Festa's and Other Adventures

This past weekend Mount Horeb school held their annual Festa de Julianina (sp?). Everyone has these festa's but the school plans theirs to coincide with the beginning of the winter school holiday. After a long week of lessons and helping at Mount Horeb and with the soccer school, Rick wasnt sure he wanted to head out for it. We were under the mistaken impression that it was a party for the kids, so rick decided to stay home and get some computer work done. Man were we wrong- I showed up to find half of Itaperucu and some of Rio Branco had descended on Mount Horeb. The kids put on great dances, and they were all dressed up as either gauchos (brazillian cowboys) or lovely folk ladies! They had bingo, and a concession stand, and prizes.. it was great! Alot of the kids who come to mount horeb dont come from Christian families, so it is allways good for the teachers and staff to be able to connect with so many parents!

After our fishing adventure on sunday morning, our friends took us to this amazing. "gruta" or cave near Rio Branco (about 15 minutes from where we live). Getting there and back was practically an adventure in itself.. although we were assured that "lots of people come here" the lack of a readily discernable trail and infrastructure had me doubting that theory! It was so steep I pretty much sat on my rear and slid all the way down, and crawled on my hands and knees all the way back up! However, it was worth it- as the cave was beautiful. Rick plans to return maybe next weekend with a group of men from the church and go thru the whole thing. (Which again.. we have been assured.. "lots of people do!")

Me and Rosanne in the mouth of the cave.

After our fishing and caving expiditions, we went back to Rosanne and Denilson's house for some awesome fish dinner (ill spare you the photos of the preparations for that.. ewww) While we waited Derick brought the neighbors three puppies over for some play time... IM IN LOVE!!!

Thank you all so much for your prayers- we have finished our "official" portuguese lessons and are now onto the review and practice phase.. Im not sure which is more difficult! We will still have a few more lessons with our teacher to go over grammar and verb conjugations, but now it is really up to us to study study study! Also, thank you for your prayers regarding our visa extensions.. what we had thought might be a bit tricky turned out to be soooo easy, and we breezed thru the proccess.. they even gave us a few extra days in case something goes wrong with our flights! Praise the Lord. It is now less than FIVE WEEKS till we leave for Africa, we can hardly believe the time has gone by so fast! Please continue to keep us in your prayers, we appreciate them so much, especially as we are now aproaching yet another stage of travel, visas and culture shock! God Bless,

Rick and Heather!