Teach me some melodious sonnet, Sung by flaming tongues above...


Hello All!

I am currently aiming for being on time with this blog, we shall see how long I survive tonight, and see if I can get it finished. Many things happened this week, some good, some great, some not wonderful, and some truly upsetting so trying to think of a mood for this blog is complicated, so I thought that I might just tell it as it happened.

Monday was our first day without Becky, as you all will know, since I wrote my blog late last week (some of this might be a little bit of a repetition, I apologise) and also we had our monthly latin link prayer meeting. And although, I ran out of gas while baking the cake for it, so that it half stuck in the tin, and that the first of the 'summer' rains started and came through our church roof right into the middle of proceedings, it was still really good to hear where other people are in their projects. It was also really good to see Jen and Nate after a year and a half, and they even let me hold Micah, even though he's only little, and I had had coffee ;) I had to spend the rest of the day madly rushing to finish reading my book and writing a book report for a class in seminary that night. I of course had had two months to write this book report, but had not surprisingly left it to the last moment, in fact past the last moment, because I was running rather late for seminary, especially since I had to run over to the project to shower, and we received a call saying that the class was cancelled. Most people of course (normal people such as Hannah) would be happy that we had an evening off, but I was a tad annoyed because I had spent all day writing this book report. Later on in the week, that annoyance turned to guilt when I was informed that the reason that the class was cancelled was because our teacher had had what I interpreted as a stroke, but perhaps wasn't (my own personal language skills do not extend to medical chat), in any case, we are praying for her, and hopefully a swift recovery, but have very little news on that.

On Tuesday, after a very successful meeting with Pastor Marcio about life and workings of the project and July camps we were to take 30 of our kids, and 80 of the Cha da Cruz children to a castle like museum (the buildings were 40 years old, Hannah' s house in the Uk is 400 years old, we have a different concept of ageing buildings obviously). Our kids made it there very well, inspite of a rickety old bus with no seatbelts and a lot of football chanting and arguing. Unfortunately the Cha da Cruz kids never made it in the end, which put a little dampner on our day, here is a shorthand version of events
1. Their driver for the first bus never turned up
2. The new driver that the bus company sent over, did not in fact have a driving licence, so that was that company out of the question.
3. The third bus that was sent could not climb the hills surrounding the Cha da Cruz area
4. The fourth bus broke down (possibly because of the hills) 10km before Cha da Cruz. The poor children were waiting for the better part of 4 hours at the project, and Marcio was working very hard to try to get them there. Unfortunately, as well, the next time that the museum had an open slot is in August. Broke my heart, but then on the other hand it was great for our kids, some of whom even learnt a thing or two. Not many. But a couple :)

Wednesday, was the Blessings day. We took the day off, and headed to the Beach about 1.5 hours away. Absolutely amazing. I advanced my tan just by walking around in the town. We met up with the steppers, and then had to say bye to them, as they moved on to the interior this week. It was a really amazing day, fun, and relaxing, and a couple of our Brazilian friends came along as well, and were very excited to have a day by the sea midweek. I'm thankful for that day off, because it helped us get through the rest of the week.

Thursday is my busy day, I have the little ones in the morning, all morning, and they don't always agree on my plans for the day, and if they want to kick up a fuss, well they sure know how. Luckily for me, they had fallen in love with What Time Is It Mr Wolf, and Hannah was able to keep them occupied with that for a lot longer than you would think. I had a capoeira class at the project and one at Roda de Fogo, and then went to see Becky off at the airport. Not the best time, I must admit. But at least we were able to spend some time together, and eat a subway, which made my day. I don't really like going to the airport to watch people leave. I don't think I was made to watch people leave.

Friday, we made mothers day cards with the children, which was quite enjoyable, especially when we sat on the side and watched them fight over the scissors and glue. Sounds safe, I know. Also, we are trying to teach our kids to recycle material, and we had found these rubber hearts that had been used for something else before, and told them to use them in their card making, the thing is, that on one side of the hearts was a verse from Revelations, which might or might not have been very appropriate for mothers day, depends how you look at it, but I think that the majority of people would maybe say inappropriate. So we told the kids to stick that side down, so you wouldn't be able to see it, but lo and behold, I turn my back for a little while and pretty much all the children had stuck the hearts on with the verse quite legible right on the front of their cards. They were a JOY to hand out to unsuspecting mothers this morning.

Because I had taken wednesday off this week, I decided to work on Saturday and headed over to Cha da Cruz with some of our football boys for a football tournament. All three of our teams lost unfortunately, so I had my hands full of upset young boys. It was a really good day, but really long, lots of football, missing lunch and all, and then having to rush home as our evening plans begun to take some actual form, meant that the 40 minutes that we had to wait for our first bus in the pouring rain, with some very hyper teenagers, was not the best 40 minutes of my life. Nor was the 40 minutes of the bus filled with drunken football fans, trying to chat to our boys the best time in my life. But at least it felt like work! And I felt I had achieved something that day, we then headed out to a worship concert in town, and everyone, pretty much everyone I know in Recife was there. Very exciting times. Was a very good concert, starting at 9am. We eventually left at 2 am, and that was before the last band had even gone on. They like their late nights here. We got home, and both of us were too wound up to really sleep, which was for the best probably, because at 4am in the morning we received a phone call, saying that the brother of our Brazilian mother, Fatima, had passed away in the night. A car had hit his motorbike, and his helmet had flown off, and unfortunately that was it. Needless to say it wasn't the best start to mothers day in this family. Fatima and her family are very upset at the moment, and Hannah and I are trying to help the best we can, but there really is not much we can do. Also Brazilians mourn a little differently to how I'm used too, so I feel a little out of my depth. We are praying for the family, and would hope that you would join us.

Monday starts a new week for us, and lots of new exciting, and hard things to do. I am missing friends and family today, as one would expect on mothers day, but luckily for me, I have the internet, and some very faithful friends who stay awake to keep me company.

Much love to all.
Emma

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