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!!

SO much going on!

Wow! There is SO much to do to get ready to go to the States! My to-do list is literally 5 pages long and it is a celebration each time we cross something off. I LOVE crossing things off!

We'll be going to the States Aug 22nd, but we won't be leaving from Anapolis. We really wanted to spend a few days getting to know Asas's biggest northern base, Manaus, before we went to the States, so we bought our tickets to the States from Manaus. Finally this past week, we were able to meet with Asas's leadership to decide when we could leave Anapolis to go to Manuas and they said we could go in the beginning of August. However, with so much to do before going to the States, we decided that Aug 10th is the earliest we can go and are in the process of booking our tickets. So, we have exactly 3 weeks between now and saying goodbye to Anapolis until Jan 5th. Although there will be lots of unknowns and stresses from traveling over the next months, we're really excited and can't wait to see you all again!!

Meanwhile, this week we had Bobby become sick.....sick as a dog in fact! I was actually pretty sure he was arriving at his end for a few hours, but I was able to put of my Moody classed into practical use. In college I took a class on tropical diseases where we had to learn how to give a shot, so I gave my first ones ever on Bobby and he's feeling much better now!

Also, this week our car decided it would be fun to take a get-away at the spa.....aka mechanic shop :( A hose broke and the car's in Goiania getting fixed....meanwhile we're a biker couple, getting around only on Jeyson's motorcycle! You should see us getting home with the groceries! We also have some house repairs going on. Our house had some issues that the builder had to fix. Of course everything here in Brazil takes longer, so finally his guy is out working on somethings. This involved taking ALL of our stuff out of each room at a time to get the walls worked on. Today is the last day and everything is getting wrapped up.

Our cat hid under the bed the WHOLE time the workers were here, but when the left his curiosity got the best of him!

Lastly, for fun we had our friends Andres, Camila, Lauro, and Rose over for dinner since soon Andres and Camila will move to Manaus! I made some easy fruit-kabobs for dessert with a cream cheese dipping sauce and everyone was so impressed! A fun evening to top off a busy week.

Recent Happenings

These past days have been jam packed and I haven't had the chance to blog until now. Here's a little catch up on what we've been up to.

On the Fourth of July we decided it would be fun to have a little celebration, expatriate style. We love the States and all that July 4th stands for, not to mention that American bbqs are a lot of fun. So, we invited over a few of our Brazilian (and Argentine) friends and lit the grill.
We made all typical American stuff - burgers, corn on the cob, mac n cheese, etc. My friend Camila was so funny about the mac n cheese. When I brought it out to the table and told everyone what it was, Camila said, "Oh! The famous American macaroni and cheese!!" She went on to explain that she had seen an American sitcom episode where a guy needed to by a box of man and cheese for his fourth of July party but all of the stores were sold out. Camila was very excited to see that it really is a real food in the American kitchen and that I also served it on July 4th!
Part of the group is above. We had a lot of fun to share a little of my culture and I hope to do this every year we're in Brazil!

For the past week we've been especially busy since it's Asas's yearly week for new candidates. The candidates spend 10 days here doing everything from flights to interviews. Several of the candidates are from Columbia and Venezuela so they don't speak Portuguese. Jeyson was asked to help by going on flights with these men as they were evaluated. Jeyson sat in the back and translated for the flight instructors/evaluators. Jeyson enjoyed using his language skills in this way. Also, by going back on these very first flights, Jeyson realized just how much he himself has grown in his skills since 2003 when he was a candidate! He's a shot that Jeyson took from the back of the plane.

Meanwhile, I was able to help with an area that I love, cooking! Along with a few other ladies, we have been preparing breakfast every day for everyone involved in the week. It's been tiring to get up at 5:30 to have everything prepared and served by 7 am, but also very rewarding to be able to do something practical that can be part of bringing new missionaries to the field. These are some of the Venezuelans. The man next to me is their pastor, who came along to support the men in their church who are considering this calling.

Jeyson has also been busy this week with something he loves, maintenance projects. He has been repairing the wing of this plane

And also repainting it, which I will have to post "after" pictures later.

More posts to follow soon!