Trinta e um

We made the birthday official today. 31. Wow. Not nearly as hard to take as 30, I can tell you. Of course, pretty much anything is easy to take when you've got the beach in your backyard! Anyway, I thought we had done all of our celebrating yesterday, but today was pretty fun in it's own right. Jeff and the kids wanted to take me shopping (at "the shopping," which is how they say "mall" here). I found a couple of really cute skirts, two pairs of shoes (one of which is red and oh so cute!), and a long-sleeved shirt for our next trip to the mountains this coming weekend. I'm a size 40 in skirts and 38 in shoes, in case you were wondering. (I will also be picking up a cute bag I saw yesterday at one of the beach vendors on our next outing). After the praise service at church tonight, I wanted to ask for prayer for a special blessing for my birthday. I thought maybe one or two of the men would pray for me, but about 100 people ended up staying behind after the service to pray for me, which touched me in an incredible way. Not only that, they all filed past me afterward with hugs and kind words--in English and Portuguese. Again, the love I have been shown here overwhelms me. After the service, the five of us and a few of our friends went out for pizza and had a wonderful time. And then when we got home, I found that I had voice mails galore from many family members calling with birthday wishes. I called them back and enjoyed very much getting to talk to all of them. What a blessed life and what a happy birthday!!