He is With Us

The adventures have begun. Jess and I arrived a little over a week ago and have been slowly re-immersing ourselves into Brasilianness. I say slowly because we've actually been speaking more English than when we were in Africa, since we'd already established English relationships with so many of the people we've been with. Plus, Portuguese felt rather awkard at first. If you can imagine stuffing cotton balls into your mouth and speaking, that's kind of what it was like. Yeah, you can get the words out and yeah, people understand you. But it feels funny. And you sound funny too.

It's been a week of a little bit of everything - from feelings of sheer bliss and feeling alive and being able to breathe once more, to moments of doubt where whoever was currently strong told the other to stop asking what we're doing here. The true truth, though, is that Jess and I can both say that although we don't really have any clear idea about what we are doing here specifically, that there is a deep peace within each of our beings that overrides all the feelings of uncertainty that accompany the unknown.

Although we lost sight of the goal at various points this week (and we haven't yet left the comfort of being with dear friends!), the Lord has already shown in undeniable ways that He is with us and that the only thing that matters is to follow Him. It means lots of letting go. When I packed my suitcase to come, I already felt relieved because I was forced into letting go of a large part of my life. The size of suitcase I wanted to travel with meant that most of what I hold onto as "me" had to be left behind. No room for the past. No room for the future. Only enough space for the present.

But this week I realized that there's more difficult letting go of to do - letting go of fears, letting go of the closeness of relationships, and letting go of the 'need' to have a plan and a clear goal to head towards. Not that these aren't appropriate or legitimate, but because if I give them too much weight, they hold me back from following the Lord wherever He will go. I'm beginning to learn to surrender the intangible things to the Lord. It's hard, because they're things in my heart and I can't just decide to get rid of them. I can see, though, that if something is truly necessary or valuable, it's better left in the Lord's hands than in mine. Things I hold on to somehow manage to crowd my heart, but things I give to Him make me free.

After the events of the past week I've come to the conclusion that there aren't right decisions and wrong decisions. Instead, I think there's following the Lord and then everything else. I'm excited to follow Jesus. It's such a strange feeling to not know where you are going, but to know that everything is just the way it should be . . . I'd like to capture this feeling in a bottle.

For the next two weeks or so we are going to be travelling to visit friends in 3 different cities and we'll be checking out some schools we've already contacted. A friend of ours has been kind enough to lend us his cell phone, so if you'd like to call us (no pressure but it would be VERY nice :) send me an email and I'll send you the number. We'll only have the phone for the next week and a half or so because we'll be giving it back once we get to his city. So if you're planning to call, don't wait forever. Of course, emails are always accepted with pleasure :)

Pray for us!