Woke up this morning to a rooster crowing somewhere on the island…shortly after 4am. The one thing about roosters functioning as alarm clocks is that you can’t hit the snooze on them…especially when they are not within reach and don’t belong to you. So I had no choice but to just lie there in my more »

Today’s a day I have been anticipating for a long time…Treasure Island! I ate a quick breakfast of egg casserole and coconut bread and packed everything I would need for three days on the island. With the exception of my hammock, I managed to get it all in a small suitcase. We left Petrolina in more »

This morning we went to meet the rest of Uncle Byron and William’s family at their home and to have some fun with William. We ate a breakfast of French toast with mamo (papaya) smoothies and at about 9:30 we jumped in the car to drive to Sobradinho, Bahia, another city in another state about more »

Breakfast this morning was SO good! French rolls, cheese, and some sweet bread with coconut that reminded me of the pan de coco that my family loves to get at China Town in Seattle. Mmmm…it was one of the many highlights of my day. We left the house around 9:00 to meet up with a more »

Today we left Exu for another city in another state- Petrolina, Pernambuco. It is home to the Reiner’s, but it is my first time outside of Ceara since coming to Brazil. We woke up around 7:00, packed our stuff, and ate a breakfast of French rolls and butter, cheese, goiaba juice, hot milk, and cake. We more »

Today was such a great day of ministry. It started when we woke up, ate a quick snack of bananas, and left the house shortly after 7am. We drove about an hour away to the small town of Ouricouri, the location of our morning ministry. On the way there we practiced our music for the more »

Today was a sad day for a couple reasons. First of all, it was sad because we left Crato today, my home for the last five weeks. It only took five weeks for me to become fairly involved in several ministries and begin to develop many friendships with both Americans and Brazilians. But the next more »

This morning I woke up around 7:00 to go running. I thought about going earlier when it was cooler, but when I woke up around 6:20 and saw that it was really cloudy, I decided to sleep a little longer because I figured it wouldn’t get too hot with the sun blocked. Fortunately, I was more »

For the first time in two weeks I woke up and went on a run. I slacked off way too much the last couple weeks, so today I made sure I woke up early (6:30) and got in a good run. It’s so easy in life to stop doing the good things, and once you more »

After the normal routine of waking up and eating breakfast, we had another round of classes, this time only with Uncle Jim. He talked to us more about missions in Brazil and the theology and philosophy of missions in general. Some of these things I remember from my missions classes, but other things were new, more »