Day 8

As you can see, I didn't make a blog entry yesterday since it was a fairly full day! We attended Vida em Cristo in the morning yesterday. The morning "service" is more like Sunday School and it's a new addition to the weekly services since Aaron took over as pastor in September of last year. Their night-time service is the normal worship service with music and preaching. After Sunday school, we headed over to eat at Cris' mom's house for lunch. This is a weekly tradition for them. Sundays here are very much a time for family and a time to hang out together and relax. After we returned from lunch, Eddie and I took a walk around the area and it seemed like everyone was hanging out on their "porches" and bbq-ing, talking, and just enjoying the afternoon.

Later that evening, we went to the worship service. Aaron asked us to talk a little bit about why were were here to the church, so we just talked about how we felt impressed by God to make the trip after Aaron had visited our church, Journey Church in Bozeman, MT. We told the church that we have felt very welcome by all of them. We may not be able to understand each other (Nao falo Portugues - I don't speak Portuguese), but we (Eddie & I) can understand the love they feel for us. One woman told us that we are in her heart (coracao - pronounced like "corda-sone"...sort of). As we were trying to sing the worship songs, we could still praise because the name of Jesus is the same! If you have a moment, please pray for Cristo em Vida as they have gone through a rough patch in the last several months. The church split awhile back and they are smaller in numbers now, but it was probably a good thing. The church is getting back to it's original roots and the membership enjoys it's connection with the Evangelical Church. Just like us, they enjoy having a heritage and they like knowing that they are not alone.

We have learned that although we can learn how to say Portuguese words, there are various pronunciations of some words and that there are also various accents. One couple we met from Rio de Janeiro have a very different accent on their Portuguese words than people living here in Cubatao.

Aaron preaches in Portuguese which is very impressive! His wife translated for Eddie and I and also for the other missionary couple that is located here. After the service, they have a little food bar where you can buy a little something to eat and hang out and fellowship with everyone a little longer. We received so many hugs and kisses (traditional kiss on the cheek) from so many strangers! It was so much fun! We are starting to recognize people we met last week now, so it was fun to try to communicate with them. We struggled with the limited Portguese words we've picked up and they struggled with the few English words they knew...but it was all good!

Tonight I'm preparing to teach my first photography "lesson". I plan to take photographs of each of my students tonight so I can post them here (as well as learn the names of those I haven't met yet). I hope you'll be able to pray for each one. Eddie's first class is tomorrow night.

So far I have around 15 mosquito bites and counting, but no Dengue fever yet! I'll close this post with a couple of photographs of some of the people we've met: