When in Brasil...

The last few days have not been too busy.  Sunday we spent helping at the church and talking with our host families.  The service was 2.5 hours long, and some people think that Mark goes a long time...don't complain.  It was all about the persecuted church in different countries and we watched about an hour of videos and got to spend time in prayer for the different continents and Christians that face persecution.  It was really good to watch and to think about such things.

Monday was Johnny's day off/day of rest because he works on Sunday.  So Jon and I went and hung out with our host family and then spent the rest of the day with Johnny at his house.  We watched some movies, visited a sick member of the church, and then got to read for a little bit.

Tuesday we went to a school with a member of the church.  It was a very short visit and we are going back this saturday for an english party.  Also Alek and Andrew got tattoos today!

Wed was super cool because we spent it at classrooms.  We visited the same school in the morning and afternoon which was a good time.  We played the kids in soccer which we won in case anyone wanted to know haha but it was fun to build relationships with them and talk with them.  They were very excited to see us there and are looking forward to seeing the level 2 team in a week!  It is crazy to think that the other group will be here in just a few days! Also a God moment was being able to talk with the students (middle school age) about purity in dating and waiting for sex before marriage and the ways that we wait with our girlfriends.  Totally a God moment that they asked that question because having visited hundreds of classes combined we have never answered that question before. Super cool!  Then we went to a BBQ because thursday is a Catholic holiday.  So everyone has the day off and decided to have food, friends, and a beer or two or three.  It ended up being a fun night and we built some more friendships with the people.

Today has been very relaxing because the American consulate emailed Johnny saying that if he can be in Rio de Janerio on Friday they can figure out a problem that they had concerning a visa for someone that was not coming.  So that is a matter for prayer that we can think about.  Johnny will leave tomorrow around 7 or 8 to drive 4 hours, get on a plane, and try to talk with them and a father concerning the visa into America.

Also needing of prayer; Jon and I are living with professor Illson.  Tonight around 5:30 his father passed away. Be in prayer. Thanks everyone. Love you all and really have been appreciating your prayers more than you know!

Why hospitals suck in socialism and the Stairway to heaven

Yesterday we had a lot of plans.  And then they all got changed in about two seconds.  We were messing around and having fun like boys do and decided to climb a tree.  Then we decided to get a little higher and Andrew wanted to jump from branch to branch.  He successfully did it twice and it was a lot of fun to watch.  Then he was coming down, it was a simple climb but the tree was mossy and wet, Andrew lost his grip, and fell about twenty feet onto his back.  He was pretty scraped up and we checked for different things.  So we went to the hospital and it was a wait.  Hospitals are for everyone and you can go there for everything from a cold to and emergency car accident.  He registered and waited 7 hours and did not see a doctor for an X-ray.  We think he is fine, don't worry all you mothers who read this.  The other three of us visited english schools and pitched our "Happy day" and English camp to them so that they will come.  Then all of us went with some brazilians to "men in black 3" in English and portuguese subtitles.

Today was a great day we spent most of the day (9-2) at church where we did a lot of cleaning and prep work for the celebration day of the reopening/christianing of the church.  They are almost finished with the work of redoing the church from the flood damage and it looks great.  Today we cleaned the floors and ripped up all the grass, layed sod down, and put down cement blocks to walk on.  Then Jon and I went to another house around 2 to help a girl and her family move (because Andrew was useless from his fall).  They lived on the third floor and had a spiral staircase.  Jon and i counted 49 stairs up and 49 stairs down.  In a little over 2 hours we made 70ish trips each with loads of stuff.  70 trips X 100 stairs = 7,000 stinking steps.  Needless to say we were exhausted at the end of this.  If you want to have an idea of what happened go to the gym, get on the stair stepper, grab a 25 pound weight and walk for two hours.  You'll get the idea.  Overall the church looks great we got a lot done and we are going to eat tonight, watch a movie at someone's house, and continue to serve in any way that we can.

Right now Alek is at a Portuguese Christian rock concert with a few of the members of the church and he can tell you more about that experience tomorrow.  We will all sleep soundly tonight!!!

Thanks for the comments and prayers.  We love you all very much!

Jefferson Pao

Hello all! It has been a while since our last update mainly because we have been out of town and very busy the last couple days! This week we started going into school in other towns to talk to administration to see if we can come with the level 2 team and do our "culture exchange" and share the gospel. God has blessed our time and every single school we've gone into the last two days has been more than happy to allow us into their schools! Tuesday night we got to all spend the night in a city about 20 Kl away called Lontras. We were with the pastor of the church plant there, his name is Lucas. We spent the night at his house and then went with him to schools on wednesday. Since we don't speak Portuguese fluently yet we let Lucas do most of the talking while we try to make a good impression by talking as much as possible and one time beating some Brazilians in a game of Volleyball. We have been busy with schools and bible studies. We have had a bible study tuesday, wednesday, and thursday night this week. We usually get back to our rooms around 11, take a shower, and then crash after some reading. We have been able to build some awesome relationships and have had great conversations. God is helping us learn Portuguese fast and giving us lots of opportunities to talk with people and also to do some physical labor. We got the opportunity on Monday, which is Johnny's day off, to go help roof a house for a couple that goes to the church. We spent the day putting bricks on the ceiling and running tubing for electrical throughout the house. This was Johnny's "off day". It was good to sweat a little bit, and even though the sun goes down at about 6 the sunsets are absolutely beautiful here! Thanks for the prayers and we will be keeping you all posted! -Andrew Hello folks well the time is midnight and we are very tired, but this is a good kind of tired knowing that God has used us to for his awesome plan here in Rio. Like Andrew said we have been really busy seeing new and old faces, getting opportunities to build new relationships and continue old ones. Today we travelled to a city named Taío, there we spent the day with pastor johnny and we went to three schools who were all very nice and loved the fact that we would be coming back with more americans, and we are excited for what this year is going to have in store for us. We are all growing closer to each other. The late night talks and the laughs are always amazing. Even though i am struggling with TD (travelers diarrhea) for over a week now (at least i hope thats all it is) God is still giving me the strength and the energy to continue on. We love the thoughts and prayers. Much love -Alek About the title... (inside joke) :)

The dog from Hell

On Saturday we went and hung out with the students of the church for a few hours.  We sang songs that we could sing in English and Portuguese at the same time and then played football, soccer, and volleyball for the better part of an hour and a half.  Volleyball turned into a spiking war trying to see if we could hit the brazilians harder or if they could hit us harder.  It was pretty fun and then we went out for pizza with members of the church.  It was pretty cool and we got to bless them by paying for the meal when it was over.  They have been so generous to us all and feeding us their favorite or best meals that we had to pay them back in some way so that was pretty cool for us and lets just say that they were all surprised.

After that we went to the house of one of the church members named Tiago (pronounced chiago).  He will come to New Orleans and Lincoln with us.  There we watched the NBA for a while and then Jon almost died.  They had a dog and it did not like Jon at all.  It barked at him, showed his teeth, and forced him to climb a couch to get away.  Did I mention that I could probably punt this dog twenty yards?  We thought it was better because after a while Jon held it in his hands and then it went bazerk again.  Lets just say it makes for a funny story and everyone laughed.

On a side-note Andrew ripped his skinny jeans in the crotch and it was hilarious.

This morning we went to a park with the church members and got the chance to pray together and sing a song. We also played rugby with them and soccer.  Really fun and tiring but also great for us to be able to have greater relationships with the people and meet some new members of the church.  After that Jon and I went to a friends house for churrasco, Brazilian BBQ.  It was super good and we each ate a steak or two.  Then we had one of our favorite things in Brazil, siesta.  Take a nap, read, relax, shower and then we headed to church.

It was fun to be at church and see what a normal sunday looks like.  No translating, no English, just the people together worshipping God.  That was a new experience for us but pretty cool at the same time.  I can't really tell you what the message was about other than it was about John 3.  Then Jon and I went to get pizza with our host family and we practiced Portuguese and sang Disney channel with our host sisters who are 14 and 7. Fun fun.

Prayer requests for the church (roughly translated);
-For the families, especially for Christ formation
-Pray for Brasil, for more churches to be planted where the word of God is spoken and true
-Pray for the pastors, evangelists, and Christians in general
-Pray for the Haiti project and volunteers to go this year
-Pray for the challenge conference to hep equip Rio do Sul to participate (the group going to New Orleans to be prepared)

God bless. Love you all. Thank you for the prayers

Prayer requests

-To be lead by the Spirit and grow in dependency upon God.
-To be good learners of Portuguese and understand the language quickly.
-Health of the team and people of the church.
-To daily choose God and be open to what He is teaching us everyday.

Thanks for all your work as prayer warriors.  We really appreciate it!

Crazy Black Woman

So they have a cake here that is called "Negra Mercado" and it literally translates to "crazy black woman" so that's what we decided to call our next post! :)

Last night was the first time that we got to go to schools and we went to the school of our host  father professor Illson.  He is an english teacher there and has 6 classes that he teaches English to.  It was a little strange because were unprepared and the professor used the time to push his favorite soccer team on the students which we found to be extremely entertaining.  We played games with the students, talked a little bit about Nebraska and spoke English with them to practice a little bit.  Afterwards we all remembered how draining it is to be in the classrooms and all slept really well.  During the day we had great conversation with one another and spent time in prayer, reading our Bibles, thinking about the Gospel, and talking with our host families.

So far this trip is way more chill than ones in the past.  We get some down time and are looking for different ways to serve our families like dishes and buying our own food to eat.  This next week it looks like we will get more time to hang out with the brazilians in the church and from other cities as well as visit different schools to set up for the level 2 team.

So we were going to build a house this morning and help a family who was moved because of the flood but we showed up and there were no construction workers!  Now we are waiting for lunch and trying to learn Portuguese by watching American TV shows on TV with subtitles because they don't do voice-overs for the best TV shows like Grey's Anatomy, Once Upon a Time, New Girl and others.  Some learn English by watching these shows and trying to hear the language and learn how to pronounce words better too.  It's cool stuff. chao!

7-3, 3-11, 11-7...Shiftwork

This is us doing it big here in Rio do Sul. Yall know what it is. We went for a run last night in the rain and our host mom told us we would get sick...but we did it anyway. She is such a mother, but we love her. She reminds us of our real moms. We are going to be going to a school tonight to promote English Camp and hangout with some students. Were excited! Thanks for all the prayers for health, Johnny is feeling much better this morning and we are planning to get a lot done today. Also, we forgot to talk about our bible study we had on wednesday night. We got to have some great conversation and had a blast! Love you all!