some contacts for the hall. Hundreds of tracts were given out, as well as bags of clothing and diapers and almost 75 Bibles. 500 more Bibles were on order and set to arrive by Friday. Children who had been naked minutes before now had clothes to wear. The group watched as a man ran from a distance to where they were. Expecting him to ask for clothing first they waited for him to open his mouth. While he may have needed clothes or money, the first thing he asked for was the Bible.

The afternoon was a success on all fronts. The rain had slowed progress on the halls exterior, but work had been brought inside. Much of the kitchen floor had been tiled, and half of one bathroom had been plastered. One quarter of the auditorium roof tiles were now painted and re-hung, and Uncle Mark had finished the halls bulletin board and more shelves. Eric and William were soaking wet and playing with the hose in the street. Boys will be boys.

Monday night meant English lessons, and had it not been for the fact that I was soaking wet I would have been looking forward to teaching the Christians how to speak English. I assisted Aunt Lori’s class, and helped a few women with some vocabulary terms for common household items and places. My favorite part of the evening was trying to describe the function of the toilet so they could tell me the word in Portuguese so I could tell them how to spell and pronounce the word in English. One of the women named Liese said, "ahh, the Queen on the throne”. She then referred to Lori as the queen of the toilet, which made us all laugh. Thought I would share a little bathroom humor with you all.

After the lessons were finished we said goodnight to the students and headed home. We stopped and picked up some snack pastries for dinner and then returned to the house. I was still freezing cold. A warm shower felt good, but my relaxation came to a halt when I discovered that my bag and my bed were soaking wet from the rain. The one clean long sleeve shirt I had left was wet. Now I had to decide to go short sleeve on my goose bump covered arms or put on a damp long sleeve shirt. I decided to go damp. I gobbled down a snack and returned to my office on the patio to make another attempt at posting.

Paul and Patty got organized for their trip home the next day. Paul was still miffed that his FedEx packages hadn’t arrived yet. I managed to get one blog up on the first try, but it took four more attempts to get the same success with the second post. Finally they were finished. I was exhausted by this point, but dad was online and wanted to talk, so I spent some time with him before retreating to my damp mattress on the terrace. The worst news was that the weather forecast was equally as bleak for the next day…

William and Alison Uno Taking Tiles off the Roof for Painting

Luciano Working on the Handicap Ramp

Raimundo and Damião Tiling the Kitchen Floor

Stephanie Painting Roof Tiles

I'm Covered in Concrete Dist from Sanding

This is the Man that Ran for the Bible

Lori Puts Clothing on a Boy Who had Been Naked Minutes Before

Lori and Patty Continue with Distribution

Time to Clean Up for the Day