everything that I ever wanted...

As my time in Ijui comes to a close, I have been reflecting a lot about my time here and how much God has blessed it. I was flipping through my blog and I came across my entry from May 9th, the one-month anniversary of my arrival here. I was reminded of how disheartened I at that time, that I hadn´t done what I thought God sent me here to do, but now, seeing what I´ve been able to do here, in Ijui, I feel like I´ve done everything that I thought I would, only on God´s timing, not mine. Some of the things that I described being frustrated with was not finding a church, not finding a tutor, and not teaching english, which I was expecting to do with my tia Vânia´s class. But I´m happy to say that I´ve now done all of these things, just in ways differently than I expected.

I have been blessed to be accepted whole-heartedly into Tia´s church. I´ve found a place there that they all say will feel empty this sunday when I´m not filling it. I´ve been able to sing in front of the church a number of times: a duet with Eduardo, a few trio´s with Tia and our friend Raquel, and a group of maybe 6 people a few weeks ago. I´ve also found a place in the youth group, even spoke (poorly) at the service they had last saturday. I´ve swapped worship music with one of the guys in the band, and really feel like I´ve gained a community that I was craving for the first month and a half of my time here, and i´m sad to have to leave it.

Although I wouldn´t consider him "my tutor", Eduardo has been pivotal in my picking up on little nuances in Portuguese that I wouldn´t have necessarily learned without him. We had a few lessons that solidified things that I understood and cleared out doubts, and I can say for sure that I wouldn´t have learned the word "poupança" without his help, nor would have I learned how increadibly hard portuguese is in the first place. It was good being reassured by him that I do know how to speak portuguese, that my accent isn´t really that bad and also being corrected by him a little have all helped a lot. Its been nice having a friend who "speaks my language" to, if nothing less, give my brain a break. But Eduardo and his family have been a lot of the reason that I love ijui so much. Knowing that I always had a place to be, that I didn´t have to have a reason to drop by and was always welcome, helped me find my place, and taught me a thing or two about hospitality. I will always be in debt to them, and I hope someday I can return the favor and take them around Seattle for a few weeks of vacation.

Lastly, i´m going to consider my feeble attempt to help Eduardo in his classes as "teaching portuguese". Although I really don´t feel like I did much of anything, I know that Eduardo liked my presence to explain things that his student´s didn´t understand or give the correct pronouciation of difficult words. I´ll never forget how difficult it is for his thursday night class to say "unimaginative" nor the glimpse of how hard it is to learn english, when it all appears so easy for me. I´m thankful for my time of being available to help him, it gave me more of a sense of purpose here in Ijui and also more of a brain break, which I always seem to need!

So on thursday I leave to go to Porto Alegre, my time in Ijui will be officially over, this place that has felt so much like home will be a place that I long to return to. But I´m thankful that it is this way: that I feel so strongly connected to this place, because it only means that i´ll be back... hopefully multiple times for longer times. God willing, this place will remain a special place in my heart that I´ll get to go back to, and have this feeling grow.

Até mais,

Ana