There is SO much to fill you in on about our time in the States so far! We arrived here 3 weeks ago and so far are having a great time being back. We've been based out of NJ and, since my parents moved to AZ, we've been staying in an apartment above my grandma's house in Edison. It's such a blessing to have a place to consider home for a little while and the kitchen and living room give us a little more privacy. It's been going great so far.
About how it feels to be back: Target, Chinese food, the ocean, automatic cars, speaking English - they're all so terrific! We still can't get over just how many options there are of EVERYTHING in the stores. Something that we might have 2 or 3 options of in Brazil (let's say cheese or mustard or notebooks for example) there seem to be 862 options here! Not even to mention how many things they have here that don't even exist in Brazil. Going to the store is overwhelming! We just look around and stare in amazement unable to process it all...it's been fun!
As soon as we got here, we drove down to Virginia to see my sister and brother-in-law. We don't pump on our gas in NJ or in Brazil so it was fun for us to have to figure it out on the way. Gas is about 1/2 the price here as compared with Brazil so that's a huge relief since since we've already driven 1,300 miles!
In Virginia we went over to Williamsburg one evening. Here's me and my sister, Danielle, who is pregnant with our very first niece! We have our first nephew "in the oven" on the other side of the family. We can't wait to meet them both!
Williamsburg was a lot of fun since the whole town is a big reenactment of civil war times.
We even saw them lighting off some canons.
We got ourselves into a little trouble while we were there :)
We also went to the beach in the outerbanks of North Carolina and went to the Wright Brothers museum/historical site.
It was really fun to see the actual place where aviation was "born"....especially since now that has so much to do with our lives! Below: the different places the plane landed during it's first flights.
Heading to the top of the hill where the plane first took off with Adam and Danielle
While we were in VA we also had the chance to share about our ministry with their church, which was an awesome opportunity. We also shared with them before we left for our first term, so it was great to be able to go back and report in about our experiences. After church we went out with the pastor and his wife as well as some other friends.
The day after we returned from VA, we went straight down to America's Keswick where we were the missionary speakers for the week at the Christian conference camp. This was really special for me since I spent so much time at Keswick growing up and this was really the place where I first felt "called" into ministry.
We met TONS of wonderful folks at Keswick and were able to share with so many people about our ministry and reconnect with many old friends. This is the gym where one of the meetings was held.
Although there was a lot of time that we were busy sharing about our ministry, we also felt like it was a wonderful time of relaxation and we got to enjoy their pool and other wonderful features!
Since we've been back from Keswick, we've settled back in at my grandma's house. Almost every day we've been getting together with friends and sharing about our ministry. Many people we are visiting with are already our partners in ministry, but we've also been able to share with some friends for the first time. Lots of exciting opportunities! I'll share more on an upcoming blog, but while we're in the States we have the goal to raise our monthly support level to meet our needs for our next term. We know all we have to do is share in every opportunity we have and that God will bring the partners He has in mind. It's a little scary but mostly exciting to see what He's going to do. In the picture below, we got a chance to go with my good childhood friend, Katie to a beautiful place in NJ for a hike.
Well, for Katie and I it was more like a walk, but Jeyson was up for a challenging hike up a very steep slope (up the hill behind him)
It's been wonderful to be back for family days, as we've missed out on all of those over the past years. It was Grammy's birthday this weekend and it was so fun to be there for once!
Ok, time for 2 confessions. Confession 1: Day to day we're feeling more tired than these pictures let on. We both recharge with alone time so until today we were really lacking alone time! Today we went down to the NJ shore where Jeyson had to bring a tool to get repaired, but it turned into a lovely day! We walked along the pier and enjoyed a relaxing lunch together at a place on this cute street. Now we're feeling revved up and ready for another full week.
Confession number 2....although we're having a blast here, we miss Brazil a little already! We're not ready to go back just yet, but our life and ministry that we love so much in Brazil is always on our minds. We're enjoying being here and a wonderful change of pace, visiting with wonderful friends, etc but we will definitely be ready to go back to Brazil by Jan 4th! We think that's a good sign though since it means we love serving there.
PS - We also had a chance to share at our sending church Calvary Bible Church this Sunday. We shared for the whole Sunday school hour and the church put it on their website. If you're interested in hearing part or all, here's a link: http://cbcaudio.homeip.net/cbc/school/ and click the second link that says our names.
Telling our stories, sharing our vision...
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!!)
Happy birthday, Christa!! It was so fun celebrating with you!
Cute!
The trail started out with this old railroad bridge..
