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.