you live a better life when you still believe that there are secret doors to other worlds if only you could find them
you live a better life when you can cry and weep and wipe the snot from your nose unashamedly
you live a better life when you realize that you are not the center of the universe, but that the universe was made for you
you live a better life when you let it bleed, you don’t scratch it, and you give it time.

So a random person i know just died. it makes you stop and wonder about life. please pray for the family of Greg White. The funeral is Friday

David went on a website that has our house. so detailed that i can see our itty bitty pond in the backyard. rather scary.

I am missing another wedding. DEANDRA, the woman with the most wonderful voice in the world, is getting hitched this weekend. please pray for them also.

I’m watching you from a scenic
View taking in your every move
Who you tried so hard to be full of
Wishes and dreams
That did not come true for you
I can read you like a book
Sad stories everywhere I look
Faded pictures remind you when
What could have been
Did not come true for you

“Love is not a victory march. It’s a cold, and it’s a broken, hallelujah.” (Leonard Cohen)

Fernanda and her class…Milena and David

i have individual pictures of the rest…but that’s alittle much. God be with you.

This is the little kids park…with Gabriel coming at me, reminding me that indeed, he is the center of the universe.

Never a dull moment. never. 33 kids.

The teachers, trying to figure out who should be the student of the week…you know things are good when you have two kids who are amazing and so decide to give it to both:). what a problem to have! unfortunately, i don’t have their names. the one with her back turned is Ivana, next to her is Gabriel’s (a different one than in the previous picture) mom, then the 1st grade teacher, then the gym teacher, then Fernanda, then Lucia (Roberto’s mom) and then Lucas’s mom. i would know them by their kids, huh? so Kaio and Daniel got a 20 merit thingy.

Ivana, Daniel (who is the most amazing 6 year old ever) and me. with my shoes that only give me HUGE red spots on the back of my feet. oh well. and i can’t find my shirt (HA! YES! it was huge and horrid anyways) so wear red instead.

This million dollar grin is given by Heitor (pronouned “A-Toe”) who has his arm in a sling from breaking it at school yesterday.

Karine’s four Kindergarten kids

The first week of
school is over, and Carnival is soon to begin. What a week. Yesterday Heitor
broke his arm, or has a crack in it or something. Today was only a half day,
and they are heading to the beach. Would you believe that this kid asked to
come to school? His family waited to leave and picked him up from school on the
way to the beach—broken arm and all. The kids really love the school.

We gave out merits
today. It is like redeemable paper money things, and we will then have a
“shopping day.” Too bad the teachers couldn’t decide between two kids. What a
good problem to have! They really are a great group of kids. So we gave out the
reward to both of them. 20 merits. It is all the kids talk about—“I want to
learn the verse in English and get a merit!” “If I eat all my food will I get a
merit?” and so on. Adna told one kid he’d get a merit if she shared his snack
with me and he promptly offered me the whole snack. Heh. Speaking of Adna…she
eats erasers. I told her I would be writing about her, and she laughed. I like
Adna more and more. So she erases things on purpose, saves the rubber pieces,
and the pours them into her mouth. No joke. She had eraser crumbs on her chin.
It was so funny, but I couldn’t tell the rest of the class, or explain it,
because I have no clue what the word for “crumbs” is in Portugese.

The week went really
well. Some days are alittle long, and by the time 4pm comes around I am very
ready for it. Yesterday I was attempting to teach 6 year olds “Duck, duck,
goose” but it turned into a tug of war to try to make them sit in a circle
instead.

There are either an
over abundance of frogs here, or Brasilian frogs are exceptionally dumb. On the
road where I go jogging, some areas have run over frogs every couple feet. The
goal becomes missing the frog pieces rather than jogging. Sweating is rather
satisfying, at least when jogging, and you sweat after about 20 steps in the
weather. I counted. Some days you sweat before you start.

Valentine’s day was
fun (in Brasil they celebrate something like it in June, but it is basically
only for boyfriends/girlfriends), as I had all the kids learn how to say “Happy
Valentine’s Day” (hey, “valentine” is a hard word for Brasilians to say) bribed
only with a little piece of candy. Amazing how quick they picked it up. They
are now counting the days until St.Patrick’s day when I told them I would break
out my candy again.

i wrote 7 pages about this book i read. amazing. wonderful. and long winded of me. this is just the warning.

Eating Mangos is good for your teeth. i~ve never flossed so much in my life. the kind of mangos they have here (called ~sword mangos~) make you look like a vampire after you eat them, you have all these stringy things hanging from your mouth. wow.

The kids kept asking me all day when they were going to take a shower. i was thinking ~Gosh, i know it is hot, but come on~ and kept telling them they could take a shower at home. but who would have known…in Brasil, kids take showers at school. every day. They bring all their shower stuff and everything. so they can smell nice when they go home. get that. i was shaking my head with every politically correct idea hitting me in the face. could you imagine all the grade school kids planning on taking showers at school every day? it would add to the cleanliness…

Here is some prayer requests:
*the water is incredibly low in Carpina. Some areas of town don’t have any water at all. Right now, this only affects me by taking a shorter shower. yikes.
*health–some others and i seem to be coming down with a cold or something. in this weather? yep, probably because i spend most of the day–all that i can–camped out in front of a fan.

My computer still does not like me so i have found ways to fight back and now have pictures. i also went back and added pictures to my Everglades trip, so check them out sometime, k?

The first assembly of school…Caio is the front row left–he is a good boy. i wonder if he can be bad…the ones next to him…they can be bad. but i love em. they are my 3rd graders. 3rd grade is the best.

I[ve gotten pretty good at the goodbye routein. for other people, i
think they skip the “hello“ part now and come up to me saying “when
are you leaving?“ because they are so used to me going. they look up
and see the girl who is only half here. because she is half there. they
can enjoy me, knowing i will be gone soon–so don’t get too close to
her–because she is not all here. to me, this is my 7th goodbye. leavin
the US, leaving Brasil. yes, there are a lot of “hellos,“ but they are
not so…
7 times of listening to people ask “why are you leaving?“
7 times of wondering if i am crazy
7 times of excitement, thrills, and doubts
7 times of pondering if it is really God[s will or mine
7 times smiling and giving hugs and saying “thank you“
7 times of wondering what hellos and goodbyes are in the future
7 times of flat out fear
7 times of peace
7 times of letting go
7 times of struggle and surrender

After that rather depressing thought…thought i would add a nice picture…

Satan walked to heaven’s gates after wandering the world to and fro and God asked, “have you considered my servant Rachel?“
Satan replied that he had, but if he could just take away her kids, cows, and camels…oh wait, she doesn’t have any…what could he do to her? “Just let me make every day the first day of school and then let’s see what happens“

before this gets any more sacrilegious, let me tell you that the first day wasn’t SOOOO bad. actually, the worst part about it is that i found out there is no more flip=flops  this year. not professional enough. yes, i realize that, but it made for very happy teachers, and sometimes happiness is more important than professionalism. and my dress shoes gave me blisters. we had a couple incidents with 33 kids running around loose, thinking they were free forever, but other than that–amazing.

And just to remember the difference from last year. last year i spend the first hour trying to stop Lili from crying, and then ended up teaching them one word–“cat“ in English. and then one kid went home and said i was “chata“ which is something like boring, annoying and so forth. i cried after that day. horrid. i had also just arrived from the day before and was not fully there mentally.

For our opening assembly, Tele spoke to the kids in English and Portuguese, introducing them and explaining the merit and demerit system. He had the kids from last year sing some songs in English and they actually remembered most of the words. Well, at least they sang the word “NO“ really loud. We don’t have all the curriculum yet, so i am going on my own. But the kids are amazing. i have 1st through 5th grade. Gabriel learned his colors, Rebeca helped me clean up, Lucas does not know how to stop talking, Ciao is the only one who wanted to listen, Isabela learns faster than i can teach…the classes went great. The kids did a great job “reading“ my “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see?“

it is so hot. i don’t think i have ever been in weather like this. it is alt hotter than last year. even laying on the bed, no covers, with the fan directly on me i have trouble sleeping. so during the day…we had drink breaks every five minutes or so to keep hydrated. tomorrow everyone WILL bring waterbottles. lets not even discuss the resulting bathroom trips…

Yesterday was the 1st year anniversary of Acacais (the church at the Alcance) which meant a churrasco (BBQ Brasillian style)! i love life. yum. The music group from Guadalajara came, and they play traditional northeaster Brasil music. awesome stuff. and then the guy told the story of David and Goliath in “Northeastern style“ which would be comparable to someone really really ghetto telling a story with all the slang words and accent and all…it was great. but he did it in a way that really got the point across. Problem being, humor is one thing i don’t really get yet in the Portuguese language (it comes after you are even more fluent than i am–although i am starting to mix up my words when i speak–saying one thing in English and then switching to Portuguese without even knowing it…the funniest thing was when i started translated for David. heh. like he needs it…)

This week is the first ever missionary conference at the Alcance. There is a family here who used to/is/will be working with some tribes in the Amazon (they are Brasilian and are living next door to me at the Alcance for awhile). Their kids are in my class and great. Pictures of them and all these things will be coming as soon as my temperamental computer remembers that it likes me.

We also had a baptism. i should have been a good girl and found out the story behind the guy who got baptized…but i know he is a new believer and just recently began coming to the church. If Tele were here, he’d have an amazing story to tell you about a changed life. i just saw the dunking. it made me jealous. who says you can’t be baptized again? next time, i wanna do it at the beach. ahh.

Sunday night i went to the church in Paudalho. They have something special about them. okay, all the churches do, but God is doing something special there right now. Alot of new converts recently, and so many people are young and on fire and passionate. wow. when they start asking for prayer requests and praises, they end up having to limit it sometime, because it NEVER stops. amazing. I[ve been praying for Anihas mom, who had FOUR surgeries on her heart–and just got out of the hospital. She was there sharing a testimony at church. and so was Marcellos grandmother, who everyone thought wouldn’t ever walk again–she actually rode a motorcycle to church! i told her i was very jealous because no one ever lets me ride a moto (they are the cheap taxis around here) anywhere. grrrr.

Our first lunch

The boy on the left is my favorite. His name is Gabriel. he is the brightest crayon in the box.

The baptism and those from the church. don’tcha like the pool? it is right outside me room. ahhh.

Churrasco! Pastor Assuario, Diego…Kel and Fernanda from what i can see…