There was a group from Life English School who were touring the United States the last couple weeks. Aaron was in charge of the groups planning and traveling. While he went north with the group the activities down here continued, church, prayer group, Bible study and Sunday school. Two weeks ago I was able to preach my first sermon in Brazil since Izabel and I visited in 2010. Last week one of the Brazilians Rodrigo did a great job preaching the sermon. Even though the group and Aaron arrived back in Brazil earlier this week I will be preaching the message tonight since Aaron had many other things to be doing other than preparing a message. Whenever I'm preparing to preach, especially when it's imminent, it is hard to focus on other things; hence the distracted update today.
At the beginning of June I was asked to take on a private English student as his classed with his previous teacher were coming to an end and I was looking to get a little bit more involved with life down here and at the school. We have had 4 classes together, he is a very inquisitive student so a lot of our class time is spent in dialogue, forcing his English which is pretty good already. The thing that makes it hard is that I am teaching principles that I know but they are things that I've grown up with so explaining why and when to use certain tenses is difficult. I am enjoying the time that I get to spend at the school getting to know some of the students, I hope to hear good stories from the ones who were able to visit the States.
I am continuing with my Portuguese classes. When we began almost 6 months ago I felt like I still needed to learn a lot but at the same time I felt like I knew quite a bit. Now I know a lot more than I did back then but I have come to the realization that I have no idea how much more there is to learn. To illustrate this,
Imagine exploring a house that you do not know how big it is. Having explored what you feel are a lot of rooms you cannot imagine the house being larger. You come to a door and you think to yourself that it must be the exit but when you open the door you realize that you were just touring the guest area and that the house is much larger than you expected.
I knew that I had a lot to learn before I started but now I am learning that I underestimated how much it was that I actually had to learn. There is also a common illustration about peeling off layers of onions. Portuguese, just like peeling onions, the more layers I peel off the more I want to cry.
On Tuesday we will be going with a group from the English school in Vila Esperança to the zoo in São Paulo.
I almost forgot to give an update about the protests. They were receiving attention during a soccer tournament here and using that tournament as a good platform. Once the tournament ended there was one mass protest the next day and I thought that was the end of it. This last Thursday, the 11th, there was another mass protest organized and we were surprised to find that it went through our neighborhood. We were on our way to the Bible study and had to take a detour because the protesters were blocking the road we wanted to take. We are all still safe and I don't think anything will happen to us. We receive warnings from our consulate to stay away from the protests while they are happening, so we do.
Thank you for your prayers and your support, feel free to share this around.
Dave, Izabel and Samantha
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