An Update of Sorts

Hello to everyone still out there in blogger land... assuming there is anyone haha even if not, writing's always been therapeutic to me ;)

I'm really sorry that I haven't updated or written since I've been home. Time flies like no other. In short, here's where I am :

I'm currently living in a 2 bedroom apartment by myself in Arlington, TX but my lease is up at the end of this month and I have decided to move in with my father. This will be interesting for any number of reasons -

1) My dad and stepmom recently got divorced so the house will be fuller now (not just with furniture and people, but with love and laughter as well)

2) I haven't lived with my dad since the divorce with my mom. (We're talking like almost 15 years here.)

3) My sister and her sweet adorable little girl are supposed to move in as well sometime in the next couple of months.

I know that people talk and especially friends and peers think that 25 (soon to be 26) is too old to be living with a parent. But I've already done the whole living on my own as well as living with roommates. I've spent the majority of my life trying to help take care of my family while keeping a large and unhealthy distance from them. I <3>

I started school at University of Texas in Arlington (UTA for short) this past fall and I love it! I made 3 A's and 1 B - was going for that 4.0 but I guess I'll have to settle for a 3.99999999999. hahaha (I realized a little too late that my GPA became void once I transferred in so I didn't work as hard as I would have to maintain that last A.) Lesson learned. I actually started classes today - my english was interesting - we got to have class outside due to the classroom being locked with no key in sight. The other class is a psychology course titled "Drugs and Behavior" which I was very keen on taking due to my history of trying to handle friends and family with drug problems. Little did I know that the class was 150 full with many of the kids treating it like a joke. I was not thrilled at all when some incompetent boy commenting that if we could just TEACH people how to "properly use" drugs (we're talking about ALL illegal substances, not just marijuana) then we could legalize them. .... yeah.... If the entire semester stays like this, I may just maim someone... I don't see how people can honestly believe things like that...

Anyway, I'm looking forward to this new year. The only resolution I made was : to not miss an opportunity for greatness, due to fear, doubt or what people may say.

Today, I bought all my books, went to classes, worked out for an hour and took some of my packed things to my dad's. Now I'm at my brother's, spending much needed time with my sister-in-law. (He's at the gym right now - I'll see him after.) :) Also found out today that "spring" break is apparently in February... in between Valentine's Day and my birthday... which is also the time when my brother, his wife and some of our other friends are going skiing in Colorado. So now I can join them! I'm pretty excited - I'll get to visit Stephen, Justine and Casey again, as well as (hopefully - money allowing) being able to go skiing for the 1st time. :)

Anyway gotta go now but I will try to keep things updated more often.

One More Day!... One more time... one more sunset baby & i'd be satisfied...

Yuppers I'm coming home!!! :-D I will be home friday and I am excited and ready! Time has flown by WAAAAY faster than I could ever have imagined and here I am - one more day & then a day spent in airports... I'm super sad to leave everyone... and Brasil... a country I never thought that I would like haha But now it feels like another home... hmm... God has been amazing and is STILL amazing and answers prayers all the time, big and small... I love the things He's been teaching me and even more so, when he pulls me through the brokenness... I can't wait to come home and see everyone! Thank you to everyone who has followed my (not very often... sorry!!) blogs through this journey and for all of your prayers and support! Believe me, they are truly appreciated!

Less than 3 weeks... yowsers!

Wow I'm still amazed by the time...
To add to the Dourados blog from last week...
Besides working with the innercity kids, I got to go to Aldeia which is the Indian reservation there and spend time with a family - reallllly cool... except a LOT of walking... unfortunately I didn't know how MUCH walking, therefore nikki was in flipflops... NO BUENO!! ;) hahaha but it was good...
And on saturday mornings, the church opens up for kids in the city to come take free classes (like to learn english or dance or learning how to talk in front of people haha many shy kids there...) or to play games (volleyball and soccer) so Pâmela told me that I could help with her english class which of course I was like "sure!!"... What I didn't know was that, after she brought me to the front of the class and introduced me as her American friend, she handed me a piece of chalk and said "Now this is YOUR class!" and sat down... hahaha wow ya should've seen the look on my face! :) But it was good - we had a good time & i eventually got the kids to open up and give some feedback... I also went to another friend's english class (where SHE was learning english) and it was kinda funny b/c they were learning "british english" and the tapes they have to listen to are really hard to distinguish what they're saying! The teacher even "made" me (haha) take the test with the rest of class and it was kinda hard! hahaha but only b/c the British accent was so strong and the recording was really rough :/ haha And I'm going back to Dourados soon... maybe sooner than I previously thought, but that all depends on a few factors... but when I do, my friend Pâmela (who actually teaches english as her job at a school there) said that all of her students want to meet me so I will be "helping" haha (i hope ONLY helping) with her class when I go back... Anyway things are going well... and winding down haha... I was eating pizza with a friend last night and we were talking about me leaving and not being around every day anymore and it was really sad and we both almost started crying! :/ I really am sad to leave this place... much more every day... but I'm also ready to come home... Yesterday I was at Alisson's college and I had the most interesting conversation with a gay guy from Lebanon that is Muslim... random i know... but we were talking about Islam vs Christianity and talking about world views and how people really think about America there and the differences between a lot of different things and it was very eye opening to see how people (outside of the US) look at the world and the US... not just him but I've talked to many people here... and i'm really glad to have a more rounded view of the world than my previous bubble... it's very interesting to say the least... Anyway I've got to go but I will leave you with this :
"Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life."
Proverbs 4:23
love it... and God spoke to me thru it... and it was goooood :)

Nostalgia has overtaken me...

Wow I really thought that I would be better at keeping a blog... hmmm guess I was wrong haha :) sorry....

I have been in Dourados (another city about 4 hrs away from Campo Grande) since last friday and I'm not sure exactly when I will be leaving from here hahaha Like everything else in Brasil, it is all up in the air...

On Sunday, I helped with a program for innercity kids here called "Projeto 'Adamá" - this church travels to different neighborhoods here and work with the kids on sunday afternoons. They dance, sing, teach them about the Bible, give them treats, etc. It's really cool and was a joy to help with. I've also been exploring a lot of the city and everyone is so great and friendly here. I have people arguing about where they want me to stay at haha so it's real cool...

The last few nights, I've been staying at my friend Pâmela's house and she lives in a nice apartment on the top floor with several balconys with exquisite views of the city... and this is where I have been spending my time lately haha. It's so beautiful, especially at night. I find myself alone sometimes, just sipping water from my coffee cup (haha) and staring out in to the night sky, at the city line and all the stars in the sky... And I feel torn... part of me feels like I never want to leave here and that I will never be able to recapture everything I've seen and experienced here and I'll miss everything too much... and then another part longs for home and my friends and family... haha but i guess that's normal right? ;)

5 weeks... well technically am i at 4 weeks now? i guess so haha... crazy how fast time flies when you're not looking... but yay, i'm glad to see everyone soon - i miss you all... i am especially excited about seeing my little sister and her swollen belly!!!!!!!!!!! :) i want to meet willow madelyn NOW! haha it's hard to see pictures from the internet but not be able to really watch and help her through this, my first niece... i am TERRIBLY EXCITED!!! :)

Three Sleepless Nights... This Isn't How It's Supposed To Be...

Just for the record... if anyone feels like praying for me...
I can't sleep!! haha I've been having trouble for more than a week now sleeping and it's slowly wearing me down haha
Anyway, back to the update...
A couple of Sundays ago, I spent the day with two of my guy friends on their side of town and wow! I was promptly ushered in to life without a car, cellphone or much money. Had I known how much walking we were to do that day, I would have worn my tennis shoes instead of sandals haha When we wanted to visit someone, we just walked to their house. We also walked to this big open market in one of the streets which was pretty neat. The openness and kindness of the people here is sometimes staggering. One of the guys live in a small house with his mom. It is very poor and doesn't even really have doors (minus the front door). But when we came over, his mom offered everything that she had, whatever we might want, if she had it, she offered it. Generosity here takes on a new meaning and I pray continually for God to bless all these wonderful people who have shown me such favor. I also went shopping recently and didn't think that I had much money for clothes but the shop we went to belonged to a friend of one of the pastors here and the owner always supports all kinds of ministeries and missionaries so she gave me a GREAT deal (I got like 8 items for cheap). And all she wanted me to do was to keep her in my prayers, for blessings over her life and her shop. So I prayed with her there in the store and I wrote her name in my journal to remember. Many blessings here...
I also got to go to a samba concert. They have a program right now where pretty big bands come through and play for free in one of the parks here. And the park is so beautiful! It's very big and they set the stage up against the lake with the city skyline in the backdrop and we sat on a hill facing everything at sunset... WAAAAY cool :) and the music was great too!
This past weekend, for Easter, we went to a retreat in the mountains... Did I expect the nights to be frigid considering every day (and night) here has always been fairly hot?? NO haha I did not... Nights were spent shivering in my tent under 3 bare sheets haha but it was a lot of fun. I shared a tent with a couple of younger girls and we spent the weekend playing games with the rest of the youth. We had several services and in one of them, I gave my testimony (in very broken portuguese haha - no english speaking people there this time...) and sang "Nothing But The Blood". I've been asked to sing many times and I have but always in english. Right now I'm trying to learn the words to some of the songs I know fairly well in portuguese. :) Anyway many little things go on but too numerous to mention... or maybe to silly haha but they are important to me. God does answer prayers. I believe it and I've seen it many times. I pray continually every day that He would open and shut doors in my life and that He would guide my hands and my ways. I also try to pray before I make any decision, even the small ones :) And it's been such a blessing doing this, I can't even tell you...

Life As I Know It

Let me just say... that it is always a joyous sight to see adults and especially older people (in their 70s no less) dancing and praising God with no inhibitions. Last night, we had a prayer vigil, i guess would be the term... It started at 10pm and went until like 1:20am, i think? I wasn't paying attention to the clock so much when I crashed haha... But yes, the first half was just worship and I always like it when you can have so many people gather in a house with no special things, just a couple of guitars (and this really cool weird sortof smaller accordian thing...) and many people that sing off key haha... And you could really see the joy on everyone's faces... Not saying that they are all perfect b/c God knows the many flaws everyone has haha... But just at this moment, they were really worshiping God and you could tell... It wasn't about anything other than love and fellowship and that to me is so... pure... And I love to see it :) And like I said, to dance with joy before the Lord... it always brings a smile to my face - it reminds me of when David was chatised by his wife for dancing, scantily clad albeit haha, in front of a large crowd of people even though he was the king... but he said it wasn't for their entertainment that he danced... he danced for the Lord :) I love that. Maybe their whole lives haven't been this way... or through everything they do, continue to be this way... but for this moment, in this place, they really took time out of their sleep schedule (the bispas are normally in bed by 10pm haha) and their lives with their families... and they worshiped the Lord their God and prayed for His will to be done. Things like this really bless my soul in a way that I can't tell you. Sometimes I guess I let myself think that the world is too bitter and things can't change. People can't change. That people don't know how to love anymore... and then God steps in :) and shows me His love. His love for His children and our love for Him. It's so simple and yet staggering. It is beauty - His love, His grace.

Gigi....

Gigi is the little girl who lives next door. And for some unfathomable reason, she adores me haha. Let me just say first that she can be the MOST ANNOYING thing in the world... for example, one morning after service when I desperately needed a nap... there was Gigi... in my room... jumping on my bed and on me, telling me to wake up... haha and then when she's here and she wants to do something, she wants to do it NOW, not wait for me to finish whatever random thing that I was previously working on... but she can also melt my heart like no other haha... when I was in Dourados last week and didn't come home until later sunday night, apparentally Gigi came over the next morning at 7am, waiting for me... luckily they didn't wake me up haha so I got some rest that I was looking forward to... Then I didn't end up seeing her until last night, when her and her father were coming home on his motorbike and a ball came careening across the way & he swerved and the bike and company fell over. Luckily, they weren't too badly injured, but had a lot of scrapes and bruises. I didn't find this out til later when her dad came over to get me and elza because Gigi wanted me to pray for her. So we all went over there & everybody was like "Gi! Nikki's here!" (b/c I still hadn't seen her again since I left for Dourados) and she came walking up to me slowly, pouting, with big scrapes on her forehead and body and just wrapped her arms around me in a big hug... I wasn't sure if I wanted to cry or laugh, it was just so sweet... So we prayed for her & I stayed there for awhile watching A Bugs Life in portuguese with her and her brother... And needless to say, when I got up this morning, there was Gigi, waiting downstairs for me to play with her... Life is certainly interesting here in Brasil... :)