Adventures with dad

Brin's been gone on a boat trip for about a week now. I've been enjoying hanging out with the girls. I think they'll be in for a little bit of an adjustment time when mom returns, kind of like after the kids get to spend time with grandma and grandpa. Anyway, here are a couple of things we've been doing together...

For some reason I have memories of making Apple Dumplings on special occasions with my family when I was younger (I can't for the life of me remember what those special occasions were, maybe like in my case dad was just hungry for some dumplings). We made some the other day. It all went great, except for when I ran out to get some ice cream...

It seems vanilla ice cream is harder to find than you'd think. As I was digging around in the freezer, pushing aside such flavors as "green corn" and "tapioca", I tried to explain that I wanted vanilla, or something close to that. "Oh, are you making a milk shake?" the patron asked. I hesitated, should I try and explain to her how I'm making a dessert and it just tastes better with vanilla? I'm not sure I can even put to words with English the complimentary tastes of a warm apple dumpling and a cool scoop of vanilla ice cream. I decided to forego the explanation. She sure tried hard to please me though, at one point bringing me vanilla ice cream... with raisins. "It's mostly vanilla with some raisins", she explained. Finally I opted for Vanilla with some sort of chocolate candies, I figured it was better than trying to spit out raisins like watermelon seeds. Come to find out, the chocolate candies didn't take away anything from the sweet sweet melody of apple dumplings and ice cream.

The girls were pretty bummed out that they couldn't go with mom on the boat trip (unbeknownst to them one of the reasons she was going was to get some time away from them). So I promised to take them camping, which we did in the backyard, and we also went to a local beach with a group from our church. We spent the day there, playing football and swimming. The beach was an hour and a half boat ride from here, so the girls even got a little boat trip out of it.

Iriri Travelogue

I just spent 5 days on a trip to a very remote region where the work is growing. To get to these remote communities, we travel about 8 hours by car and then usually visit several communities on the Iriri River. This time we drove to a different location on the Iriri and visited 3 different communities on the river. I had several impressions and experiences on the trip, but writing a lot, I'll try and just comment on some of the photos:

Once we arrived by truck, we traveled exclusivly by boat. Here, a dugout canoe with an outboard motor transports part of our team (consisting of myself and 4 other Brazilians).

We carries film equipment with us, showing the Jesus Film in each of the 3 locations. Around 7 people responded to a call to follow Christ, adding to the several others who have also shown an initial faith and a desire to serve the Lord. The distance from Altamira will make it difficult to see these people discipled. We are hoping to send a brazilian missionary couple to this area to live and work with the new believers.

Illiteracy is a common. Pastor Clenildo (from the main church in Altamira), is showing a local man how to use a device which speaks the New Testament in Portuguese. Individual verses and books can be selected. It's batteries can be recharged using a handcrank or a built in solar panel.

A young boy reads a gospel tract to two illiterate men. They are laughing because he confuses the word "sinner" with the word "fisherman" when reading that "everyone is a sinner" he read "everyone is a fisherman" (the Portuguese word for sinner "pecador" is similar to fisherman "pescador").

Our group stopped by an elderly woman's house, who was blind and nearly deaf, to pray for her.

Commercial fishing is one of the main sources of income in this area. Here, a man who makes weekly visits in his truck to deliver fish to the market in Altamira, wieghs some Peacock Bass.

One of the other main sources of income is the collection of tropical fish from the river. Here an air compressor sits on the bank and is used to supply breathing air via the hose to divers who collect fish.

Enjoying a moment alone along the river.

With the river still rising due to the onset of the rainy season, the fishing was not great. But I did secure this catch one day. We mostly ate Piranha (on the left) which seem to bite in any season.

Are you ready for some football????

It all started back in June when a team of my former youth group came down on a work team. Most of the guys played on the high school football team at the time and tried to teach a few Brasilians how to play "American" football. I brought back a football when we were home, thinking that maybe we would play again sometime. Last weekend about 12 guys showed up to learn how to play. Only 2 of them were at the original game in June, so we spent a lot of time explaining the rules (which can be kind of hard to explain when you don't know how to translate words like down, line-of-scrimmage, down by contact, 1st and goal and hike - how the heck am I supposed to translate hike? I don't even know what that means).

For not knowing the first thing about football, I was impressed with how quickly they learned. My only regret was explaining the lateral, it only confused the issue and lead to way too many illegal forward passes. (I just realized, after I wrote that last sentence, that Brin is going to hate this post...)

We've played twice since that first Sunday, and once was on New Years Day after most of the guys were up all night! We always gather a crowd of curious onlookers, and a few times we've picked up some walk-ons from the crowd. We've been playing tackle on a small sand field. The dislocation has been the most popular injury so far - a shoulder and a toe. I think I'm going to push for flag football soon.

On a personal note, I go through football withdrawals every year during the NFL season. I've been able to get a few games that I've enjoyed watching. But really going out there and playing has been a pretty good fix as well. Plus, for the first time in my life, I'm the star quarterback!

Here, one of the throw-happy guys decides to chuck the ball instead of being tackled. He was not the quarterback and was well past the line of scrimmage.

This guy, Leandro, actually has a pretty good tuck going. Usually the ball would be waved frantically by the runner.

Explaining plays was also a chore, but like "backyard" football back home, they rarely (if ever) went according to plan.