Brazil

Day 4 Thursday, July 16th

I finally slept well last night. The sunrise was gorgeous. For breakfast we had coffee, granola, banana's (their banana's are amazing), and some potato stuff. I'm not sure what they call them. Marie boiled them with the skins on which are brown and I just ate them plain like that. They are bright purple on the inside.

We had bible study just a bit ago. We are studying the gospel of Mark. We're taking it slow--which is good.

Judy encourages us not to get so bogged down by the newness of this country nor our responsibilities as to forget to spend time with God and in prayer. Right now that is not hard. I am surrounded by His glorious creation. It is peaceful on the river here and there aren't many distractions - you almost have to think of distractions on this boat. I have a little feeling the village won't be quite like this.

We should be arriving in the village soon. I think everyone is ready to get off the boat and start doing something.

Several people aren't feeling very well - our digestive systems have been thrown out of whack.

Now there are not so many houses along the river, they are quite rare in fact. We still see dolphins, lots of butterfly's, and a few monkeys but not much. We are all waiting to see the crocodiles and Judy says if we go out at night in the village with a flashlight we will.


Day 5 Friday, July 17

Ah, it is 7:30 pm. I didn't realize when I promised myself I'd journal every day it'd be this hard. I'm so tired I could cry.

It took a lot longer to get here than they thought it would. We couldn't see our way onto the Monkey River last night so we stopped about 20 minutes away. I was trying to talk to Maxi and turning on and off the searchlight for him. He was trying to make some sort of deal with me and wanted to shake hands on it. I didn't have any idea what he was trying to say so I wouldn't and he laughed and slapped me on the shoulder.

Cama says he was probably asking to marry me and Jannie that he wanted to feed me to the fish. Today though, has been interesting. We arrived in the village and almost immediately began working on the church. It was blisteringly hot until about noon when it began to rain - a gift from heaven in more ways than one. We all stood out getting drenched. We sweat continuously.

The people are shy but nice. The language barrier is very difficult but funny as times too. I know a little Spanish which is close to Portuguese but the Apurina language is very different. Mr Fockler brought Frisbees and they are loving the game. They played with them for hours. The concrete and bricks can be difficult to work with. It is hard to wear gloves so our hands are raw from the rough cement rubbing.

I worked with Pastor Eric mostly today. It was interesting talking with him. After work we all went swimming in the river. It felt amazing. Today for lunch we had paca - which is a large rodent. It tasted rather like pork. A couple of people were grossed out at the thought. Although Alan isn't feeling good anyway so I don't blame him for not trying it.

Too tired to write any more.