We´re halfway there...........

Well everybody, can you believe that the three of us have been in Brasil almost 3 months!?!? Time sure does fly doesn´t it? I hope you all are doing well and getting back in to the swing of things with school and summer coming to a close. Here´s what we´ve been up to:

1) We started last month with saying goodbye to a close friend of ours who helped us with our project. Emanuel, Manny as we like to call him, plays porfessional soccer for a team in Oman. He had to return to Oman to start training after vacation. We threw him a good-bye barbeque and sent him on his way. Please keep him and his family in your prayers.

2) As we were saying goodbye to him, we were saying hello to our students after a long, but well needed break. It was great getting back into a routine and the kids seemed to really have missed us. They seemed to notice that Lee Ann and I have gotten better at speaking Portuguese and they were very excited to converse with us!

3) Since getting back into the swing of things, we have started choosing one student each week who comes everyday, participates, and behaves. This student gets their picture and a poster of information about them on our wall. We, also, had our first store where they can use the fake money they´ve earned. They were so excited about it and had a lot of fun.
Just two weeks ago we started our outreach program and visited a family who is not doing so well financially. We took three of the older students to go with us and take notes about what the family needed. Then they went to a grocery store and price checked everything they needed to buy and then budgeted the $100 we gave them. After they bought the items, the food was delivered to the family. The students did very well and felt good about helping their community.
Two new activities we have started are photography and moral classes. Each Friday we choose four students to walk around town and learn about how digital cameras work and how to take a good photo. Lee Ann and I did this by ourselves last week and had a blast teaching the kids and hanging out with them. I think the students had a good time and learned a lot. We, also, got to practice our Portuguese! The moral classes are on Wednesdays. We decided to start this, because many of these children often aren´t taught right from wrong. This past week we created skits and a 3-step procedure about problem solving. Our students tend to turn to violence when they have an issue and we want to help them see that there are others ways to resolve issues. They really seemed to accept what we were telling them and we even saw a few of them apply what they learned!

4) A few other things we have done recently are: throw a birthday party for one of our girls who turned 15 (a very important age here); attended some craft classes where we learned to sew, face paint, and create decopage; and started to plan for college students from FATEB to spend one Saturday every month with our students (to help our kids have good role models in their lives and to create a better bond within the community).

5) I am now one year older than the last time you heard from me and I´m loving it! The girls set up a scavenger hunt around town for me on my birthday (Aug 28th). Each place I went, I had to find a clue that would take me to a present and the next clue. It was so much fun and probably the best birthday I´ve ever had! Thanks girls!

6) We continue to make the best of every crazy situation and create dares everywhere we go. Lee Ann has earned around $20 from doing dares involving talking to random boys to doing the splits in the middle of an ice cream store! What a hoot!

7) The most exciting thing that happened recently was travelling to Curitiba. Our main purpose of going there was to renew our visas, but apparently we were too early and they wouldn´t renew them. Oh well! Next Monday we will head to Ponta Grossa to try again! The rest of the weekend was spent sight seeing and participating in a Capoeira conference. It was very fun to meet other people who enjoy the sport as much as we do!

That wraps up this issue of the Project Discovery update. We continue to pray for you all and hope that you´re doing well! Take care and have a great week!

Megan

"Time passes in moments
moments which, rushing past
define the path of life, just as surely as they lead towards its end
how rarely do we stop to examine that path?
to see the reasons why all things happen.
to consider whether the path we take in life is our own making or
simply one into one which we drift with eyes closed.
But what if we could stop?
Pause to take stock of each precious moment before it passes.
Might we then see the endless forks in the road that shaped a life and
seeing those choices, choose another path?"