Hello everyone!
I am very sorry I haven't been keeping up with
my blog very well. My first month's newsletters should be on its way to you
already. Please let me know if you haven't received it or if you want a copy, email me your email address (riachonoermo@gmail.com)
This first month has been a good mess. I have
learned in traveling and now living in Brasil that the basic rule of life is:
have no expectations. Things always go better when you don't set firm
expectations like "in a month I'll be comfortable enough with the language
to start having Bible studies with people" or "within a week of
arriving I'll have my house set up how I want". Or "man, I can feel
the plywood through two mattresses... I think I need a new mattress and
soon".... 6 weeks later I finally got one. In 5 days I will receive a washing machine for my clothes. Life moves at a slower pace here,
but it's anything but relaxing to the person adjusting to it. I still feel
anxious walking into the grocery store, because in the states I knew where
everything was and what brand I wanted and I could go right to it, grab it, go
to the front and pay for it, and leave. Here, the aisles seem organized
haphazardly, they're cramped and full of people, and I only recognize a few
brands. Errands that took 5 minutes back home take an hour here. I still don't
know how to receive my mail!
I say none of this to complain, because honestly none of it bothers me! I just want to give everyone
a small look into my day-to-day life of adjustment. I have loved every second
of my new life here in the past month and a half!
The missionaries and a couple of families here have been so precious to me, helping me so much to adjust and figure things out. I'm grateful to God for people who are so patient with my lack of language skills and knowledge about what I'm doing!
The missionaries and a couple of families here have been so precious to me, helping me so much to adjust and figure things out. I'm grateful to God for people who are so patient with my lack of language skills and knowledge about what I'm doing!
All of that being said, here are some of the
millions of highlights from October 1st to today (if I shared them all you'd
get tired of reading!):
Welcome and Housewarming party
A couple of Sundays after I arrived the ladies of the church held
a housewarming party for me. I can't even describe what a blessing this was! I
was given sheets, kitchen gadgets (some of which I'm still learning how to
use!), towels, and other miscellaneous things for my new apartment. This was a
blessing in two ways. 1st, I needed these things and it's weird to shop (as
mentioned above), and there's no store where I can get home goods within
walking distance to my home. 2nd and most importantly it is a blessing to feel
you're already loved your brothers and sisters in the church, and so good to
get to know them a little better as these are the people I will be doing life
with for the next two years!
Cheiros
This is a bit personal, but
I hope it makes you smile. It certainly made me smile. The family I stayed with
last year when I was here has become some of my closest friends. They have
helped me so much in my adjustment with anything from going to the store to enduring my endless questions over culture and language. They are so dear to
me. The mom of the family is like my mom here. She takes ridiculously good care of me. Well.
Brazilians in general are very touchy-feely and are always giving hugs and
kisses on the cheek for greeting an saying bye. I'm very touchy-feely to so I love this! Parents give their kids a
special kind of affection (and maybe to other people they love, but I’ve only
ever seen it between parents and kids) “cheiros” (pronounce it shay-roos). To
describe it from my experience it’s like a kiss on the top of the head but with
it the person audibly inhales a little so they can smell their child’s
fragrance. It sounds weird but it’s really cute! We were at church one
Wednesday night about three weeks ago, and as we were leaving my “mom” was
saying goodbye to me. She hugged me, then grabbed my head with her hands and
gave me cheiros. I actually teared up a little because it
really touched my heart. It caught me off guard and I probably made a very
surprised face. I told her that was the first cheiro I’d
ever received and she said “oh! I’m sorry! I know, you’re American, sometimes I
forget that you’re not used to affection like that! Do I need to be sorry?” I
replied no, that it touched my heart a lot and she hugged me and told me “I
love you, so of course I would give you cheiros”. I can’t begin to describe the
magnitude of love I feel for this family.
Christmas
Christmas
will be hard, being away from family and friends and it coming during the hottest time
of the year here. The seminary that our church runs is on vacation for a month starting
in the middle of December, so there will be much less activity around the
church. I was having a conversation a few weeks ago with my “mom” and my “dad”
here and my “mom” brought up Christmas. Christmas is very important for
Brazilians here in the northeast part of Brazil. It’s important to be together
as a family and nearly everyone travels for extended periods of time. She said
“how are you going to do Christmas?” I replied that I’d be staying here in
Recife and she said “No, I can’t accept that. N and I were talking
and we don’t want you to be alone, so we want you to come with us to Salvador,
where N’s parents are from and where we will be staying for the holidays. I
won’t have a good time there if I know you’re stuck here by yourself without
family.” So I will be spending a week and a half, from December 23rd through
the new year with my Brazilian family in Salvador, a city in the state of Bahia
that’s about a 12-13 hour car ride south from Recife, where I live. We found a
great sale on plane tickets (it’s already very cheap to fly domestically here,
and the flight is only an hour and ten minutes!) so we will be flying. Once
again I can’t express how grateful I am for a family that loves me like their
own here.
A Bump in the Road
As
many of you know I went on a two day trip to a famous beach nearby with an
American who was here visiting. She gave me an opportunity to debrief and ask
questions about life in Brazil, as she lived here for one year starting in
2012. It was a great trip and I learned so much from her. Unfortunately, though
I was being very careful, I had an accident with my computerized prosthetic
leg… it got water in it and this caused serious problems with the computer. I
sent it home to the US with the American who took me to the beach and she is
sending it to my prosthetist. They will be loaning me a new knee until my knee
gets fixed, maybe in 2-3 months. From everything I’ve asked and know this
little accident will be covered by warranty. Please pray that this is true.
There’s a church member from the missionaries' supporting church coming to watch
the seminary’s graduation in the beginning of December. We have asked him if he
will bring my leg (with the borrowed knee) back with him when he comes. Please
pray that he can bring me back my leg. My old leg does not fit me well and,
though I really don't want to complain I'll be honest that it’s causing me a bit of pain. As Brazil is a
country in which people walk A LOT, I’d love to have my leg that fits back with
me as soon as possible.
One-on-one Bible Studies
One of the women in
the church is currently studying with a couple of the members who have been
recently baptized and I have been tagging a long to get a sense of how to do
Bible studies here. One would think there's nothing different between a Bible
study in the States and one here, and that one would be right, but also very
wrong. There's a way to talk with people, to come to them from their cultural
perspective, that I am learning more and more about every day. I want to always
make sense culturally and be relevant. Christianity is the same at the foundation, but it's expressed and talked about differently sometimes in some
things. For example, try talking about the importance of the weekly monetary
church offering to someone whose culture has for its examples of giving the
greedy Catholic church, where in the past (and perhaps even today!) you can pay for the pardon of sins and the even
greedier Pentecostal church, where the Prosperity Gospel (see Joel Osteen or TV
pastors, or google it to know what that looks like) is preached to fill the
pockets of "pastors" who often own mansions (PS the huge majority of people
here doesn't even own a HOUSE- most of them live in apartments and even small
houses are ridiculously expensive). I've gotten the impression that people sometimes have a hard time trusting the church with his
or her money, and for good reason! I hope to soon be confident and
culturally proficient enough to begin studying the Bible with others
one-on-one myself.
Disclaimer: Remember, all of these things I'm sharing are my impressions of things here- things through my eyes. I could totally be wrong about things like the emotional significance of cheiros or how I'm relating things about how it is to study the Bible. I'm still basically a child in this culture, and I'm learning about a million things per day.
Disclaimer: Remember, all of these things I'm sharing are my impressions of things here- things through my eyes. I could totally be wrong about things like the emotional significance of cheiros or how I'm relating things about how it is to study the Bible. I'm still basically a child in this culture, and I'm learning about a million things per day.
In a bit look forward to a blog about
Acampamissão, a camp all about missions and serving God that we took our youth
group to. It has changed my life in a way I can compare to nothing else I’ve
ever experienced.
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