Sorry for the belated post; I know that I promised to add pics, and the week simply got away from me. It’s good to be home, but things have been a mile-a-minute since I walked in the door! 🙂

Here is the standing-room-only crowd at the dedication after we finished the chapel. If you have never experienced a worship service in another language, it is an amazing experience! It made me feel like we got a little glimpse of what heaven must be like!

Here is part of the construction crew, before the dedication service. It was an honor to work with these guys. I learned a lot and appreciated their patience as I tried new things.

The exterior is mostly finished in this photo (taken from the soccer field across the road), but we still needed to varnish the windows and paint the front wall.

We’re home! I’m trying to make myself stay awake a little while longer, because even though it is only two hours’ difference, the return trip has wiped me out. I’m looking forward to a long night’s rest in my own bed.

The house was a wreck when I got home, so I’m glad that I decided to take tomorrow off as a jet lag day and not return to work until Wednesday. Between catch-up laundry, housekeeping, meal planning for the rest of the week (& hopefully a nap at some point), I’ll have a full day at home tomorrow. (I tried to lower my expectations of what the house would look like, based on past experience with the other parental unit in charge for just a couple of days, so at least it wasn’t a terrible disappointment to find that my low expectations were met after being away for a week and a half while he stayed at the house with the kids.)

Thanks for the prayers & encouragement while No. 1 & I were in Brazil! I’ll try to post pictures soon.

As I swipe-type on my tiny phone screen, there is a concert happening down on the beach, and they have quite a sound system! We can hear the music clearly all the way up in our room a block away, so we opened the balcony door to enjoy the ocean breeze & the free show! 🙂

It’s hard to believe that today is our last full day here. We went back to Guarapari this morning for a few souvenirs & snacks from street vendors, then we came back to the hotel to get ready for the church dedication this afternoon.

The dedication was special. The church was overflowing, so the Americans (& several Brazilians) stayed outside. My behind is so tired of sitting on concrete, but it was worth it to be there. The pastor was very thankful, and I got hugs & cheek-kisses from several folks before we left.

Tonight, we’re packing & saying our goodbyes to others who leave at earlier times tomorrow. It will be nice to sleep in! 🙂 Once we get home on Monday & I have a chance to sort through things, I’ll try to upload some more pictures. Thanks for all the prayers this week!

We had less than two hours to do any interior work in the church before the floor guys began laying tile this morning, so some of us tried to finish varnishing the windows while others put another coat of paint on the still-not-totally-dry stucco walls.

While the tile workers were doing their thing, we varnished the outside of the windows & put a base coat on the front of the building. We aren’t even going to try to paint the sides or back because the mud is far too damp still.

The VBS group hosted a health fair & clothing giveaway in the neighborhood. They did glucose & blood pressure testing & gave away packets of toiletries & toothbrushes, etc.

Although there is more that we had hoped to do, the rain prohibited us from putting some finishing touches on the building. We’ll leave all of the paint supplies for the church to touch up later.

Tonight for supper, we had a traditional Brazilian barbeque in the backyard of the hotel. The food was scrumptious! A local group did a performance, which looked like a mix of taikwondo & break dancing. They also did the Brazilian samba, and several of us went out there & had fun pretending to know how to dance. :p

I´ve been keeping a mental list of the interesting and curious things that I have observed and experienced in Brazil, so I thought I would jot down a few before they escape me:

• Don´t flush toilet paper; instead, put it in the small trash can next to the toilet.
• Speedos are in style, and men of all ages and sizes wear them on the beach and beachfront streets unabashedly.
• Avoid riding in the back of a pickup on a dirt road (good advice in any country, but particularly on muddy, winding, pot-holey roads in Brazil).
• Three words that begin with “Gu” sound similar but are very different:

1. Guaraná is a fabulous soft drink that tastes kind of like a fruity Mountain Dew.
2. Guarapari is a local town with open-air markets and streets full of shops.
3. Guanabara is the rural community where the new church is located.

• Winter here is like Autumn in Texas; it is breezy and cool. Such wonderful weather, even with the rain!
• I heard that 80% of the population lives on the coast!
• People are friendly and will almost always respond when you greet them in Portuguese.
• Tile is cheap and abundant; there is little/no carpet.

Today I painted, painted and then painted some more. The priority for the morning was to finish the roof, and since the tiles are asbestos-based, we had to wear masks when we went in to paint while they were still drilling holes in the tiles to attach them to the support beams.

The church looks great, though there is still work to be done tomorrow, and even more touch-up work after we leave. Because of all the rain, we aren´t able to put additional coats of paint on the interior walls because the blocks & stucco are still damp, and much of the exterior will have to wait to be painted, so we will leave paint supplies for the church.

We are about to walk down to the beach for fireworks, so that will be fun! From what I´ve heard, you can get fireworks here that are not available in the U.S., so I´m curious to see what they´ll have.