New Portuguese Teacher

Today we had a good Portuguese class with a new teacher. She is a very typical Bahian, very small, of African descent, and with a strong accent. This is something that we really need as the accent here is well known around Brazil as unique, which translate as hard to understand. I am very thankful for this teacher as she has a maturity and passion for teaching foreigners to be able to speak her language. After class the girls had their accountability time and Russ and I went back on the trail to try to get my apartment contract signatures legalized. We took off on a bus to the historical centre to the place I was told I would be able to get this done finally. We finally found the building and there was only 5 people ahead of me. My initial reaction was that we must have been the wrong address. I was presently surprised that I was able to get the contracts legalized, Praise God. This now means that we can get a bank account in this country. That also means we will be able to pay our bills online and therefore not have to stand in lines for hours. This has really been a problem for missionaries to South America who have spent hours a month standing in lines to pay bills, so if it is possible to avoid this then surely our time will be used for more productive kingdom activities. While I was downtown Alicia was busy at home after their accountability time as she phoned to have our 20 litre bottles of drinking water refilled. It was great to see how excited she was to accomplish the task of ordering water over the phone in Portuguese, and for the water to arrive within the hour. That is a great sign of progress of aculturation. The first thing we do is fill up 5 2 liter bottles and putting them in the fridge so that we can have cold water. What a necessity. She had also put up our clothes drying racks that hang from the ceiling. She had also cooked a great meal, curry chicken on rice. Thank God for servant wives. I also went with Keith to try to help him get signed up for internet. Hopefully that will work out. Thank-you God for a full day and for a much deserved day off tomorrow. God help me to find a good balance of hard work on the field without getting so tired that we feel burnt out.