Happy New Year! Feliz Ano Novo!

The last week or so has been full of lots of opportunities to spend time with my Brazilian family and experience the amazing New Year celebrations here. This blog post is going to be mostly photos, as I don’t have that much to report on the work front due to the Brazilian Summer holidays and lots of things stopping for a while.  

Bunk Beds and Building

Diana in her new bedroom

It's been really exciting this last week to see building work nearly completed on one of the family's houses. Diana (13), Erica (12), Evilásio (10) and Gustavo (9) have finally got their own bunkbeds, a proper bathroom and soon a wall to provide more security at the front of the house. This work has been organised by Adrian and Judith (the couple I work with) with money raised when they were in the UK over the summer. Before all 4 children were sleeping in one bed. It is so lovely to see them settled into their own space now and the girls are particularly loving their pink walls and matching pink fan! We had a nice girly afternoon in there one day this week, practising reading, reading about Ruth in the Bible and doing some nail painting.

 This week has also brought two mornings of moving lots of bricks, sand, concrete and stones through the community (the builders merchant couldn't deliver to the family's house due to the road being fixed). This was hot and tiring work but we finished delivering it all yesterday, with lots of help from the children, and I now feel like I've started 2014 with some good work outs!

New Year

So New Year's Eve is a pretty big event here in Brazil, as I discovered this week! We celebrated with a party at the bottom of the block of flats where I live (7 of my Brazilian Mum's siblings and their families also live in the block so it was mostly relatives!) This went on right through until sunrise (with a couple of trips upstairs to put the puppies to feed!)

A photo before heading downstairs - this month Mateus (the little boy) and his Mum (the family's aunt)
are staying with us, which is good fun.

 A family pic

My Brazilian parents watching fireworks on the beach at midnight. It was
incredible as up and down the coast everywhere you looked fireworks were going off !

With some of the extended family

Watching sunrise on the beach

In other news the puppies are now HUGE (they can only feed in 3s now),...

they still move like sloths...

Their Mum has turned gangster...

..., I got my ears pierced...

...my Brazilian brother has headed off to Mexico to spend the next year, the women's exercise class went well yesterday, things are going well at church (although it's been a bit hectic as the children's age organised groups are not on in the holidays so we often end up trying to run activities with a big group from 3 years old up to 16) and I awkwardly informed my Brazilian parents this week that one of my friends had killed her boyfriend instead of broken up with him... slightly lost in translation! However on the whole, praise God, the language side of things is feeling a lot easier and unless it's jokes or lots of slang it's no longer an effort to understand!

It's 5am on New Year's day and the first sunrise of 2014 is beginning. I'm looking out at the sea and the beauty of this world that God has made. I have no idea really what this year will bring, but no doubt there will be happy moments and sad moments, achievements and challenges, days when it all feels right and days when nothing seems to make sense. However as I look out at the sun rising I'm filled with the peace of knowing that whatever 2014 brings, there are some things that will always be true.

"Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail." Lamentations 3:22

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." 1 Peter 1:3

Happy New Year! I pray that it is a year when we come to know this 'living hope' more and more, whatever challenges, successes or surprises 2014 brings.