Friends!

Don’t you love being with friends? Old friends or new friends, it’s just great! Yesterday, October 12, was children’s day here in Brazil, in addition to being a catholic holiday, so we had the day off. João and I took advantage of that to drive over the mountain to the Barra and take Hilda Cowsert out for lunch. She and her husband were my supervisors (read: mentors) when I first got to Brazil. They did so much for me and made a huge difference in my life and ministry. Her daughter is a missionary here in Brazil and so she was in town visiting her daughter, since she is now retired and living in Florida. She came to our church Sunday night and I was so excited to see her. It was even better to be able to go out to lunch and have a good time of talking and catching up. She is still, at 81, so active in ministry! What a blessing in my own life and the lives of so many others. It was a great treat to be with her.

I am still enjoying the memories of last week and the conference. I am only sad because somehow I lost or misplaced all my notes and my ‘wonderful’ ideas for my blog. I am sure they would have been insightful entries, but alas I simply cannot remember them. I remember vaguely, but I confess that my ideas are of a very ephemeral nature, so that if I don’t jot them down, the essence flies out of my head like the fur falls off of Mia. Fortunately we ordered a CD of the messages and when I listen to them again, perhaps my ideas will be restored to me.

At any rate, what I really wanted to focus on here was the joy of being with friends at the conference. At the photo on the right (above) you can see Marilene, Gabi (my art teacher), and Bia (Mari’s daughter) at a park in Águas de Lindoia. I stayed right next door to Marilene at the hotel, so we had a nice chance to talk at the meals, visit the pool together and do some shopping.  To the left is photo of João and me with Roberta and Joel. Roberta studied art with me last year. Her husband is a Presbyterian pastor and although we are actually neighbors we never see one another. Surprisingly on the trip (eight hours) down to the conference we ran into each other at lunch and also at a gas station along the way. We joked that it was predestined for us to be together, since it turned out we were also in the same hotel. We ended up spending a lot of time together and getting to know one another. They are good friends’ of Marilene and Franklin and that made for some extra special community time. As you can see on the photo on the right (taken by Bia, who always seemed to have the best ideas for photo ops), we joked and laughed a lot around the table. That was good for us. Sometimes we get into a rut, and there is NO time to be with people outside our own church, so this was a great blessing. One of my constant struggles here in Rio is to make friends and to make time to be with friends. It’s easy to get so wrapped up in everything there is to do and forget about “be-friending”. I hope last week serves as a reminder to me of how important that is. Friends don’t just happen. You have “work” at being a friend. But it is fun work.