3 weeks in

One of the things that I thought I would be prepared for as we were beginning to put our house together was that things go at a different pace than Izabel and I were used to. In my previous months living in Brazil I had seen it first hand and it's also something that I've heard from many different people. Knowing that, however doesn't make it easier to handle delays when they come.

We have had an advantage of having a car available to us on the day that we arrived. Because Shelly Fuehrer was on vacation in the States we were able to use her car to go around and run errands that we needed to do. With Shelly's car we have been able to make a couple trips to a nearby beach town, Mongagua, where Izabel's sister lives to spend time with her and her husband. We have been able to drive to Santos to visit the Federal Police so I can register myself as a permanent resident and we've been able to go to Praia Grande and do some shopping for our house. I was a little uneasy about driving down here but now that I have done it quite a bit I actually enjoy it. As Aaron Brakefield said, "you just do what needs to be done" while driving.

We've had some frustrations while getting our house ready.

Our kitchen cabinets already being put to work.

• Our Brita water pitcher was cracked in transit from the U.S. to here. We bought a water filter at the mall in Praia Grande so we could finally have drinkable water at our house. When we bought it we were told that someone would come and install it for free, we just had to call the number for the installers in Cubatao. When Izabel called, she was told that they don't have authorization to install the water filters in Cubatao. After talking to many different people and losing her patience after being given many different numbers to call we aren't sure someone will come by to install the water filter.
• Speaking of installers, we bought a kitchen table and cabinets before Christmas and they were delivered as promised on Dec. 29th. We were told that they would be installed on Jan 2nd or 3rd in what would be a two day installation. On Jan 2nd, Izabel called the store to find out what time they would be installed and was told that the earliest they will be installed is Jan 8th with no explanation. I encouraged Izabel to call back and remind them they told us the 2nd or 3rd and how much money we spent at their store and we were told that their three installers quit at the end of December and they need to hire new guys.
• We went to the Federal Police as instructed in the visa I received to register myself as having arrived in Brazil. The first time, we arrived 7 minutes after they stopped helping foreigners for the day. The second time, the lady handed us a paper that listed everything that we needed to bring with us, copies of documents, passport style pictures.... After gathering all of those things Izabel and I went the next day thinking we had everything we needed only to be told that we were supposed to have scheduled an appointment, which is now scheduled for Jan. 7th.
• To receive our Brazilian copies of Samantha's birth certificate and our marriage license we needed to go to the official records office in Cubatao (Izabel's ID card here in Brazil still has her maiden name). They required a more recently issued copy of Izabel's birth certificate in order to give us the Brazilian wedding license. The one Izabel has was issued at the end of 2011.
• The people that lived in the house before us did not take very good care of the place, making it a good home for small critters. We are currently waging a war on these critters and at this point it's hard to tell who is winning. We've spent some money buying things that will hopefully get rid of them but we keep seeing others come from other places. This means we need to keep a constant eye on Samantha while she is playing.

Despite all those we have had some success.

• Our couches and bedroom set were delivered and installed. We now have the ability to have guests over and not make them sit on the floor.
• A lot of the things we brought from the U.S. were made to go into a 110 volt outlet. All of the outlets here in Brazil run on 220 volts, meaning that unless we want to burn our our appliances we need to get converters. I couldn't figure out why my coffee maker kept shutting off while brewing coffee until I realized that it took twice as many watts to brew coffee as our voltage converter could handle. We finally found a converter that can handle 1010 watts which will be enough for my coffee maker (Finally!!!!) and will hopefully be enough for our blender.
• We had a merry Christmas (even though I've never had to wait so long into Christmas to open my presents) and we hope that you did as well. It was 107 degrees here and we went to the beach along with many other people. For the first time ever, Izabel said that I had good taste while choosing a clothing item for her.
• Thankfully Samantha has begun to gain weight. We bought a scale and 10 days after Samantha's Dr.s appointment she had gained half a pound and is still gaining. I plan on keeping everyone updated on her weight gains for her next 23 years.

I don't know why the pictures are so hard to place in the area that I want. I've not had that problem before.

Thank you all for your interest in the ministry here in Brazil. Feel free to contacts us if you have other questions.

Hey, We're here!

We've had quite few changes the last week and more and I want to keep people updated on them. We've finally made it down to Brazil, arriving Thursday Dec. 13th. The weeks before we left were scheduled busy and we knew that we would always find more to do once we completed our to-do list. Then, less than 2 weeks before we were to leave for Brazil Samantha got sick which caused a whole new to-do list. Thankfully she's acting better and now that we're in Brazil she is eating quite a bit of food.

The couple days before we left for Brazil were spent purchasing last minute things that we thought we would need, luggage tags for all of our luggage, TSA locks, misc. baby supplies, games for our Wii, you know, the important things.

Tuesday was a very busy day and if we ended up getting any free time we would have gone to Clackamas Town Center. Knowing what we found out later that day we're very happy that it was a busy day because that was the day the mall shooting occurred and we would have been there at the time it happened.

After packing everything but Samantha's pack & play which we were still using, we went to bed late Tuesday night only to wake up at 1:30 Wednesday morning (a little earlier than we planned) to tend to a crying Samantha. Thus begins the long day of travel. With all the luggage we had we discovered that we should have arrived at the airport more than 2 hours early as we barely made our flight. A big thank you to the guys who showed up at the airport to get us out of the country. I don't know if their motives were to help us or to get rid of us, either way we appreciated it.

Now that we're here we've spent a lot of time with Izabel's family (they love having Samantha with them), going through our luggage (all of the suitcases arrived, but not everything inside arrived in one piece). Friday we spent the afternoon shopping. We planned on first buying things to set up our kitchen, then our bedroom, then our living room, then our guest room. After doing some browsing we saw two couches (very comfortable for Brazil standards) and the pair of them was $500 cheaper than one of the same kind we saw at an earlier store. After negotiating with the owner we agreed on a price and he told us he had kitchen stuff at his other store down the block. Instead of getting kitchen stuff we saw a closet (there are no closets built into houses in Brazil) and we quoted a price we got earlier from another store and he dropped the price by a large margin to match our previous quote. Both our bedroom set and the sofa's will be delivered either on Wednesday or Thursday, along with our appliances which will be delivered on Thursday. When our things are delivered I'll post pictures

There is a lot more to share but I think I'll keep it for future blog posts when I have nothing better to write about. Thank you all for your interest in the ministry and for your prayers.

Happy New Year

There's a lot of times that I think it's good to have some new year's resolutions. A good resolution will be made to improve one's life and once someone walks into Costco they will see what the most common resolutions are. Work out equipment, dieting books and foods are all closest to the entrance.
I've been working on some resolutions myself, not for the new year but for the new stage in my life, which just happens to come at the turn of the calendar. My job at Costco had kept me active enough where I did not have to think much of diet and exercise when I got home.

Oh, how things will change now. I've been waiting for this for a long time where I can sleep later than 3:45 and not have an aching and exhausted body for the rest of the day. I now have the responsibility of disciplining myself to take care of my body while I have a less physically demanding job as a full-time missionary. My resolutions are:

1.  to keep my body physically fit.
2. To make more time in my day for prayer and devotions

One blessing from the ability to be home in the mornings is to spend time with Samantha

We are only able to start this part of our ministry on a full time basis because of those who are praying; and those who have chosen to partner with us in this ministry God has called us to work in. We thank you for each of your commitments.





Approaching a milestone

I got the itch in 2005 while working for the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, that God had something different planned for me. Since then I've been all over the place, 3 trips to Brazil, a year in Iowa, a year in Spokane, and a few years in Oregon, am I missing a stop? All this time I've had my eyes on the end goal of being a full-time missionary with Evangelical Church Missions (E.C.M.).

I've lived through the cold Iowa winter and the hot Iowa summer working at The Latin Bistro, Izabel and I spent 2 years with the great people at Park Place Evangelical Church. I've delivered furniture at Walker's furniture, and I've had 3 stints working at Costco. I knew that all of these were leading me to where God was calling me, but I just wanted to be there already. I want us to be in Brazil already helping with E.C.M. Brazil, but that is still a little ways away. Now, however, we have been told that I can stop working at Costco and that is a major step foward for us.

The exciting news though now is that Izabel and I have been approved to be full-time missionaries with E.C.M. allowing us to spend more time in Partnership Development. This will aid in getting us to Brazil much sooner. It is something that we knew was going to happen sometime soon but I now have an end date for my employment at Costco, Jan. 3.

There are plenty of things that we have been doing to prepare us for our future in Brazil. I've been studying with Rosetta Stone, we have reading to do that deals with Cross cultural ministry, we have a partnership base to maintain contact with. The difficulty is finding energy to do these things after working an 8 hour shift. Come January we will be able to dedicate all of our energy towards Partnership Development.

We have exciting things to share and we are looking for people to share them with. We will drive to Spokane for the first week of January and then be in Seattle on the first weekend. We would love to share our stories and are looking for friends to share them with. Please pray for us as we need to make phone calls to schedule ministry opportunities with our friends.

"Our Friendly Church"

"Our church is such a friendly place; It's where I love to be. I smile at all the friends I meet...and they smile back at me."

I'm back after a not so brief intermission. It's been a long time since I've written, about as long as Izabel and I have been going to different churches during out partnership development stage. We're beginning our 5th month of going to new churches every Sunday. Here are some things that I have learned during this time...

-There are a lot of churches that we feel like we would love to attend regularly if the job description did not require visiting so many churches. The benefit to being part of a denomination is that when you walk in the doors of an Evangelical church you know that you are in agreement with the teachings of that church. In every church that we have ministered in, 16 if you care to know, we have left encouraged because of how welcoming the people inside that church have been.

-I really like stability. Having just said that we've enjoyed our time ministering at various churches, it's great being able to spend a Sunday evening service at Park Place where we spent the last two years, they are a great family that we have come to love over the last couple years.

-It's fun seeing the churches that I've been hearing about for years. I was excited to head to Swisshome because of all the good things Pastor Bryan Moore had to say about the church, I had the privilege that same day of preaching from the pulpit of Mapleton where my grandpa preached before I was born. I enjoyed Lincoln City knowing that God is breaking down barriers through the hard work of the Hall family, speaking of Pastor Marty Hall, we had the opportunity to travel to Sturgis, MI where he attended so many years ago. It's a small world inside The Evangelical Church.
Here's a picture of Samantha's first plane trip as we traveled to Michigan.

-I guess another thing I learned is that I wish I would take a picture of every church we visit, it would be nice to have a record like that. Here's one that I almost forgot that I took.

Follow, I will follow Thee.

"Jesus calls me; I must follow, Follow Him today, When His tender voice is pleading, how can I delay."

This morning is our third Sunday since our time at Park Place E.C. has ended. The first week we went to Sweet Home with Dave & Carol Kochendorfer who had been missionaries in Brazil but are now going to New Mexico. Last week we went to Eugene First E.C. where we learned to be flexible when we couldn't get the pictures to show during Sunday school so we had to give our evening presentation in the morning and we showed pictures in the evening.

We have an official goal for support and that is 295 monthly shares of $25. Right now that seems like a lot and if God wasn't leading us I doubt we would ever get there. God has already blessed us with about 50 of those 300 shares. If this rate keeps up we will be in Brazil before Thanksgiving.

I found a book at the library yesterday that talks about the history of Brazil and where the country is going with their economy, which is growing right now. I don't know when I'll find time to read it as I have two required books by E.C. Missions and was given a book on prayer from a man at my home church, but what I've read so far is interesting to me and I think it will only help me when I am presenting about Brazil. Probably more importantly though, the more I know about Brazil the better I will be able to minister to the Brazilians.

As I wrote that last sentence I realized that is what each of us need to do regarding Christ. The more we know Christ, the better we will be able to minister to the people that we come into contact with.

"And He said to them, 'Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.' Immediately they left their nets and followed Him." Matthew 4:19,20

And so it begins...

No we're not full time missionaries yet, that will still be a long time but we're beginning orientation tomorrow with Jeremy Kochendorfer. I believe this is all new not only for us but a new process for Evangelical Church Missions also, which means that I don't know what to expect to come from all of this. We have questions about how it will work while we are raising support which I assume will be answered over the weekend; but we will also receive many answers to questions that we don't even yet have. If you have questions for us about our career you can ask as a comment or send us an email.

I was excited last weekend as Izabel and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary, it has all gone by very fast which must mean that I am having fun doing this marriage thing. I also offer congrats to my parents who celebrated an anniversary yesterday and to my boss/mentor Carl Duhrkoop and Nancy who will celebrate their anniversary in a couple days.