Sum of the Last Two Days

Yesterday Kevin and I went out for our Valentine's Day lunch (early, 'cause we work on Sundays) at one of the big hotels in town, where they serve authentic Indian food (there are many Indians in town) and then enjoyed a bit of roadside shopping at the used clothing stalls. We bought a few things for Benjamin and a new purse for me. Mine was stolen in November and I never did replace it. Toby’s school had a little party, and I brought cupcakes for the whole student body and teachers (numbering 30), while Benjamin played at a nearby friend’s house. I did quite a bit of shopping this week, stocking up the larder with cans of black beans, a big can of powdered milk, spaghetti, and fresh produce in the fridge (lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots and green peppers). Kevin has been meeting with the monitors, overseeing classes, preparing a sermon and he attended the funeral of our landlord’s father.

This morning we received word that the son of one of our monitors, Alberto Castelo, died. Earlier this week, I took his wife and this child around to several pharmacies in town to buy the medication that they would never be able to afford: Malaria treatment, antibiotics, and Tylenol. Total cost: about $8. We hoped that this treatment would send him on the road to recovery, but this latest sickness was too much for him. He had been sick off and on since birth, and didn’t walk even though he was almost 3 years old. He was as small as a 14 month old. It is another tragedy for Castelo, who lost a baby just last year in April. The funeral will likely be on Monday.

Today is also the funeral for Kevin’s grandfather. Lorance was his last living grandparent, and the sixth of our grandparents who has died while we were overseas. It is painful for us to miss yet another funeral for a loved one, and we are especially sad that we won’t be able to see Lorance again on this earth. He was 95 and a really good guy. We are thankful, however, that he knew the Lord and we will see him again in heaven.

This morning I went to a ladies meeting at my church. We met at the pastor’s house (20 minutes fast walk from my house), then walked another 20 minutes to the church, then afterwards walked 15 minutes to visit a lady with a baby, then another 20 minutes back to my house. With temps in the high 90s, I returned feeling rather limp! While visiting the lady with the baby, I noticed that the one-month old was wearing a charm around his wrist, to protect him from evil spirits. Almost all babies wear these, and they are put on by witch doctors. I’ll have to speak to the pastor’s wife, who didn’t seem bothered by it. She also announced that the baby was now a Christian, since we had prayed for him, which is another thing we’ll have to discuss. Just another example of the “heresies” that are present in all the churches here and are due to the lack of Bible teaching. At the meeting, they asked me to teach them an American song and dance (we dance while we sing here) and since I don’t have any praise dance songs, I taught them to do the cha-cha-cha while we sang “God is so Good” in Portuguese, Makua, and English! They enjoyed it a lot and it promises to be a fun time tomorrow when we do the cha-cha-cha in church. We also practiced a drama of the parable of the Prodigal Son for performance in church tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Kevin and the boys went to a yard sale of retiring missionaries. These kind of sales are a big draw for missionaries, because you can buy items that you’d never get in stores here. The big purchase of the morning was a used American-made standing fan for $20, and we were glad to have it! Most of the electronics you buy here are poor quality, and American-made promises to last for some time. They also bought some construction paper, watercolor paints, and a hot glue gun.

This afternoon, Toby’s Portuguese teacher will come at 3 pm to teach Toby for an hour, and he’ll teach me from 4 to 5. He is a very pleasant young man who is well-spoken, though his spelling is awful. I need to find out what the difference is for two words, which are similar to “put” and “place”, and when I should use which one. I also want to find out all of the words for “attend” and “go to”, as there are different verbs for different situations. You may attend a church service, but have another word when you go to a meeting, and another word when you are at a public event. Portuguese is a very specific language, verb-wise. Meanwhile, Kevin is off to oversee more classes, teach a class, and then will drive 30 minutes outside of town to find out when the funeral for Castelo’s child will be. No one out there has a phone. - C