Cactus Flower

Where we live, it hardly ever rains.   The dirt is mostly sand. Things are brown and most plants have some sort of thorn. But in the midst of the dry and the not so colorful,  there is much beauty. Everywhere we look,  we can see the hand of God in creation. Sometimes you have to look a little harder  than you might in other places. It might require some patience,  but it's there... Seems many give up on the Sertão [Brazil's semi-arid Northeast Region], but if you are willing to look and patient enough to stick it out - you can indeed find beauty! O Lord , how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all. The earth is full of Your possessions— O Lord my God, You are very great: You are clothed with honor and majesty,   Who cover Yourself with light as with a garment, Who stretch out the heavens like a curtain.   He lays the beams of His upper chambers in the waters, Who makes...

Well, Hello out there to all my little nephews  and some not so small nieces, too!   You know who you are!   Welcome, welcome to another edition  of Aunt Michele's Stories for Friday, May 6, 2016. When your Uncle Byron and Aunt Michele arrived to start working in Brazil in 1994, the first thing we had to do was start language training.  Now Uncle Byron had lived in Brazil as a teenager.  His parents came to Brazil to be missionaries when he was fifteen .  He had a real interest in learning Portuguese.  Probably so he could talk to pretty girls.  I'm just guessing there.  Anyway, his father paid for an older MK boy to tutor him.  So when we came to Brazil, Uncle Byron did his Portuguese lessons very quickly.  In fact, he took a test to see if he could skip the lessons all together.  By the time the teacher got around to checking his test he had already finished the work for half of the 30 required lessons.  H...

It seems that after our two dogs passed away in November that all the stray animals in the neighborhood knew!  First, Countess the cat showed up - while the dogs were still alive but on their last legs so to speak.  Then a few days after we'd actually buried the dogs, the little stray that we ended up calling Wishbone appeared. Stray dogs and cats are a big problem in our little city and all over Brazil and many third world countries.  In a place where there isn't even enough money to help people, it's hard to find funding to help animals.  Added to that problem is that many individuals give food to stray animals that roam the streets, but they don't invite them into their homes or take care of them.  People are very hesitant to consider the good of making sure that there are no strays.  They think it's a problem for the government and not their own.  I hope as you boys study more about government and history that you will see the need of the individua...

Your Aunt Michele first visited Brazil in 1985.  Uncle Byron and I had been dating for a year or so when he announced that he would be traveling to Brazil that summer to see his sister graduate from the school for missionary kids.  He asked if I would like to go along.  Somehow he convinced me that it would be a great trip.  I could meet his family and see Brazil.  He was also sizing me up to see if all my talk about wanting to be a missionary would hold up under the pressures of actually going to a mission field.  So off we went with strict orders from Grandma Beckner to NOT get married on a Brazilian beach somewhere. We drove to Miami to catch our plan to Fortaleza.  It saved us a lot of money, and money was in short supply.  We made the trip in a little yellow Honda Civic with no air conditioning.  On the way down we stopped in Pine Mountain Valley, Georgia where we spent the night with friends of the Atha family, Owen and Grace Riley. In ...