Cactus Flower

And whoever gives one of these little ones only a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple, assuredly, I say to you,  he shall by no means lose his reward.   Matthew 10:42 On any given day I have at least one person clapping at my gate.  Some are regulars.  Some are poor.  Some are homeless.  Some are jobless.  Some are street vendors.  Some are mentally challenged in some way.  Some ask for money, some for food, some for a cup of water.  Some I've learned their names.  Some are regulars.  Some I never see again. I decided long ago when my boys were little that I wanted to be an example of kindness and respect to all the people that pass by.  It's not always easy.  Sometimes it's inconvenient.  And yes, sometimes I have little patience.  But I try. Recently one of our all time regulars has been showing up every day.  Asking him his name was always complicated.  I had heard him...

Sometimes as missionaries we really just need a day off, but finding the time is hard.  Two weeks ago I was feeling that need for a big city grocery store.  Byron had a whole list of car parts and boat parts and project parts that he needed and could only get in the "big city."  I tagged along with a good book and my cell phone to wait it out while he hit the parts stores so I could have my hour at the mall in town.  It was worth the wait.   We just can't get some things in the little interior town where we live.  A trip to the big city can be refreshing.  It can also be disappointing as even there often what you want to out of stock, no longer available, etc., etc.  It's like a snipe hunt and you never know what you will find.  Thankfully that day, our finds were good and "happy." Taking off a day to just do nothing, now that's a rare thing.  It's also a hard thing.  Missionaries are paid to work, and we take that very serio...

We needed milk.  At least that's the excuse I stated to my missionary man.  We live in a small interior town.  Our milk comes in boxes like the one of the right with Betania written on it.  It's long life milk.  Fresh milk is not available.  A liter of box of milk here in town is almost BR$5.00, but in the big city!  It's much cheaper, you know! So off we went!  My hubby really knew that I just needed to go.  I needed to walk about the air-conditioned mall and eat at an "American" restaurant!  There are two malls within an hour of us. One with a big grocery store and lots of other neat shops, Burger Kings, McD's and even a Subway.  The other with some interesting stores, a BK and a Subway.   We had our lunch in one at Burger King, cruised the stores and made some purchases at the big grocery store.  Then we stopped downtown to buy a new Bible for me.  Oh, I've been needing one desperately as James and Peter ar...

Last week I wrote a little about knowing that I wanted to be a missionary when I was a little girl.  Sometimes it takes a long time before a dream actually can come true.  For me it took quite a few years.  When I was about ready to graduate from high school, I had to decide where to go for college.  I was interested in teaching but knew that I wanted to do this on the foreign mission field, so I chose to go to Piedmont Bible College and start a five year program to be a teacher. Somewhere in the middle of those five years between 1983 -1987 is when I started dating Uncle Byron and visited Brazil for the first time. Clube Náutico, Fortaleza, 1986 The trip was a confirmation of what I had dreamed about as a girl.  I was ready to come back to Brazil and start working at the missionary kids' academy, but that was still a ways down the road. In 1987 Uncle Byron and I got married one year before I was to finish my studies at college.  In the announcement for the...

When Uncle Byron, Greyson and I went down to the capital of our state, Salvador, to pick up William and Kerri from the airport, we got to eat at a Burger King.  We were really happy to get to go. Few restaurants here have free drink refills.  Burger King does!  And of course, there are Whoppers! Finding American food in a foreign country can be a difficult task for missionary families.  In our house we don't really eat all American food but we don't eat beans and rice everyday either.  We eat some of both and some things are crazy inventions based on what ingredients we can find. So, going to a real "American" restaurant from time to time is fun.  One time when we lived in Fortaleza, I heard about the grand opening of the very first McDonald's there.  There was an article on the evening news about the big event.  My understanding of what was said in Portuguese was that it was a "Grand Opening."  In the States, when someone talks about a "Gran...

tribunadoceara.uol.com.br         Years ago when your Uncle Byron and I first came to Brazil, we started working with a small church whose missionary pastor had gone to the States for furlough.  We didn't have a house of own or even a car.  We rented a small apartment near the MK school where we both taught some classes and rode the bus or walked wherever we needed to go.  That included going to church.   The church wasn't real far away and the bus we had to take went right near our apartment and let us off very close to the church.  Then it continued on its way around the city.  It was called the Grande Circular I.  That means Big Circular.  It was called that because it made a circle around the whole city.  Now Fortaleza is a very big city.  Currently it has a population close to three million people.  I always felt like I had only seen a little part of that big city - the American school, the beach and th...

Cutting a dog's hair! I've done some crazy things in my missionary days.  Some are probably better left untold.  And some I'm planning on telling you here on this silly little blog. Do you remember the post about the bad little dog named Nicky?  He was a little poodle mix that belonged to another missionary family.  We took care of him for about four months.  One time while I tried to trim his hair.  He usually went to a professional dog groomer and would come back looking like quite the Mr. Poodle.  The time that I trimmed his coat he looked like such a mess that one of the missionary ladies that saw him told me she was going to let the furloughing owners know what we had done to their dog.  Thankfully the owners were very easy going and didn't mind one bit. Well, poor old Blackie got a really bad skin problem one year.  He would scratch and scratch all day long and all night.  I tried shampoos for fleas and ticks, got him some medicine...

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...