Cows Holes and Lizards

*After you read this post, please make sure to read the following one. I posted it earlier today and want to make sure everyone sees it.*

Today was another one of those days where I just absolutely fell in love with my readers. They all did something this week to further endear themselves to me, whether through their excitement that they are speaking English well, or by always saying "bye bye" as they leave, or by thinking long and hard after reading the lesson from Luke and saying "Wow...this is very important." Today, as I read this lesson with my final reader of the day, we began talking once again about the difficulty that money can bring to the Christian life. Many of our conversations recently have turned to this subject, and he has very strong opinions on how money can come to control and ultimately strangle a person. As he explained to me yet again how the love of money can be evil, he attempted to quote, from memory, one of Jesus' more famous statements. Before you think condescending thoughts, keep in mind that he was not speaking in his native language, and then tell me if it looks familiar. :)

"It is easier for a cow to pass through a hole than go to heaven."

On the eve of yet another Brasilian holiday, I am home feeling refreshed, encouraged, and happy as a lizard. Perhaps you have never heard the expression 'happy as a lizard,' and perhaps it is because I just made it up. I don't actually think this lizard is too happy, because if it's the same one I've seen for the last three days, he's been imprisoned in my apartment since Monday:(To give you a size comparison, my hand is as long as the part of the door handle that's pictured to the right of the little guy.)

If he's not the same one, then I have a much bigger problem on my hands and need to find a way to get rid of these tiny lizards quickly. Last night as I tried liberate him onto the balcony, I decided to affectionately name him Chatinho, a word that I really don't know how to translate. "Chato" means annoying, and "chatinho" I guess would mean little annoying one. To give you a hint, my mom used to call me "Chatinha" quite often as a child :). ('Ooooooh Chatinha! she would say. It brings back such pleasant memories...) I am not a fan of lizards in my home, but he is small so he's more cute than disturbing. I do hope, however, that Chatinho finds a new home soon.

I think I managed to bring the strange summer weather Oklahoma endured during the months of May, June, and July with me to Natal. It has been raining quite a bit for the past week, and I'm not talking normal Natal rain where it rains for 5 minutes then disappears like it made a mistake, never to show up again. I mean it rains, hard, for like 10 minutes. Then it stops, but comes back again an hour later and rains hard again. Somehow, though, I manage to always be inside during the rain and needing to go somewhere during the sunshine. And I bet I just jinxed myself by telling you that. Here's to me getting soaked the next time I leave my apartment...

Happy Proclamação da República tomorrow! Hope you enjoy it as much as I will!

A Way to Feel Smart and Help the World

Special thanks to my former roommate for directing me to this site...

Kelly, if you didn't already know about it, I feel really, really cool.

Improve your vocabulary, give away some rice:

http://freerice.com/index.php


A Natal update is coming soon!

Just to Clarify

I was thinking last night about how most of my blog posts are about life in Natal, and not necessarily about my day to day, 8-5 job (or 10-8, actually) that I'm here to do. Every few posts I'll mention the reading sessions, or readers in particular, but that's not because I'm not enjoying them or don't find them important enough to write about. On the short-term LST projects, LST trains its workers how to blog appropriately, talking mostly about the reading sessions and minimally about what they do on their days off. I think this is extremely important, as you do spend 5 days of your week working all day and only 2 days resting/sight-seeing. Sometimes on the short-term projects you even end up with more pictures of the sight-seeing than your reading sessions, even though most of your time and energy was spent on reading. That's just the way it goes, especially when you're in a beautiful city like Natal!

However, my internship is much more than a 6 week project. When I moved to Natal, I moved to Natal. My life here consists of waking up every morning and "going to work," but it also consists of making friends, hanging out on the weekends, going grocery shopping, learning how to clean my apartment, finding weird Brasilian game shows on TV, spending time with the missionaries, going to church activities, learning the hang of public transportation, and yes, even going to the beach sometimes. I hope that you don't get the wrong impression when the pictures I post are of sunsets and friends. I work a 40 hour week just like you do, I promise! (FYI, my 40 hour work week consists of individual reading sessions, group reading sessions, preparation time, talking with my LST supervisor, writing correspondence to my supporters, studying Portuguese, other areas of ministry with the church, spending time with readers outside of sessions, etc. Yes, it adds up to at least 40 hours, but now you understand why I put "going to work" in quotations. It rarely feels like "work"!)

I wanted to maintain this blog for my friends, family, and supporters to know what was going on with me here in Natal. Therefore, the things I take the time to write about are "what's going on with me." I hope you have been enjoying it, and I hope you know that you are a part of furthering God's Kingdom in Natal. Thank you for your prayers, and thank you for your encouragement!

How To Score Serious Brownie Points With Your Missionary

I would like to dedicate this post, and the rest of the posts in 2007, to my friend Jim Kizer. Some of you who keep up with the comments section have seen him comment a few times under the moniker "Kizer," always with a encouraging word and maybe some advice on how to send mass emails more efficiently. :) I dedicate the rest of the posts in 2007 to Jim because he was able to make a group of 10 Brasilians the happiest Brasilians in Natal, no doubt, for the rest of this year.

Jim is a friend from ACU, and for the past year he has been an employee of the Acappella company. A couple months ago he let me know that Acappella would be making a stop in Natal on their Brazilian tour, and I shamelessly asked what my friendship with him could get me (or save me...the tickets were expensive!)

Being a man of his word, Jim talked to his friends who were traveling with the group and let me know yesterday that I would be able to get in. I brought my friend Sergio with me, as he did not have a ticket but is a huge Acappella fan, and we went to look for Jim's friend. Not only did Jim's friend let us in, but he seated us before the doors opened, let us move to VIP seating once all the concert-goers were seated, arranged with the head of security (a Baptist missionary from around here, also my new friend,) for us to meet the group privately afterward, and gave me a free, autographed CD to boot. It was really fun for me because I've never been given special treatment like that before, but also exciting because my friends were SO EXCITED. Roberto's eyes were glowing as we sat on the floor in the VIP chairs, so close to the stage, and Sergio was giddy as we took pictures with the guys afterwards. All of the Acappella guys were so nice, and acted just as excited to meet us as we were to meet them!

Roberto, Marisa, and Sergio have done so much for me since I've been in Natal, I had been feeling overwhelmed, almost defeated, by the prospect that I would never really be able to repay them, let alone thank them enough. So, I think this helped.... :)

Sergio and I with happy eyes because we were in disbelief that it actually worked

Waiting for the show to start

Roberto, Marisa, and Sergio with the Acappella guys

THANKS, JIM!!!!!!!!!

Joao Pessoa Retreat

The group from Natal the first night. Everyone dressed in black that night...we're not just a bunch of weirdos.

Watching the sunset from the roof Saturday evening
(L-R: Rejane, Kelly, Marisa, Sarah, Catherine)

Our group waiting on the van to arrive to take us home!
(Me, Nathalia, Sarah, Kelly, Andre, Catherine, Rejane, Roberto, Rafael, Pipa)

Once again...the group from Natal minus Andressa, who managed to get the chicken pox after working so hard to raise money for everyone to go! :(
(L-R: Nathalia, Rejane, Pipa, Andre, Rafael, Kelly, Roberto, Catherine, Sarah, me, Jaime)

Newsflash

I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with creative titles for my entries, so my apologies for the incredibly lame-o ones I do end up using. I have good news to share with the blogging community of Living and Loving: as of today, I am officially a fully-documented Brasilian. Sure, I always had the Passport. Yes, I paid an absurd amount of money for Brasilia to send me a color-printer copy of my birth certificate on printer paper. Yes, I am registered to vote (and paid a penalty because I didn't do it when I was 18...woops. How could I have forgotten to do that on my 18th birthday 3 days before my high school graduation?) Yes, I received my CPF card in the mail a few weeks ago and don't really know what it's good for but everyone makes a big deal about it. After all these things, I was still missing one, last document. Today I finally got my Identidade, my general ID card that serves the same way as a driver's license serves in the US. (Except mine doesn't let me drive...and don't worry, I don't want to get that one.) The picture is terrible and my thumbprint looks like my finger is the width of my foot, but nevertheless, it's here and I'm a real person now. My skin might be white as a ghost and my hair might be blonde (according to them,) but I am legally as Brasilian as my doorman and the President. I just took a picture of all my documents laid out to show you, then realized that putting a photo on the internet of all my legal documents with my ID numbers clear as day was about the dumbest thing I could ever do. So, sorry. I guess you can't see all my cool Brasilian things. :(

Today I also bought an English/Portuguese Bible, which was actually more exciting for me than getting my Identidade. I have been waiting to buy this Bible for a while, until I had a little extra money, but after using my friend's at the retreat this weekend, I realized that it was invaluable and I needed to have it now. I spent the rest of the afternoon staring at it, so excited for every time I will use it and get to read the same verse in English and Portuguese, side by side! It is going to be a great learning tool for me to learn Portuguese, and will be so helpful to use in my classes when my readers don't understand a certain story or scripture in English. Fun fact: the Portuguese translation for "Passover" in the Bible is what we call "Easter." I could not figure out last week why my friend was complaining that his birthday is close to Passover, and therefore he only ever gets chocolate on his birthday. I found this strange, as I thought about how I personally had never given anyone chocolate on Passover...until I read the Portuguese-English Bible this weekend and realized what he had been saying. And thus I just demonstrated to you another perk to having a Portuguese-English Bible.

Two of my readers believe in Predestination and this is weird for me. Not weird because I think they are weirdos, but weird because when I was preparing for this internship, I prepared myself to show Jesus to non-believers, and did not prepare to discuss the validity of the doctrine of Predestination with fellow believers...like not at all. If you have had this same experience, please send an email or comment my way with some advice. The battles are entirely based on scripture and our individual interpretations, which is what makes it so hard.

Okay, I have more to say but I want to be respectful of your time. I'm thinking that this is the week I'm finally going to buy the things I'm missing in my apartment. You know, maybe some silverware, a spatula, pots and pans. It's amazing how long you can go living without those things. :) Have a good week!

Verse of the week, just because it's my favorite:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. -Philippians 2:3-4

and in Portuguese...

Não façam nada que seja motivado por despique, nem que seja provocado por interesses pessoais. Mas sejam humildes: que cada um considere os outros superiores a si mesmo. Não pensem unicamente nos vossos interesses, mas procurem também aquilo que interessa aos outros. -Filipenses 2:3-4

A Great Weekend, a Great Brother in Law, Everything is Great Today

My creative writing juices just aren't flowing today, but I wanted to check back in with you and tell you two things.

1. I had a wonderful weekend. I traveled with some of the church members to a nearby city, Joao Pessoa, for a youth retreat. (Here, 'youth' actually includes anyone between the ages of like 11 and 25. I count.) They church there did an incredible job with the retreat, and I hope I'm around next year to go again! :) Like a true Carpenter, I forgot my camera and therefore missed out on some pretty great pictures of sunsets, friends, and the bathrooms without doors (just kidding, I wouldn't take a picture of that,) but hopefully I will get some of the ones my friends took and upload them later. I made a new friend, an American girl who has been living in a city outside Recife as an AIM worker for 2 years, and really enjoyed getting to talk with her and share our experiences. I am in the infancy of my internship and she is at the end, so it was good to have someone to talk to who really understood where I am coming from and was able to offer me insight and little inspiration for where I am headed. We were shy to talk to each other at first because I thought she was a missionary kid, and therefore had really good Portuguese and maybe didn't claim the US so much and wouldn't want to talk to me, and she was afraid to talk to me for the same reason. We ended up playing Uno together on Saturday evening and I wasn't saying a word in Portuguese, afraid of speaking incorrectly and with an accent in front of her. Turns out she was doing the same thing, afraid that I would judge her Portuguese. :) It was so funny when we realized that we had had the same misconceptions about each other and it had prevented us from talking earlier! She also told me that up until we talked, she and everyone else at the retreat had been trying to decide if I was American or Brasilian (rather than actually talking to me or any of my friends and finding out, which I also find hilarious. I'm like a "blonde" haired blue eyed tiny monster here.) She said they had come to the conclusion that I was Brasilian, which is exciting for me, but also explains why I got stared at a lot...again.

2. My brother in law whipped up an amazing newsletter for me to send out to my supporters, and I want to brag on him for it. I had written something out to send to supporters who aren't on my email list, and asked him if he would be able to format it to make it entertaining to look at. What he came up with was about 6 gazillion times better than what I had even been hoping for, let alone expecting. It was only going to go through the mail to a handful of people, but it looks so cool that I think I want to email it, too. So if you're on the email list...be expecting something soon. And if you're not on the email list...leave a comment and ask to be. Or email me at my last name dot my first name (cris) at gmail dot com.

Have a great Monday! I'm sure I'll be back soon...