Well, I'm all done! I will be traveling to Sao Paulo tomorrow morning
and we will have some debriefing, shopping, and other fun stuff there, but
as for my ministry duties, I am pretty much all done. I can't believe how
fast my time went by here in Prudente... Seems like just yesterday I
walked into the church yard at 6am, after getting a ride home from the bus
station. There was so many things that I wanted to do this week, there was
no way that I could do them all. I had about five hours of sleep a night
and still there were not enough hours in the day.
Thank you for praying for the Bible studies, that made a huge difference!
My Wednesday night and Friday morning Bible studies were very good! We
finished up Philippians, so there was good closure. It's neat to see God's
timing, there were just enough lessons to cover the whole book comfortably,
not rushing and not having to slow things down either. There was good
discussion and the preparation made me really think about the passages as
well.
The final week of classes were fun as well. We covered the best topic
last, food. We did things like take a trip to the supermarket and talk
about names in English, how supermarkets are different in America, and other
topics, depending on the level. And on Thursday my classes got food! I had
ice cream for my beginners, baked cookies and cappuchino for my intermediates,
and made a full dinner for my night advanced students. Mmm, salad, curry,
and tonkatsu. Very nice... They enjoyed it! Cooking was a rather
interesting experience, they use the metric system here, so they were all
like, "how much is a cup?" This made recipes difficult for me as well.
On Friday, there was a goodbye potluck for me, it was so nice. I had
about 30 students and only a few couldn't come. I'm so glad that so many of
them were able to make it, I wanted to see them all again before I left.
We took many pictures, as I think you would all expect me to do. We stayed
up until almost 1am at the church just hanging out, it was great!
This morning, like every Saturday, we have our basketball clinic. We
usually just play games, go 5 on 5 full court. Just 10 minutes before I was
going to stop to get ready for lunch, I went up for a rebound in a crowd of
people, and yup, I sprained my ankle. I heard people saying "ovo", which
means egg. That's what it pretty much looked like. It hurt more and it was
more swollen than it has ever been before. My right ankle, the one that I
sprained badly just before graduation in June. You Davis people probably
remember me limping around... I have been icing it today and am keeping it
elevated, but please continue to pray for healing as it will be difficult to
be limping around when I need to be traveling. I thank God for His
provision, as there was a doctor playing with us and it just so happens that
he is traveling back to Sao Paulo tomorrow, so he can take me in his car,
where I can keep it elevated and won't have to deal with the bus and the
metro.
But at the same time, I will miss both services. I was supposed to make
a presentation and share "Faithful Father", as it is Father's day in Brazil
tomorrow. It made me so sad to think that I will miss both of the services
and will not get to say a proper good bye to many people. In a way, it was
good though. I think that I really needed to slow down. I was supposed to
have a VERY busy day today, but all my plans went out the window with the
injury. God's way of telling me to slow down. Or perhaps He just
wanted to show me how much love the people of Prudente have...
However, word got around fast that I will be leaving in the morning
instead of night and all day today I have had a steady stream of people
coming to see me and say goodbye. All of my friends, and students... It's
very touching and such a blessing to have such good friends here. One lady
stopped by today to say goodbye. She's old, speaks mostly Japanese (not
much Portuguese), and I have had little contact with her except sometimes I
have dinner at the house of her daughter's family. I said goodbye to her in
Japanese, then she knelt down and put her hands on my ankle. Strange, but I
decided to see what she would do (please don't hurt it!!!). Then she
started to pray. How special, do you realize that?
Later, some of the college people came by and sang Michael W. Smith's
"Friends" to me in Portuguese, another friend who was in Sao Paulo for the
weekend found out and called me, and many other people came, all the way up
until a little while ago! I've been so blessed! It's going to be hard to
leave this place... By the way, Sumiko, you won your bet with Shivy! Well,
I have to go now. The doctor is coming back to check up on me soon and take
me out for x-rays! Take care and I'll talk to you when I get back!