Tuesday, December 30, 2008

We have all been thoroughly enjoying being together as a family again, as June and Brian have arrived for their 2 week holiday with us. 'Father Christmas' (aka grandma) managed to get all of the bags through without any problems, and today we are celebrating Christmas again. It is great to be together and to be able to show them our new home. Thankyou to everyone who thoroughly saturated their trip with prayer!!!!!

Friday, December 26, 2008

Just a quick post to direct you to another blog which a friend of ours writes. It contains many photos of the work we do here as well as recent photos of our Christmas time at Luzeiro. See: http://www.laurabookout.blogspot.com If you click on the link it should take you there.

Thursday, December 25, 2008


Happy Christmas everybody!!!!!!!!!
We have just had our first Brazilian Christmas, and it's all gone very well. We had 12 of us for lunch, Brazilians, Dutch, American, New Zealander, South African and British. We all brought something traditional from our country, and it was YUMMY (but I felt I needed to make gravy to go with the turkey, very un-Brazilian). Everyone was a bit baffled by the crackers I made (except the girl from New Zealand), we also had to say "BANG" as I didn't have any snaps. It was good fun to share together.
Josiah and Gideon have coped very well with a different Christmas, many thanks to all who have been praying for them.
May God bless you during this Christmas time and in the coming New Year. We are truly blessed to have so many friends being a part of our lives.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

You'll be pleased to know that today is much better, we still have rain (but that is to be expected).
Is it really only a week until Christmas?!?! Am I the only one who thinks it can't possibly be that close. It's strange to have not heard 1 carol, seen 1 frost, had any fires or eaten sprouts or mince pies.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

We have been living in such glorious weather for so long now that I had forgotten about the 'rainy season'. We have had 2 days and nights of non-stop heavy rain, and it looks like it will rain for the next few weeks, maybe months.......oh dear, even worse than the English summer.
As if all of the wet clothes hanging around and the leaks in the house were not enough to make me miserable, I have just had a RIDICULOUSLY BAD Portuguese lesson. As part of our learning we use an on-line teaching which also uses voice recognition. if when we repeat the phrase we don't get the accent or emphasis correct, it won't let us move on. I must have repeated 1 phrase 20 times, getting no more than 2 words right, at this point Dave came and rescued me. Why is another language SO hard?
Thankfully not every day is like today, Oh well I guess I will try again tomorrow.....

Sunday, December 14, 2008





Here are the photos of our very cute new budgies, they look like adult budgies now. They were very ugly, but in 4 weeks they have fluffed up nicely and we have been spending a bit of time hand taming them, we're not sure whether to try to teach them English or Portuguese though!
I am beginning to believe it is December, and that Christmas is just around the corner......it has taken quite a lot to convince me, such as reading a daily advent Bible reading, making homemade mince meat (even though I haven't got the right spices, it still seems pretty good), and decorating a tree. We found a very dusty tree that we were able to use, the Brazilians think we're a little strange, as culturally the Christians don't have trees to celebrate Christmas. We also made lots of origami decorations.
Today we have had our closing off of the year fun event for all of the groups, it went very well as the children were allowed free choice of activities (I hope to post some photos soon). They had a great time and now we spend our time before our holiday doing practical work and helping out at some of the houses that are desperately short staffed.

Friday, December 5, 2008

Well....Josiah is now enrolled in a school. Praise Jesus.

Also, we received a parcel from England today. This may not sound particularly interesting but it was posted nearly 4 months ago....yep, the postmark on it reads 14th August. This is one of many parcels which we assumed was lost so maybe we will yet receive the other ones.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Yesterday, Josiah and I (Dave), along with a friend of ours (to translate) went to the school which we are hoping Josiah will be able to attend next year. We expected that Josiah would have to do a test to ascertain which school year or grade he would be put into. But, to cut a long story short, it ended up that he did not have to do the test and would be put into the correct year according to his age. However, we did not manage to get a discount as we previously thought we could.
So, all we have to do now is sign a few documents and he is in, beginning in Feb 2009.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Today we went to the Federal Police with a lawyer to hand in all of the prepared papers for our visas to be renewed. These documents would then be stamped by the people there and sent to the central government migration office in Brasilia for processing which would take about 1 month. However, it did not all go according to plan as we discovered something which was done by the Brazilian Embassy in London when we originally applied for our visas in Nov 2007. On the official visa forms it states that I have 2 children (dependants) but Beckie is separate so our family just consists of me (Dave), Josiah and Gideon. Strange, huh? The implication of this is that Beckie's application is treated as separate too so it is possible for the outcome of our applications to be different. For example, she could get a 2 year extension and us 3 could only get a 1 year extension! There is no clear or logical explanation for this. Today, it meant that the visa renewal applications were sent off for josiah, Gideon and me but Beckie's has had to be delayed because separate papers now need to be prepared for her, costing us more time and money.
There is something i do want to make clear though....it is this: these things do not fill us full of worry, just drive us closer to God because it is all in his very capable hands. For us, it is another lesson in trusting Him with everything and for the outcome of everything, for we are his. Hallelujah.