on a day-to-day basis...

so what do missionaries do on a daily schedule?

a question we are learning to answer as we live thru it. 

Here was our day today: 

1. wake up 

2. plan for our furlough (scheduling trips and planning church meetings)

3. stress out about Mark's incomplete Brazilian documents (will he be able to leave the country in May??)

4. pay bills (every bill here in Brazil is paid at the bank - no drive-thru)

5. stress out about Ali's incomplete Brazilian documents (will she be able to get back into Brazil??)

6. Do something about the documents, and drive to another city to apply for the process. 

7. Last minute preps for the children's camp that is starting tomorrow. (gather material, plan recreation activities, etc)

8. Plan for seminar offered to Parents and Youth Ministers next weekend. 

9. Scheduling for school visits to promote the seminar

10. Elders meeting and presentation of our new and upcoming 2008 interns. 

11. laundry

12. midnight trip to the grocery store to buy ingredients for yupp lunch tomorrow (15-20 ppl)

a tad dynamic, and just what we love. 

hope you are enjoying your busy days as well!

ak

worship

So this weekend one of our favorite new Brazilian buds, Pedro, came to visit us. Pedro brought along with him several worship songs that we learned to love in England. 

we have listened to some favorites on repeat for a couple of days now: How Great is Our God, This is The Air I Breath, Consuming Fire, etc.

there are a couple of the songs that are recorded with a live audience, and it gives me chills to listen to hundreds of people praising God with such powerful words. 

we look forward to worshiping with you again soon!

i leave you with these lyrics. 

There must be more than this 
O breath of God, come breathe within 
There must be more than this 
Spirit of God we wait for you 

Fill us anew we pray 
Fill us anew we pray 

Consuming fire, fan into flame 
A passion for your name 
Spirit of God fall in this place 
Lord have your way 
Lord have your way with us 

Come like a rushing wind 
Clothe us with power from on high 
Now set the captives free 
Leaves us abandoned to your praise 

Lord let your glory fall 
Lord let your glory fall 

Stir it up in our hearts, Lord 
A passion for your name

youth group

this is some of our youth group enjoying the mac's ability to distort their faces! (and ours) 

we meet with our youth group twice a week - sunday mornings before worship, and thursday night at our home. 

it's a young group (most of them 13-15 years old), and in many ways a very different group than what we became familiar with in Ohio. 

A little about Brazilian culture: kids have no perspective of leaving home/becoming independent. Most kids will grow up and go to a college very near their home, and commute daily. Or, if they are forced to leave because of distance, they return home every single weekend to be with family. So families in Brazil do not raise their children to be independent, as they do in the USA.  Kids usually don't leave until they are married (late 20s). 

As a consequence, there is a lower level of expectation of maturity in teenagers here. 

Which has a created an interesting transition from OH to here... 

Despite all the challenges, we have enjoyed the group, and enjoyed watching them develop into an integrated part of the church. 

Please continue to pray for this group. 

Continue to pray for their spiritual maturation. 

Continue to pray that God will give them a role in His body here in Itu. 

kaisers

this one is about Buckeye, aka Kai

camp days were long... and Kai discovered her favorite nap position.

she was helping us move... 
inside-out night at camp in January

we are totally in love with the Rottweiler we purchased here in Brazil back in November. 

she is the most docile, sweet, cuddly puppy (75lbs at 8 months) we could have found!

since brazilians have a hard time saying Buckeye - you should see what they can come up with! Bocai is the most common miss - we have given her the nickname of Kai. yes, as in Kaiser. 

Kai, for one, loves fruit. any fruit. if you are eating it, she wants it; if she sees it hanging in the kitchen, she wants it; if she sees grampa with some, she wants it. 

Kai is also Mark's Jiu-Jitsu partner. He comes home after practices and re-practices all his newly learned moves on our pup. She loves it. She has also made the over-generalized association of male=jiu-jitsu. So there are some poor souls that enter our yard and are forced to learn at least the defensive moves to fin her off. 

Kai is also our kid. 

If you are a couple that has been married for only a couple of years, you understand how many times a day/week/month you will be asked about...CHILDREN!!  especially in  a country that has fewer privacy barriers than the US. 

So when we are asked, we tell ppl we HAVE a child. She is black, brown spots, four paws, and wonders if she is adopted. 

Our family is up to 3. 

ak

A lil' Perspective

About 25 minutes outside of Itu  there is a place called 'the Christian Home' (Lar Cristao).  It is an orphanage and home to about 40 kids.  We have been to this orphanage many times for various reasons (from attending a weekend retreat on their grounds to taking our youth group there to play soccer with the kids).  I have become close to a few of the kids living at 'The Lar', and very close to one of them.  He is a fifteen year old boy named Eliazar and we met during a weekend encampment hosted by the orphanage.  Eliazar had recently become a Christian and he asked if I would start a Bible study with him.  It was either the day we met, or the following that he asked me this.  His eagerness, driven both by a desire to learn more about his new faith and by the natural loneliness that life without one's family brings, was more than impressive.  We now meet once a week and are studying our way through Matthew.

Starting out our study we had a discussion about the time in Jesus' infancy when his parents had to hide themselves away for fear of King Herod finding Jesus and having him killed.  This led to a discussion regarding the suffering that comes to all in life, even the blameless baby Jesus.  

I asked Eliazar if he had ever had to run for his life, and he said that he had.  I asked him, were you running from a family member... or someone you knew?  He replied, "No, Drugs."

After that discussion I got to thinking, a boy losses his parents, gets in to drugs in a way that puts his life in danger, and then turns around to pursue Christ in his life, anxiously seeking someone to disciple him in his new faith... What does that??!  This was one of those 'hopeless' boys that you see on the street breathing glue out of a bag and asking for money from cars stopped in traffic.  This boy met and was loved by Jesus - and that changed everything.  That can sound so cliche, but the power of the love of Christ to give hope to the hopeless is undeniable.  I can't explain it, I couldn't even imagine it.

Eliazar helped me regain my perspective.  Jesus does make the difference.  If we are really about His life altering Spirit, then we have got to believe in the Hope for the hopeless.

this is why

have we told you about yupp lunch?

When Mark and I arrived we plugged into the group of young professionals at church; many of them are my closest friends from teenage years in Itu. 

There are about 20 of them total, and they love spending time together! i'm talking 2 or 3 times/week. crazy. but we noticed that many times they would get together to hang out, but always had to find a place, find food, find rides, etc. 

So we began our Yupp Lunch on Tuesdays. 

Several get off work for lunch, so we thought, "Let's share a meal together! Food provided, place provided, fun provided!" I am in charge of preparing the meal and they bring fruit and drinks. So far i have made strogonoff, spaghetti, rica&beans, beer  chicken, carbonara, etc. 

Mark brings his Jiu-Jitsu friends, and we hang out with everyone for an hour or so. 

It's been a blessing to host this diverse group, who can eat us out of the house any day! 

Please pray for our company. We want this to be a source of physical food, and spiritual food, too.

Snap shots

amazing moments with amazing friends! 

and there is always the sad part... 

we received some more incredible visitors last weekend! Micah and Britt! They are both working with a church in Paraguay, and we met them in January at the Missionary Conference. 

I think they had a realistic glimpse into the life of the Kaisers -- f-u-l-l. 

On Friday night we had SORAYA's B-day party! one of my best-friends for 12 years! She is so beautiful! Soraya is going to med-school and will be coordinating our medical mission campaign next summer (more info to come). here she is:

Saturday we took most of our youth group to an amusement park called HOPI HARI! It was stressful getting everything organized (the kids did in 3 fundraisers to earn money for this trip) but it was very fun once we got there! Micah and Britt joined in and we loved having them with us! (micah in green and Britt in light purple next to her) 

i was THRILLED to be on the carrousel ... picture taken just moments before we were asked to get off because we were over 4 feet. =( 

better late than never

Mark, Shethal and Luke! Great times!

Our House Party on the 03/22

the partiers that lasted till 7pm of 03/23

So i know you expect more pics, since we have better internet. 

here you go... we will be playing catch up for a little, so hang in there. 

more to come. and also updates on ministries. 

loving life, 

kaisers

some things that happen after 6 months away

we're trying to compose a humorous and insightful TOP 10 list 

about changes taking place in our lives after being in BRAZIL for 6 months...

10 - you miss things like FEBREEZE...

9 - you forget how to conjugate past tense of verbs, "is it `I shook the bottle' , or 'i shaked the bottle?' " 

8 - arriving 15-20 minutes late is standard -- yes, yes, i know that was standard for us no matter where we were living!

7 - you feed your puppy exotic fruits like passion fruit, mangos, papaya, pomagranit (sp?), etc. then late at night you are awakened by the most gosh-awful acidic farts produced by your puppy...

... TO BE CONTINUED...

(off to a Bible study, then our friend Soraya's b-day par-te!) 

=) 

some explanation to the randomness

the random pics? i have a reason...

i went and tried out a new form of internet here in Itu. It´s the radio wave internet.

i needed to be sure that it would allow us to upload pics more easily! and as you can tell the result was succesful! yay!

so tomorrow AM they will be installing our antena!
which means, more pics for you!

can´t wait to show you more of our world!
ali

internet test