This Week's Happenigs and Delightful Downtown

It's so much fun to be back in the Chicago area! We've been having a blast and so far have fit so much into the past week.

We've:

- Visited with our pastor from Brazil who is temporarily in the States

- Met with the Winnetka Bible church missions council (one of our supporting churches)

- Spoken at WBC in Sunday school and the church service

- Spent the day with our friends who moved from NJ to IL while we've been in Brazil

- Gotten together with a bunch of our "Moody" friends

- Gone to Harvest Bible Chapel to the weekend service and toured around Walk in the Word.





Getting to HBC was especially meaningful to us because we really enjoy the head pastor, James McDonald's preaching ministry from Brazil. Every week that we're not traveling, we participate in our local church in Brazil, but we feel like James is also our pastor in a way since we listen to him all of the time via podcasts. It is just so meaningful to hear the Word in your heart language so we listen to him all the time. It was great to get to attend the church he pastors and see the place where the podcasts are recorded. Very cool!



Also this week we had a chance to tour around downtown Chicago, which was a blast! We stopped by Moody during the annual missions conference and got to see some of our professors and old friends, which was also fun. We just LOVE downtown Chi-town and spend the whole day just walking around and enjoying...especially before the weather gets brutal! Here's a few of our favorite moments of the day.



The John Hancock....only a few blocks from Moody.



Walking down the street...JH in the background



Chicago Sun-Times building and tours on the river

The Sears tower is now the Willis tower! We couldn't believe it! I think we'll always call it the Sears though :) You got to love being back on American soil and all of the freedoms and blessings it brings!

How cool is this? The Trump Tower! They were just starting to build it while we were in college so it was so fun to see it finished.

We just LOVE this city! Have I mentioned that already?

Yes it is great to be back! It is so sentimental as walking up and down these streets was how we spent so many cheap dates back in college. This is a view overseeing millennium park where there are tons of fun free activities going on throughout the warm months.

And who can pass up some pictures at "the bean"? It's this huge mirror sculpture in the middle of the city park where you can take all kinds of fun pictures.

Here's a picture of us reflected in the bean with the city in the background. Such a creative and interactive piece of art!
And a shot from inside the bean. There were so many people swarming around also taking pictures.

This was such a perfect day....we loved every moment!

Gorgeous view from Michigan Ave.

And the Water Tower...one of the few buildings that survived The Great Chicago Fire

And the best part of the day - deep dish pizza at Pizzano's. Great food and great memories as this is one of the places we had one of our first dates almost 7 years ago.

What a great week it has been!

But no matter where we go, our precious home in Brazil is not far from our mind! This statue in from the Sears Tower was one of the 483 times our lives, friends, and ministry came to mind this week!

Goodbye NJ, Hello IL

In between getting together with supporters and speaking at churches, we've also really enjoyed spending time with family here in NJ. One day we headed down to the shore area to visit my Aunt Diane...

Although it was raining you can still tell she has the most beautiful view from her window. Just past the pavilion is the ocean. How I miss the ocean living in central Brazil....can't wait to live on the Amazon river!

We also saw my grandparents (mom's parents)

And the highlight was getting to see dad again! Since my parents moved to Arizona we haven't had the chance to see them yet. We'll get to spend time with Mom and Dad later in the trip, but Dad came in down for a business trip and we got a sneak preview spending time with the Ciotta's again. We had scrumptious NJ pizza and then the next night had dinner with him, Grammy, Christa and some friends.

Meanwhile, it's getting to be quite cold around here for us who live in tropical Brazil! Ok it really hasn't been below 60 or so but for us? brrrr! Just wait till we're in Chicago!

Speaking of which, tomorrow we're leaving NJ for our next stop...Chi-town! We'll be staying with friends in Western Springs, IL and traveling all over the area sharing about our ministry. We're very excited to be back in our old college stomping ground :) We can't wait!

Extract Excitement!

For those of you who know me well, you know I'm a bit of a foodie. I LOVE to cook, eat, and read/watch anything about cooking or eating. I love to try out new recipes and experiment in the kitchen. I'm so thankful that I like to experiment because I have to do a lot of that to try to adapt my favorite recipes to use what we have available in Brazil. While in Brazil, I've learned to make my own version of pancake syrup - a bottle of maple extract from the States makes bottles of syrup...my recipe only uses 1 tea to make 2 cups of syrup. Naturally, I wanted to bring back more maple extract, so I was so excited to run into this very large bottle of it for cheap at an Amish market in Lancaster, PA.

I picked up the maple and also saw this bottle of pecan extract/favor. Immediately I could picture myself adapting my maple syrup recipe to making pecan flavored syrup as well! YUM! I can also use it for making muffins, cinnamon roll icing, and so much more. I could taste the possibilities and couldn't resist the great price.

As I was at the counter I began chatting with the woman running the stand, telling her how I live in Brazil and wanted to bring back some flavors that would allow me to satisfy my cravings for my favorite foods. Then....she introduced me to the real treasure!! She showed me these tiny bottles of about 30 different flavors of extract! The bottles are only 1 fl dram (.125 oz) but are super concentrated. Each DROP in the bottle is equal to a teaspoon of the more watered down, normal extracts. Each bottle has about 25 drops according to her and only cost about $1! My mind started spinning and mouth watering at the idea of easily fitting these bottles in our suitcases and whipping up tons of recipes in Brazil. I CRAVE blueberries in Brazil and this would allow me to put the flavor in muffins, crumb toppings, and much more...

I bought 3 blueberries but I thought I would expand my horizons and try out raspberry, blackberry and cherry. I can even add a drop to a pitcher of iced tea or put it in cakes!!

But wait...there's more foodie excitement/possibilities for an ex-patriot chef! Jeyson and I love flavored creamer in our coffee but it's not available in Brazil. Over time I started experimenting with a homemade version. Just throw in a blender: 1 can sweetened condensed milk, 1 1/2 cups of whole milk and blend. This is the basic recipe but then you can add any flavor to it you can dream of. 1 tea of van, 1 tea of cinnamon, 1 Tb hot chocolate mix, a big squirt of caramel syrup for ice cream, 1 tea peppermint, or even spices for pumpkin pie to make a pumpkin spice. But when I saw these:

I knew I couldn't pass them up! Yay for many bottles of homemade butterscotch, English toffee, Bavarian creme, and Eggnog flavored creamer. And why not use the fruit flavors for creamer too? A cherry + almond flavor (we have that in Brazil) = amaretto ....blueberry flavored creamer? yum!

See?? I told you I'm a foodie and I'll be one happy coffee drinker/baker/syrup maker in Brazil! I can't wait to try them out! Thank you Amish country for understanding what's necessary to cook from scratch!!

Friends, Food, Fun: Furlough

This is what it's all about - getting together with friends...

Making new ones...

Telling our stories, sharing our vision...

Reporting back to those who have been partners with us....

We're loving it! We've been staying in an apartment above my grandma's house and almost every day we drive an hour in a different direction to share with friends. It's been a little tiring but we feel so excited about what we do that we're so enthusiastic about sharing our story every chance we get. Here's Jeyson doing a little yard work at Grammy's house.
It's hard to believe our time in NJ is coming to a close in 1 1/2 weeks! We'll be going from here to the Chicago area, to Los Angelos, to Phoenix, and back to NJ for 5 days just to catch our flights home to Brazil. So...that means doing the majority of our packing up now since we'll be back here to pack up just for a few days. Packing to bring what you need for a whole term in Brazil is quite different than packing for a vacation. We're bringing a lot of strange things you wouldn't bring for a short term missions trip or vacation...including some things my parents left for us when they moved to Arizona - a sewing machine and printer/scanner. Jeyson's also bringing quite an interesting collection of tools for his mechanic work and I can't wait to get my birthday pots/pans and my new crock pot to Brazil. We will be going on 3 different flights so Jeyson is always very careful in packing our more fragile stuff....here's some pans getting ready to go in a bag (complete with shirts packed in between so they don't dent by banging together!!)

You should see the rest of the bags...it's pretty crazy! :)

The City of Sisterly Love

This weekend we enjoyed a day in downtown Philadelphia with my sister, Christa, and her boyfriend, Andy. We had a wonderful day exploring the city and spending time together! In the evening we visited one of our supporters in the city and had an incredible time together. Here's some quick pictures of our downtown fun.

Visiting the liberty bell...

Stopping in a park...

This weekend was Christa's birthday and after lunch we surprised her by pulling out some little cakes to celebrate. We even blew up some balloons and insisted that she wear a birthday hat :)

Happy birthday, Christa!! It was so fun celebrating with you!

We especially enjoyed exploring Chinatown. There was even a festival going on which really made seeing the neighborhood chaotic/super fun!

I confess that I"m posting this without Jeyson knowing :)

Cute!

Jeyson and I used to enjoy bubble teas when we were in Chinatown in Chicago. We like them so much we've even made them homemade in Brazil. We loved introducing Christa and Andy to them too...though they

didn't like them as much as we did. We were really hoping to tour the mint, but it was closed. We did get to make this little penny though!

Fun views around the city...

And this fun plaza called "Your move" It features giant pieces from all different games

Monopoly hat

Domino's

Standing on bingo pieces...

In Brazil we don't have dryers, so everyone has to iron their clothes to get the basic "line wrinkles" out of them. This monopoly iron would come in handy to get the job down quickly!!

Pictures at the famous Love sign...

It's such a cute spot that 2 wedding parties were taking pictures while we were there!

Thanks Christa and Andy for the fun day! We LOVEd....

spending time with you and seeing the city of brotherly (and sisterly!) love!