The Last Leg

Sadly our stay in Porto Alegre, with The Blumes, is coming to an end, bringing the start of our last stop in Itu, Brazil. The last couple of days have been a lot of fun, although a couple of plans have been spoiled by rainy weather (I personally enjoy the rain).

The mission team here usually has 3 different house churches which host a service every Sunday, and on the last Sunday of the month they combine the churches for what is called "Celebration". Thankfully, they moved it up a weekend for us so that we could attend. It was a great experience watching and participating with people praising the Lord in a different language. During the service all the readings were in Portuguese and we sang the same songs, first in Portuguese and then in English. (We all did our best to sing along in the other language).

Lastly, each group took turns praying over the other.


The group also took a trip to the Centro Mercado Publico. Some of us bought coffee, ice cream, and maté sets, which seem to be very popular among the Brazilian families.

Saturday night we attended a party at a lovely lady's house named Lenni. The party was celebrating Festa Junina and we had some delicious food and drink while playing games and getting to know the Brazilian families.

(Playing Uno)

Now onto the real important stuff: FOOD. Let's just say that after falling in love with Peruvian dishes, sauces and soft drinks, Brazil had some large shoes to fill. So far it has done it's job!! One interesting restaurant so far has been a churrascaria. There are some of these in the United States and I suggest that you find the closest one and make a trip TODAY. How it works is you pay for a buffet, and the waiters walk around offering probably 8 different kinds of meat that you can choose at any time. They had sausage, steak, chicken, chicken hearts, pork, more beef, garlic beef, and others. It was wonderful. Another great dining experience was at a pizzeria. Apparently Brazil has a lot of pizzerias, most having a similar style to the churrascaria: waiters constantly walk around and offer the table freshly baked pizza. The best part of the meal was the dessert pizza. Many enjoyed the chocolate and strawberry pizza, the ice cream pizza, the caramel pizza and many others. I will definitely miss this place.

The Few