Woohoo! Finally Connected

The airline system, transportation, phones and Internet can surely be frustrating when in Brazil. I could not connect to the blog yesterday and could barely stay on the Internet for any length of time. Oh well, here we are now.

I'll start by apologizing for a lack of pictures. It's not for a lack of trying but mainly time. We started off schedule today and stayed that way. Today was our prayer day as a group. We started at the hill where Aracaju was founded in 1855 and learned a bit of the history and ventured through a small Catholic church nearby. From there we went to "the center", the middle of town and saw the Governor's Palace, where the House of Representatives meet and other government offices. We also went to see the oldest cathedral in Aracaju and learned about the religious disposition of most of the nation. At each of these stops, we spent time in prayer for the people where we will be working and other topics based on what was discussed. After lunch, we went to a day care/orphanage for children from very low income families. We heard from the founder's wife about the founder's heart for kids and why he started the facility, saw some of their daily activities and performed a couple of puppet skits for them. From there we headed to San Cristovan, the 4th oldest town in Brazil and learned more history, ate some fresh baked bread and got to visit the home of Julio who hosts the church at his home each Sunday and also hosts a Saturday night Bible study. His mother also lives with him and has Bible studies with ladies from the town periodically. They are wonderful Christians who love God.

Tomorrow we start what we came for. We will begin our VBS program early in the morning with approximately 90 kids in the first session (if you are from Decatur, the church building here is roughly the size of our new family room so you can imagine herding 90 kids in groups through a reasonably small space) and the rest of our group will go on a singing campaign.

We are still tired from the travel and a couple of our young ladies still haven't seen their bags with their clothes but are holding up well. We spend each night meeting together and talking about the good and the bad we encountered during the day. The worst thing is the language barrier but the people are still friendly and loving.

I did try to post pictures but it's sslllloooooowwwwwwww and it's past my bedtime. We start EARLY in the morning. I hope to have good reports tomorrow. Keep us in your prayers.