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 quickly ate and loaded up, moving on to our next destination which was several hours away.
Tag: 2013
Day 39: Jesus, Our Very Best Friend
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 service. In the back of the SUV, William pulled out his guitar and I got out my violin and we started playing and singing together with the girls. When we had finished practicing our songs, we started playing other songs just for fun, and the Reiner’s joined in with us as we sang “I’ll Fly Away,” “When We All Get To Heaven,” etc.
Day 38: Sad Day
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 phase of our ministry requires us to move to Petrolina, so we started in that direction today.
Day 37: The Expo Interlude
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 right!
Unfortunately it was a little humid due to rain during the night, but it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t near as humid as Iowa is during this time of year. I didn’t want to run for a whole hour like yesterday, so I decided to work on my anaerobic fitness (instead of my aerobic fitness) and do some sprints up the road on the hill. I ran up the hill and back down five times, taking a short break between each one. It was quite the workout.
Day 36: Lots of Laughs and a Few More Tchaus
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 stop, it’s hard to start doing them again!
It was by far one of the most enjoyable runs of my time here. I decided to push myself much more than I had so far, and I ended up running 10 kilometers without stopping. But what made it enjoyable was that I spent the whole run talking to God. For about an hour I tried to thank God for as many things as I could and offer up a few requests.
