Long Time No See

What a ride it has been the last two weeks! Hectic is kind of an understatement. If I wrote about everything, I think many of the things would be boring to you, so I’ll just hit a couple of events. One of our high points this past week was receiving our friends from Canada, Tereza and Patricia. Patricia was very much a little girl when we left Canada three years ago, but now she is a beautiful young woman. They were so much fun to have here in our home. It was like having family here. They left yesterday to travel to Maranhão, to visit Tereza’s family, and we already miss them here. Some people can just walk right back into your life and it’s like you’ve never been separated. That, to me, is the real test of friendship!

In addition to their presence with us, this week is the state Baptist Convention here in the city of Rio. Unfortunately the convention site is REALLY far away. In good traffic conditions, about an hour. In bad, about three hours. So João has been rushing back and forth to those meetings. On Wednesday, he was the preacher and the men’s choir from our church sang (you can see some on them in the background of the photo of João). João did me very proud with his message. I think what he had to say was very significant and I hope they take to heart his concerns about ethics and integrity. They voted to publish his message and several references were made to the message during the business session the next day.

On a very light note, last week I had a beauty consultation with a Mary Kay rep. (Who just “happens” to be our youth minister’s wife.) Do you remember when Mary Kay makeup was all the rage? I loved it back in the 80’s, but when I came to Brazil, I stopped using it, since it wasn’t available here. Now it is, albeit everything is very different. I was impressed with quality of the material and its affordability. Although I had invited several friends from church, only one was able to make it. She thought she looked a little too made up, but I thought she looked polished. At any rate we laughed and giggled and had a lot of fun doing our make-overs. I remembered how much I need “girl” fun. Since Marilene moved two years ago, I just haven’t invested in that. I suffer from a chronic fear of rejection, so I tend not to call people or invite them to things, as much as I enjoy them. I always wait for people to call me, but because I put up such a good front, folks assume I wouldn’t be interested in being with them. Since I don’t call, they don’t call and I end up in my own lonely little vicious cycle. We’ll save the analysis for another day.

I have to leave here in a bit and pick up all my test results at the lab. Doing the exams was another part of my week. Now I just have to schedule a doctor’s appt to talk over the results, which from the indications at the time of the exams, are all okay. As Momma always says: “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken”.