Brazilian Beach, Park, Pizza, and Downtown Shopping!

Well, one week is already done! Crazy how fast it seems to go by, though it seems like I have been here longer than a week now.

Saturday we took a day trip to the beach! It was warm weather, SUNSHINE, fine grain sand, BEACH UMBRELLAS (compared to the rain ones...), yummy food, salty WARM ocean water, SUNSHINE, beach volleyball... 

I SWAM IN THE OCEAN! Like FULL BODY underwater. 

It. Was. Awesome. 

Saturday night was Festa Junina, we danced, had a fire, watched some of the American team from Morgan Hill and some of the teens from RM do an amazing song skit, and ate yummy desserts. OH, and Binho and I made marshmellow scewers for the kids to roast the marshmellows on. Pretty sure they went home with stomach aches... SO MUCH SUGAR!! But, they loved it, so whatever. (: 

Ireni and I, in my "hillbilly" outfit

Sunday I met up with Deyze, Leticia, Igor, Marcelo, and Luis to go to the park to relax. Now, at home, the park is like what, maybe 10 minutes away? For a nice park in Sao Paulo, we took one bus about 35 minutes to the bus station, then waited one and a half hours for the next bus, which we rode for about 45 minutes... Once we got there we had to walk a little ways and then we were finally there! 

While at the park, we played volleyball with a soccer ball, played a great game of UNO, talked, and played music. Other than the bugs, we had a great time. 

Afterwards we went to church where I was introduced to the church and we listened to a guest pastor talk about missions and ministry, kinda fitting. (: He spoke about being hungry to share the Word, to love on others, and how when we feel called to ministry and missions we feel that hunger for God as He continues to put that hunger in our hearts. 

Of course, after that we had to go get some pizza (: 

Yesterday morning was hard, I really wanted to shut down, my brain was tired. Portuguese is hard. Being in a group with all brazilians, they go ahead and speak Portuguese... So of course, I can only pick up some words. It is starting to get better, I can recognize more words, but its like every other or every three.

Right now, there is so much other stuff going through my brain, it is really hard to focus on prayer. I want God, I want to be focused on letting Him break down the language barrier. But when I don't feel like I can find silence or even just quietness in my brain it gets really hard. So needless to say, I could really use some prayer to just find Him in the noise, and not focus on myself and my inability to speak and understand the language, but rather, that I would focus on how much He can do even with a barrier like language. 

Tati and I spent some more time today talking about my small groups. It makes me really excited that we will start meeting up next week. She sent out texts to the girls and young women to see who would be interested. Sounds like she got good responses. 

Today we went to Downtown Sao Paulo for some shopping with the American team before they flew out tonight. I got to pick up a cell phone so I can better keep in touch with everyone down here, a cross-body purse so no one steals my stuff, a bilingual bible (English and Portuguese, side by side verses!) which I am super excited to have, and a natural "remedy" as they call it down here.  My digestion is not adjusting well, if you catch my drift... :P  {prayer please??}

 

While Downtown we stopped and walked through the Catholic church, I missed the name of it, but it was BEAUTIFUL. I think the best part was all the people in there on their lunch breaks taking naps, haha!

Tonight I got home before 6pm, you have no idea how wonderful that is! I get like a bunch of hours to just hang out and relax. I think a cup of cafe', my journal and Bible out on the balcony sounds just wonderful (: soooo, tchau!