America the Beautiful!

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.

Base Basics

Here's some quick shots of our mission's base in Manaus. It's located right on the edge of an inlet of the Amazon river. Since our mission works with missionary aviation, I'm not sure if I ever mentioned on the blog before that our mission also has a boat. This boat is taken to some of the thousands of communities along the river to do clinics. The doctors, dentists, and others who go on the trip sleep in hammocks as they float down the river.

The "campus" of the base is a few acres....

and the biggest structure is the hangar/offices.

And right from the hangar, you can look back and see these 2 houses. While we were in Manaus we helped our friends Andres and Camila get settled into their new home - the blue house. There's still a lot of decisions pending, but if we DO wind in Manaus as our next base, we MAY get to live in the green house if the mission doesn't have any other plans for it.

The base is such a peaceful place. It's hot and humid like the rest of the city, but it's calm and quiet there, in great contrast to the hectic downtown! For a Jersey girl like me, I LOVED being on the edge of the water! You can see it in the background behind the planes.

Here's a simple little house where one of the caretakers and his family live. They were very nice and passionate about reaching the others in the area with the Gospel.

Jeyson really enjoyed the days that he was able to work in the hangar.

The hangar is right on the water, which is especially great considering that we have float planes - the runway runs all throughout the Amazon :) Speaking of the Amazon, it's incredible to know that they're an estimated 17,000 communities in the Amazon without the presence of the Gospel!

This plane is being worked on in Manaus and is going to be sent to one of our mission's other bases, Santaran. There, some really exciting things are going on with church planting ministries. According to a missionary serving there, a mission called "Missao Paz" (a Brazilian mission) has planted churches in over 500 isolated communities in the region!!

These are some of the cuties that live at the base - I fell in love with all 4 of them and the base! Who knows, maybe soon we'll be updating our blog with photos of our new lives and ministry there.

A look around Manaus

We're in the States now and soaking it all in! However, we didn't want to skip over posting about our incredible trip to Manaus. The 10 days we spent there were some of the most adventurous and challenging (yet very exciting and inspiring) that we've had since we arrived in Brazil. In this post I'm going to show some pictures from around the city, and then I'm going to do another post on the ministry at our mission's base there.

A view of the Amazon river from a port
A meat market

A view from the market. Although there are cars and roads in the city, many river people get to the market places by boat on the river. Manaus is a huge, busy (and not so clean) city with TONS going on! There's a ton of variety (for Brazil) and every nook and cranny is packed with shops, restaurants, houses....it's really an overwhelming place!

A man sleeping under the bridge

Crowded, busy streets

Local vegetables brought downtown in wheelbarrows and sold all around

You have to watch your wallet carefully as it's such a busy city....and apparently your toilet paper too! This was a funny thing we saw in a store bathroom :)

Men gather around to watch a game of checkers in the park. If you look closely, you'll see that the checkers pieces are actually soda bottle tops.

At your local supermarket, you can pick up fresh piranhas for dinner

What a different world! More pictures and posts to come soon!

Hello from Manaus!

We got here yesterday safe and sound. We're doing well and happy to be here, but we're still trying to adjust to the overpowering heat and humidity.....it feels just like the bathroom after a hot shower!!! You can see where we are on the map below - towards the top left of the map. Our city, Anapolis, is near Brasilia, so you can see how far we are!



Manaus is a huge city in the middle of the Amazon (1.7 million) and you can see from the satellite shot that we're literally in the middle of nowhere! There are 2 rivers that form the Amazon river - the dark colored one you see is the "Black River" and the yellow colored one is the "Solimoes River". They meet together right where Manaus is located - you can see that Manaus is that big white blob where the rivers meet. From there, the mixed rivers are called the Amazon.



Today we explored around a little and here are two quick shots. Jeyson at the market checking out what's available from the local farmers.

Stopping for a quick local specialty - an"acai" smoothie. Acai is a food you may have now heard about in the States as it is gaining popularity because of it's health benefits. It is a nut that comes from Brazil and has a very unique taste. We think it tastes a tiny bit like really delicious dirt....I know....we're weird, but we love it!!

We have lots more pictures that we can't wait to show you, but that's all for today.

Baking Blurb

I LOVE fresh Italian bread with my pasta....really with any meal, or even by itself. What Italian doesn't?
Sadly, here in Brazil, Italian bread as I know and love it doesn't exist. The bread here is crusty on the outside and empty on the inside. It's yummy, but not the same to me! So, about a year ago I put bread on my list of things that I wanted to learn to make myself....right next to a NY style pizza, tortillas, bagels, and English muffins. Are you noticing a carb trend? There are other items too though, including homemade cookie dough ice cream, which I haven't gotten to yet! So about a year ago set out to learn to make the best Italian loaf out there, and it's been a lot of fun and really a lot easier than I thought! I never thought I'd get into this, but desperate cravings call for desperate cooking! Many-a-loaf later I got it down! This first one is the classic Italian loaf, with a hint of a taste of olive oil.

And I've played around with my faithful recipe and made great variations! Rye, whole wheat, 3 seeds, cinnamon raisin,

I was even asked to make a bunch of loaves and spreads for our friends' wedding! It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun!

If you've never given baking a loaf of bread a try, you really should! It's easy, fun, yummy, and impressive....it also makes a great item to bring when you're invited for a meal. Here's my favorite recipe and a few tips:

Rustic Italian Bread (I found this on Food.com and it has never failed me!)

1 Put in your bread machine: 3 cps flour, 2 tb oil, 3/4 tea salt, 2 tea sugar, 2 tea yeast and 1 cp warm water (for mine, I put the wet ingredients in first)
2 Set on dough setting.
3 Always follow your machines instructions, when mixing open it and keep check on the dough. Dough should be in a nice round soft sticky to the touch ball. If it is not add more water, or add flour which ever is needed.
4 Remove when signal beeps and cycle is done.
5 Preheat oven to 375
6 Grease and sprinkle cornflour or cornmeal onto a baking sheet.
7 Punch dough down and form into a long or oval loaf.
8 Cover and let rise for 25 more minutes.
9 It should be doubled again by this time.
10 Uncover and slash the top with a sharp knife or razor.
11 Brush all over with the beaten egg white.
12 Bake 25 minutes to 35 minutes, until hollow sounding when tapped on bottom.
13 Cool.

Tips:

Use a pizza pan with holes in it

Put lots of egg white - don't skimp!!

Put on LOTS of seeds - way more than I put on that first sesame loaf. LOAD it up to make it look more professional like the picture where I'm holding the loaf on a pan. Rosemary, thyme, basil, and parm. cheese all together make a great topping too!

Make sure the oven's the right temp before putting in the bread

Don't under bake the bread, wait for it to be golden and very hollow sounding.

If the bread is cooking too fast underneath, put an empty cookie sheet on the rack below the bread so the heat hits the bottom a little more indirectly - or maybe that's just for my strange Brazilian oven.

To change the recipe up, switch the olive oil for vegetable oil and put on different kinds of seeds.

Have fun!

A Milestone on the Journey

This Sunday we were so excited that four of the teens from our Life Group ministry got baptized! This was our first time being at a baptism here in Brazil, but the best part was being part of the teens growing in their faith to get to this point.

This is Kellen, her dad is praying for her.

And Marielle

Jessica....

And Josue - this was especially touching and we have been able to see him especially develop and grow.

Picking a star fruit from the tree in the church yard afterwards.

It has been such a privilege to be part of the these teen's lives and walk! Our co-leader will now be the main leader and we are praying that God will continue to work in their hearts!

The countdown continues: 1 1/2 weeks until we leave for Manaus, 3 1/2 weeks until we're in New Jersey!!