What time is it?

I'm reading a book about missions assigned by Aaron Brakefield and I hit one of the chapters on culture. The book tells a story about the different understandings of 'time' in different cultures. The story is told based around a meal where the missionary feels disrespected because his invited guest arrives an hour late. On the other hand is the guest doesn't want to arrive on time because to do so would give the impression that the meal is only about business. A true friend will arrive 'a little' late to show that the meal is about friendship rather than business.

This story reminded me of some of my experiences here in Brazil in the past. A friend invited me to eat lunch with their family multiple times. The appropriate response for an American to this request would be to ask "what time?" and "is there anything I can bring?" Each lunchtime I arrived when stated and became a little frustrated that the meal wasn't ready yet. In fact it hadn't even been started. Imagine me showing up ready to eat and learning that I still had to wait for the meal to be prepared.

It took me a while to learn what the invitation was about. The invitation wasn't about eating, which I had originally thought it was. The reason to go to their house was about the time that we would be able to spend together. What I had learned though this was that I should have felt honored about this family wanting to spend time with me and getting to know each other. The time that I had to wait while the food was being prepared was time that we were able to talk and build our relationship.

What ways in your life with friends are you able to show them that what you really enjoy is the time you spend together. Take some time to smell the roses, your relationship will grow with the time spent together.

After all of the rain that happened last Friday afternoon we've had a couple more days with thunderstorms. It's sad walking the streets of Cubatao and seeing all of the furniture that people have had to throw away because of the flood. There are some parts of town that are using bulldozers to deal with all of the garbage.

Last night the weather was becoming ominous while I was getting ready to go to Portuguese class. During class the rain came down hard for a few minutes with some close lightning and loud thunder. Once, during class, the power flicked off only to come back on right away. Walking home I heard some people on our street say that "this house has it but that house doesn't," I wondered what they were talking about until I got home and realized that our house didn't have power. We finally had power again at 4:30 this morning. I guess it's the stormy season.

And the rain came down

The rain began at about 3:30 yesterday, it started trying to come into our house from about 4 until 6pm through somewhere above the window. I had to stand by the window holding a towel to soak up the water before it would flow inside. Early on Izabel asked if our car would be ok out on the street instead of in our elevated parking area and I said, "there's no way the water will get that high. About an hour later I waded out in knee high water to bring our car inside. There were cars and buses stopped outside our house because all of the roads were flooded. Aaron Brakefield said that our road is not known for flooding, it's a few blocks down that get flooded easily, so I guess we were lucky that at the crown of our road it was only about 4 inches deep. Other people (including Aaron) inside Cubatao proper had to abandon their cars in waist deep water or worse. News showed residential areas in Cubatao where water went over 6 feet high inside a house.
We are grateful that we only had to worry about a little bit of water trying to come inside our house when so many other people lost so much. Please pray for those who lost items in their houses due to the flooding and also pray for the families who lost loved ones. 
These pictures were taken early on. The water came about another foot into our garage and shortly after this the top picture would have a few cars and a bus included.

I finally figured out what this hole in the stairs is for. It has kept Samantha and I entertained for hours with me throwing a ball through it and watching it bounce down the stairs.

The rain stopped around 6:45 or 7 and the water slowly went down. Our neighbors were not home but we were able to see water a few inches up the door. By the time one lady came home the water had gone down so there was no standing water in their house but everything was wet. She lives with her elderly mother who had gone to Santos and finally returned at 2am when the buses were able to get through the traffic and mud. I shared one video of downtown Cubatao area on my Facebook but I invite you to search out other videos either through news in the Baixada Santista or on youtube.