Playing catch-up

It's been a bit of a crazy month.  Between physical therapy appointments and other regular daily activities, we've been bit by bit preparing for our upcoming departure. We leave for furlough the end of May and our list of people to have for lunch, vehicles to fix and ministries to cover grows instead of shrinks each day.  In the midst of all this our focus has clearly not been on updating our blog.  So here is a review of activities over the past several weeks...

At the end of April, Brin hosted a team that mostly consisted of Amanda's family (Patrick & Laura Kilborn) from Canada.  Amanda has been living with us over the past 6 months helping homeschool Ava and Mia.  The team worked on a construction project here in Altamira and spent 4 days on the river visiting several river churches.  At the end of their stay, Amanda returned to Canada with them, after a good-bye serenade at the airport by her Brazilian friends.

Ava and Mia playing hooky from afternoon church.

Brin teaches kids oral hygiene before distributing toothbrushes and toothpaste that the Canadian team brought. She does this after handing out fistfuls of suckers.

A beach service in one of the communities we visited.

Ava on top of the boat as we travel 

up a small creek to a village.

In keeping with the theme of craziness, Josh's hair has been a preoccupation for many. Including Mia who helped secure his locks from the breezes on top of our boat. 

Brin's birthday fell on the day that the team left.  She was thrilled to be able to plan a trip to the waterfall with the team.

Ava and her friend Maddy made a sand ''hedgehog"'  birthday cake.

On to more recent events...Last weekend Josh helped out with a leadership training weekend that we held for the first time in the area of Surubim, a remote community where Josh has been working.  Usually these trainings are held in Altamira, but because of the cost for leaders living in remote communities to travel into the city, we brought the training to them.  There were about 15 leaders from 4 different remote locations that came to this training.  For many of them, it was probably the first time they ever attended an event that was focused just on them. 

A simple thing like bread was a treat to the leaders who live in the interior and have limited access to bakeries.