In Londrina

After two wonderful weeks at Lar Batista, I am now at the place where I will be spending most of my time in Brazil. I'm sitting in Gwen's (and my) apartment, hearing bells from a church nearby telling me that it is 12:00. I got to sleep in this morning, which was great considering I still have a cold and Joaquim and I arrived here at 4:15am on Tuesday.

We left Assis Chateaubriand at 10:45 Monday night, and I still wasn't feeling too sad or anticipating anything too much, probably because he was still with me. We spent a short night on the bus and met Gwen and Pastor Jhonatis at the bus terminal, went back to the apartment, and slept some more.

In the morning (the later morning) we had some breakfast, relaxed, and then eventually went out to see the seminary, the church, meet a few people, etc. Pastor Jhonatis came over for lunch and I was glad to have Joaquim with me and to see them all talking and getting to know each other...unfortunately I still wasn't really able to participate in that, due to my nonexistant Portuguese, and Pastor Jhonatis doesn't speak English, but it was great to see them all talking. We spent the afternoon watching some tv, I took a little nap, and just relaxed some more.

That night we went to a class for people who are either new Christians or are just interested in learning more about Christianity. It was the fifth week of the class and was really interesting to see how their study approached Christianity in a simple and clear way. Joaquim and I just sat in and listened, and it was strange to think that I'll probably be back to that class a few times. Not saying goodbye here for a while...

After class there was a sad goodbye as Gwen and I dropped Joaquim off at the bus terminal. 4 hours used to seem like nothing when I was in the US and he was in Brazil, but it will be a new and difficult adjustment once again. I'm sure I'll be thankful for that bus in the weeks to come. Pastor Jhonatis told Joaquim he was welcome to stay at his place any time, which is great of course.

So I returned "home" with Gwen, and the reality of my situation began to hit me. I'm in Londrina, a city of over 600,000 that has only been cloudy the last two days, I still have a cold, I still have a lot of questions, and I still desperately wish I could just start speaking Portuguese.

One shining bit of hope is Celia, who comes to the apartment on Tuesdays and Fridays to do some housework. She is so sweet and I can see her being the best help to me in learning Portuguese and learning my way around the kitchen. I can't even turn on a burner on the stove, I have no idea how it works. It's ridiculous, to say the least.

The biggest hope in all of this is the strange but wonderful feeling that I'm exactly where I need to be. It's also not quite where I would like to be, as it's a little too far from Joaquim, it's a little too gray and cloudy, and I'm a little too Portuguese handicapped. It's hard, to put it simply. But in my mind that only solidifies the fact that it's good. As I lay in bed last night, completely exhausted emotionally and physically, I could only sense that God was just waiting for me to get over it and start to realize that I was totally safe and in the center of His will.

The rest of today I'm just staying in, unpacking, and continuing to get my life together a little bit. Tomorrow Fran Noah is picking me up in the morning to take me to the English class she teaches, so I will get to see around the language school a little bit. If I'm correct (and who knows about that...) I will be taking Portuguese classes there, 15 hours a week. Needless to say, I can't wait for that to start!

I'll post some pictures soon of my apartment, etc. For now there are still two suitcases in my room that I have to go deal with...