sorry...

i'm terribly sorry for not keeping y'all updated...i've gotten super lazy. :)
i've been laying in my hammock reading my Bible for the past two days...you can't get mad at me for that! ;)
so...since last thursday...hmm...let's see...we'll have to work backwards...
today, i went to prayer at 6:30 AM...as every weekday morning...
went to visit a girl from the cell group with Silvia, had lunch at Ken and Joanne's house, visited with the CBF team...and laid in my hammock.
yesterday...laid in my hammock, reading my Bible, we went out for lunch to this fish place...got some steak with rice and lemonade for the equivalent of about $2.50. it was great. last night was TADEL, the leadership training meeting/service thing. it was really cool. i just love being at anything at the church, it's just great to be there...and not just cause it's air conditioned! ;)
i also went out with silvia and her family to micro lanche and had a burger and some amazing fresh lemonade...yummy!
monday was a holiday...santarem's birthday...we had a meeting about the encontrinho (a children's weekend retreat that we are helping with this upcoming weekend) then we went to silvia's house and swam in her pool and played volleyball and ate spaghetti and played soccer and played uno...and played uno in the pool...and got really really sunburnt...oh, well that last one was just me...oops! y'all are gonna love my crazy tanlines in michigan...i might have to only wear a one piece suit...my stomach will cause too much reflection...it will be blinding... :)
sunday, we went to church service early...well, that's a long story...i'll explain sunday morning as part of saturday...i went to service at 9 at santarezhino with micah and then we all went out to silvia's to eat churrasco and swim and play uno and hang out...it was very fun. then we went to church at 7 pm at central and then afterwards went over to somebody's house that was supposed to be a party or something...ended up leaving and going to micro lanche and having burgers...had some creme de cupuacu at the party thing....
umm...saturday was a crazy night...after aviva jovem, the youth/young adult service, we went to micah's to watch a movie and jokingly said we wanted to sleep over because he has air conditioning...long story short, we tried to go home and were locked out...so we returned to micah's and slept on his floor...it was like 3 am...we were so exhausted at church...i don't really remember what else we did on saturday...i think i did laundry or something...i don't know...haha.
friday...we cleaned a rug for becky and helped clean up at the water filter office too. :)
i don't know what else happened since then...i probably went to micro lanche about 5 more times...haha.
and...i think that's all i have to share....i am thinking about typing up some stuff about the people i've met. :)
i'll see how far i get before i have to go take a shower before cell group tonight...
i'll start with the roomies...
stephanie is the spunkiest person i know. she is absolutely adorable, i envy her mad makeup skills and her amazingly gorgeous blonde curls...she is so in love with Jesus and she lets it show in her actions every day...
lauren is a goof...she is so funny to be around and can always make me laugh or smile at all the goofy thing she says...
sally is fabulous...she is letting me use her computer...so you know she's awesome! she's such a sweetie...she lived her before...so she is great to have around cause she knows portuguese...she also used to pray to be a gnome when she was little...she's full of fun random stories...
benjamin is the other intern...he's a goon...he's sitting here right now trying to remember his home phone number...it is quite comical...he has chocolate from the states...so he's been my best buddy...
micah is one of the MKs here...he's from illinois originally...well, i guess techincally he's originally from south korea...he's so funny. he has been a little cornfield goodness in the middle of the amazon rainforest...he's really helpful to have around too...he speaks portuguese and english also!
silvia is wonderful. i call her mom (sorry mom, she's my other mother!) and she is such a sweetheart...she's brazilian but speaks perfect english and she's one of the nicest people i have ever met...i love her. i will dearly miss her when i have to come home. :(
chai...she's crazy!! chaiene is her real name...and she doesn't speak much english...our conversations turn out to be quite comical...she thinks i'm crazy and that's her nickname for me...she is so much fun to laugh with and is great to hang out with...we have conversations between a small bit of english and me trying to speak portuguese...i sometimes need a translator...one time, she asked me what i did for ministery in the church...and i told her, in portuguese, i sing, i play piano and "brinco com meninos"...what i should've said is "brinco com criancas". what i said was, "i play with boys" not "i play with children". she was adament that she was going to tell my pastor that i play with boys at church. :( oops! she also told me she was going to call my mom and tell her i wasn't wearing sunscreen!
more friends:
paulinho (in portuguese, means "little paul") little paul is 6'3" tall by the way...he is the son of the directors of Project Amazon. he's a really neat guy and has been really helping out with getting us into the culture and stuff. we attend the cell group that he leads and he invites us along to all the fun things...lots of swimming. he's great...he is moving to fortaleza in august though...so he's really busy getting everything ready for him to leave...but he still finds time to spend with the interns (a few of them knew him from when they all went to ORU together)
becky and jeff are the directors of the mission and are absolutely wonderful...we don't get to spend a lot of time with them, but every second we have with them is great...they are so much fun and have such a vision and a passion for the people here and they are so amazing. i love working with them.
ruth and nate are another couple of MKs turned missionaries...they are currently pregnant with twin baby girls! :) i'm very excited for them...she is naming them rebecca and anna...after me, of course! i love ruth and nate...they are a very fun couple...and i love to tease them about naming the babies after me!
ken and joanne are the missionary couple that we live in the back apartment of their house...that sentence was really clumsy...but you get the point...they are from illinois too...so it's fun to talk about illinois things with them...they are a really neat couple and she does a lot of work with children and so we always have a bunch of kids running around the house...i love it!
i've met a ton of other wonderful people too...i am too tired to get into any more people...i'm sure you are sick of reading this anyway...
tonight is cell group and we are having stroganoff to celebrate the cell group multiplying! it's going to be great fun....hopefully we will have some intense uno games going tonight too...i love that the brazilians love uno...it's great...they do have some crazy rules though...but it makes it way more fun...

fun times

Well, I haven't really had to do much work this past week...shhhh...don't tell anyone. We have been attending church services and cell groups and really developing relationships with a lot of the Brazilians. I have been learning a ton of Portuguese. I love it. I want to be fluent so badly.
We have been having an hour of Portuguese lessons each day, and the church services and prayer meetings and cell groups are all in Portuguese and I am getting less translations every day. I'm just supposed to figure it out. Haha. I really do pick up a lot. Having a background in Spanish has helped me pick up a lot of the words, but it is soooo hard for me to pronounce Portuguese. I'm trying though.
I've eating at this same little burger joint every night for the last like 5 or 6. Haha. It's great. It's a fun place to hang out. Everything seems so cheap here. I get a milkshake-y thing called a vitamina (think I mentioned it before) and a burger for 7 reais (prounounced hey-eyes). Which is equivalent to around 4 dollars. It's so good too. They eat ketchup and mayonnaise on everything here (just like me!) like fries and fried bananas. They fry bananas into banana chips and salt them and put ketchup and mayo on them...it's great. I love it. I really do love the food here. It's all hard to make though...so we've been avoiding cooking anything.
And I apparently have no clue how to cook. I divulged today that I can't even make oatmeal. My roommates were like, you boil the oats. Haha. I said I just microwave the instant oatmeal packets at home. Haha.
It's been very warm here, obviously. And rather rainy...obviously. Haha. I love it here though. I'm having a blast. Yesterday, we cleaned window screens for a couple of the apartments of missionaries. It was fun. I sincerely enjoyed it. Today we are scrubbing mold or something off of walls at the guesthouse. Yippee!
Dale and the team from CBF arrived safely. They left on their boat trip yesterday. I didn't get to go cause there wasn't enough room on the boat. They have ten people on their team and if all of the interns had gone as well as the Bluniers, there would've been twenty people or so...and that's just not fun on the boat.
They are going to be gone until Saturday, and I assume they will be going to the youth group meeting thing Saturday night...but I don't know.
I love how curly my hair gets here. It's so funny what a difference all the humidity makes. I wore it curly last night and everyone was asking if it was natural. It was pretty crazy...almost an afro. One of the boys told me the other day that I have hair like a black person (I think he meant an afro, haha.)
I love the little kids that are always chilling here at Joanne's house. She hosts several children's cell groups and they come over and play before there group meeting. It's so much fun to play with them, and I'm beginning to understand more and more of what they say to me.
I haven't been taking a lot of pictures lately...I need to get on that and do it more. I just hate taking pictures when I could be playing with a kid or helping out with work. I'm sorry, y'all will probably be disappointed at the volume of pictures I come home with. :)
Maybe if I had a really nice camera that was fun to take pictures with, I would take more. Haha.
Well, I hope y'all are doing well at home. I miss y'all.

Momma...I've tried calling a couple of times, but my phone apparently isn't going to work...sorry. Let me know when Baby Shaffer is born.

Tchau!

fun in the sun

okay.
that's probably not a good topic.
but i'm doing great.
just wanted y'all to know.
starting to understand more portuguese.
it's really great.
i love our new roommate. she's great.
and ben, the other intern is pretty neat too.
i don't have much time right now...i will post again soon.

i forgot to mention...

we did go alligator hunting on the boat trip...but we didn't catch any. :( so i still haven't eaten alligator.

we did get a hold of a turtle that we cooked up...but i wasn't around to eat that either.

the team had it though.

i have fallen in love with vitaminas. basically a milkshake-y like thing...banana flavor is amazing.

and i've eaten a ton of fresh pineapple...yum. glad i'm no longer allergic.

and we went to a churrascaria. i think i mentioned it before...but it was really good.

farinha is a lot better than i remember. i've actually grown to like it quite well...it's made from a root that's poisonous. :) (called mantioch or something like that...you can look it up. it's a really neat process how they make it "unpoisonous" and into the food that you eat.)

well...i think that's all my odd food stories...for now...

;)

slightly better internet

well, today i am down at the office. where the internet works much better than at home.
but currently i can hardly focus my eyes on the screen. which i hope just means i'm leaning too far away and not that my eyes are getting worse.

i'm gonna try to post a lot of stuff today, some older stuff that i didn't really have time to go into detail about before.

well...for starters...my pops apparently got facebook.

i'm proud of him...mom, you are next!

so...the past couple of days have just been a time to relax and fellowship with the missionaries and some of the brazilians too.

we went out to alter do chao to the house that some of the missionaries own that has a pool and just hung out in the patio area and swam. it was a lot of fun. and we ate hot dogs...lots of hot dogs. hot dogs for dinner, hot dogs for breakfast (with scrambled eggs) and hot dogs cut up in rice for lunch. i don't want to eat any more hot dogs for a while. haha.

we also swam in the tapajos again. it is so high right now. it has never been this high...and it's actually gone down a lot.

we went to what would've probably been an area normally bustling with tourists which was completely empty and abandoned. we had a bunch of fun...i assume you will be able to see some pictures from this soon on facebook if you are my friend.
i don't have the ability to really post any pictures right now...i really wish i could...i just don't have the means...i will try to get some of mine up...but if you are my facebook friend, the team i have been working with will tag me in photos for sure.

the team left yesterday. it was really sad to see them leave. i have really become rather fond of those boys...they were my little bros and i will miss them dearly.
i'm gonna have to visit new orleans when i get back...i have to make an appearance as the girl who did a better belly flop than one of the boys. haha.

i have also inhaled so much of the tapajos river that my friend micah has diagnosed me with "tapajitis". it's similar to pneumonia...it's having a lot of water in your lungs...it's actually difficult for me to breathe...i'll live though...i think i forgot how to swim or something cause i have inhaled so much water and gotten so much in my ears...i don't normally have that happen. oh well.

i still haven't bought my rede (pronounced "hedge-y") yet...(hammock) which makes me really lame. i have just been borrowing one...it's so fun to just be able to throw up a hammock on hooks anywhere to sleep. i just slept in like a patio last night...it's so great. i love the brazilian culture. everything is so laid back.

the street i live on isn't paved. i need to make sure i get a picture for y'all...cause you won't believe this...it has a river that more or less runs down the middle of it...and cars can barely even drive down it...it has like foot deep ravines and drop offs that make it interesting to drive down...most of the time anybody giving us a ride tells us to meet them at the corner where the road is paved again. haha.

i am bruised from my thighs to my ankles. and have four spider bites on my left fore arm alone (aka my body is covered in bites). the skin on the bottom of my toes isn't really there any more. i got pushed out of the tree we were chilling in on the tapajos and lost much of my skin on my left shin. my right ankle may or may not be infected/growing gnat larvae. and i have blisters. and i probably have worms.

and i'm loving life right now and couldn't be happier. i love the hard work, it's insane that i have energy to wake up in the morning and that i'm able to even walk. it's really neat to see how God restores my body every day and allows me to continue to do His work. it's also really neat that He restores my attitude and spirit and allows me to have patience and endurance to continue even when i feel like falling over. my attitude hasn't been positive at all times, i have gotten frustrated over a few things, but i always am refreshed and restored and am able to continue on.

i've come to realize that people in every culture enjoy some good slapstick comedy, so i have been able to communicate through just been the goofball that i am without any words.

joanne (the woman who's house we live at/near) has a cell group of children that she leads. i was at the house the other day when they all landed...and it was the most fun i've had in a long time. i played some pass the basketball around the circle, we played hide and seek, they decided they were gonna put a bunch of braids in my hair...it was just insane. i also had just finished a load of laundry. there are no dryers here in brazil, so i was in the process of hanging my clothes on the line when the kids decided they were going to help me. apparently, my underwear is hilarious.

the other day when we were coming home from alter do chao from working at camp, we stopped at a little gift shop for the boys to look for some gifts for their families and friends. i was explaining how the jewelry made from coconut shells and acai berries was a perfect gift for any girl and that that was what they needed to get for any girl they were buying for. pastor marco, the leader of the team was looking at some of the earrings and asked me which ones i liked best. i pointed out a pair and said they were by far the best and that he should definitely get them for his wife...so, he picks them up and takes them to the counter...pays for them and then walks over and hands them to me and says, "they're yours, sister." it made my day. he is such a sweet man of God and i am so glad he was the leader of the team, it was such a joy to work with him.

i think i maybe have gotten out a lot of the stories i wanted to share. i did get to stand on a bus ride to alter do chao. it's about an hour ride and the roads are absolutely trash with hills and curves and the bus was soooo overcrowded (which is why i had to stand) but i really enjoyed the experience. haha. and it only cost me R$2,30. (approx. $1.15) haha. everything seems so cheap here. which is a nice change over home and europe.

if you are looking for a souvenir from here...let me know what you want. i can hook you up. the jewelry is all really really neat. just let me know.

love y'all. miss ya.

facebook

ugh.
the internet here is horrible.
apparently the connection is better at the office...i may try to get on there sometime and post a little more stuff.
today we are going to a churrascaria. it's a brazilian barbeque place.
it's amazing.
i'm pretty excited.

tomorrow we are going up to camp to do a work project there.
i'm pretty excited about it...it'll be fun.
it will also be the last work project we do with the boys before they leave.

yesterday we got to go to the marcha para jesus.
at first, we were originally supposed to be still on the boat and not be able to go. but we came back early so we could go...i'm so glad we did.
it was tons of fun. i really enjoyed it.

so...today we are going to church at 5.
this church is insane.
they have 8 services: 7 am, 9 am, 11 am, 1 pm, 3 pm, 5 pm, 7 pm, and 9 pm.
and each service has thousands of people at it.
it's insane...cause it is only one of the churches in the city.
it's just so awesome to see the work that God is doing in this city.
i really am enjoying being here.
keep praying for me!
my body has been a little beat up from all the work.
ick...
well...gotta go eat some meat...yum!
becca

facebook

ugh.

the internet here is horrible.

apparently the connection is better at the office...i may try to get on there sometime and post a little more stuff.

today we are going to a churrascaria. it's a brazilian barbeque place.

it's amazing.

i'm pretty excited.

tomorrow we are going up to camp to do a work project there.

i'm pretty excited about it...it'll be fun.

it will also be the last work project we do with the boys before they leave.

yesterday we got to go to the marcha para jesus.

at first, we were originally supposed to be still on the boat and not be able to go. but we came back early so we could go...i'm so glad we did.

it was tons of fun. i really enjoyed it.

so...today we are going to church at 5.

this church is insane.

they have 8 services: 7 am, 9 am, 11 am, 1 pm, 3 pm, 5 pm, 7 pm, and 9 pm.

and each service has thousands of people at it.

it's insane...cause it is only one of the churches in the city.
it's just so awesome to see the work that God is doing in this city.
i really am enjoying being here.
keep praying for me!
my body has been a little beat up from all the work.

ick...

well...gotta go eat some meat...yum!

becca

giant spiders, sunburn and bathing in the tapajós

well...

brazil welcomed me in the best way possible.

not a half hour after my last post, i hopped in the shower only to be greeted by a giant amazon spider.

it was roughly the size of a saucer, like including the legs...it was huge.

so i met my new roommates wrapped in a towel while our host came in and killed the spider so i could continue my shower.

i napped tuesday morning for about an hour and then we went to the reutter's house for lunch.

it was fabulous...spaghetti!

then that night we went to tadell (that's not spelled right) which is training for small group leaders.

we left for our boat trip tuesday night...i had slept an hour in the past 36 or something.

didn't get much sleep cause when the boat is travelling, there is quite a bit of wind, and i was the first hammock in the front...i was sooooo freezing cold that i couldn't sleep at all...it wasn't fun.

we were in the village for a few days, we did lots of hardwork.

we moved bricks off the boat onto dry land...hard work carrying tons of bricks...

moved earth around...moved some bricks some more...it was hard work.

i'm burned to a crisp...bright red.
not fun.
and i bathed off the back of our boat in the tapajós.
well...i better let someone else use the computer...

and i had a chicken stir fry pita thing for lunch.

i'm here!

i made it to brazil safe and sound.

in one piece.

with three pieces of luggage.

which is a success.

i am kinda tired...i woke up monday morning at 7:00 am...and i'm so twisted now, i don't even know what time it is...but i haven't slept since then...you can figure out how many hours that is...

i think i may just try to make it through today too. i think i can do it.

i met up with the team coming down here in atlanta at the airport, i randomly walked up to the group of guys that i thought could be the team that i had been asked to meet up with, and sure enough...that was them.

oddly (i mean, Godly) i was actually seated next to them on the plane, one row ahead of them...so i got to spend the long flight getting to know these boys that i'll be spending the next four/five days (i don't feel like counting/figuring it out) with on the boat.
the team is 5 high school boys with their youth pastor.
they are from louisiana, and they are quite the characters.

they don't believe me when i tell them my age...they think i'm sixteen.

to which i say, whatever...and then laugh at their next lame joke.

it was really nice to be with people to pass the time in the airport and on the flights...i am really glad that God put them in my path...not just that i had someone...but that i had these guys...they are sweethearts and i feel very fortunate to have met them...i'm looking forward to the next few days...

i actually got placed on an earlier flight out of chicago because i had arrived early enough to switch...which gave me a lot more time in atlanta to figure things out...the girl i sat by on this flight talked my ear off...yes...my ear...and she was a very sweet southern young woman and i enjoyed her company on the flight...and after the flight, she got me right to where i needed to go...(which ended up being right where the boys were.)

my return flight situation is still a little iffy...but i know God has a plan and everything will get worked out...

it's really interesting to be back here...it's exactly as i remember it...except so many things have changed too...

well, i just wanted to check in and let y'all know that i was safely at my destination with all my luggage and body parts intact...
i'm just sleep deprived...so please pardon any spelling errors!

love y'all...keep praying!

bec