Merry Christmas!

Since I haven't blogged since September, I figured Christmas might be a good time to restart. The best holiday wishes to everyone! I'll try to be a better blogger in the new year. Let's call it a New Year's resolution.

Merry Christmas! Have a wonderful time celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior.

Oh, and Carl slept through a fire!

Actual picture of Carl sleeping and fire

I wanted to add this onto my last post, but it's just too awesome. It deserves a separate post. The last two weekends, Carl and Scott have been staying at what can best be described as a rural-esque home stay. I'd say farm, but I fear it would conjure images of red barns and dairy cows and the boys assure me that is far from the reality of this farm.

Early Sunday morning, Carl hears a rustling of activity around the house. Fearing that the family are early risers, and would expect him to be the same, Carl ignored the hustle and bustle and continued par-taying with the Sandman.

Little did Carl know that the family was battling a wildfire to stop it from spreading to the house. Mother, Father, Brothers and Sisters were out, trying to beat out the flames and having a difficult time finding green branches to do so because of the dry weather.

Thankfully, the fire was put out and no property was lost. And Carl awoke to a beautiful morning and a tired family that tried, in vain, to explain the early morning exploit. After three or four renditions of the story, Carl did finally understand what had happend. He now assures us all that is the last time he will sleep through fire, flood or any other disaster.

We'll see Carl, we'll see...

Count Peachy

This weekend, Liliana and I spent our second weekend with Pastor Ramon and family in Santa Barbara Oest. Much fun and Portuguese was had by all. On Saturday night, we went to a youth service, and had a hoot and a half doing skits, playing Bible-based quiz games and the like. In fact, we played a game I was born to play: all I had to do was NOT speak Portuguese and mime.

Boo ya.

It's so much fun to worship with other believers, especially when they're of a similar age and place in life, even if you don't speak the same language. Sometimes, especially if you don't speak the same language. Lots of times, I find I'm intimidated or shy in certain social situations. But I'm not allowed to be shy here and it's because I don't speak the language and I'm not from around here. But people come up and talk to me and 57 percent of the time, I have no clue what they're saying. But I smile, say "Deus abençoe!" and let it flow. Thank God we have a way of seeing past language and looking at people's hearts.

Of course, sometimes the language barrier is a problem and I miss worshipping in a language I understand. But that's why the learning process is so awesome. This week, I could only follow the sermon for the first two minutes. Next week, I'll be able to follow it for three or four! I fully trust that with the hard work I'm willing and able to put into the learning process, I'll be able to understand and communicate in an effective manner soon!

After all the games and fun times of the youth service, it was Liliana and my turn to speak. Pastor Ramon had asked us to tell a little about ourselves and our journeys and why we're in Brazil. No problem, right? We wrote out testimonies as part of our Portuguese class and had practiced and made sure the translation was proper, so we felt like we could do it. Well, lo and behold we find out that Sabrina (the youth leader) had designated 30 mins for us to speak. My testimony takes my 2 minutes to read.

Gulp.

We made it though. Liliana is a rock star and got the ball rolling with an excellent talk and I followed with a halting, agonizingly slow, poorly pronounced story. Think of the last time a five-year old told you a story--be honest, Did you enjoy it? Sure, you like kids, and feel obligated to say yes, but really you enjoyed it for the chance to make fun of a kid. That was me--the five-year old.

But you know what? I LOVED it! Even though I knew it was elementary and silly, I said what God laid on my heart and how God has directed my life and continues to guide my journey, and that was awesome. People told me they understood me; but I suspect they mean they understood my heart if not the words coming out of my mouth.

Oh, and Pastor Ramon's bird--Peachy--bit me this weekend on my neck. Seriously, looks like I've been hanging out with Dracula or Bill Compton. It would've been so easy to make a "Twilight" reference here, but I intentionally left it as a protest against the bastardization of vampires in those books (not to mention the complete breakdown of the strong literary female, but I digress).

This week we're looking forward to more Portuguese and hopefully finishing our registration process with the Federal Police. It will be good to get that done, because my dear twin brother is getting married in two weeks and I would love to be able to get back into Brazil after the wedding. Not to worry, that's not a very likely situation. I know all your hearts literally stopped beating for a second, but no, it's okay. Calm down. Seriously, it's fine. Dandy in fact; yes, the whole bureaucratic process of registration is dandy. Just peachy.

Oh snap, did you catch that last pun there? Think about it....

No thanks, I'm sanctified...

Ok, in Portuguese they don't ever say "I'm full" after eating, they use "I'm satisfied." Okay, well in my silliness I mixed up the words for satisfied (satisfeito) and sanctified (santificado). So on Saturday night, we're hanging out with a bunch of teenagers at a banquet type thing and they keep offering me food--which I politely declined saying "Nao obrigado, eu santificado" with a big smile.

I couldn't figure out why they kept laughing at me. Until I looked up in my dictionary what I should've been saying--satisfeito, not santificado. Imagine turning down pie at a church potluck with a simple "No thanks, I'm sanctified." Hilarity would undoubtedly ensue. Of course, this would beg the question of why you would ever turn down pie at a potluck....

Eu, na verdade, vos batizo em água...

This weekend was our first homestay experience. We packed into Pastor Ramone's Renault and rumbled off to spend the weekend in Santa Barbara Ouest. Pastor Ramone is a professor at the College in addition to being a pastor and he was awesome enough to open his home and family to Liliana and I this weekend. There's so many awesome stories to tell about this weekend, but there's one in particular that I want to share.

On Sunday night, the church baptized three new believers and it was so incredible to witness. The children were invited to sit right up next to the baptistry (which was concealed under the platform, so it was right in front of the sanctuary) and watch everything up close. Then, when the newly baptized people walked out, they were immediately engulfed by the people that are part of their lives and spiritual walk. A kid from the youth group was baptized and the entire youth group ran up with noise makers and made sure to give him a big hug--while he was still dripping wet!

On the way back to Pastor Ramone's house, Liliana was asking how we would say "I watch baptisms" in Portuguese--and Pastor's response was awesome. He told us they don't say they watched baptisms because that separates the people watching the baptism from those being baptized. Instead, they use the verb "estar" or "to be."

How cool is that? And how true is that? As the church, we don't (or we shouldn't) merely watch baptisms, we are integral parts of every baptism. We are one body and when someone is baptized and joins the body, we all grow and we are all part of the experience. We don't just sit back and watch a new believer, we disciple and teach and help a new believer grow into a mature disciple of Christ.

I would love to say, in English, every time someone is baptized "We were baptized today," but I know people would look at me really weird. So I'll stick with Portuguese: "A gente esta baptister hoje."

P.S. I realize my Portuguese was probably really, really off--but hey, I'm learning

This is my homework...

This was my homework last night:

Just in case you can't tell what I'm holding--those are board books. The kind infants use to learn vocabulary.

You know, I was actually really excited to use these books for studying. They really did help learn the vocabulary and they're designed to be simple. This photo is backwards, they're actually "p" words. Pipa means kite. Probably not something I'll use in everyday conversation, but man, one day I'm going to whip it out and my Brazilian friends will be really impressed.

P.S. Don't mind Carl in the background. He was getting his peanut butter from the closet and was ill prepared for a picture.

Learning a new language in this immersion-type setting is really humbling. Literally, people can communicate with anyone over the age of 2 easier than they can talk to me. I think this is really good for me; I know I can sometimes get overly confident and this is a good lesson in humility. I'm excited for what God's teaching me through this experience.

I'd say the best part of the board books was what we did in class tonight. We got to play Pictionary. My favorite vocabulary builder ever. Hands down.

Pictionary inspired me so much I went ahead a drew a nice mural during our break. That's a dinosaur chasing a chicken and Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants. The dinosaur has also offended two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Ridiculous, no? In my defense though, every element of this came up in class tonight so...

I feel like a mentally-challenged toddler...

I've heard it said that learning a new language is among the hardest things a person can do and I'm going to have to agree with that. After being here exactly one week, I can tell you that learning Portuguese is HARD. I sort of (eh, kinda) speak two other languages besides English--French and Arabic--but this is a whole different sort of language acquisition.

For French, I sat in a classroom for five years and learned the grammar and vocabulary and a little bit of culture and by the end could carry on a conversation in the language. I can read much better in French than I can speak French and if you were to sit me down with a French speaker I would undoubtedly freeze up like a deer in a pair of headlights.

Arabic--haha, I can't believe I claim I can speak Arabic; I can tell a taxi where to go, barter a decent white-person deal in a souk and have a very simple, very self-centered conversation. And really only in Egyptian; I took Modern Standard for a semester, but I'm afraid my Egyptian overshadowed anything I learned in that class. Anyway, for Arabic I learned very situational things--what to say to a taxi driver, what to say to a shop owner, how to tell a few things about myself. No one really expected a real conversation from me.

Here, oh geez, everyone expects real conversation! We've gotten past the preliminaries last week and now my new Brazilian friends want to know about my past, my family, my friends, my hopes, my dreams, my faith--it's enough to be really, really overwhelming! And on the one hand, I can tell I'm improving; This was my face in conversation last week:

This week:

Soon, I'll look like this:

But really, I just feel bad for all the Brazilians we hang out with. It can't be fun for any of them that I can only understand the simplest phrases and then only like 10 percent of the time. I keep wanting to tell them that I'm not stupid and I'll learn, but not being able to say that seems to disprove that particular point :).

I definitely envy the others on my team--Scott has been here before so he already speaks some Portuguese and both Liliana and Carl speak Spanish fluently, which gives them a huge leg up on Portuguese. Once again, Mom you were totally right--I should've studied Spanish in high school, not French. But there are some crossovers between French and Portuguese--grammar being the big one. But alas, not very much vocabulary.

But I shall not lose heart!! Anything worth having is worth working for, and by gum I will be able to talk to people! Fingers crossed it will be soon. The five hours a day I'm spending studying Portuguese should help, and enshallah I will pick this up quickly!!!

In Brazil

Well, it is my first full day in Brazil. I'm currently sitting in the lobby of my dormitory on the campus of Brazil Nazarene College in Campinas. I'm enjoying "Au Pair" dubbed in Portuguese and realizing how little Portuguese I know. But, that's okay! That's why I'm here!

The first sacrifice for culture is official--I had to take out my nose ring. I'm very sad--I've had it for four years--and it kind of made Aimee, Aimee. Not since the fateful summer at NPH has the ring left my right nostril, but I am perfectly ok with having to take it for cultural reasons. I'm just a little sad.

We're just chilling for a few days until Liliana arrives. After that, I guess we'll be starting classes? I'm not entirely sure though, we're still pretty uncertain what life will look like here in Campinas.

If you actually look like your visa photo...

There's a wonderful quote by Sir Vivian Fuchs saying if you look like your passport photo you're too ill to travel. Well, my passport photo is better than it could be--my visa photo for Brazil, however, is pretty horrendous.

I'm fairly certain that this photo indicates some severe grumpiness that may or may not indicate possible violence. I know that I won't become violent, but this photo is not a good gauge of that. I've had to supply passport photos for other visas before, but this is the first time said photo has actually appeared on the visa. If I had known this, I probably would've made more of an effort to not look like an ill-tempered white girl.

BUT I have my visa and that's all that matters!!! Carl and Scott have their visas, at least I think Scott has his visa--he's there already, so I'm assuming he has--but Liliana has not yet received hers. So now she has to change her flight and it's all because her visa service is stupid and screwed the pooch on all of it. So she won't be in Brazil until Saturday. Not cool.

As for me, I am just 36 hours, 30 pages of writing, two research papers, one clean room and 20 hours of flight time away from Sao Paulo and the next 9 months in Brazil.

Last night my parents hosted a bunch of people over from church for a wonderful "going-away" party, and it was an awesome time! Such a blessing to have such a wonderful church family.

The next nine months should be a very exciting time--I'm extremely curious to see why God has led me to Brazil and what God has in store for me and my team.