Hey, kid. You need help, and ol' Baloo's gonna learn ya to fight like a bear.

Hello All!!!
I have been without the internet for a good week now! So yet again I find myself apologising for the lateness of this blog. I mean the best, but sometimes it's just not enough.
The past week has flown by, and as usual by Sunday I can't even remember if there was a Monday to this week, and if there was I haven't a clue what we got up too. As the days go by, we are trying to get more and more prepared for these summer camps, that seems to be number 1 on the priorities list, but also we are looking at changing around some of courses here at the project. I'm feeling a little thinly spread with the capoeira, since I have not been able to find a group of my own around the area yet. Recife has a lot of capoeira regional, and by the looks of things it's a very violent type of regional. There is a group further away in Rio Dolce with Mestre Sapo that does Angola, and hopefully one of these days I will find time and resources to get myself up there. I am currently waiting on the Anna part of EMMANNA to come over to Recife, and then hopefully she will use force to drag me up there! So Anna if you are reading this, come up soon, and take me to capoeira. Also, I might start up classes teaching maths and geography. Yes, I know, most of you looked at the first one and are either still rolling on the floor laughing or praying that I don't teach it so that I don't do these children any more harm. In any case, I am going to ignore all of the hypothetical hooplah and am going to do it anyway. The kids here don't get enough schooling, and any extra help, any extra classes will be appreciated. At least I hope. And also, amongst all the cockroaches and scorpions we found loads and loads of Portuguese language school books that should help in these matters. I'm still hoping to be able to open up our project for full morning and afternoon sessions, but for that to work I need to have more helpers, and they are thin on the ground so far. But Faith, Hope and Love...
The week was a little more full than originally anticipated. In Portuguese we are learning Past Simple, and can I point out that that is just ridiculous, calling anything that requires so much work to learn as 'simple'. So I have been trying to use what I have learnt in some sentences while talking to the Brazilians, and I swear that people understand me less now than they did before. In fact, one of my friends from Seminary kept on having to translate for me while we were on our weekend away!!! Oh well, I'm sure it's just steps forward that feel like steps backward, or something equally intelligent.
This weekend we had a missions weekend to a small town outside of Recife, we were to go on Friday Evening, which meant that we would have the whole of Friday daytime to make up the day off that we would miss. And as things turned out, our friends called us at 8am in the morning and offered to drive us out to the beach at Porto. So, we thought, what better way to spend the half day off then on the beach, and it was amazing! We walked out through the water to some natural pools with lots of fish and tourists in them. Had our pictures taken and then realised that the tide was coming in, and fast. In fact it came in so fast that there was no way to walk back to the beach we had to swim. Luckily for us, the two Brazilians that we were with were able to swim, because that is not always the case. Unfortunately our bag with everyones mobile phones, wallets, passports and such like was not of the waterproof variety and they took a little swim in the arising tide waters. One of the friends that we had with us was a new acquaintance for us, a guy who has quite a story to tell, unfortunately it is not my story to tell, but I shall add a link on here soon, he is currently travelling around South America, and is hoping to make his way over to Europe within the end of the year. He is quite a powerful character and was an amazing witness on the beach, while all the worlds vendors were trying to swindle the 'rich' gringas for their every cent, this friend of our spent hours just evangelising to each and every one of them.

After the beach we made our way to the Missionary Weekend away in a place called Carpinha (or something similar to that, apparently we were pronouncing it wrong the whole time that we were there). The event was being held in a convent with real nuns, it was a really beautiful place, very well kept, gave me some vision for our own project. It was meant to be a weekend for the youth of the area, and we had a massive team of almost 50 people and we were expecting quite the number of youth. As it turns out, as it is with most things, especially in this part of the world, the event didn't turn out quite like we expected it. The number of youth that turned up was quite small (there were numerous reasons for it, one of which was misinformation-the curse of the Brazilians) and so in the end it turned out to be more of a weekend of fellowship with the students from Seminary that we had yet to meet, and in this case it was one of the best weekends that I have had here yet. I was able to meet a lot of new people, to form a lot of new contacts, theatre and dance teachers for kids for weekend projects, other capoeira teachers with small projects near by. We also had a night out on the streets doing theatre and testimonies and chatting to the locals, which was an absolute blessing. People in Brazil are much more open to chatting to strangers.

Pretty much the minute that we got back from the weekend away we jumped into several cars and vans and took some of the kids of our project to the sister project for their churches birthday celebrations. Was a good service. The best part of which obviously was the cake, and the our smart kids taught me how to look like I hadn't got my piece, which meant that we were able to eat our share and them some. By the time we returned home I was so tired that I slept most of Monday to make up for the weekend.

The rains have started. Our roofs are not holding up. But at the same time, at least we can have showers if the water runs out again. Although the electricity is coming and going as it pleases. So candle light is the new mood lighting.

Love and Miss you all

Emma

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