Bound for Boa Vista

This is a village called Marari in north Brazil near our mission's base in Boa Vista. About 900 Yanomami people live here....


Right now the Marari village is facing a crisis. The people plant crops, but this season the crops failed because the region has been facing the worst drought in over a decade. Although the people also gather from the forest and hunt, there is no way to gather and hunt enough for the whole village. The missionary living among the people contacted her church who eagerly agreed to send in food until the next crops are harvested a few months from now. Asas de Socorro supports this missionary with air transportation, so when she explained the need for food to be flown in, Asas anxiously agreed to help with the crisis. Here are two of the pilots bringing in a plane of basic food supplies. What a practical way to serve a people group, not to mention a powerful testimony of this missionary's love for the people as she lives with them sharing about Christ every day.

The people carrying bags of food to be fairly distributed.

Unloading the plane

It's amazing how much you can fit in a tiny plane!

This is the typical nose decoration that the Yanonami women wear

Handing out much needed supplies

A few flights of food have been brought in already, and the village, church, and Asas de Socorro desperately want the service to continue until the village can support itself again. The only problem is that the 2 Asas airplanes at the Boa Vista base need to have maintenance done before they can fly again. In order for the maintenance to be done as quickly as possible, several mechanics from the mission are headed to Boa Vista to speed up the process....including Jeyson who is on a plane, about to land in Boa Vista in about 30 minutes. He will stay for about 2 weeks to help get the planes up and running again. I will head out on Friday to join Jeyson and stay for a week. We are so excited to be a small part of this vital ministry.
Please be praying for Jeyson on this trip, me as I am home, the maintenance to be done quickly, the Yanomami people group to receive what they need physically, for them to be open to the Gospel as they see and experience God's love in a life-saving way, and the missionary to share Christ clearly so the church there would grow.

I have a bunch more pictures of the Marari village that I will post in the next few days as Jeyson is in Boa Vista. Oh, and you might remember the name Boa Vista. I have mentioned it before because it is one of the two bases where we will most likely be sent to live in the future. This trip is especially exciting because it will give us a great opportunity to see what our future ministry will look like. How appropriate that Boa Vista is Portuguese for "Good View"!

Conference, Kids, Kalungas, and a Door Jam

Today I am playing catch up from a VERY packed weekend. My friend Camila (below) asked me to be one of the leaders of a children's program for a church's missions conference here in Anapolis. Although children's ministry like this is not part of our regular ministry work, she was short handed so I agreed.
The weekend was packed! Every time there was a missions conference event for the adults during the weekend, we held an activity for the kids upstairs....Friday evening, Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening, Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon, and Sunday evening.

About 60 kids came out and we divided into different age groups - I worked with Rose leading the 5-7 year olds and we did some activities with everyone together. Most of the kids were from the church, but there was one really special group of kids that were Brazilian but come from a very different culture....

the Kalunga culture. The name Kalunga describes a people group from the state of Goias Brazil (the state that we live in) that are descendants of runaway African slaves when there was slavery in Brazil. The slaves fled to an extremely isolated and hilly region where they knew they would never be found by their masters. Although many generations have passed, (and slavery no longer exists in Brazil) their descendants still live in this very isolated area in extremely poor conditions, living off the land, far from city life.

The church that held the conference set up a mission/orphanage in the Kalunga region and a missionary couple lives and serves there. Some of the children who go to school at the mission are orphans and live there because they don't have a family. Others have family in the region, but their home is a 4 hour walk from the school, so they live at the school and visit home every few weeks. The Kalunga families are extremely poor, many don't even have electricity. They don't have cars, (although some have horses) so getting around the hilly region is quite a long and hard trek. I don't know if you used to watch the old tv series "Christy" but that's the kind of lifestyle and culture that the Kalunga reality reminded me of.

The mission does a great job taking care of the children. The children were extremely well behaved, polite, healthy, and took great care of one another. They came out to the conference for the weekend so they could get to know the church and so the church could meet them first hand.

My co-leader, Rose, spent some time in the Kalunga region doing ministry work. She said walking into the region from the nearest city was one of the longest, and most difficult hikes she could imagine. It's hard to imagine 4,000 people living in our state with such a different reality than the one we have here in Anapolis!

It was such a joy to serve this special people group this weekend and get a small glimpse into their lives and culture.

We enjoyed lots of arts and crafts, teaching about prayer,

and on Sunday we brought the kids to Asas de Socorro to show them a little about our mission (after all, it was a missions conference!) Here's us playing some games in the new hangar....

And a few of the kids (with their parents' permission) went on panoramic flights.

This one boy on the left was especially interested in mission aviation and was asking all kinds of questions. Who knows, maybe he's a future Asas de Socorro pilot?

While the flights were probably the most memorable part of the weekend for the kids, the part I will never forget was Sunday night. We had all passed our limits (both teacher and students) and were just about to let the kids head out to their parents as the last songs were playing. For a moment, Rose stepped out of the room and I was alone with 2o or so 5-7 year olds who were bouncing off the walls. After a few mintues Rose tried to open the door to come back in but it wouldn't open! For some fluke reason the door jammed itself shut with me and the kids inside! For about 15 minutes I had to try to keep the kids calm and from screaming out the windows as they went crazy!

On the other side of the door, the teachers were trying everything to get the door unjammed. Finally one of them got Jeyson out of the service knowing he had a good chance of getting me out with his mechanic skills. After a few minutes and some huge shoves, we were free. As we walked out of the church, all around I could here the students telling their parents about how were almost had to sleep in the room overnight :) haha - what a grand finale!!!

Needed: Movie Suggestions

Our ministry with the teens at our church has been going great! Last night we had a good turnout and the group has been connecting so well, which we are so excited about. One of the purposes of the group is outreach to their non-Christian friends. For the past two weeks we have been discussing the importance of sharing Christ and how our group is a great way to include friends who might be closed to the idea of church, but are open to talking about God and the Bible in an informal setting. And, next week is our first week to purposefully include non-Christian friends. We're going to have a make your own pizza and movie night. Everyone is bringing toppings for a pizza and bringing a friend. We are even bringing some teenage friends! Just the other day a family with teenage twin girls moved in and we invited them.

We are making popcorn and borrowing the church projector and we're all set...except one detail....

What movie should we watch? We want something clean (obviously!) and thought provoking, discussion opening, with a not overly direct Christian message....any thoughts? My sister recommended The Blind Side which looks very interesting and is our top choice so far. But before closing the deal, are there any other suggestions? (It doesn't have to be a new release) Any thoughts?

Food for Thought

One of my favorite parts about hearing about different countries is learning what a typical day of food is like. Although I've lived here over 2 years, just the other day I realized that I have never blogged about what a typical Brazilian eats in a typical day. Keep in mind, there are lots of other foods that are eaten on special occasions (who can forget Brazilian bbq?) and there, of course, are exceptions to the rule based on social class, but we're focusing on the typical food in a typical day.

For starters, after 2 days in Brazil you will realize that the typical Brazilian eats almost the exact same menu every single day. In fact, if you live in typical Brazilian family, you never need to wonder what's for breakfast or lunch because it's always extremely similar. This is hard to imagine for us Americans who thrive on variety! In fact I am still fascinated about the fact that Brazilians don't get bored of the same tastes, but when I've asked some friends this, they can't imagine getting bored or tired of their food routines. So...here it is! (I took these pictures of items I had around my house, so some of my things are slightly different, but I"ll explain)

Breakfast starts out with white bread, usually what we would call a Portuguese style roll. Unlike this one, usually they are really crisp on the outside and VERY airy and almost empty inside. The rolls are eaten with margarine, and on special occasions ham and cheese are put inside.

Breakfast wouldn't be complete without coffee - even for toddlers! In fact, "breakfast" in Portuguese is literally "Morning Coffee". Brazilians drink VERY strong coffee in VERY tiny cups. I don't have any of the typical coffee cups on hand but I do have a spoon that you use with these cups. Here's the size to get the idea....think espresso. Sometimes they put hot milk in too.

The other thing about Brazilian coffee (in the morning and all day) is it is EXTREMELY sweet. I mean totally, totally loaded with sugar! Think cough syrup sweet....seriously! Jeyson and I generally prefer our coffee without sugar (though we do have a major weakness for flavored creamers). Drinking coffee without sugar is unfathomable for most Brazilians. We've ordered coffee out before and requested it without sugar and the Batista actually made a face like we just requested water from the toilet :) What can I say Brazilians love coffee in their sugar!
For lunch, Brazilians always eat rice,

And beans. I had this can of beans just for the picture, but Brazilians make the beans from dry beans. They cook them in a pressure cooker and then fry them in other pot with garlic. Rice and beans are served every day...period. Even if a side dish of spaghetti is served, so are rice and beans.

Meat almost always goes along with the rice and beans. Usually it is pan fried chicken, beef, or pork, though I"ve heard in the Amazon they have a lot of fish.

On a busy day, people might just cook up chicken nuggets instead of the meat. It's funny that here it is socially acceptable to serve fried chicken nuggets to adult lunch guests...even dinosaur shaped ones :) I must confess, they're fun - it releases the inner kid.

Different veggies are served with lunch - carrots, cabbage, lettuce, beats, etc. The one different thing though, is they are almost always grated or finely chopped - think coleslaw style even for lettuce. It actually is much more practical than trying to fit a giant leaf into your mouth politely :)

Brazilians drink fresh juice every day. They take pineapple, lemons, or passion fruit, etc and throw them in their blender. Most people rarely drink iced tea or milk - unless it's chocolate milk that is! I haven't yet converted over to the juice culture. It's a lot of work to chop fruit and wash your blender each day, so fortunately they sell convenience juices for people like me. This is a bottle of very concentrated cashew juice. Just pour this bottle into 5 liters of water and you're good to go. You might be wondering how you make juice out of a nut, right? Well did you now that the cashew nut is attached to a pear sized piece of red fruit? The nuts are exported but the fruit stays here. Since so many cashews are produced for exportation, the fruit is the cheapest kind of juice to buy here! (see the picture on the bottle for a picture of the nut attached to the fruit)

Dinner is Brazil is very simple. Some people reheat lunch left overs, some have hot dogs, or a pizza, and some just have simple crackers with butter and coffee, or even a piece of cake!

Another interesting thing is that Brazilians LOVE condiments. They put ketchup, mayonnaise, etc on just about everything...even pizza!

Speaking of pizza, when you come down here for a slice, don't forget to use your knife and fork - the only socially acceptable way to eat it! In fact, Brazilians use utensils for just about every kind of food out there - fries, and even sometimes hamburgers!

So that wraps up a typical day of food in Brazil. So, what do WE eat, you might wonder? We lean towards varieties of our American favorites, made with Brazilian ingredients, and with a flare of Italian, a sprinking of Asian, and a dash of Mexican. We've just decided to make our own food culture. Speaking of which, time to get my saucey chicken, cheese, and green pepper casserole out of the oven.

Tickets!

IT'S OFFICIAL!!
Last week bought our tickets to the States for our first furlough! We will be flying in to Newark, NJ on Aug 22nd and heading back to Brazil for our second term on Jan 4th. It is so exciting to think of seeing family and friends again - not to mention Target and Thai food! We are also so happy to have a couple from our mission that is willing to house-sit for us while we're gone. Things are falling into place and hopefully by the end of this month we'll have the details worked out of when we'll be in which state etc. We can't wait to see you and tell you all about our first term in Brazil!