We Have Arrived

In Brazil. In our apartment. In life, in general, it seems. We arrived in this inappropriately-named country of "Order and Progress" a week ago yesterday. We spent the first five days in an apartment that our church keeps for foreign visitors, where all five of us (and our intimidatingly large amount of luggage) stayed in one little room, packed wall to wall with twin-size beds. We shared our meals with people from Brazil, Peru, the Czech Republic and the United States. It was a wonderful experience, but we were thankful to get to move into our own apartment on Tuesday. It is still a small space (about 600 sf), but there are lots of common areas in the building we can use, and--and this is the best part--our back yard is the Atlantic Ocean, so it doesn't really seem so small. (I'm serious about that backyard thing. From our porch on the 8th floor we have a 180 degree view of the beach/ocean, and it is absolutely is amazing)! And aside from a few minor inconveniences--no hot water in the kitchen sink, laundry facilities 5 floors below, imperfect internet service and not speaking or understanding the language very well, and maybe one or two other little things--it's absolutely perfect! The kids are having a blast, and Weston has surprised us by being the most willing of anyone to speak the language and make new friends. I will upload pictures when we figure out how to get a wider bandwidth for the internet signal. This afternoon, we are headed up into the mountains for the weekend. Our church has a beautiful campground there where we will attend a seminar. We are looking forward to drawing nearer to the Lord and enjoying a very lovely part of His creation. I'll check back in with you sometime next week.