The first few days

We have now been in Brazil for 4 days.

Monday was our day off. After a really lazy get up and then the delight of getting our cases back, we had lunch and set off to explore the town. We went to get money exchanged, but the travel agent needed to drive to the next town to get it, so we went to window shopping for a while. Alana, one of the English speaking ladies from the church came with us – she is actually going to the school in September which is cool. Window shopping turned out really fun. We met up with another guy from the church and the whole group of us hung out in the top floor of a shoe shop just chatting. The lady working in the shop let us try some Chimarrão, which is a strange herb drink.

They just stuff the cup with these leaves and then add hot water. Apparently it is a very social thing which is often passed around in groups. I thought it smelled like a mix between liquorish and BBQ chicken, then tasted a bit like meat feast pizza. Wasn't really my kind of thing, but some of the others like it. Dinner was a trip to a local burger joint with couple of the church youth group. Then we collapsed in front of our Monday night film – Minority report! Finally everyone headed to their rooms. The guys to sleep and the girls to chat, a patten that has continued every night since- lol.

Luckily for us, we get most mornings off. So on Tuesday it was a relaxed get up and then for the girls an abrupt wake up with the cold showers. The guys don't have the luxury of morning showers. They are using a different shower which is located in the flat of a couple who live in the church. So they have to wait until after lunch to use the showers – poor smelly boys! Breakfast was at 10, team worship at 11, lunch at 12 and then an hour free before our afternoon activity. In the afternoon we were working with 'Project Pescar', a kind of youth club that they run each afternoon that church. It's more than just a youth club though because the kids are taught skills like wood work and crafts. For our first day though it was a case of getting to know them a bit and just hanging out. So we were playing lots of games like; 'kangaroo, koala, platypus'; 'Splat'; and 'flush the toilet' (which is effectively stuck in the mud- a tag game). Then after thoroughly wearing everyone out we went inside to have a snack and play table tennis and 'sinooker' which is a bit like pool but with a smaller table and rather than using a white ball you use your balls to sink your opponents. All the kids are lovely. They are all very happy to practice their limited English on us and teach us some Portuguese words and phrases. We all had a really good time with them. So we were with them from 1:30 until 5:30. Despite having so much fun, it was really tiring and most of us were quite relieved to be able to go and have a short kip before dinner. Dinner was officially our first meal that was cooked by the team was a beautiful pasta meal cooked by the lovely Mettie-Anne and the equally lovely Joe – it was good!

Wednesday morning the girls woke to find a couple of work men trying to get into their room. It was a little strange lying in bed while these work men were attaching things to our wall, however this 'something' happened to be a heater/air conditioner so we really weren't going to complain. Houses in Brazil don't have heating, so whatever the temperature is outside, that is generally the temperature inside. Sometimes though, the church is actually colder than the outside temperature, just purely because it is so big and can't heat up very quickly. Once they had finished our room became the warmest room in the entire building! Breakfast was again at 10 and team time at 11, this time though we had soaking- yay! Lunches are always provided for us by the church. Each day the food had been so good. We get a selection of the following each day; shredded lettuce, carrot and beetroot, potato, beans, rice, these cute little deep fried rice balls, beef , meat rolled pancakes, cheese and corn rolled pancake. It's generally quite simple, but as I said, so good. Wednesday afternoon was a football (soccer) game with the kids from Project Pescar. Everyone was split into 5 teams and we played each team against the others with matches lasting either 10 minutes or up until one team had scored twice.

I was aware that as a nation Brazil was good at football, and it is so true. Some of these guys were really quite good, especially some of the girls! Not all of them were good of course, but a good number of them. So it was quite an interesting tournament, if a little cold for the spectators.

Wednesday evening was the first meeting that we were taking part in. We had Johnny giving a testimony and Joe was preaching. We also had the lovely Raquel (pronounced Haquel – Rs in Portuguese are pronounced like Hs) as our translator. Those of you who have worked with a translator before we have an idea of how very different it is to talk or preach with a translator. Everything takes more that double as long, and it's much easier to loose your place as your thought patterns are interrupted. This didn't seem to be to much of a problem for our boys though. Although Joe found that his 'introduction' section took up most of his time, it actually worked out really well. They both did fantastically and had really good points that seemed to really touch people. Joe ended his talk with a bit of teaching about healing. He then called out the words of knowledge that we as a team had gotten earlier, tinnitus, a scalp problem, problem with the elbow and a load more. These people he invited up to the front and we as a team prayed for them for healing. Most of the time we didn't know an kind of specifics of what we were praying for, because there weren't enough translators for us all. So the people we were praying for were merely pointing to the general area and we were praying general prayers (unless God gave us something more specific as we were praying). Good thing is though that God knows exactly what was wrong, so it didn't matter that we didn't know- he healed them anyway! God healed a good number of people that night- it was so exciting.

Thursday we had WARM SHOWERS!!!! Apparently by trying to have both showers on, we had blown the fuse! Oops. So once the fuse had been replaced we got lovely warm showers again- a huge relief. After breakfast we had small group and then drama practice in the afternoon. We are performing the 'Everything' skit while we are here and we all had to learn our parts. The Everything skit is a really powerful skit that goes along to the song Everything by Lifehouse. If you have never seen it before you can find it on youtube. It makes me cry every time that I watch it. By the end of the practice we had choreographed the entire thing, basing it on the youtube version and actually managed a reasonably good run through. Thursday evening was another preaching night for us. This time however we were not at the church in Sapiranga. The team was split into two teams and each teams went to another of the local churches, one was about 15 minutes away and the other about 30 minutes. Team A had Roland giving a testimony and Becky preaching on 'Dreams and Destiny'. Team B had Otis giving a testimony and Mettie-Anne preaching on 'Shame to Honour'. Although I am in team B, I went with team A this time (just due to the number of spaces in the cars), so I got the joy of hearing Becky preach :) The service went really well. Becky preached the best she has ever done that sermon (I should know, I was her practice audience) and people were really touched. After the talking we had a ministry time where we were praying for people. It is very strange praying for people when they don't understand what it is that you are saying. In the end though I found it actually really freeing knowing that they don't understand you. It removed all of the possible performance issues of “Am I saying anything wrong?” “Have I head this word of knowledge from God right?” all of that was moot. I'm not the only one who found that we just got something form God and prayed into it without questioning. After the service we prayed for a man who was severely short sighted and saw his eyes improve while we are there. I am excited to see him next week to see how he has improved over the week. Then it was time for food. The church had put on a lovely spread for us. We had hot chocolate made with condensed milk – oh my word it was so sweet, hot dogs in pancake kind of things, cheese bread, chocolate cake and more. It was a real treat to round off the evening.

Prayer points:

• A number of the girls have got colds, so please call in that healing

• The damp weather is also not helping those with Asthma

• We were so excited to see real healings in the first meeting that we held. Please pray for an increase of that anointing, that these miracles will just continue to flow.

• Blessing of Portuguese. We are learning piece by piece, so just pray that God would cement what we have learned in our minds and give us even more understanding.

• Homesickness. Most of us are missing the school and home a bit. So pray for a release from that.