10 Years

We received and e-mail from missionary friends of ours. They have been in Brazil one year and she was talking about how God has been with her and some of the struggles but also joys that they have experienced on the mission field. I started thinking and realized that this month (March) makes 10 years that we have been on the field. We left the states for Brazil in March of 1999. At that time we only had Philip and Hannah and they were little. Philip was only 2 1/2 and Hannah was a little over 1 year old. I was so full of big dreams, little did I realize how hard it would really be. Studying the language. I thought to myself, "I am fairly intelligent how hard can this be?" It was much harder than I thought and my pride got bruised more than once. I also remember when we first came to Brazil we did not even have internet access. Now I cannot imagine living without it. The small city where we started our first work had much more mud than pavement. Now it is the opposite. We had for a while a 1974 jeep and it could get us anywhere we wanted to go. I remember when our 3rd child Joshua was born in a small public hospital. What an experience. There are so many memories. I guess the thing that I have the most memories of are the people. The Brazilian people have become our family. We have seen God work through these people time and time again. 10 years seems like a long time but at the same time a short time. It has certainly never been dull!