Y Tu Itu ??? (And You Itu?)

Hello all!

We´ve made it to the last leg Itu and we are having a blast! It seems like yesterday that we were first setting out on this journey and it´s almost over. Our missionary contacts are Mark and Ali Kaiser and they are absolutely on fire for the work here in Itu. They work with the youth group (they host 30ish teens on Thurs nights), have a homeless ministry, are working on a summer bilingual youth camp, working on a medical mission, and are hosting another team from Highland CoC and some short term and longer term missionaries. One of the biggest projects they currently have is the renovation of three houses (two of which were generously donated) to be turned into halfway houses for people back from drug and alcohol rehab. We´ve been fortunate to see the beginning of a dream finally come to reality. We´ve helped with taking floors out and cutting concrete walls, and spraying walls to get rid of the mold problems. Along with the halfway houses, others have been helping making decorations for their summer camp that is coming up and helping to organize a massive church closet. In the evenings, we´ve had some interesting experiences... One night we ate at a restaurant called Let´s Eat, whose claim to fame is that they speak English there and have burgers. We were invited to come and were surprised by the turnout of Brazilians who came to eat and talk to us to practice their English and learn about the US. Another night, we were invited to go to a English class for some teens, where we were interviewed with some serious questions and others like, ``Do you have a boyfriend?´´, so you can bet that we have some stories about that. One amazing experience was Thursday when the church had an all day picnic to have a family day since it was holiday here. We enjoyed spending the day eating, playing, laughing , singing, and getting to know each other! You can really see the love of Christ here in this place and that God has some great plans for the people of Itu. All for now... sorry if there are grammar/punctuational mistakes- portuguese keyboard here and it´s almost bedtime.

Good night!
The Few

P.S. Funny story... We had told Ali Kaiser that we were bringing some jerseys to help with a cool new project called Chance Bags (sort of like TOMS shoes). Ali thought that we talking about just some ziplock bags of jerseys but soon found out that we actually hauled suitcases of about 125 jerseys. She sends her utmost thanks!