Happy New Year, friends!
We can't believe it is already 2018. What a year 2017 was! I finished working as a teacher in Walnut Grove in May, began working at O'Reilly Auto Parts' warehouse in June, and finished working there in August. We traveled to Florida in May with my family for a family vacation! JD finished working his truck building job in August, and we traveled to New York for 10 days in September. We also spent time with my family in September before we drove to Chicago to fly to Recife! We've now been living in Recife for more than 3 months. That still blows my mind! I can't believe we're already almost halfway to our first visit home in April. Time has flown by so quickly.
We haven't written an update in two months, so this one will cover quite a lot of time! I didn't post as much online over the last 6 weeks because I was sick. I got some sort of respiratory infection (we think a mild case of walking pneumonia), had a fever on and off for several days, and had a cough I couldn't shake. This lasted through Thanksgiving, our staff retreat, and more. It was really frustrating because I wasn't able to do visit our friends through our outreach many days, I missed street church, and I stayed home from visiting the babies at Bethany for the entirety of that time. I'm so glad that I'm better now! We visited the babies at Bethany for the first time in a LONG time yesterday, and it was great to play with them and hold them again!
As you've probably seen on my social media accounts, we got a dog! Our Selah is 8 weeks old today, and we picked her up just one week ago! Looking back at pictures, she's already grown a ton in that time. She's learning how to sit, lie down, and play gently. She is doing great with meeting new people and is content to just sit by and watch everything happen. We think she'll be a great friend to everyone that comes to our home!
Many of our missionary friends flew or drove home to spend time with their families for the holidays, so there were only a few of us left here. We made sure to spend a lot of time with each other to make up for not being able to be with our families! Christmas Eve is the big day here in Brasil - many people start their time together around 8 or 9 PM with a big dinner and afterwards, they open presents and celebrate with fireworks. We spent Christmas Eve evening with our fellow missionaries and girls living at Bethany. We watched "The Nativity" and ate a lot of good food and desserts 😊 On Christmas Day, we invited our friends over to just spend the day hanging out. We also facetimed our families and celebrated as much as possible with them.
My family was able to send some things with some other missionaries back in November, so they snuck in some gifts - our traditional Christmas Eve pajamas and Christmas morning stockings! It was so special to be able to participate with them in those traditions!!
Our Portuguese is coming along! We have slacked on spending time studying each day, but we are making plans to change that and be more determined to spend time practicing each day. Immersion in the culture is amazing and has really forced us to learn to communicate with those around us!
If you would like to partner with us with a one-time or monthly gift, please message us to find out how! Thank you, as always, for keeping us and the entire Shores team in your prayers! We truly appreciate them all!
