Wow, guys. I just looked at the dates of our blog posts, and it has been about 3 months since the last one... 😳I can't tell you how quickly time passes here. We've gotta get better at this! Let's talk month-by-month since January.
January: How the year started off...
- Hosted our friend Robyn (who will hopefully be moving here soon)
- Spent time with our pastors from Dayspring Church in Springfield, MO who were here to teach at one of our schools
- At the end of January, we were asked to house an 18-year-old young woman who had previously lived at Vila Betânia. "C" had nowhere to go and we thought we could find a place for her to live in about a month's time. However, we still hadn't found a place after a month, so "C" is still with us today. She's spunky, quiet, and a teenager in all meanings of the word 😉, but we've enjoyed having her with us. She'll actually be moving into our Transition House (for girls who have aged out of Vila Betânia) this weekend. We're thankful she will have a safe place to live and grow during this next season of her life!
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| Welcomed our first nephew into the family!! 💖 |
February: Here's the highlights from February...
- Watched the Super Bowl with friends
- Got a stomach bug
- Experienced our first local clinic for an appointment for a friend (and were there for about 3 hours just waiting!)
- Taught a friend how to make American banana bread
- We made buffalo chicken pastels (kind of like an empanada) and absolutely loved them!!
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| Picked up our friend Kate from the airport... we had signs, unicorn headbands, and gifts. It was awesome!! |
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| Hosted some new missionary friends (and their 2 kids and 2 dogs) who live in a town about 4 hours away... Selah LOVED it. |
March: Some things that happened during March...
- Ate (maybe) too many coxinhas 😍
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| Celebrated 2 birthdays at Vila Betânia! |
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| We went to the beach for the first time to actually enjoy the beach! We had time to go for about 45 minutes, but it was nice to enjoy something so close to us that we often "forget" about having such easy access to! |
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| Selah had surgery to remove her dewclaws to prevent injury (and was so pathetic while wearing her Cone of Shame). |
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| We enjoyed some drinks and a walk on the beach for St. Patrick's Day. |
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| We enjoyed dinner with friends of ours from Finland who used to live here in Brasil. |
April: We've been here for 6 months now! We can't believe how quickly it has gone by. A few things we've done during April...
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| Celebrated Easter with our Shores family and Vila Betânia kiddos 😍 |
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| After spending several Thursday nights just driving around our city looking for new locations to host what we call Street Church, we finally settled on a new place. It was fairly close to our old location, but there are so many more kids. The heart behind Street Church is to spend time showing the love of the Father to homeless and/or drug-addicted children and families in our city, but we haven't been able to find as many homeless children recently. The children in this new park mostly live in buildings close by, but they have still witnessed many more things than they should have to at such young ages. The last three weeks, we've had 10-20 children spend time with us on our "red carpet." We paint finger nails (or have ours painted), draw pictures, tell stories, play soccer, or one of many other things. We just want these kids to be able to be kids, even for just a couple hours on a Thursday night amid all of the chaos of this park. It's a blast! |
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| Hosted a surprise baby shower for friends of ours here... congratulations Ned and Larissa!! |
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Walked and drove through the "Sea of Candeias" to visit our friends in the communities (aka it rained overnight and it was crazy)!
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What's coming up:
- We leave on the 23rd to go back to the US for about 6 weeks, and we're really excited to see family and friends. We're planning to be in the Rochester area of NY for about 2 1/2 weeks and then we'll head to Springfield, MO for about 3 1/2 weeks. After that, we'll be in Nashville for a couple days before heading to Fort Lauderdale for a day while waiting for our flight back to Recife! If you'd like to catch up with us at all during our trip, shoot us a message on FB, IG, iMessage, email, whatever! We'd love to connect with as many people as possible.
How you can be part of what we're doing here:
- Visit us! We've got a guest room, and we'd love to have some friends and family visit!
- Pray for us, Shores, Vila Betânia, and the people of Brasil! Revival, restoration, and revolution are happening here - let's pray for more!!
- Support us monetarily with a one-time gift or monthly gift of $10, $25, $50, $100, or more! Any amount is helpful as we work toward our monthly support goal! We're about halfway there!! Visit our Modern Day website HERE to give any amount. Let us know if you have any questions!
