Trip to the South

We're so glad to have our camera cable back so we can finally post the pictures of our trip to south Brazil and of Christmas. We've had some requests to post lots of these pictures, so below are quite a few!

December Christmas dinner at Asas

Jeyson with some of his Asas friends at the dinner -Jeyson, Paulo, Andres, and Heber

A few days after the dinner, we headed on our trip. The first stop was Jeyson's parents' house since it was right on the way. We spent the night at their house and helped out a little around the farm. Early the next morning, we headed out on the first leg of our trip - to Curitiba which is 17 hours away.

We broke the trip up into two days, and stayed at a hostel in Jundiai, SP along the way. We had never stayed in a hostel before, and it turned out to be a nice place.

Here was a view from our window....not exactly 5 stars, but a nice cultural experience.

Back on the road again, we passed by São Paulo. The city itself is modern and very built up, but as we drove by the outskirts of the city it was shocking to see slums that seemed to continue on forever.

Many people come to Sao Paulo from all over Brazil with hopes of finding a good job and starting over. Unfortunately, most have difficulty and wind up living in the the slums.

The above sight was so moving - a lot full of brand new cars, neighboring a slum filled with people who are just trying to survive.

A few hours later, we finally arrived! South Brazil has a very strong European influence as so many immigrants have come from Germany, Italy, and other European countries in the last 100 years. The city is so different than where we live, it really felt like another country!

We loved the wood houses that looked like country cottages! It was so nice to also see homes without tall security walls like here in Anapolis....

and nice, paved sidewalks! Just walking down the street it was interesting to see how many people were from German backgrounds. Many still spoke German and many many people had blond hair. Jeyson fit in here in Brazil for once!

When Jeyson was about 5 years old, his family spent a year living in Curitiba. Although he was so young at the time, I was amazed at how much Jeyson could remember when he returned now as an adult. Jeyson found his old house (above) and the houses and churches of several relatives who live in the city. He even found his German preschool! In addition to the trip being a great way for me to see the south and meet many of Jeyson's relatives, it was also a fun "walk down memory lane" for Jeyson.

One of the interesting cultural experiences I had on this trip was seeing a Brazilian cemetery. I had never seen one before, and I found it to be such an interesting contrast to American style cemeteries.

No grass or similar looking tombstones. Each grave was a beautiful, above ground unique memorial to the loved one.

Here you can see a bench for visitors to visit the site.

In Curitiba, we stayed with Jeyson's uncle and aunt and spent a lot of time visiting with many of Jeyson's relatives who live in Curitiba.

Jeyson's father has 9 siblings and Jeyson's mother has 8 siblings, so there are endless relatives and many live in Curitiba. Above is a picture of Jeyson's dad's family growing up.

Since Curitiba is so close to the Atlantic Ocean, one of my hopes was to go to the beach in South America. We went with several of Jeyson's cousins and had a great time. Compared to the New Jersey shore, the water was so warm, though they all said it was cold since they are used to even warmer ocean water :)

A little fish market by the beach where you can buy that day's catch

Of course every Brazilian family get-together must involve grilling meat

and on Jeyson's mom's side, it also often includes playing this family invented board game. The object is the use a big disk to hit smaller disks into the corners of a board. The board is covered in cornmeal to make the pieces slide better. It is actually a lot of fun, and Jeyson is busy making one in his free time here at home. We'll have to see if we can convince any of our friends to give it a try.

Jeyson's uncle is very involved at his church and works with a ministry to bring the Bible to life for children in a way that encourages their creative thinking. He designs and makes 3D pieces to tell a story from the Bible. The idea is to encourage parents spending quality time with their children as they learn from God's word, rather than just put on a cartoon Christian DVD.

Here is the parable of the Sower and Soil

He also works with their church to use as many natural resources as possible so the environment will be cleaner and church costs will be lower. Above is a solar panel that heats up the church's water. The heater is made out of plastic hosing that flows through empty soda bottles.

There was also this reminder creatively shown above - Enjoy watching God's nature!

The church also has a large garden and grows food for the church's and community's needs. I had never seen a broccoli plant before....this is one kind of broccoli available here.

We also spent an afternoon walking around downtown Curitiba. Here was an outdoor Christmas market in the city.

And the main city avenue, made just for walkers.

And a shopping mall made from the city's old railroad station.

After 3 days in Curitiba, it was time to go to our next stop - Marechal Candido Rondon, a city a few hours away from Argentina and Paraguay. After an 8 hour trip, we arrived in Rondon and had a great time there getting to know even more relatives and even more of the South.

Jeyson's uncle, Milton, is the head of assembly at a factory that makes soft serve ice cream machines.

We had a fun time getting a tour and being "forced" to try both the shakes and soft ice cream the machines make. Above are Jeyson's aunt and uncle.

Who knew that the ice cream machine factory also has a collection of classic cars? We also had a tour there.

The next day, we headed to Puerto Iguazu, Argentina to spend two days with our friends Andres and Camila. Andres is from Argentina so it was so fun to have someone with us know knows the food and culture.

If you remember from previous posts, Brazilians and Argentinians love drinking a special tea called Mate. In Argentia it is such a part of the culture that there are "vending machines" of hot water for the tea. You just put in coins and put your thermos by the spout to fill it up with a liter of hot water.

In Argentia we went to a place called "The Three Frontiers". Here you can see where Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay meet. (See above and below)

Above are Guarani Indians who are native to the area

Our first day in Argentina, we visited a park that promotes the environment and Argentinean culture.

This giant "Arapuca" or reconstruction of an indian animal trap was made with massivel logs that where aprehended from illegal loggers.

Inside a shop at the park

The traditional poncho

And Argentinian hats

The nativity scene

Shooting arrows

Me and Camila relaxing in chairs made from tree trunks and roots

Then, the next day was the event we had been looking forward to most on this trip - visiting Foz do Iguacu. Foz is a huge national waterfall park, and we spent almost the whole day hiking around since there are so many waterfalls to see. It is impossible to capture how truly beautiful it was, but here are some pictures to give you an idea.

Here we are at the top of one of the most famous waterfalls in the park "The Devil's Throat" which is higher than Niagra falls. Even after a few minutes of looking, we were completely soaked by the tons and tons of water spraying back up from the fall.

It is incredible to see how close you can get to such an enormous waterfall

Walking to another area of the park, we were able to see one of the most magnificent things we have ever seen. There truly are no words to describe what it was like to look at this scene there are dozens of separated falls.

Walking farther, this is a scene looking down over yet another fall.

Wow, what an amazing wall of water!

Walking around the park, we came across people from all different countries, and all different kinds of creatures too! As you can see, they are very used to being around people!

The next day we went to Paraguay. Paraguay has some special rules that make importing things from overseas extremely cheap. As a result, many many Brazilians cross over to Paraguay to buy cheap items for personal use or to sell back in Brazil. Because there is such a huge demand, the entire city that you enter when coming into Paraguay is a HUGE outdoor market. What is for sale? EVERYTHING YOU CAN IMAGINE! Electric razors, DVDs, drills, socks, Wii, perfumes, Pringles, tents, and SO much more. Everywhere you look, there are stores, booths , people walking around selling things, cars selling things...it was crazy! There was hardly room to walk or time to think between people coming up trying to sell you something Especially before Christmas the city was chaotic! We didn't go wanting to buy anything, but was a worthwhile experience, though completely overwhelming. Since the city was so crazy, we didn't feel like it was a good idea to take out our camera to take pictures, so sadly you'll just have to imagine the scene :)

On our way back to Anapolis we spent another night in Rondon and enjoyed one last treat on the trip....the Brazilian/German speciality of fruitcake, pepperoni slices, and tea.

After that, we drove the rest of the way home and enjoyed a wonderful Christmas eve at home together and spent Christmas with Jeyson's parents. Here is a picture of our Christmas eve breakfast. It was such a wonderful trip, but it is SO wonderful to be back home!

What A Wonderful Christmas

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with friends and family. We definitely did! As you read on our last post, we enjoyed a very different Christmas season that involved a very fast tour around parts of south Brazil to visit some of Jeyson's relatives. I (Stephanie) have never really enjoyed long car rides, but it actually turned out to be a lot of fun! Each time we stopped I was able to meet more relatives, try new foods, and see new parts of this huge country we live in. One of the best parts was also being able to cross over to Argentina and Paraguay, since we stayed with relatives who live only about 2 hours away from the borders.

We made it back to Anapolis on Dec 22nd and on the 24th we drove over to Goiania to spend Christmas eve and Christmas with Jeyson's parents, sister, and brother-in-law. Here in Brazil, the big Christmas meal is actually served Christmas eve evening, traditionally at midnight! On Christmas eve we all went over to the YWAM base where Mario Jr and Lika live and enjoyed a wonderful meal with many young missionaries who were not able to travel home to be with their families. Christmas day the Braun family enjoyed a meal together at Jonas and Iria's home. In the evening we went to hear a beautiful cantata that Iria was part of at her church.

And if all of that wasn't wonderful enough, we also got to celebrate Christmas virtually with the Ciotta family using Skype. All of my immediate family met online from different states and we had a great time on an internet conference call.

Now that Christmas is over, I was so excited to come online and show you pictures of our trip and Christmas. Sadly though, we accidentally left our camera's cable in Goiania so we can't get the pictures over to our computer. Stay tuned though, and we will post pictures as soon as we go back to Goiania to visit.

While We`re Away...

I'm actually writing this post ahead of time since our plan is to take a trip during the Christmas break we get from Asas. I didn't want you to go too long without a post though, so I'm getting it all ready now while in Anapolis. On the trip we will visit some of Jeyson's relatives in south Brazil that I have never met, and cross over to Argentina to see Foz do Iguacu from that side. This trip also doubles as a little 1 year anniversary get away for us, so we hopefully we're having lots of fun as you read this.

It's Christmastime, which is one of my favorite parts of the year. I love pausing from all of the running around in life to take time to remember Christ's birth. Since we got married December 29th, this is actually our first Christmas together as a married couple, and we're still trying to figure out how our new little family will celebrate. I would love to hear a what your family does for Christmas. Do you have any special traditions or things you like to do together? Also, what do you do to keep Christ as the focus of Christmas? I would love to receive comment to these questions! Even if you have never left a comment on our blog before, please do! We'd love to get some good ideas.

I mentioned in a previous post that we were about to have our final couples study for the year. Well, we did have that last meeting, and we were very encouraged with the discussion that reflected over all that was gained from the study. Not only did people remember principles from the study, but also everyone commented that the group itself, a support network for our marriages, was invaluable. We also found this to be true. It is so refreshing to have a safe place to be transparent about the joys and struggles of marriage. We hope to continue meeting together in the new year.

Left to Right - Cininha and Paulo, me and Jeyson, Camila (her husband, Andres, is taking the photo), Emersson and Otinaracy, and Heber and Suzie (who just finished all of their training in Anapolis and are moving to the Amazon in a few weeks).

By the way, here is a little lettuce update. Do you remember a while ago I told you about the snail I found in my lettuce? Well, a snail was tiny compared to this millipede I found the other day! I can't believe it was in our fridge for a whole day before I washed the lettuce! There's nothing like lettuce straight from the garden!

Well, we can't wait to catch up again when we get back from our trip. Don't forget to leave your comment about your holiday traditions....we can't wait to hear all about them and maybe even adopt some :)

Cookie Connection

Thank you so much for praying for us as we brought Christmas cookies to out neighbors. Just to recap for those of you who may have missed our last blog: In the new year we will be beginning an evangelistic small group in our home as a way to share the Gospel with our neighbors. Before the time comes to invite everyone, we thought it would be good to make contact again with some neighbors we haven't seen in a while and others we have never met. So, since Christmas is right around the corner we decided bringing Christmas cookies would be perfect.



This weekend I (Stephanie) set to work baking. I made chocolate chip cookies, chocolate crinkles, Mexican wedding cookies, and gingerbread men. Since cookies are almost completely unheard of here in Brazil, I knew anything I made would be unique and memorable. We put the cookies on little plates and wrapped them up.

After writing a little note on each one,

(and posing for a quick picture) we set out.

Although we were a tiny bit nervous at first, at each house we more so warmly received! People were so touched that we had thought of them and very interested in talking. Since we had many gifts to give out, we weren't able to stay long at any one house but almost every family wanted to invite us in. Several even asked us to come back to visit again.

One of the funniest parts was the reaction our neighbors had to the gingerbread man cookies. Since cookies are not something found in Brazil, of course cookie cutters are not either. (I brought a cookie cutter from the States.) So when our neighbors saw these "doll shaped cookies", as they called them, they were so impressed that I had made the cookies into such a cute shape. They thought it was SO original :) They also remembered seeing the "doll cookie" in the movie Shrek....I never would have thought of that connection!

We are very encouraged about the connection we were able to make with our neighbors and are praying that they will be interested in our Bible study group when it comes time to invite them.

Cookies, Stuffing, Weddings, and Wii

I'm back in Brazil after my wonderfully refreshing trip to the States for my sister's wedding. I was so happy to see Jeyson again, who has been hard at work while I've been away. Fortunately though, I was able to bring him some of his favorite treats from the States...which I may just have to enjoy along with him :) Since recently I have written more about what is going on with me, in an upcoming blog I plan to zero in a little more on his work.



Well I do have a bunch of fun pictures to post from my time with my family, but first let me tell you some other exciting news. You might remember from previous posts about how we are working with our church to receive training on beginning an evangelistic small group in our neighborhood. The training we receive each week is participating in a small group where we learn about being leaders of our own group. So far we have had many discussions and even one week we had got to lead the group. Yesterday though, each couple was encouraged to invite a friend outside the church to participate with us as a larger small group. I decided to invite my friend and English student who has been very interested in the Bible studies we do in my English conversation group. Since I just returned home Tuesday night, I wasn't even able to call her until Wednesday, the day of the event. I called her, fully expecting her to say no due to the short notice or lack of interest, but to my pleasant surprise she said yes and decided to even bring her daughter. The leader of our training, Jailson, lead a a study based on a parable and we had a group discussion about values. We were encouraged to see that even all of the guests participated in a very engaging discussion and it was a very worthwhile time! I told Nina how in the coming year we will begin a study at our own house, and I hope she decides to come!



Speaking of the study at our house, since this will be an outreach to our neighbors, we decided that we want to try to reach out to all of our neighbors again before inviting them in the new year. So, since cookies are not only not a Christmas tradition here, but almost unheard of, we decided to bring our neighbors each a plate of cookies, reintroduce ourselves to those we have not built a relationship with, and give them something different and memorable. So, this weekend I plan to get baking and we will deliver the cookies soon after. Please pray for us as we make these contacts! We would love to be able to build a connection so they will come to our small group and hear the Gospel. I will post an update on how it goes!



With that said, now on to the fun pictures from my trip.

My new brother-in-law, Jeremy, is an air force pilot....a love for airplanes seems to run in the family! While we were in Charlston for the wedding we got to take a tour of the base and the GIANT C-17s that he flies.

Look at the size of these planes! Several of our mission's planes could fit inside of these.

There were so many of them, too.

The inside view

Me, my dad, and brother-in-law, Adam on the seats along the sides of the plane.

Adam and my sister, Danielle, in control of the plane :)
My sister, Christa, my dad, and my grandmother under the plane's wing.

Me with my grandmother

Speaking of my grandmother, one of the most amusing moments of the trip was going to a Mexican restaurant with both sides of the family. Rather than getting tacos, my grandmother thought she might get something light and fresh instead. She asked the waitress if she could order a bowl of fresh fruit. When the waitress said there as none available, my grandmother paused for a second, and said that since fruit wasn't an option, instead she would order a bowl of fried ice cream! I was impressed by her letting go and having a good time, and hope to be the same way when I'm her age....and still in good health like her!

Wedding day finally arrived. Here is a picture in the salon with Jamie the morning of the wedding.

The wedding was at this beautiful gazebo in the park. It was a small wedding, with only about 40 people and it was just perfect, even though the weather was rather chilly! (Especially for me who has been living in the tropics :)

A pre-wedding shot. Left to Right - Adam, my grandmother, my mom, my other grandmother, my sister Danielle, and my sister Christa.

The beautiful bride and her new husband.

My parents with Jamie at the reception

I was so glad the wedding was close enough to Thanksgiving that I was able to stay for the holiday. We headed back to NJ and enjoyed Thanksgiving with some relatives who were not able to come for the wedding.

My grandfather also celebrated his birthday.

My uncle somehow got stuck sitting in the corner :)

My sister, Christa, and her boyfriend, Andy

After dinner we played some exciting rounds of Wii bowling. Here's my grandmother bowling - she's an expert and beat the whole family!

And even a Wii Guitar Hero rock band....we laughed SO hard!

I can't tell you how fun, refreshing, and relaxing this trip was. Some of the best parts of being home were seeing my family (of course!), sharing about our ministry in my home church, being at my sister’s wedding, enjoying convinces such as steamy hot showers, and eating many of my favorite American foods (especially around Thanksgiving!).
However, being away also gave me the opportunity for a fresh perspective on our ministry and life in Brazil. It helped me to see that this is definitely where God wants us serving Him now. Sometimes while living overseas it is easy to miss home (meaning the States) but going there helped me really see that Brazil is home. My trip also helped me to see that God has been so faithful to provide for every one of our needs. And it has helped me to see how important it is to build relationships to bring others closer to knowing the Lord - and I came back so glad to be doing that full-time, both directly and indirectly.
Visiting my parents, setting up the Christmas tree with them, passing turkey around the table, and understanding absolutely every word spoken was so refreshing! I’m so glad I went to the States and now I’m so glad to be back in Brazil too.