Snapshots

I've been back in Natal for just over a month and it feels so good to be home again. I get awkward about these kinds of things sometimes (like the first weekend my freshman year at ACU that I spent away from my roommate, I was worried it would be awkward when I got back. Um...weird) and was worried that I might feel like I was out of the loop and had missed a lot. Well, I totally did feel out of the loop and it was amazing just how much happened in the 2 short months I was gone, but Natal is still home, and it's always good to be home.

Since being back I've been on the hunt for a new apartment, one that preferably has good air flow, safe localization, and space to entertain, three major qualities which my current apartment does not have. Renting is a complicated process in Brazil, you basically have to prove you are of royal bloodline to be allowed to rent property, and even then your royal bloodline has to pay a hefty security deposit. Since I moved here a year ago (no credit) and work for an American entity (no proof of salary, not the way they want it, anyway,) they did not accept my royal bloodline papers and I was left to pray really hard that God would just open the right door. Well, open the right door He did. Not only did I find my dream apartment, but the owner has been extremely cool so far and has offered to write a private contract. What does this mean? Not having to deal with "the middle man," aka real estate agencies, not having to deal with hefty security deposit, and, hopefully, lower rent. Please say a quick prayer that this is, in fact, a door God has opened and not a really terrible scam. Unfortunately, that happens sometimes. But I choose to believe God has opened the door. He has been so unbelievably faithful (and extremely HELPFUL!) until this point, how could I start doubting now?

There is a mouse in my apartment, yes, my 8th floor apartment. He is a baby and the first time we saw him he moved around like a sprinter with a bum leg. Poor thing just hobbled his way as fast as he could under the couch, along the countertops, and across the stove. Yes, I did indeed see GusGus (thanks for the name, Lacy. Personalizing him will not make his death any easier...) ON TOP of my stove one day as I went to clean up my lunch dishes. The next day, Lacy found him INSIDE the oven, cowering in the corner, paralyzed with fear. Lucky for him, Lacy and I are both paralyzed with...disgustedness...each time we see him, and it prevents us from killing said mouse with broom. Poor GusGus. We're growing to like the little guy.

Speaking of unwelcome creatures, I have officially been inducted into the "Brazilian with Street Cred" hall of fame upon having to take worm medicine. Medicine for what kind of worms, you ask? Who knows. The kind that most Brazilians recommend taking medicine for every 6 months because that's how common it is here. If you eat fruit, vegetables, or just anything, actually, you run the risk of joining the hall of fame as well. I managed to get by a year and a half without ever having wormy symptoms, but I guess since they knew that I'm now here for a while the joke was on me. I had been feeling weird for about a week, and last night Marisa looked at me and said "Cris, I think you have worms." I bought the chewable tablet at the pharmacy today (that cost me all of $1.50, thank you subsidized and efficient prescription drug system) and have been told I'm in the clear. Until 6 months from now, that is. Eew.

I turned 24 last week and I feel old. I'm now in my mid-20s rather than early 20s. For some reason that's been rough on me. And by "been rough" I mean I thought "Wow...24. How did I get here that fast?" and then got distracted by something else (probably GusGus. Or the worms.) My birthday was really nice and I felt very loved by my Brazilian family. I had Mexican food for lunch (a rare treat!) and pizza for dinner, all shared with people I love. (Um...perhaps we're getting to the bottom of the worm problem...)

I'm really excited because two weeks from yesterday we will receive our first LST team of 2009. Since the primary reason I returned to Natal was to coordinate the ebb and flow of year-round LST projects at our church, I am really, really, REALLY excited to kick off the LST year. We'll have a team of 2 women from Park Plaza church in Tulsa spend 4 weeks with us, then another team of 2 women from the DFW area spend 2 weeks. Then in August we'll host two more teams from the Westover Hills church in Austin. I am so excited to meet all of these new people and introduce them to the work in Natal. It is such a fun, beautiful, encouraging place to be, and I really pray that the teams who come will be blessed by their time. I KNOW God is going to bless their efforts, so please be praying for the readers who will come to study with them!

I don't know who is out there reading, but I really hope to get back to blogging more regularly as things start picking up around here. The last month has been overwhelmed with apartment hunting, car contemplating, refrigerator shopping, etc, and I couldn't think of anything interesting to tell you. Thanks to my birthday and GusGus, we have a blog post!

Have a wonderful week!

By the Numbers

I've racked my brain to think of a concise way to sum up my two months in the United States. With so much exciting news to report and so many Mexican dinners to count, I decided to attempt to condense my thoughts into a "By the Numbers"-style list. Let's hope this works...

Cris's Trip to the US, By the Numbers

2: Number of eye infections with which I arrived in the United States on February 4
0: Number of eye infections with which I left Natal on February 3

16: Number of times I ate at a Mexican restaurant
2: Number of times out of the 16 that I was by myself at Taco Bueno

3: Number of weeks it took for me to find churches to cover my salary, work fund, and oversight
2: Number of churches that are overseeing my work, paying my work fund, and paying my salary (shout out to the Westover Hills Church of Christ in Austin, TX, and the Springtown Church of Christ in Springtown, TX.)

3: Number of roadtrips I made to Texas
1: Number of times I redeemed frequent flyer miles to go to California

5: Number of days a week, on average, I slept in
6: Number of days a week my sweet mom let me sleep in if I wanted to

2: Number of times I saw snow
1: Number of times the snow was deep enough to play in it and build a snowman

20: Number of dollars I spent one day at Old Navy to buy 6 shirts...which leads me to:
6: Number of shirts I bought at Old Navy for a total of 20 dollars!!!!!

4: Number of former roommates I got to see and play with
1: Number of former honorary roommates I got to see and play with (shout out Jeff Duncan, thanks for sharing your wife with us!)

30+: Number of fundraising letters I sent out
10: Number of contributors who responded to said letters and made generous contributions (up until this point)

2: Number of times I paid money to eat a cupcake at "Cuppies & Joe"
2: Number of cupcakes I bought the second time I went to C&J, they were that good

3: Number of times I attempted to drive a standard
0: Number of times I felt good about my attempts

5: Number of times I went to Wal-Mart
2: Number of times I went to Wal-Mart in the last 24 hours of my time in the US

8?: Number of times I went to the eye doctor trying to get my prescription just right
1.5: Number of years for which I now have a supply of contacts

2: Number of times I went to a nail salon to get a manicure OR pedicure "just because"
0: Number of times I had ever done that before when I lived in the US...(Disclaimer: Brazil has totally ruined me on this. In Natal I can get weekly mani/pedis for less than US$10. You would too...)

3: Number of episodes of "Dancing with the Stars" that I watched
3: Number of times I was embarrassed about that

3: Number of aunts with whom I watched "Mamma Mia"
2: Number of days it took me to get songs like "Take a Chance on Me," "Dancing Queen," and, the worst, "Super Trooper," out of my head after said watching

5: Number of times a week, on average, that I talked to people in Natal
5: Number of times a week, on average, I wished I was still in Natal

3: Number of years I have committed to stay working with the church in Natal
?: Number of years God has planned to keep me here

So there we have it. My 2 months and 1 week summed up into a catchy little list. I got back to Natal on Friday and have loved every minute of being back. For the next couple of weeks I will be doing some re-settling things, and then will be getting in gear to start hosting our LST teams for the summer.

Speaking of summer, the whole time I was gone everyone in Natal kept telling me that it was the hottest it had ever been. People who have lived here for years had never experienced such heat. I, of course, was dreading coming back to the heat after having such a pleasantly cool time in the US. However, God smiled down on me (and showed mercy to those who have endured it this whole time) and has sent cool, rainy days our way since I arrived. I'm hoping since summer went long, rainy season will come early? A girl can dream...

Homesick

I've been feeling pretty homesick for Natal lately. I know I'll be back soon, but until then I can't help but keep looking at this picture and missing my family. :(

This is the church picture from Impacto Jovem, the event the church held last weekend that I mentioned in my previous post. Recently, each church member was given a t-shirt with the church logo monogrammed on it and they all wore them during the event. Aren't they a good lookin' bunch? I have my shirt and I'm all ready to take a complete family photo as soon as I return.

(Thanks for the pic, Lancy.)

Bad Blogger's Anonymous round 5

I'm having blogger's block. I have so many great things to say but don't have the creativity to express them in an interesting way, so for now I'll cop-out and give you a link to someone else's blog. :)

My teammates, the Jewells, just had their third baby boy a couple weeks ago, but they were still able to attend and blog about (wow...I feel so inadequate...) Impacto Jovem, the big event the church in Natal hosted last Saturday. From what I've been hearing, it went extremely well and they had over thirty visitors! Just another reason why I'm so anxious to get back to Natal. Until I do (on April 10th) please join me in reading about it on the internet.

Way Cool Wednesday

In 2008 we rejoiced in Natal as, throughout the course of the year, 7 different people gave their lives to Christ through baptism. I've blogged about most of them, names you may now be familiar with, such as Francisco, Geraldo, Talis, Jefferson, and Tiago. (Those took place between August and December.) Then I told you about how in 2009 we had 3 baptisms on the same day in January, and I hadn't even told you yet about the baptism we had the first Sunday in February, my last Sunday in Natal before I left for the United States.

Well, I'm back to report more good news, my friends. Last night we celebrated once more (mine was a remote celebration, but I can celebrate in Oklahoma just as well as in Natal!) as ONE MORE sister gave her life to Christ through baptism!!!!!!!!!!!! Can I get a 'YAHOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!'? Thanks. :)

I'll be honest when I tell you that I didn't even know our new sister's name until I just asked a friend in Natal (thank goodness for instant messenger! I just knew her as "Jackeline's mom.") But I will tell you how she came to join our family. Back during the summer when my parents were on their LST project in Natal, my mom read with a sweet, sweet young man named Andre. Andre was already a very faithful Christian, but really loved our program and what we were doing in the community. He invited his friend, Jackeline, to visit the church and check out the basic English classes. Andre eventually disappeared, but Jackeline kept coming. She has been coming off and on, more on than off, since July, and has gotten involved with the English program, our LST parties, our women's Bible studies, VBS, the young people's group, and Sunday worship services. She has been studying the Bible with Marisa for quite some time, and after she began her studies, she started to bring her mom to church with her, as well. Her mom had not been coming for very long before she decided that it was time she made a decision...before her daughter even reached that point! I look forward to getting to know her better when I get back to Natal.

Please pray that Noemia will continue to grow in her faith, and that she will be an example to her daughter of what a life transformed by Christ looks like. This is a tremendous blessing for Jackeline, and my prayer is that they are an encouragement to one another. And, one more time, YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(If you haven't yet, please make sure to check out the post just below this one that I wrote yesterday about reverse culture shock. Those of you who don't use Google Reader really should. It's quite the miracle program. :) )

Reverse Culture Shock

Many of you are familiar with the idea of culture shock. You go to a new place (foreign country or foreign state) and are quite literally "shocked" by the culture. Everything seems backwards and you begin to develop irrational hatreds toward obscure parts of the new culture. (Real examples that I have seen: anger about produce in Brazil, tears over the lack of forks in Japan, a refusal to speak anything but English to foreigners because everyone should know it, etc.) Culture shock can come about in a trip that lasts a week or in a move that lasts years. It usually rears its ugly head toward the end of the beginning (month 3 of 12, week 2 of 6) as soon as the honeymoon phase wears off. It's very real, very ugly, and, in hindsight, very humorous. (It was me who cried over the lack of forks in Japan, I'll admit it...)

Few of you, however, may be familiar with the concept of reverse culture shock. It seems backwards, and it is! The idea is that, once you travel to said foreign land and become accustomed to their way of doing things, you go through culture shock AGAIN when you return to your home county/state/city/etc. Whereas you became accustomed to eating with large toothpicks in Japan, you find Americans lazy that they use knives, forks, and spoons. (Ok, bad example.) A better example may be that you (I) become so used to attending a church with 50 members in, oh, say, Natal, Brazil, that you (I) go to visit your (my) home church for the first time, and the 2,500 members make you (I) want to crawl into a corner and hide. Whereas the sheer enormity of the congregation never bothered you before your cross-cultural experience, now it seems impractical, superficial, unnecessary, and impersonal. The feelings of reverse culture shock can be just as ridiculous as those of culture shock, but in my case, more often than not, they act as a spotlight to the ways I've grown and changed since my cross-cultural experience began. Some of it comes out in the form of judgmentalism, and although that is not appropriate, either, it also acts as a spotlight to the ways that your views and opinions have changed.

In a way, you return to your "home" and it really may not feel like home at all. The friends, acquaintances, trends, technology, worship songs, popular artists, TV shows, and maybe even family have all continued living life- without you! This can be the most shocking part of it all. You don't know where you fit anymore, or even IF you fit, in the scheme of "home."

To give you a true example of how I am adjusting to life in the States and perhaps going through a little reverse culture shock, allow me to pose a few questions and make a few statements, some of which may show that I am becoming an old lady:

-WHO are the Jonas Brothers?
-Is it safe for me to be out driving alone after dark? (In Edmond, Oklahoma!)
-Why is everyone at church in such a rush to get to the next thing instead of taking time to actually have conversations with each other?
-Why do some people spend more time texting and answering phone calls during a face to face conversation than paying attention to the physical person they are talking to?
-Dollar value menu? You can get food for ONE DOLLAR?
-Jaywalking? There are designated places to cross the street?
-You paid how much for that iPhone?
-Cupcakes? The latest trend is cupcakes?
-What language am I supposed to be speaking?/How do I say that in English?

And, finally, I implore:

-WHAT IN THE WORLD IS TWITTER?????????????????

As you read those, please don't take offense or assume I was talking about you. In all honesty, these questions have essentially been playing on repeat in my head for the last two weeks, as I looked wide-eyed at to this fast-paced, bright lights, text messaging world we call America. I wrote this more to give you, my readers, an insight into what it's like coming "home." Part of culture shock, and reverse culture shock, I think, is heaven-sent. From what I understand, we aren't supposed to be getting tooooo comfortable in any one place, right? Aren't we just a'passin through, anyway?

I love being here, and I love seeing my family, friends, and eating out very cheaply. But if you happen to see me looking wide-eyed and completely lost, I'm probably just needing to see a friendly face or hear some friendly words of encouragement. Anything along the lines of "I'm happy to see you," or "Cris, want me to take you out for some Mexican food?" will do just fine. ;)

I'm here!

In case anyone was wondering, I did make it back to the US just fine. Upon my arrival (or departure, no one really knows) I caught an eye infection in both eyes that had me out of my contacts and squinting for over a week. Thankfully, it cleared up quickly and I was able to make it to my first meeting with a missions committee in Austin, Texas last weekend. Everything went well and they agreed to be my overseeing church and pay my working fund. Praise God! That is a tremendous answer to prayer and I am looking forward to meeting with other congregations so that I can get back to Natal as soon as possible!

I have gotten a good dose of Mexican food, but have nowhere reached my limit. I still have quite a few restaurants on my list to be checked off, but thankfully Mexican has been well-represented thus far. I'm enjoying spending time with my family, old friends, and wearing jackets and close-toed shoes. I'm looking forward to a trip to Abilene in a few weeks to see college friends. Stay tuned for my next post about reverse culture shock. I intend for it to be informative, and, as always, I also hope it's entertaining. :)