PV Sul, campamento

Well, we are finishing up the second week of camp here in WOL Porto Alegre, Brazil. With four more weeks to go, Leighton and I are very much energized and excited to keep serving and learning here. Over all it has been a great experience here in southern Brazil. They have decided to give me a break from counseling this week (Praise the Lord!) and put me in the kitchen washing dishes. It has been a fun week, I’m still trying to learn how to converse in Portuguese. I am trying to avoid speaking in Spanish, they understand most of it, but that is not there language, so I have had a good time kind of guessing Spanish words and putting a Portuguese accent on it and end up being correct. Every one here says I am speaking well for only being here three weeks, so that encourages me to give it my all to learn this language!

So we have arrived to Brazil, yippee! We arrived on the 7^th in the morning after traveling all night from Montevideo, Uruguay. We had a great time in Uruguay and I bought an Equipo de Mate! It is pretty great but I still have to cure it before drinking out of it. I also bought 3 kilos of Yerba, because that is a necessity if you go to Uruguay. So we arrived safe and secure to the WOL property here in Porto Alegre. The place is really great, it is very hot but I like it here. However it does rain pretty often, so it cools things down. Last week it rained basically three days straight off and on, and it flooded the property. There is a little river that flows into a waterfall on the property which was like rapids, it was incredible how that amount of rain could do so much damage. Portuguese is coming, I understand basically everything, but I am having a little bit of a hard time communicating with others, the speaking is always harder. Well, they have decided to put me as a counselor for the summer. So I am not very comfortable first of all because I don’t even speak the language yet. But they have been telling me that after the first few weeks it will come really fast, which I can already see much evidence of. So, we will see what happens, it should be an interesting experience, probably one I will never forget. I have been thinking of just all these incredible experiences the Lord has permitted me to be a part of, I mean I am seeing the world, learning things on a daily basis, learning other cultures and languages. I am sure that this is preparation for something big called my life. I know that the Lord is at work in all the small details of my life to work his will out through me and to prepare me for his work, and I have really been excited about that a lot more when I arrived here. Well we were told before we got here that camp ended on the 15^th of February but once we arrived we were told otherwise. On arrival we were told that camp really ended on the 28^th which is right after carnaval here in Brazil, which if you don’t know what carnaval is, it is probably the biggest drinking, drugging, and sex party on the planet. It is the whole last week of February, they mostly celebrate in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro I believe. Extremely immoral, and dangerous. So we are praying about staying here for that time which would put us back a lot on the schedule but we are thinking about it now and weighing out all the possibilities. Also one of those weeks they will not have camp but instead take a very small group of people on an adventure week. It is a week of climbing big rock walls and mountains, white water rafting, horse riding, rappelling of cliffs, and other similar things. The only set back is that it cost around 100 American dollars, which is a lot of money, and we’re not sure if it will be worth the money or not. So keep that in mind for a prayer request.

Well, we were originally going to leave from here on the 15^th of February, but now we have made a change of plans and decided to stay until the 28^th, which will be after Carnaval. Also, Lord willing we will be going on the adventure week that I talked about before, it should be a great time. Around the 29^th or 30^th we will hopefully be making our way up to Sao Paulo so we can get going on to Bolivia. This trip seems to be getting longer and longer. As of now we will not be arriving to the states until beginning to mid April, this is crazy but I love it. What an adventure! Thanks Lord! So many opportunities, so many places, so many things to do, and so little time. Pray that the Lord would help us to keep our heads attached to our bodies and to remember the purpose of this trip, to serve Him, and spread His word!