Buffet

Of thoughts, ideas, and news today.

I learned last Saturday that my Gateway tower does not work in a 220 outlet. I should have known better but the laptop, printer and projector are all 110/220. I don't know what I was thinking but I stuck the chord right in. Pop, smoke, tears. We wanted to show a movie during our all night with the youth group and I was trying to figure out how I could get the best sound. Projector to wall, dvd player to projector, sound to computer . . . Pop, smoke, tears. Today it sits at the shop, I hope it can be fixed and salvaged. I'm getting to know our notebook again as a result. This thing is an ancient, four year old machine. We bought it when we started our pre-field ministry in September 2006. Everytime a new window opens that little flashlight comes up, looking for folders. I think its time for a new-machine-savings account.

Speaking of Saturday:
We had a good time with the youth group on Saturday night. It did rain but because we had fewer numbers than we had planned on we didn't have any problem with sleeping space. We have a great group of kids. Lets pray hard that we can all enjoy heaven together. After our breakfast at church on Sunday morning, Denielle and I came home to a wonderful Easter meal of leftover Sloppy Joes and lamented that the computer's illness did not allow us to talk to our families. It was just was well. We were so tired that we slept through most of the afternoon. I don't remember needing to take such a long nap after these events a few years ago. Hmm.

Some language lessons: One thing that did wonders for our Portuguese language skills was translating for Denielle's parents while they were here. I think being in that situation and being forced to speak when Dad (who has never met a stranger) would just start talking to somebody, forced us to use what we know. In our limited language mentality- because in many ways it is a mentality- we wouldn't simply go up to somebody and start a conversation beyond the normal, polite greetings. It was a good exercise. Thanks Dad!

A further example of our progress happened on Thursday when we had scheduled to meet for lunch with the leadership of one of the Bible Studies we participate in. A mix up of communication (between the Portuguese speakers) and some unforseen events led to a cancelation of the meeting. The only thing was, I and another man had already sat down at the restaurant. It was a very fun time. And the other guy only speaks Portuguese. David Flink has a very funny, appropriate and truthful blog post about language learning. He hits it right on the head. Follow the link.

One other thing: I always have to bite my tongue and smile at people when they listen to me and say, "So you aren't from here are you?" How could you tell?

I am still working on trying to get a few clips of our Sunday night service up on our YouTube. The computer crash has made it a little more challenging. We also want to upload a little video of the song the children's Sunday School class put together. Ambitious for this computer.

Tomorrow night I have the opportunity to do something I have never done before- speak at a couples meeting. This is a great thing that churches do here in Brazil. Once a month on a Saturday night all the married couples in the church get together for a devotional, time of worship and fellowship. This week our pastor has another commitment and so I get to fill in.

Monday we head to BGFM's annual field conference/business meeting. We are excited to go back to the northeast though the cold front that dumped record rain on Rio de Janeiro is now getting ready to camp out over the northeastern shoulder of the country. Hopefully it won't rain all week. Pray for our mission family. This week could be really important for us.

Thanks for reading.