The best news so far...

You didn't know it, but I've been owing you some really great pictures of some really great events. Since the start of 2009 we have witnessed three people give their life to Christ in baptism, and since August of 2008 we have seen a total of eight!!! You knew about Francisco and Geraldo back in August, and then at the beginning of December we had two more, Talis and Jefferson. So that's the latest I had you caught up on...little did I know jsut a few weeks later I would be uploading pictures of four more!

This is Tiago. Tiago was invited to church by his girlfriend, Kelly, a longtime member at our congregation. We all fell in love with Tiago the first time we met him, how could we not with that smile? From day one we could see he was a genuine, caring person, and from day one he was excited to become a part of a church family. With just a few weeks of Bible study, he knew that a life in Christ was the right choice for him. We welcomed him into our family the last Sunday in December. Hoorayyyyy Tiago!

This is Ingrid. You have heard about Ingrid before, indirectly, when I blogged about her little sister, Isabel. Ingrid is 12 years old and the oldest of three children in an amazing, servant-hearted family. Ingrid has served God her whole life, but recently decided she wanted to study about baptism. She studied with John and Samantha and decided she was ready to commit her life to God. We are so happy for her decision!

This is Rosendo, the oldest of Geraldo's four kids. Since his dad was baptized, he has come to church faithfully and even gotten involved with the teenagers. The whole family is in the popcorn business, selling popcorn on the streets when they are not in school. They are great salesmen, which is good news for us! Since Geraldo's baptism they have brought more neighbors and friends to church than we ever could have imagined! John began studying with Rosendo a few weeks ago and he made the decision to follow in his dad's footsteps and give his life to Christ!

This is Socorro, Geraldo's wife and Rosendo's mom. You know where this is going... Geraldo is such a good salesman that he was able to convince his wife to join him for church each Sunday (although he gave his kids no choice. Ha!) She is a beautiful woman, as you can tell, but also so kind, sweet, with a very gentle demeanor. Though she always has a smile on her face, I could tell she was skeptical of the whole church thing, and was probably there more to support Geraldo than to make any changes herself. Well, that all started to change when she saw the church being the church, serving her family in ways I would imagine they had probably never been served before. As John studied with her and then began to study with Rosendo, mom and son decided to be baptized on the same day. It was a REALLY GREAT day!!
Please be praying for these new brothers and sisters, as well as for the other four I mentioned at the top of this post. We are so excited to see our church family growing, but we also know that they are especially prone to Satan's attacks. God is so good, and so faithful, and we pray that He continues to bless our little congregation with days like this!

*Special thanks to John Jewell for all of the fantastic facial expressions in the above photos

I might be addicted to Mexican food. It's possible.

For those of you who know my plans for oh...the next three weeks of my life...you may be wondering why I am only now writing this post to update my blogging audience on what is about to go down. The answer to that is: not really sure. The last few months have been a bit topsy turvy, with my health problems (hey, I got an MRI and the results came back all clear. I diagnosed myself as overworked and since Brazil is on vacation right now, I am underworked and feeling great!) and with Christmas and with plan-making, I guess I just kept putting it off. Ok, that's a lie. The real reason is that this is news that I prefer not to talk about, as it makes me feel a bit queasy/shakey, so in true Cris fashion I guess I thought if I ignored it, it would either A) go away or B) announce itself to you. Neither A nor B happened, so I am left with option C: spill the beans.

Exactly two weeks from today, to the minute, actually, I will be leaving Natal and concluding my internship with Let's Start Talking. I will be going back to the States to spend 1-2-3 months visiting family, friends, and every Mexican restaurant within driving distance that serves free queso. My primary objective in this trip, however, (besides the Mexican food, of course) is to meet with churches who may be willing to sponsor and/or support me financially in order that I may return to Natal and continue working with Comunidade de Cristo as a full-time missionary. The plans for me to stay on after the conclusion of my internship have been in the works for a while, but only recently did we add a trip back to the US into the mix. I had intended to stay here in Natal with LST through March, but God has a funny way of opening doors and shoving me through them, and so back to the northern America I will go. Only temporarily, I hope.

I am excited/scared/nervous/giddy/craving Mexican food/queasy/happy/restless all at the same time about this. The negative emotions come from the doubting Thomas side of me, who tends to focus on the idea that I have no return ticket (yet) and my future in Natal is going to be determined by missions committees. The positive emotions come from the believing, risk-taking, get-out-of-the-boat Peter side of me who tends to occasionally think about the fact that God is actually who is in control here, and with full confidence I can say that I believe He wants me to continue serving in Natal, and then I start to Dream Big about what three more years working in this amazing ministry could do for the Kingdom, and then I get so excited about it that I actually stop thinking about Mexican food for a second and I just think about how there is nowhere in the world I would rather be at this stage in my life than Natal, Brazil, despite the lizards.

So there you go, a very accurate glimpse into my current mental and emotional state. The missionaries here have known for a while, the church as a whole found out about two weeks ago, and I just emailed the readers to let them know, too. In case your first response was to think "Gee, I wonder how I can help her..." I would like to say that the BEST way you can help me here it to PRAY. The uncertainty of it all is really nerve-wracking for this self-professed perfectionist control-freak, and I could use some heavenly peace to calm my nerves.

I ask that you please pray for wisdom in the hearts of those whom I will be meeting with, that you pray for wisdom in my heart to respond appropriately to whatever answers I may receive, that you pray for safe travels, that you pray for the church here in Natal that is day by day trying to reach Natal for Christ, that you pray for my readers who are searching for answers, and that you pray for my health as I am about to eat an obscene amount of Mexican food. (Ok, totally kidding on that last one...but seriously...can you tell what I'm looking forward to? I need help.)

So, there you have it. I will be spending the next two weeks hanging out with readers, church members, friends, the beach, and conducting a few last reading sessions with the readers who stuck around during vacation. I will spend the week after that packing, crying a bit, flying, preparing powerpoint presentations, and, you guessed it, eating Mexican food. :) I'll keep you updated as I get updated. Thanks for your support, prayers, and hopefully a laugh or two at my neurotic, but brutally honest, writing style.

Sleeping will not be an option tonight...

It's 1:54 in the am and the street noise outside my apartment building is worse than your average lunch-hour traffic jam. The upper-80s weather keeps closing my window from being a real option, so here I am, blogging in the early hours of January 1, 2009, rather than doing what the old lady in me would like to be doing: sleeping.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Brazilians know how to party. I would venture to say that, second to the famous Carnaval celebration, New Year's Eve is the biggest holiday celebration in Brazilian culture. Christmas isn't even that big of a deal, usually varying from family to family, but everyone does something for New Year's. I've always commemorated New Year's more out of necessity than anything, but here it becomes much more than just a change in the final digit of a four-digit number, with fireworks all day long (ok...so I guess that doesn't set it apart yet from any other Brazilian holiday...or day, for that matter...), wardrobe to match the occasion (you wear the color that represents what you're looking for in the new year...white represents peace, red represents love, I guess, and I don't know the rest of the colors because, as I mentioned, new years to me is a change in number. But I digress...), fancy hair and make-up for the ladies, New Year's eve services for the churches, and empty streets for the pedestrian (me.) I waited in a ten-minute line tonight to buy a single egg at my friendly neighborhood bakery, but then walked home and didn't see a single other person or even a car, for that matter, on the street. Holidays are bizarre here.

The church members spent the evening together, sharing a delicious meal and reflecting on blessings from the past year and dreams for the next. I didn't have the guts to take the microphone and speak in front of everyone, but I did sit in my chair and think of my own blessings and dreams. I have so many, too many to count, and could not be more thankful to God for making 2008 a great year. It has been a challenging one, challenging in ways I never could have anticipated, but that has given me opportunities to see God being faithful in ways I had never seen before, as well as opportunities to see God working in me in ways I had never experienced before.

I know 2009 will be filled with lots of new adventures, new words in Portuguese, new relationships, new mistakes, and new experiences for growth, but I am grateful for the old adventures, old relationships, old mistakes, and old growth experiences that got me to this point. May your 2009 be a year of growth, adventure, relationships, and even, sometimes, mistakes. And, through it all, may God accompany you and hold you and carry you and guide you.

Feliz Ano Novo!!!

Christmas LST-style

Each month I send out a mass email to all of our LST readers, past and present, inviting them to our monthly English worship service. I sent one out this last Monday, inviting them to the service this coming Sunday, but completely forgot to include any Christmas well-wishes. I immediately did a reply-all and sent an additional Merry Christmas! message. To me it was an afterthought, more of a cultural thing (Brazilians are big on mass holiday greetings,) but I have been surprised and touched by the messages I have received back. I thought I would share some of them with you so that you can see what sweet things our readers had to say:

• Hiiiiiiii Criss, VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HAPPY 2009
• MERRY CHRISTMAS Cris, You always remember your friends. God bless you...
  
• Merry Christmas to Community [the name of our church]. You are in my heart. I am in Recife, despite the distance, but my heart is with you.
• (I translated this one from Portuguese) I received an unanticipated gift for Christmas. The opportunity to participate in LST was very important to me. I thank you, because you coordinate this project here in Natal, I thank Community of Christ for the opportunity, I thank my friend who invited me to participate, and Cyndi for the wonderful classes, and God who has given me life and the opportunity to enjoy it. Merry Christmas to all of you!
• I want you to know I wish all you from Comunidade de Cristo a very Merry Cristmas! You are all very important to me and you all made my 2008 happier than any other year. Hope to see you soon, when I am back! Enjoy the celebrations and Be with God!
• (also translated from Portuguese, but it came in all caps) MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU TOO. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR EVERYTHING: FOR GOD'S WORD, FOR GETTING TO KNOW A CULTURE THAT IS DIFFERENT FROM MINE, AND FOR MAKING SO MANY NICE FRIENDS. JESUS BLESS YOU.

Aren't those precious? Receiving those has made my week. Also something that made my week was when a reader and I were having a conversation about snow and winter in the US. He said that on movies he sees lots of ice dolls. I had no idea what he was talking about until he drew a picture of a snowman. :) I have now heard them referred to as ice dolls and boy snows. What else might come up??

Have a very merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Eve Eve Eve!

Fun fact: did you know that "Natal" means "Christmas"? I live in Christmas, Brazil, and the city takes that very seriously, leaving up wise men statues and giant Christmas trees all year round for your viewing pleasure.

I have blogger's block. I've sat down several times over the last week or so to type out a wildly compelling and profound post, filled with pictures and stories and a beautiful farewell paragraph for Greg and Cyndi, but all I end up with is verbosity and boring. Maybe it's the upper-80 degree weather and sun so intense that even with 50 SPF sunblock I'm getting a wicked tan. Yes, maybe that's why.

So...until the creative juices begin flowing again from these fingertips, I want to wish you a very feliz Natal and próspero ano novo! (Happy Christmas and prosperous new year!)

And for those of you who are keeping track, word on the street is that Christmas 2008 will now be spent at the beach rather than the pool. Yes, I am jealous of all of you who don't have to dream of a white Christmas because you actually will have one, but I guess my situation isn't so bad either. :)

At the Copa, Copacabana...

When I say "Rio de Janeiro," what comes to your mind?

The famous Christ the Redeemer statue? The almost equally-as-famous Sugarloaf mountain? Copacabana beach? Favelas? Danger?
(Much to just about everyone's suprise, I felt very safe in Rio and did not see a single dangerous situation...other than the insane Carioca drivers, of course! But there is no photo documentation. Rio is a safe place. Don't believe the media. And don't go to favelas. I'm sure that helped.)

When Mark and Kelly bought their tickets to come visit, they scheduled a two day stop in Rio on their way back to the States. They invited me to come along with them and partake in the adventures any gigantic city is sure to provide, and perhaps act as their default Portuguese-speaker. Since we had planned their visit to coincide with Thanksgiving, a selfish move on my part (hey, my sister is a good cook, and I didn't know how much help I was going to have with the LST Thanksgiving feast!) this put the stay in Rio at the beginning of December. I took advantage of the expected s-l-o-w-n-e-s-s that December brings in Brazil and accepted their offer. Oh man…am I sure glad I did!

We got into Rio on Sunday evening and woke up slightly early Monday morning to get out and be as touristy as possible, as fast as possible. We stayed with good friends of our family, Carlos and Elaine Castilho, who are serving as missionaries in Rio, and were honored that Carlos took two days off in order to drive us around and accompany us to all the traditional Rio tourist attractions.

The Castilho family

First stop was the Christ statue. It gave us (Mark the Photographer in particular) quite a scare as we approached Corcovado, the mountain, as there was one, singular, lingering cloud covering everything but the base of the statue.

When we finally got up there, I was freezing because we were literally inside of a cloud. I thought Mark was going to cry. But the cloud did not keep the tourists away, no it did not. I heard more English spoken in public that day than Portuguese, and people were not shy to imitate the pose in front of the statue for photo ops, even if it was covered by a cloud. After we had a few juices and snacks the clouds finally cleared and we went up to take pictures…and OH MY GOODNESS. It was beautiful. We had a panoramic view of the city, and after spending the rest of the rainy, gloomy week in Rio, I realized how LUCKY we were to have been there on such a clear, beautiful day. (Yes Mom, I finally realized.)

Please look at all the people who imitated his pose for pictures. It was really weird.

Overlooking Copacabana beach

While Mark ran around taking pictures, we got creative with how to get ourselves in pictures with the full statue. This was my favorite. That's Carlos.

Another, single, lingering cloud over Sugarloaf.

After Corcovado we drove around for a while and took some fun, but perhaps disrespectful? pictures from a lookout point.

Holding his hand, thanks to Mark's photography brilliance.

We then had lunch along Copacabana beach in order to make it to Sugarloaf by sunset. Carlos had done this before and said it was the best way to see Sugarloaf. So we took his word for it and were not disappointed. The sunset was incredible and we had another incredible view of the city. The cable car ride was NOT my favorite, and I will now show you a picture to prove that. (Sorry Kelly.)

All in all it was an amazing, unforgettable day, and I am so happy I was able to share it with Mark and Kelly.

Mark and Kelly left on Tuesday night, but I stayed through the week in order to spend more time with the Castilhos, see how missionary life in Rio differs from missionary life in Natal (quite a bit, actually), and visit another friend in a nearby city. Oh yeah, and to get my money's worth for making a trip I had previously attempted to plan four different times in the last four years.

Life is back to normal now in Natal. We've had an eventful last couple of weeks, which I will also be blogging about soon, but I'm guessing it will slow down a bit next week with Christmas. I'm excited to spend my second Christmas in Natal, and even more excited for the possibility that it might involve a pool. Natal is so absolutely, unbearably hot. All I want for Christmas is a pool.

Until next time...happy shopping!

(Note: About half of the pictures above were taken by my brother-in-law, Mark. The ones that are good are his, the ones that are not are mine. Thanks Mark!)

What are you thankful for?

Thanksgiving 2008 came as close to perfect as it possibly could, just short of actually spending it with my extended family, eating my aunt Glenda's homemade apple pies and aunt Nell's strawberry pretzel Jell-o salad and Sister Schubert's rolls. (Sister Schubert is not a member of the family…unfortunately.) When it was my turn to answer the above question, my answer was simple, and probably obvious: I'm thankful that my entire family was able to visit me in Natal this year. It was especially meaningful to actually have Mark and Kelly here with me on Thanksgiving day, sharing in our celebration and being thankful for the beach. :)

We celebrated Thanksgiving on the actual day with the other Americans living in Natal plus some of our special Brazilian friends. We had all the fixins, including a tropical turkey, rolls, dressing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, pies galore, and Fanta and Coke to drink, of course! We spent the day at John and Samantha's, and ended the afternoon by playing a fun (and new to me) word/card game. It really felt just like Thanksgiving in the States, complete with sleepiness and thankfulness.

The "What are you thankful for?" circle at John and Samantha's house

The following Saturday we had our second annual Thanksgiving celebration for the LST readers. You may remember that last year it was called a Thanksgiving Party and had a lot of Brazilian elements. Well, this year, thanks to Cyndi the Thanksgiving Genius, we had a 100% American Thanksgiving feast. We included some of the fun elements from last year, including the Thanksgiving tree (an absolutely fantastic Thanksgiving tradition, if you ask me) and added some more high-tech ones, thanks to Lacy's powerpoint presentation on the history of Thanksgiving.

Visitors and church members working on their leaves

We closed out the opening activities by getting in a big circle and singing "For All that You've Done I will Thank You" and "Give Thanks," then the food was served and everyone DUG IN. I am quick to admit that traditional Thanksgiving food is a little weird, particularly since I didn't begin to appreciate it until about 8 years ago, but the Brazilians were very receptive to the break from their usual rice and beans and embraced our weird food with a smile and a line for seconds. One reader came up to me and said "Cris, American food is AWESOME!" I said "Why thank you, Lucas, I'm glad you liked it. But you know that this isn't what we eat every day, right?" "What?!" He was so disappointed. :)

The dessert table! YUM!

We had a great turnout with our readers and some other special guests, with about fifty participants total. We even had food leftover, including pumpkin pie, much to Sergio's unrestrained excitement. (I'm pretty sure he took a whole pie home…we're just spreading the Thanksgiving cheer around, one pie at a time.)

Kelly, Sergio, and I in front of the Thanksgiving tree

Thanksgiving is the American tradition I am most PROUD to share with my Brazilian friends, because the purpose of the holiday is so meaningful. The Brazilians were very receptive to the idea of taking a special day out of the year to give thanks, and did a great job of expressing themselves on the leaves we hung on the Thanksgiving tree. Some of the things they wrote were:
-All of the bad things that didn't happened (Hey, come to think of it, I'm thankful for that, too!)
-God (Written and illustrated by the youngest Thanksgiving Feast guest, Andy Jewell, age 4.)
-My divorce (We placed no rules on the Thanksgiving tree leaves…clearly.)
-My master's degree (If I was at the point some of these readers are in their graduate degrees I would be thanking God, too! Several of them have had to revise their master's dissertations seven or eight times and then go through the defense process…wow.)

Lacy chatting with a group of readers

The whole group!

Thanksgiving week culminated with the greatest celebration of all: the following Sunday we celebrated two more baptisms and two more additions into our church family! Talis, an LST reader, and Jefferson, one of Talis's friends, gave their lives to the Lord on the same day. Talis started the LST program with my dad in June and continues to study with Lacy, and Jefferson's first contact with the church was at our LST Costume Party at the end of October. Both are fantastic guys who will have a great impact on God's kingdom. Welcome to the family, guys!

Well, Mom, thanks for making it all the way to the end of this post. As I write, I am on a trans-continental flight back to Natal from Rio de Janeiro…another entirely-too-long post within itself. I predict it will be even more photo-ful than this one! Thanks for reading, and happy December!