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....