Birthdays, Carnival, and Ministry

February was full of meetings and celebrations. With the kids starting back at Vinde, there was plenty of organizing and cleaning to do.

This year we are now in charge of the interns too, so we had a meeting with them and Sarah to go over the policy and procedures. We will have a “family”night with them every month to just hang out for morale, bi-weekly we will meet with them individually to talk about life, ministry, future, etc, and weekly is Bible study. We will take them around for errands like groceries, haircuts, etc and Sarah will help with other more Portuguese heavy stuff like doctors, visas, etc,

I love these kiddos – To see them learning about God the Father and Jesus their Savior.

To see them happy and learning.

Carnival happened this month. Carnival is a MAJOR deal in Brazil. While the biggest party is in Rio de Janeiro, cities all over the country celebrate. Here in Atibaia, some of the grocery stores even close to allow employees to celebrate. It’s crazy. Atibaia’s celebration is advertised as a more family friendly event and it gets crowded. We avoided celebrating; too many people and too many people drinking. The city even put out posts about consent and sexual violence. They also put out posts about conserving water because of all the visitors. For the most part, though it was parades, signing, dancing, food trucks; a big block party. (Photos above were from the mayor’s office instagram post; not mine).

São Paulo had a pretty big crowd. (Photo courtesy of roletandosp). One of the interns was traveling with her sister, who had come to visit, and a Brazilian friend. They looked for cities that were not celebrating Carnival and the trip went well, until they decided to hang out at Batman Alley in São Paulo before they were supposed to take her sister back to the airport. A group of guys, broke into their rental car and stole all of the sister’s luggage, her backpack, and even the spare tire. They had to reschedule her flight because she had to get an emergency passport and the office was closed for part of the week due to Carnival. They also went to go to the police station and file a report. Her laptop had an AirTag and the police tracked it to a pretty rough favela and then proceeded to tell her that they weren’t going in there to get it. Brazil is crazy.

The kids love lego time. Legos are really expensive in Brazil so they love to get to play with them at Vinde.

English classes are fun. Tucker helps me at the Imperial location and Mason helps me at the Sede location.

Anyone that’s been here to serve knows that we all do a lot of dishes. I bet the boys will never complain about loading a dishwasher ever again after all the handwashing we do here.

Well, Tucker turned 14. I love this young man. For his birthday he wanted to go to the trampoline park and then out for pizza for dinner. The kids had a blast.

How is he 14 already? I love seeing him mature. He has such a big zest for life. He loves being active and loves to laugh.

Pizza was a great time. We went to Dominos (it’s a lot more expensive than our normal Brazilian pizza place so we save it for special occasions). The staff were so great. When they heard us signing happy birthday, they made him a dessert pizza (we didn’t order it) and brought it out to him and sang to him. I thought that was so sweet. Brazilian are so social.

His actually birthday was the day of the bazaar so we took him out to McDonalds for a Big Mac, ice cream cone, and an apple pie. Sarah invited the boys over for games and snacks. He got the body cam he wanted for this birthday, so I think all and all he enjoyed his birthday.

Move In Day for Giovana arrived. Thank you so much to those that helped make this happen for her. You are truly a blessing.

I could tell she was excited but she was definitely nervous too. This is a big change for her. New phase of life, new friends, roommates, etc. Please continue to pray for this sweet young lady. He brother, Johnathan, was the only family member that showed up for her but we made sure we were there for her. We helped her move in and met one of her roommates, had lunch with her, and then prayed over her before we left.

It’s the rainy season (which stinks when so much of your ministry is outdoor focused) but the staff here are amazing. When a heavy rainstorm arrived rights t pick up time, the staff grabbed umbrellas and went to work. They were SOAKED but they were determined to try to keep the kids as dry as possible during pick up.

We have a bunch of new faces and sweet returning faces.

I don’t have pictures of it, but the Bragantinos (professional soccer team in Bragança) donated official Bragança clothing to the kids. They received shorts, shirts, socks, and arm bands. The kids were OVER the moon for this stuff. They wear it all the time now. Krebs, a large agricultural equipment producer and supporter of the ministry, sent each kid home with a goody bag of stuff as a welcome back gift. It’s great to see businesses being partners with the ministry.

Before the semester started, Liandro and the Lus, conducted a meeting with the parents. The meeting was held after the bazaar.

Speaking of the bazaar, we were overflowing with donations so we held the bazaar at the quadra instead of the refeitório.

Of course, we had people over for the Super Bowl. Events like that are hard because at that point we were two hours ahead of EST time, so it was a late night.

And finally, after a year and a month I was finally able to get my psychological exam scheduled. Sarah and Trevor had prepared me for what the collection of tests would be like (since translators are not allowed) and that would have been great if I had been given the test that everyone else has taken for years. For example, I was prepared for identifying the missing parts of a picture of a horse for one, but no; not me. My test was different. There was no horse, drawing lines, yes; horse no. For one of the tests, I was given a picture to memorize. Then the picture was taken away and we (I was in a classroom of people) had to write down all the images we remembered from the picture…in Portuguese! There were so many words I didn’t know in Portuguese. I haven’t learned the word for a guy parachuting because why would I learn that when I’m still trying to make sure I can get groceries, go to the doctor, etc. I was freaking out. I was running out of time so I just starting writing the words in English so at least they knew I remembered something. I told the test administrator what I did (in Portuguese) and she looked at me said she didn’t know English and shrugged. I told her I could draw her the picture and that I remembered all but two of the images but she said she couldn’t make any exceptions. My heart sank. I was so nauseous thinking about how I had waited over a year to take a test I was about to fail. But, thankfully, I was still allowed to pass in the end. I was so excited. Supposedly my license should be here by the end of March.

We are still waiting to hear back on our visas. All the paperwork has been submitted. Please continue to pray for this process.