July 3, 2007

Ola, lovely family and friends! (Drat, there’s supposed to be an accent mark over the A, but I can’t figure out how to do that on my computer )

Well, I have reached the end of my first month in Portugal. A whole month—it has gone by so fast. I sent you all an update 2 weeks ago (except for some of you—my deepest and most humble apologies for that—it was an accident), but the past 2 weeks have held something completely different. For the past 2 weeks, Kim and I have been in a little town , working with a body of followers. While we were there, we lived with the most amazing family ever (see a picture on Kim's page). This period was the first phase of our month of Portuguese cultural immersion.

The story of life here:

This body has a fellowship center for the elderly members of their group.   Many of these elderly people have no family near them and they’re very feeble, so their friends in the body and at the center are their only support. Every week day, the leader here, Daniel , his wife, Raquel, and a volunteer team of cooks and housekeepers have lunch, wrship time, and a snack with them.

Kim’s and my job was to help in the kitchen and to do whatever odd jobs Pastor Daniel wanted us to do. We also hung out with the old people and practiced our language. As you may imagine, old people are very traditional, so we really got the traditional Portuguese experience, especially with food. Portuguese people eat a ton! Kim and I don’t normally eat a lot, so at the end of every day, our stomachs were sore from everything we had eaten. Lunch is a huge event—first course, soup and bread; second course, meat, salad, and side dish; third course, dessert. Snack is tea with bread, cake, crackers, and sometimes other more interesting foods. Dinner is another full meal.

Kim’s and my main kitchen job was to peel potatoes in the mornings. The cooks thought it was hilarious when, on the first day, I said, “I’ve never peeled potatoes with a knife before. I always use a vegetable peeler.” They said, “No way! That’s only for peeling carrots. In the US, you all have machines to peel potatoes, but here in Portugal, we are good cooks, and we don’t need machines to peel potatoes, because we can use knives.” Every day after that was filled with jokes about “descascar batatas” (peeling potatoes). The day before we left here, we went on a retreat with the whole body. While there, Irma Raquel (Sister Rachel) called us up to the front. Out of nowhere, she pulled out 2 knives and 2 potatoes. Kim and I had to peel those potatoes in front of the entire body!

Staying with our family here was definitely one of the best parts of our stay. The funny thing is, they are Brazilian, not Portuguese, but they’ve lived in Portugal for 5 years now. Originally,  Daniel asked the families in the body to volunteer to host us for a few nights apiece. Immediately, this family volunteered to keep us for the whole 2 weeks. Interesting cultural note: Portuguese people do not usually invite guests into their homes. In fact, Amanda told us that compared to Brazilians, who are outgoing and open, the Portuguese are very reserved. That’s why it makes sense that their family, Brazilian transplants to Portugal, was the first to volunteer to host us.

Hearing Irma Nitia’s (Sister Nitia) testimony was one of the highlights of my stay with this family. Irma Nitia was our house mom. Before our first day working at the center, Irma Nitia walked there with us to teach us how to get there. Along the way, she asked, “Have you ever read aba-cook-ie?” I thought, “What? Have a cookie? No, of course I’ve never read that.” It turned out that she was talking about the Book. Once we figured that out, she started telling us about all of her views of the end times. From there, the discussion turned to her own life. She shared that she was saved out of a family that practiced Spiritism—worshipping Satan, doing witchcraft, reading Tarot cards, the whole bit. She found the Son when she was 24, and since then, she has been completely against anything that even looks like it might remotely be questionable or connected with Satan. Her faith in Father's power is very strong. She even shared how she had seen some followers pray for a demon-possessed person, and the demon left. This entire conversation was mostly in Portuguese. In our efforts to understand everything, Kim and I completely forgot to pay attention to the path to the followers' building. We had no idea how to get there! After I heard Irma Nitia’s testimony, I had incredible respect for her faith. She always talked about Father and yarped with us. One night, she led a wrship time in her home, and one Sunday when  Daniel had to be gone, he asked her to lead the evening service.

The language part of our time here was very interesting. For the Portuguese, effective communication is paramount. This became obvious when  Daniel provided a translator for us the entire time we worked at the center. Our translator’s name was Andrea.  Born in Wales to m parents, she lived in Brazil for over 20 years and married a Brazilian. Now she has lived in Portugal for 9 years. She has a huge heart for Father and m work. She, her husband Joelson, and Joelson’s band travel around and minister to young people. We had so much fun with Andrea during the week!

Unfortunately, though, I think having a translator hampered our language acquisition. More often than not, the elderly people would talk to us, and then when we didn’t understand, they would not try to help us understand. Instead, they just said, “Andrea, explain it to them.” Sometimes, they would just talk to Andrea instead of to us and then expect her to relay the message. Also, usually when we were only talking to Andrea, we used English. So yes, we learned tons of new words and our language skills improved a lot, but I think they could have improved more than they did. Even though we’ve been in Portugal for 4 weeks, we can still only say simple things. Usually, we can understand the gist of conversations when we listen, but we can’t talk fast enough to interject and participate.

Another interesting aspect of our language learning concerns our accent. When we first arrived in Portugal, we spent 2 weeks in another city, where the accent is unique, different from the rest of Portugal. Kim and I pick up accents really fast, so by the end of the 2 weeks, we were starting to use the accent quite well. Then we came here, where our host family and our translator were Brazilian. The Brazilian Portuguese accent is quite a bit different from the European Portuguese one. Our Portuguese friends told us we were starting to sound Brazilian. Also, strangely enough, the old people use a different accent than the young people. In a few weeks, we will go to northern Portugal, where the accent is different still. Kim and I are never going to know exactly the “right” pronunciation for anything!

Our first Friday here, our family hosted a wrship time for young people at their house. (Note: Portuguese age divisions work this way – Kids, babies to age 12ish; Adolescents, 13-15; Young people, 16-25; Adults; Elderly people) During that time, Irma Nitia heard me sing, so she asked me to sing for the body that coming Sunday. I sang “The Heart of Wrship” in English. The Portuguese have their own translation of that song, but the meaning of the lyrics is quite different. That same Sunday, Kim and I shared our personal story in Portuguese. The body wanted to hear what we had felt about our first week here. Andrea helped us translate everything we wanted to say, and we read it aloud in Portuguese.

All in all, our stay here was absolutely spectacular. We had a ton of fun. To hear about the rest of what we did, read Kim’s update. Portuguese people love to hug and kiss their friends, and since the followers here had the love of the Son flowing out of every pore in their bodies, they really loved hugging and kissing us. They called us “dear” and “doll” and “flower” and said “Father bless you” constantly. They also gave us so many presents. And what did we do to deserve all this love? Nothing. They didn’t even make us do that much work. We mostly just hung around with them. Oh well. Despite the fact that language learning didn’t go as we planned, the loveliness of the people made everything more than worthwhile. We plan on going back to visit them multiple times before we leave Portugal.

I should stop jabbering on now. Your eyes are probably tired of reading by now. Thanks for all your love and support and yarping!

Muitos beijinios e abraços para vocês! (Many kisses and hugs for you all!)

In the Son,

Brittaney

1. Portuguese people love to eat whole sardines. One day, we ate them for lunch at the fellowship center. That same day, we ate caracois (snails) for a snack! I like sardines and snails, but Kim does not. This picture shows Kim and me stuffing sardine gills with salt.

2. The theme verse at the fellowship center is Gal. 5:22, the fruits of the Spirit verse. The center's theme song has that verse in it, too, and they all sing the song about twice a day. Daniel asked us to paint the fruits of the Spirit on the front steps of the center. By the time we were done, we knew how to sing the song in Portuguese. I made the mistake of telling them we had learned the song, so then they made us sing it in front of the whole body!

Yarp Requests

Praises – Kim and I have moved to a new place. We are living with Emily and Amanda .  Emily recently graduated , and she has been a m in Portugal for about a year now. Amanda is a high school student doing summer m work. They are both amazing. It’s also great to move in somewhere, instead of having to live out of a suitcase.

Personal walk with the Father – Yarp that I make the Him my first priority and trust Him to plan my days. I tend to plan everything myself and then get frustrated when things don’t happen the way I think they should.

Spreading the Kingdom – Kim and I are at an interesting spot in our work right now. Starting on July 16, we will spend 2 weeks working at a Ch. camp for underprivileged children. Between now and then, though, we need to yarp and investigate opportunities that we will want to spend more time on when we get back from camp. Yarp that father will help us find and connect with the people He wants us to.

Language learning – Kim and I both feel a little behind on that. It’s fun to learn a new language, but sometimes, it just feels awkward on your tongue. We especially need help with learning verbs, because we don’t know enough verbs to make a lot of complete sentences, and the verbs are one of the hardest parts of Portuguese.