Furlough Faithfulness

Support raising and furlough are mostly a lot of fun, but there are also moments we're tempted to feel discouraged. In these moments we have to keep looking back and remembering how God has shown Himself to be our faithful provider in the past and how He's not going to let us down now! Here's one story we keep going back to that reminds us how He has provided for us the in past.

Three years ago, when we were just setting out to begin our fund raising for our first term, we were just overwhelmed! We had a seemingly impossible monthly goal to raise and we were starting with almost 0 commitments and only a few months to do it (since Jeyson was in the country on a tourist visa). On one of the first stops, I met another missionary couple who was headed overseas and also needing to raise about the same amount that we did. We spent some time chatting about the challenges, etc.

Over the next few months were were able to raise all of the support we needed at the time, and headed to Brazil. Now 3 years later we are back support raising again. We are working to raise our goal by about 20% because of our move to the Amazon where everything is a lot more expensive and because of the sad situation of the deflating value of the dollar. As we've been traveling around, we ran into the same couple again! In conversation we found out that they have spent the past three years raising support to make it to their goal and hadn't yet been able to go overseas.

We know God's timing is different for everyone and will bring this couple overseas when He has planned, but this story just blew us away, allowing us to realize just how quickly He provided just what we needed! It is so unusual that we were able to raise our first goal in just a few months - we know it was all Him working in these hearts so we could quickly get to do this:

And this:

We are so thankful for the way He provided in the past and we just keep going back to this story whenever we get overwhelmed with our current, higher goal. We have personally seen Him do great things in our life story and we're looking forward to what He's going to do next!

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!!