Our Christmas Cookie Adventure

Christmas cookies are not necessarily a tradition in our house, but I was kind of grasping at whatever holiday tradition I could get my hands on. After deciding on a cheese ball and Christmas cookies, Ella and I went looking for cookie cutters (more on the cheese ball later).

We seemed to have lost our cookie cutters somewhere in one of our many moves. After visiting several stores, and chasing down countless leads, we found something that looked like cookie cutters at an office supply store (of course). It was actually a set of 3 different stars, and we also found a flower shape that we thought might pass as a wreath. Not wanting to try my luck with St. Nick, I decided to make a snowman shape out of one of the stars. After much bending and re-bending, we had a very realistic snowman (and by realistic, I mean what an actual snowman looks like, not an actual snowman cookie cutter). We were in business, our collection of two stars, a pseudo-wreath and a realistic snowman made us feel very festive.

About the cheese ball. Brin had been very excited recently because of a new item at our local grocery store: Philadelphia Cream Cheese. I thought it would make a good cheese ball. It was not quite as firm as I remembered a cheese ball to be, and the Brazilnut covering gave it a unique taste. It was tasted by all and enjoyed by none.

Our impromptu Metal Shop Class

The finished snowman

My turn to the dark side

Some of you may remember from a previous post (see #5 of the Brazil Top Ten List) I described an obtrusive, yet popular, method of advertising here is large trucks driving around with huge speakers blaring music and advertisements. Well, it seems I've succumbed to the culture.

Our youth group is planning an outreach event at a local gymnasium and they asked me to help them record an advertisement so they could hire a guy to "take it to the streets". I said sure I'd help, but soon after I felt like I had sold my soul.

As I helped a few of my friends with the editing of this masterpiece, I began to recognize the format we were putting together. The advertisements are always about 30 seconds, starting with a background music track - as an announcer's voice (think cheesy DJ voice) begins to vomit the information at you, at the end the music comes up and plays loudly for a few seconds - and then it starts over again. An interesting effect we added, that I often hear, is an echo on the first couple of words and last couple of words the announcer says.

You may find all of this boring. I think I just had to get it off my chest. I'm not sure what my reaction will be if I ever encounter the poor chap driving around blaring our advertisement. I may just start weeping.

In a room of ten people, I'd rank pretty close to the bottom 10% when it comes to sentimentality. So it may surprise some of you to learn that I'm missing being home for Thanksgiving this year. I'm not sure what I miss. Oh sure, the people. But it's more than that, living here we miss people all the time.

Maybe it's the food. I would really enjoy bellying up to the smorgasbord that is Thanksgiving Day. But I've learned my yearning for food is a bit of a mirage. I remember before we went home for furlough Brin and I would talk about what food we missed, what restaurants we looked forward to visiting, even what dish we would order (OK, as I write this I realize how lame that sounds...). The reality was, we had built it up a bit too much, even the goodness that is a crispy creme doughnut could not live up to the expectations of that first bite.

So it can't be the food. For me, the holidays is more than just the event, it's the collective feeling of being part of something big, something communal. I see it a lot here, Brazilians really know how to party, and have more national holidays than you would care to know (would anyone like to celebrate the birthday of your town?). But for all the celebrating that I see here, I feel like an observer. It feels a bit like an inside joke that I just don't get, no matter how many times I ask for an explanation, it's still not funny.

Anyway, I know somewhere, far away, everyone's laughing at my inside joke, but I'm just not there to enjoy it. Laugh away... oh yeah, and eat a huge slice of strawberry rhubarb pie for me.

-JTP

Mean guys and drunk women

I was asked to go on a trip to the Asurini, only a day before we would be leaving. I said I would, then kind of regretted it as the day got crazier and crazier. First, I found out my new truck needs it's engine rebuilt, the price tag for this truck just went up a few thousand dollars. Then the comparatively minor annoyance of our ceiling fan suddenly not working (try spending the night in the Amazon with out any air moving). Brin had a full plate herself when she got word that she needed to go to the hospital and coordinate between the Canadian and Brazilian doctors for Dan's evacuation flight to Canada. This fell to her because Ritchie, the missionary who has been helping care for Dan was in the hospital with his wife who was having a baby. Oh yeah, and later that day Brin was going to be watching Ritchie's 2 other kids.

In the midst of the chaos Brin and I decided I should go, mainly to provide the transportation for the film equipment needed. So I left Friday morning at 6:30 to catch the 7:00 barge across the Xingu River. After only traveling 2 miles on the other side of the river, the clutch cable broke and there we sat on the side of the road. I was ready to tell our group "I don't think this trip is going to happen", but Poli, the church worker I was going with, suggested we call Pastor Clenildo and have him buy the part and sending it over by speedboat (waiting for the barge would have meant at least another couple of hours). Surprisingly, we had the right part about a half hour later, 10 more minutes and we were on the road.

Poli sharing under the lights from our generator

That evening as Poli shared the gospel with the group of about 30, my mind wandered to last weeks service at the training center. Pastor Clenildo had shared how some guy asked him "What happened to Warner? What happened to Poli? What happened to several other guys? I used to know them. They were vagabonds. They were mean. They were not nice people. Now they are upright citizens and nice to be around." Warner, Poli and the other "vagabonds" he was referring to now go to our church and Christ has changed them. And there was listening to Poli, a faithful servant coming to this area once a month to share Christ. I never new him before he was a Christian, but some guys you can just tell they used to mean, you know what I mean?

Teresa is another Poli. Not that she was mean, but she drank... a lot. Teresa shared a testimony after Poli. She and her husband Orlando own a farm a few miles down the road. They spend a lot of time in Altamira and go to our church when they're in town. There's a church on their farm that they helped start and now they are reaching out farther down the road. Teresa shared how God took away her craving for alcohol. Then she asked anybody who wanted prayer for God to help them turn away from alcohol to stand up. When nobody stood she told 5 of the guys there to stand up. I'm not sure how God is going to answer that prayer, I felt there was a little bit of coercion going on. But you could see her heart for those people.

In the end the trip seemed well worth the effort. I was able to fix the ceiling fan before I left. Brin did fine with the extra kids while I was gone. And as for my truck, they say it'll be 3 days... I'll plan for more like 6.

A burned out tree stump on land cleared for cattle

"Waterfall" (no joke, that's his name) works at making Farinha,
staple food made from the manioc root.

I awoke to this scene from my hammock which I had strung between 2 trees.

butterflies, ballots and more

This past week has found us running in many different directions. Here are a few of the activities that have been occupying some of our time...

Starting on a serious note, a week or so ago a man who was visiting on a team from Canada was in a serious motorcycle accident. He suffered several broken bones and is still recuperating in a hospital here in Altamira. His team was here visiting our missionaries at our other base in Porto de Moz, so we didn't know him. The team he came with has since left and several of the missionaries have been helping to stay with him in the hospital (and translate when needed). Brin has been using her nursing experience and has spent several hours at his bedside.

Dan has been recovering nicely, but still needs surgery on his broken jaw. The family has been trying to get him evacuated to Canada, but the insurance company has been dragging it's feet. Please pray that he will be evacuated soon, if not, his wife will be coming to help out (for probably another 2 weeks in the hospital).


The bar-b-que pit at the training center.

This past weekend we had a celebration with all of our Altamira churches commemorating 10 years of work here. A couple hundred people stayed overnight at the training center and we butchered 2 cows. The service was a powerful time of agknowledging God's hand in the work here. I didn't get too many pictures, but you can see more on Bud's blog.


Last night a group of us missionaries got together and watched the election results (pictured above). We finally turned in around 11:30 when OH was called for Obama and it looked to be mostly over. It's interesting to watch politics from abroad, especially the attention that so many here give to American politics.

Brin voting by absentee ballot

Ending on a lighter note, one of the girls caught a butterfly and they had fun trying to get it to cooperate for a photo shoot...