Cafe Club is Growing!

This has been a crazy last few days, but we've made it though and I now finally have a few minutes to blog and catch up with you.

Friday was our latest "Cafe Club" at our church....a new ministry that we are part of leading. Cafe Club is a fun, hang out environment for teens and adults to come to have fun, practice English, build relationships with believers, and hear a short message about the Lord. It is a relaxed, informal cafe environment with colored lights, food, games, music, video games, conversation, etc. The first time about 40 people came and this time about 70 came! It is growing quickly and we're very excited! Finally this week I remembered my camera so below are some pictures:
This shot gives you a good idea of what the space looked like

The band did a great job leading the group in some English praise songs...a lot of them were by DC Talk, which brought me back to my early teen days. It's amazing how the lyrics somehow stay in the back of your mind over many years :)

Clapping and singing along with the music

We had a "Mini Subway" bar and an ice cream sundae bar. One of my students, Nina, came to the event and brought along her two children (10 and 12 years old), teenage nephew and his girlfriend. Nina came last time and liked it so much that she even volunteered to make and bring items for the sandwiches. It was great to have her not only participate, but bring others and get involved!
Jeyson shared a short message in English about the wise man who built his house on the rock. He did a terrific job and several participants told us afterwards that they were very excited to have understood almost everything he said in English. We were glad to know the very practical and evangelistic message got through!

Here's a shot that's a little closer up.

Most of the above pictures have been of people's backs, so I thought I would include the next few pictures that I took of people sitting at tables. To us, each face is so special because it represents an actual person that we are here to serve...not just the impersonal "Brazil" that we often say we are ministering to.

Above is the table I sat at. You may recognize some faces since they are people I already had relationships with...my students. Second to left is Nina, and on the right is Angelina - these to are my students. The others are part of the group that Nina brought.

We were also really happy to have several people come who are connected with Asas (pictured above along with some people they brought with them)


And below are a few other tables....

Above - While most people who came were young adults, we had participants of all ages - including the president of our mission (left) and a couple he was chatting with who also came out to practice English.

Friday night, after a long clean up at the church, we collapsed into bed exhausted and spent Saturday recovering.

Then Sunday we had a very special mother's day with Jeyson's parents, Iria and Jonas. They came to our house and we enjoyed a relaxing afternoon and Italian themed lunch. The above picture is of us enjoying appetizers, which were a funny blend of our heritages - antipasto with Brazilian style tea (mate), that you can see Jonas taking his turn drinking. It's a lot of fun to see how Jeyson and I have created a new mini culture for the two of us that includes the best of various worlds :)

Sunday afternoon (after calling my mom to wish her a wonderful day) I headed back to Goiania with Jonas and Iria so I could spend Monday in downtown Goiania with Iria transferring my US driver's license to a Brazilian driver's licence. (Now that I'm far enough in my visa process that it was time to do this so I can drive here). Unfortunately, this process can only be done in Goiania, so Iria was so kind to offer to help me get this done. Meanwhile, Jeyson stayed behind in Anapolis to continue with normal life.

I could write a whole blog about my experience Monday at the Brazilian "DMV". WOW!!! I had no idea what bureaucracy was before! We were at the DMV by 8:30 Monday morning ready with all of my documents, figuring it couldn't be THAT hard to transfer a valid driver's license from the US to Brazil. I was SO wrong! We were sent from one window to the next, to the Federal Police (across the city) to get a special paper, to another line, to talk to another person who happened to be on a 2 hour lunch break. We had to make 2 deposits into the federal bank (which meant going there in person) but unfortunately we were not allowed to pay them both at the same time. We had to pay once, return to the DMV in order for them to print out the second "bill" and go back to the bank to pay again. Then, I had to get a psychological test across town by a designated psychologist. This was a $30 exam that last almost 2 hours and involved everything from drawing zig zag lines while blindfolded, to an interview about my family!!! By then it was 5:30 and I still had 3 steps to go in the process, so I wound up sleeping over another night to tackle it again first thing Tuesday morning. The next day we were at the DMV's offical doctor's office by 8:30 for an exam....another $30 later we went back to the DMV with a slip of approval. Finally by 10ish I had completed everything and after a total of 12 hours, 8 different locations we were sent to (not including ones we had to return to many times), and $180 I was given the green light (ha ha :) that I could get my license transferred. Yay!!! I was SO thankful for God's provision in a very discouraging situation. I took the bus back to Anapolis and Jeyson picked me up at the station. I am so thankful to be home (which is very clean and included a beautiful bouquet of flower, thanks to my wonderful husband) and I am SO thankful for my mother-in-law who put up with me and the process for so long. She's so helpful and even willing to go back and pick up my license which will be ready in a minimum of 5 business days (might I add). Thank you so much, Iria! And to all of you who have to go to the DMV in the USA....be thankful for how wonderful, efficient, and convenient it is in comparison! Well it's off to normal life now and catching up with many things to do this week.

If you think of it, we would really appreciate prayer for Cafe Club that it would continue to grow and that many people would come to know the Lord through it.