August 28, 2007

 Olá beautiful friends and family!

I would have to say, things have been pretty awesome here the past few weeks. Dad is doing some pretty cool stuff in Portugal. It’s not the sort of thing I expected Him to do, but I mean really—does He ever do exactly what we think He’ll do?

Where do I start? Well, actually, getting work done has been kind of hard for us the past few weeks, because we have not had internet, a phone, or TV in our new apartment.

 Kim and Emily with their thrilled faces after we finally get the Internet in our house!

But now we finally have internet and a phone! When the servicemen came, they were supposed to install all 3 things, but for some reason, they didn’t install TV. That’s the way public services are in Portugal. It’s not very regimented and scheduled like it is in the US. But that’s OK. We are perfectly fine without TV. Anyway, our friends (other m's here in Lisbon) went to work at a ch camp for young adults this past week, so while they were gone, they let us go over to their house whenever we wanted and use the internet. We were able to get all our work done that way. Wow, Dad provided!

Next, ESL. Father has given us so many great opportunities to share about JC and about Chr principles recently during class. The other day, Kim was helping me during class because Jill , my normal helper, was gone. Her group’s discussion turned to Chr and the Book and how Chr is really about a relationship with JC, not good works. I got to tell my group about how we were all ev but the discussion couldn’t go very deep because my group didn’t know as much English. The next day, my roommate Emily was teaching another one of Jill’s classes, and she took a Portuguese believer friend with her. They all got into a great discussion about the difference between traditional Catholicism and what ev believe. Beyond that, we just get little opportunities to mention Chr principles and things like that.

A couple of cool stories:

Kim, Emily, and I were frustrated because we have lived in our apartment for a few weeks now, but we still didn’t know any of the neighbors. We just never saw them. They were never out where we could talk to them. So I started praying that Dad would give me a chance to meet some of the neighbors. Then, one morning while I was doing my Book study outside on our verandah, the neighbor girl came out to the verandah next to ours. We talked for about 5 minutes, and then she had to go back inside. Her name was Joanna. This past Saturday, I was outside for Book study, and the neighbors opened their door. In the end, I ended up talking to Joanna and her boyfriend Goncalço for about an hour and a half. We talked about food, rel., politics, differences between America and Portugal—a little of everything. They are really cool people.

For the next good story, when I got my hair cut recently, the lady in the salon, Diana, and I talked for a long time. She is Bulgarian, but she moved to Portugal about 3 years ago so her husband could be the priest at the Bulgarian Orthodox ch here in Lisbon. When she found out that I was studying rel and culture, she offered to let me see her ch. So this past Sunday, Kim and I went to visit the ch. The ch, called Santo João da Rila, is actually inside the Bulgarian embassy, so we had to take our passports so they would let us in. Portuguese cultural note: Diana explained that the Orthodox ch has to be inside the embassy because Portugal has a law that only Catholic ch can have special ch buildings. Portugal does have freedom of rel. The Protestant ch don’t violate that law because they don’t need any special buildings for their ch. They can just use a house, rent a preexisting building, or do something like that. But apparently, that won’t work for Orthodox people. So all the Bulgarians and Russians and Ukrainians in Portugal have been petitioning the government for the right to build their ch building, but they haven’t succeeded yet.

After Diana took us on a tour of the ch, she took us to the Bulgarian store, which is full of merchandise imported from Bulgaria. We bought some typical Bulgarian cheese and yogurt.

Well, I could go on, because those aren’t the only cool things that have happened lately, but I think I’ll stop now. Thank you all so much for yarping for us! We really need it. Personally, I have been dealing with some tough things in my relationship with Dad, but He is slowly bringing me through them. It wouldn’t be as slow if I weren’t so stubborn, but I won’t go into that. Kim has been struggling with some things too. It’s been great to see Dad always sticking by us in these situations. No matter how much we screw up or how bad circumstances seem, He never ditches us on the side of the road. He just stays with us and helps us some more.

Lots of love to everyone! In JC,

Brittaney

A couple of yarp requests:

1. One of the other m's on our team found this statistic and sent it to us: every day, 296 people in Portugal die without having a relationship with JC. In Lisbon specifically, 73 people die every day without JC. Yikes! That is not OK.

2. Don and Billie, the leaders of our m team here in Lisbon, are having some serious problems with illness in their family. Their daughter-in-law, Liz, recently had a mild stroke. She has been in and out of the hospital many times. Now, she is having some more abdominal, head, and leg pain. Also, she is the mother of quadruplets, and some of the quads have health issues too. One of them recently had eye surgery, one of them had a tube removed from her neck, and one of them is being fitted for a temporary leg brace. Also, Liz’s grandpa was just taken to the hospital. Billie just spent 3 weeks in America helping the family, but she is back in Portugal now. Pray for this family, both the ones in America and the ones in Portugal.

 Some of Emily's Portuguese friends from ch love to eat pancakes. In Portugal, pancakes are a dessert. People eat them with chocolate and ice cream and whipped cream and other things like that. But Emily's friends love to eat our American style pancakes--with syrup, because normally, you can't get maple syrup in Portugal (We have a recipe, so we make it ourselves). So several of Emily's friends came over and requested pancakes. I made the syrup, but Kim was the pancake princess. We decided the pancakes were beautiful, and we built 'The Leaning Tower of Pancakes.' The last one Kim made was in the shape of a K. In this photo, Kim is showing off her stunning creation.