Sunday Funday December 29
Prayers and Praises
As you can see, there is more than one video this week—with lots more coming to actually catch up to Christmas. These videos are a huge praise, as my computer had completely broken, needed almost two weeks to fix, and then I needed to find and learn a completely new video editing program. Thank God we are up and running again!
Praises as the week began really difficultly with a scorpion sting. From Sunday to Thursday morning, I was out of comission. All I wanted to do was lay in a dark room, alone where I could keep my hand (where stung) still. The venom was rediculously powerful, as I needed a bunch of extra sleep and didn’t feel like myself, besides the extreme phyiscal pain of constant tingling/numb feeling, and an electric shock feeling anytime my hand was moved too quickly or touched AT ALL. I was able to enjoy a slllllllllow Christmas, and woke up Thursday morning finally feeling like myself again, without the tingling!
Praises as we were able to take our first family only vacation to Joao Pessoa (less than two hours away). It was delightful, and will have a video coming soon.
Praises for a lovely time with Heloise and her 5th birthday (see video). Prayers as we are trying to explain how she and her family are leaving soon to Sofia (Helo is her best friend).
Praises for an amazing Christmas Dinner Church celebration (on the December in Cajueiro video). I am always amazed how 5 people can bring food to a pot-luck, and we end up feeding almost 40 people (basically every single time). It was a wonderful time, as well as the official hand-off from Pastor Flavio to Pastor Celio. Hardly a dry eye in the house.
Keep up with us, see a bit of our daily life, as we post the 12 days of Christmas, where each day (the 12 before Christmas) we focused on one family or family member dear to us. Since we aren’t present for presents, we got creative.
Interweb Reads:
MY shirt that says “I’m not okay”: by my friend Mary Nolen, whose brother died this year. I am so grateful for her honest, open, healthy grieving.
Still looking for that better country: “It's become so normal that sometimes I forget how exhausting it is to live as a foreigner. It's like playing a card game, every day, where you keep discovering new rules that everyone understands except you. Just when you think you've finally got it all figured out--surprise! You don't. And you find yourself feeling like a two-year-old or a hard-hearted wretch or just a plain idiot.” (Everyone needs a little grace in their lives)
Stupid expat days and how to love them: “Passports are the perfect pictoral, timeline reminder of that. Five years at a time we fill out the paperwork and catch ourselves saying how did that even happen? Where did that time go? Look how cute he was.” (A life overseas)
Read These Books: I really like this list (Everyone needs a little grace in their lives)
End your year intentionally with these 10 questions: “1. What makes this year unforgettable? 2. What did you enjoy doing this year? 3. What/who is the one thing/person you’re grateful for? 4. What’s your biggest win this year? 5. What did you read/watch/listen to that made the most impact this year? 6. What did you worry about most and how did it turn out? 7. What was your biggest regret and why? 8. What’s one thing that changed about yourself? 9. What surprised you the most this year? 10. If you could go back to last January 1, what suggestions would you give your past self?” (No Side Bar)