Yay for Skype!

The school is closed for the day, but luckily Danny has the internet at his apartment! Last night at the Shorts' was great! We had dinner with them, Danny, and Chris and Theresa Boyce. They are also missionaries in Recife. They have an adorable and hilarious 4 year old daughter named Sara. She entertained us all evening. My favorite part of the night was getting to talk to my parents on skype!! We both had web cams, so we were able to see each other. It was very exciting! If you don't know what skype is, you need to go to http://skype.com/ today! You can download it for free, and talk to anyone in the world who has it, for as long as you want, for FREE! After dinner, we went back to Christina's. She and I stayed up late bonding and looking at pictures of last year's LST team, and trips she has been on. It was a lot of fun! I realized that since I have been here, I have been playing one really long game of charades and pictionary! It's the only way to communicate some words or concepts.

Today is our free day, so this morning I went with Lee to the church building where she and Rinata teach English and the Bible to children from poor neighborhoods. This is something they do every Saturday, and is called "Projecto Pro-Crescer" which means Project for Growth. The kids were so sweet and cute. After the lessons, they played soccer and rode bikes. One girl who has been studying with Lee for a while decided to be baptized today!

This video is of the kids singing "God is so Good." I'm not sure how it sounds because I don't have speakers on this computer. I hope you can hear how cute they sound.

This afternoon we had an exciting trip to the supermarket. This was not your typical supermarket. There were a lot of interesting things going on here, and the line wrapped all the way around the store. If it had not been for our taxi driver, Roberto who came in with us, we would not have known what to do! He helped us pick out the best fruit. Anything you need to do, you can do at the supermarket. Food, of course. Haircut? Sure! There was even live music! AND it was air conditioned! It was a whole new world. Now, we are watching the Bee Movie at Danny's! Tonight, Missy and William will go to their first Brazilian soccer game with Randy! Jarrod and I are going with Chris to a bible study in the favela. I'm not sure what to expect, but a quote from the dictionary says this, "favelas-these shantytowns are the antithesis of the picture postcard views on sale in all major Brazilian cities. Made up of makeshift shacks, they spread for miles across marginal land in and around the main population centers, painting all too vivid a portrait of the poverty that underpins life for so many Brazilians." It should be an interesting experience. It will definitely give us a different perspective.
It is brutally hot today. "Muito quente!" But it will probably start cooling down as the day goes on. Please keep Missy in your prayers. She is not feeling well.

Teaching English?

Luckily, my mother reminded me that if I am going to be teaching English in Brazil, then I should spell everything correctly on my blog. Good point. What would I do without my sweet mother? Today went really well. I realized half way through the day that all of my readers are going to end up with really southern accents. They have no idea that looking to me for the best way to prounounce a word might not be the best way to hear it. I'm doing the best I can! I had some of the same readers today and three new ones. You can add Everton, Daniele, and Oswaldo to your prayer lists :) Luciano brought me a Portuguese/English New Testament today! He said that he will bring one for each of my other teammates next time he comes. It has already come in very handy today. In one of my sessions, we were reading about when Jesus was tempted my the devil. My reader said, "and the Spirit led him into the desert." But he actually said "dessert" And I couldn't help but think that I would probably be really tempted my a dessert myself!! I realized today that I haven't had any chocolate in 2 days! Oh, another funny thing. We were having lunch when a CD truck drove by. This is a lot like an icecream truck, but more like a cart and sells CDs instead of icecream. It had speakers that were playing "Umbrella" by Rhianna in portuguese! I am really excited about each of my readers, and am anxious to meet the one's that do not come until next week. Tonight, we are going to have dinner at Randy and Kathy Shorts' so that should be a great time to sit and talk with everyone about everything that has happened this week. I am really excited about worship services on Sunday! I can't wait to meet all of the people from the church here. I don't know if I will be able to use the internet until Monday, so don't worry if there are no new updates until then. Hopefully I will be able to get more pictures of Recife over the weekend. I love and miss you all!

Thoughtlessness

My readers tonight were Misael, Marilia, Marcelo, and Paulo. Add them to your list of names to pray for :) It was amazing to see the difference in levels of English skills in all 7 of my readers today. Most of them had a very limited vocabulary. My last two readers, though, have both lived in the U.S. and seemed fluent to me. They were excited to have someone to speak English with, so that they will not lose the language. Marcelo brought a list of questions in with him. The first question on the list was, "please explain 'thoughtlessness.'" WOW! I was completely caught off guard! I did the best I could, and googled the rest. He understood 'thought' and 'less,' but couldn't figure out the 'ness.' I have a full explanation of the suffix 'ness' prepared for his next session! It's still raining here, but we kind of got used to it already. Everyone just walks around soaking wet-ha. We are about to go to Christina's to have peanut butter sandwiches and prepare our lessons for tomorrow. (I JUST now found the apostrophe, but I'm not going to go back and edit all my posts-haha.) I miss you all!!! Keep them emails coming, they are very encouraging!

Home Away from Home

These two are of the apartment building where Missy and I are staying with Christina for the first two weeks. When Missy leaves, I will stay with a girl named Lee, who is engaged to Danny. Danny is the American intern that the guys are staying with.

This is the School of the Bible (or Escola da Bíblia) where we have our reading sessions.

I just finished my first 3 reading sessions and they were GREAT! Ligia is a very sweet woman who understands English very well. She just needs more practice speaking. Vinny is my age and works with children. He can speak and understand very well. Luciano is passionate about the Lord and is very excited that we have come to Brazil to help people with their English. He is married and has a beautiful 5 year old daughter named Luciana. He almost made me cry going on about what a good work we are doing and how happy we should feel to have God in our lives. He said that God will catch our tears when we cry. He was so sweet! He is half Italian so he is fluent in Italian! While I am helping him speak Enlglish, he can help me with my Italian! They all signed up for multiple sessions, and all seem like wonderful people. Please keep them in your prayers. If you would like to visit Jarrods blog, the address is:

jarrodbtaylor.blogspot.com

Apparently this is rainy season. Thanks for the emergency poncho, Mom!!

63 readers!

I just wanted everyone to know that after today's 2 information sessions, we have a total of 63 readers signed up between the 4 of us!

Getting Started

Our team at the airport (William Liddell, Kensey Harris, Missy Robinson, Jarrod Taylor)

Recife, Brazil on a rainy day

We started the day with a tour of the city to get familiar with how to get around. Randy Short (the missionary is Recife) took us to Guararapes Park to get a good view of the skyline. We also got to see the beach! Unfortunately it was a rainy day so I decided to wait for a better chance to get a picture.

This is the Boa Viagem Church of Christ. Sunday will be their 10 year anniv!

This was our first information session at the School of the Bible. This is a separate building from the church building. We will be having our one-on-one reading sessions here. We ended up having 31 people at our first information session! The information session allows people to come and find out why we are here, and to sign up for their reading sessions for the next 5 weeks. We are expecting to have even more people at our next info session in one hour! We will start one-on-one reading sessions tomorrow. Everyone at the info session was very friendly and excited to get started!

First Impressions

We had a good dinner last night and got some good sleep. This morning we are going to get a tour of the neighborhood we are in. Later today we are going to have 2 different information sessions for people interested in learning English. We are expecting around 70 people which is GREAT! We will start our reading sessions tomorrow. Depending on how readers choose to sign up, we will each be doing about 8 one-on-one sessions a day, each lasting an hour.
I forgot to mention that Christina has a dog! His name is Miguel. He bites. So far, two things are much better in Brazil...Coffee and Pineapple!

Day 1

This will have to be short for now. I just wanted to let everyone know that I made it to Brazil! The flights felt like 10 minutes each cause I slept the whole time. Our luggage made it with us, too, so I have nothing to complain about! Missy and I are staying with a very sweet lady named Christina. Her neighbor is the director of the School of the Bible and baptized her three years ago. They love to talk about soccer! We are about to all have dinner together (My team, and Randy and Kathy Short-the missionaries) I will write more soon!

Let's Start Talking

I'm leaving in a few hours for Recife, Brazil. I am going with a team of 4 people from the Christian Student Center at the University of Memphis. We are part of the Let's Start Talking program and will be helping people with their English speaking skills using the book of Luke. I will start taking pictures to post as soon as I get there!