Rendez-vous

What a week it’s been - busy, traumatic, fun! We’ve been out every night with one thing or another. Wednesday we were out for the evening with friends who work with Child Evangelism Fellowship. They are responsible for the whole western side of São Paulo state, and between their schedule and ours we find little time to get together during the year, but finally made time to visit.
Thursday was our mission Christmas dinner over at the Smallman’s house. We missed the Blazer family being with us, but they continue in the states trying to resolve Tim’s medical problems. We were late for the meal because of a situation with a family from church that had to be handled, but the missionaries waited dinner for us (I think that most folks in the ministry are used to times like that). In the end, we had a good time eating, playing games, swimming in the pool and just visiting.

By Friday evening, it was time to eat again, but most of the day was spent setting up and preparing food (at least for Sue) and a hospital visit thrown in as well.We have found that for the church Christmas dinner, it has to be early in the month before our people start traveling. We decided this year to do a progressive dinner, which most of the folks had never done before – having the appetizer at one house, salad at another, main course at another and ending with dessert at the last house. Sue and one of the other ladies were responsible for the main course, thus the food preparation. Starting a little after eight in the evening, the whole process took over four hours. At the first stop no one was too sure about what was going on, but as the night went on, they got into the program, and by the end they were saying we should do this a couple times a month, and just go to different houses each time. Last night when we were together with another group, they couldn’t stop talking about what fun it was. We had over thirty, with some guests included, out for the dinner.

Now the talk is all about the cantata coming up next week. After some reluctance in the beginning, having been in some other cantatas that were, in their words, “foreign”, now the choir members from our church are excited about it. The theme continues the coming of the Savior, but the music is all very Brazilian.

Our grandson Jordan is growing, but as you can see he has great protection – their dog Bentley.