BE POSITIVE

Someone recently sent me an e-mail and told me to be positive. I have thought about that a good deal the last couple of days. I am in general not a positive person. That is Steve. He is the positive and I am the negative. I personally think that makes a great match. But I have realized these last couple of days my attitude is important. Now, I am not preaching positive thinking but I do not think if I have a pity party that it will help my situation. Believe me when I tell you that I have had some good pity parties and the best ones are when I have snacks to go with the party. I have realized over the last week and a half how good God has been to our family. Yes, Steve has been down but at least it is something that can be fixed. He never complains. (If it were me everyone in the house would know my pain!) We have had the poorest people of our church offer us money. Funny huh? They said they thought we might need it with the exams and medicine. We told them thank you but we were fine. That is a blessing just to know that someone cares about you. Our kids have been great. I have been more irritable lately, but they have been wonderful. We even cleaned out Steve's shop. And we have this past week moved more of our stuff into storage. Not only that we have had so many wonderful e-mails of people saying they are praying for us. Because I am now driving myself everywhere I need to go, I have stopped more frequently for ice cream. Now, those of you that really know me and really know my mom, know that the love of ice cream is inherited. My mom passed her love of it right on down to me. With all my running, I have not even gained weight from the added intake of ice cream.

Now about Steve, he is doing much much better. He is still is not driving, but as you gathered from the paragraph above I am ok with that as long as I get my frozen treat. He has been back to picking some so I know that he is better. He started his physical therapy and we are praying that soon he will be able to get his MRI done. He is still not able to lay flat on his back or on his side for long periods of time, so he is still sleeping half laying, half sitting. But the pain has been much less especially the last 2 days. Thanks so much for your prayers! Continue praying.

Santo Diame

Yesterday we had a slight mishap with our car (it broke down) and we were waiting for the tow truck. Up the road from where we broke down there was a Santo Diame church. This religion which is legal here in Brazil orginated in our state of Acre. What is consists of to my understanding is that they take the bark of certain trees and brew them into a tea. This tea is actually a drug which makes the person hallucinate. They have special services where there is a lot of singing and a lot of tea drinking and thus a lot of "visions". These services can last up to 12 hours long and even children are allowed to participate in the drinking. Sadly enough, this country looks at this religion as unique to their culture.

Why Me?

Steve asked this question, "Why me?" Steve was asked to speak to the graduating class of Portuguese students on Monday night. Actually they asked to use our church (a daughter of one of our members who was graduating) for a thanksgiving service, thanking the Lord for their graduation. They wanted Steve to speak at this graduation. He got a kick out of it because here he is an American speaking to students that graduated from the federal university in Portuguese. He was able to leave them all with a clear plan of salvation and so he was thankful for the opportunity. By the way, for those of you that do not know, Steve grew up in Brazil and his Portuguese is actually very good. Now mine, that is another story.