Jeyson, Stephanie, Elijah, & Audrey

Jeyson, Stephanie, Elijah, & Audrey

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Kodak Moments and Teeny Tiny Airports

Campbell soup - exotic and expensive?!?! It's true, here anyway! Here's us in the imports aisle at a grocery store in town. We happened to have our camera with us and I couldn't resist taking a picture to show you Campbell's soup, bbq sauce, Tabasco, and refried beans grouped together in a display of expensive, imported food. One can of the soup is about $3.50!


You can see the sign behind Jeyson advertising "Imported Products"
Continuing on with interesting pictures this week...

We passed this motorcycle that was modified for handicapped needs - notice the two back wheels since the driver cannot put his feet down to stabilize the bike at a traffic light. And, when we looked closer we found this watermelon on board!
And a shop located on the highway that makes chairs and flip flops from tires. If you click on the picture you can see the white sign says "Boi" and a phone number. "Boi" is the word for a steer, so we realized the sign is saying that the huge steer is for sale at that number!

Well, on a more serious note, there's lots going on here. This past week brought our 4-week couples Bible study book to an end. The time went so fast and it was so rewarding! The exciting news though, is that everyone enjoyed the study so much they asked us to order another book from the series to continue meeting together. While we are waiting for the next book to arrive, this week just had a fun time having a barbecue. This time the barbecue was American style with hamburgers and potato salad and everyone enjoyed it.

Also, this week coming up would be the end of my 8 week English conversation group and Bible study. However, the same thing happened with this group - everyone wants to continue! So, like the couples group, we're going to continue and start up another mini semester as soon as this one finishes. It is so encouraging to see people so interested and asking to continue on. Also, it was a huge encouragement that one student even brought up that the Bible study is her favorite part! It is neat to see God working!

Meanwhile, Jeyson has been very busy flying lately and we're exciting that he is moving forward in this process. Today he went on a navigation flight, adding to the 50 navigational hours he needs. He went with our Argentinian friend, Andres, as the copilot and I tagged along in the backseat. Here are some pictures.



Above is us passing over the large city of Goiania, an hour away by car.

This is where we landed first - it was such a tiny airport! Just a runway, bathrooms, and ...caretaker's house. When we first arrived there were 4 young kids from the family playing in the yard

and even swinging from the tire swing.


The family pets even came out to great us! Not exactly Newark airport, to say the least!


Studying the map for the next leg of the trip.


And here's the second airport we stopped in - it also was so tiny!

It was a long day making these flights, but great, necessary training for Jeyson to become more comfortable making navigational trip.


On another note, this past weekend we decided to take a little trip (by car) and spend the weekend at Jeyson's parents farm, since it has been a while since we last visit. It is such a relaxing place and full of life. One of most interesting things is trying all kinds of new fruits and seeing how others (that I already know) are grown.

Cashew nuts (above) are grown as part of a soft fruit. It is ripe when the fruit is red. Interestingly, usually the cashew nut is discarded and just the fruit is eaten here because the outer skin of the nut has some sort of toxins which burn your mouth and even skin if you touch it. Above is a pitanga, a small fruit similar in texture to a cherry but with a completely different taste. This was my first time trying it and it was great -one of my favorites now!
I had never seen a pineapple growing before and thought it was so interesting!
And some mangoes still on the tree ripening. The Braun's have several mango trees and each is FILLED with fruit. In the past they've have so many that, after giving them away to friends, making jelly, etc, the cows got to feast on the leftovers. Imagine that in the States when they usually cost over $1 each!
And while I'm at it, I guess I will also post some pictures of the new animals born at the Braun's farm. Since here the seasons are reversed, it is just becoming Spring so there is lots of new life. I didn't grow up around a farm, so for me it was such a fun experience!

Bobby the dog
And the cutest baby gosling!

And a lamb
Tomorrow (Saturday) we are headed with Asas back to the dump in Brasilia to do work along with the churches on a medical/dental/evangelistic outreach. We will be working with the teens again and would really appreciate your prayer support!








Thursday, September 18, 2008

Birthday in Brazil

This week I had another one of those "sinking in" moments where I realize "Wow, I really live in Brazil!" This week I got to celebrate my first birthday in Brazil and and what a great day it was! The day started out with my wonderful husband making me breakfast in bed - though I can't post the picture because I'm too embarrassed of how my hair looked first thing in the morning :)
Then I went to teach English at the PETI program. We are working on learning the rooms in a house so we practiced using hand motions to represent each room. Above is us doing the motion for attic.





Left to right is Tiwana, Amanda, Nubia, Ingrid, (me), Ester, Carol, and Luidmila
Then later in the evening two couples from our mission came over to play games and eat dessert.
Recently I was SO excited to discover that a local ice cream shop now has mint chocolate chip ice cream - my favorite! Many of the flavors here are different than the US so it was so exciting to find a favorite from back home.
Aside from the mint ice cream being so great, I can really say it was a terrific day knowing that although I am still adjusting to Brazil in some ways, God has blessed me with wonderful, close friends, the ability to communicate with them in Portuguese, a wonderful husband, and a "job" that I love. I really am so blessed and thank Him!

Then yesterday when all of the birthday fun was over, another exciting thing happened. I was teaching my English conversation group and this week as the Bible study we read and discussed the passage where Zacheus comes in contact with Jesus and he gives away his money. We were talking about the story and one of my questions was "What happened that Zacheus chose to give away his money?" There was a pause and then one of my students really got it for the first time. With big, light bulb-just-turned-on eyes she said "He met Jesus and that changed him!" It was so neat to see this student making steps to really understanding! We then all had a good discussion about how the heart of the Gospel message is encountering Christ and being transformed as a result. Please keep praying for our class!

Well on a different note, dry season is almost over! Brazil doesn't have diverse seasons like the States, but it does have two distinct times of the year - dry and rainy, each taking up about half of the year. When we arrived in March, rainy season was coming to an end and since then it has not rained a drop in about 5 months. As a result it is SO dry and dusty here! Then, yesterday it started....
dark clouds started looming over the city and you could hear thunder. In the afternoon it started to get quite dark! People on our street stood outside watching the coming rain - it reminded me a lot of the excitement of the first flurry of winter. In the end it didn't turn out to be a huge storm, but it marked the beginning of rainy season. Soon we are going to have a thunderstorm almost everyday!

Friday, September 12, 2008

Tidbits from the Home-front and Steve Saint

After the traumatizing event of a LARGE bug flying in our bedroom window and landing on Jeyson's head recently, we are happy to announce we have we now have a screen! Since window screens are pretty much nonexistent here, Jeyson set to work creating his own screen. We bought some wood and screen type netting and set to work. He made a frame from the wood, nailed the screen to it, and nailed the whole thing outside our bedroom window. Unfortunately, it doesn't open, but we really would have no reason to open that window anyway, and it's MUCH better than bugs!





Sadly I didn't get a good picture of the actual homemade screen, but here you can see Jeyson outside the window putting it into place.



Hard at work....





Yay! No more bugs!



Also on the home-front, recently we were so excited to finally find an alternative to tortillas! Probably like most of you, we LOVE Mexican food so we were so sad knowing that there are no tortillas (or anything Mexican) in Brazil. Some American missionaries miss Mexican food so much that they make their own tortillas, but I just didn't have patience for rolling each one out. When Johnny and Krista came down to visit they brought us Costco sized jars of taco seasonings but we still had the dilemma of what to put the fillings on. I tried making a sort of crepe, but it tasted like eating a taco and pancake at the same time! Then one day we were taking a walk and passed by a store that sells Arabic food (which is very popular here, believe it or not!). We stopped in and found this bread pictured above. It's called "sheet bread" and amazingly is VERY much like a tortilla! We were so excited! Right away we started having Mexican food on Arabic bread and it's great! It tastes 90% like a dish of genuine Tex-Mex!



Since we are now mostly using our motorcycle, it makes things like shopping for groceries a little more complicated. However, we were happy to find out that our local grocery store delivers right to your house for free if you spend over about $35 (US). It was such a great service that they even brought our groceries into our house and divided up types of groceries for us! It's funny that for the most part paper towels here are really low quality - they really can't absorb anything and fall apart as you wipe. However, the one brand that works like the US kind is a tiny bit more expensive and is called SNOB of all things! It makes me laugh every time I use them!

Above is a picture of the English conversation group this week. I taught them how to make American chocolate chip cookies and then they had to make a presentation showing how to make them as if they were on a cooking show. For a moment they were a little shy, but relaxed and we had a great time laughing and talking! Our Bible study part of the group has become more and more interesting as the students are getting more comfortable and ask great questions.

Jeyson's study spot on the second floor of the hangar.
This is where is works on preparing for his written commercial pilot's test.





You might remember from last week I mentioned about Steve Saint visiting us at Asas. Yesterday afternoon we went over to the hangar to hear him speak.



Around the hangar waiting for Steve's arrival.



Steve Saint is the son of Nate Saint, whose story you have probably heard of in the book "Jungle Pilot" or the movie "The End of the Spear". You can read a little bit about his life on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Saint It was so encouraging to hear Steve's message. Here are some pictures




It was a fairly small group so we were able to ask questions and have a more personal time of learning from him.

Here's a picture of all of the missionaries involved in being trained or training others as pilots with our mission with Steve Saint. Jeyson is in the back row next to the man in the yellow shirt.