The cat is being especially nice today.

She must know that her time in cool aunt Jenna's house is about to come to a close. Rich and Rebecca and baby screamer Anna are back!

I overslept today and so missed the second month in a row of Baptist communion. I guess they never read that part in their Bibles where the disciples took communion together each time they met...maybe that's really code speak for the first Sunday of every month? I'm realizing that the majority of people just don't like a good discussion. I sang with Jessica at a church a couple bairros away, and we got into two little commentaries. The first was on whether musicians should be paid (or charge) for their services to a church. I maintain yes, if their ministry is also their job. The worker deserves his wages...and if a pastor can get paid, and a missionary, how dare we tell our artists that they get less? Musicians work hard (long practice hours, mood swings, waiting for inspiration to write the music, expensive equipment). If I am willing to pay a Christian pastor to preach to me, and a Christian carpenter to build my house, why should I have problems paying a Christian singer to share his or her art with me? Ah, flashbacks to being a militant music major...anyhow, we determined that the key was not to abuse the ministry God gave us.

The second commentary was on baptism. Because as far as any of us know, there's not one Protestant denomination in Brazil that just baptizes people. You have to go through a class, and then once or twice a year they have this big ceremony. It's just that, well, that's not Biblical!!! What about Philip and the Ethiopian? Or all the households who received Christ and were baptized? I offered to baptize the person in question in the Manguinhos river and was rejected....ouch. Every time I read that OT story about Naaman the Leper and his servant girl who told him to bathe in the Jordan River...well, I think of Manguinhos. And realize that it would sorely try my faith to be told that I needed to dip myself in that fetid water once, twice, seven times to be cured of ANYTHING. I have new pity for the man...if the Jordan was even an 1/116th that bad, it would be too much!

My honeymood period of seeing my boyfriend every couple of days is officially over. This Saturday I start classes and he heads off to São Paulo for who knows how long (wedding, vacation time). And school. He'll be studying from 6-11pm...and working during the day. We'll see each other Sundays and every other Saturday. Oh, what fun! Yesterday he took me to this bairro called Santa Teresa. I fell in love. First, because we rode a trolley car up there. Second, because of the goregous views. This really deserves a list...

1. Trolley car
2. Awesome views of the city and sea
3. Cobblestone streets
4. Antique stores
5. People that look like they could be my friends...more hippie-like, artistic, intellectual types
6. A little museum stocked full of quirky art, some Picassos, a library (lots of Anatole France-not that I've ever read him...)
7. A ruined mansion where Anatole France and Isadora Duncan once came for society parties
8. Dancing on said mansion's outdoor veranda, imagining that I was said Isadora Duncan
9. The smell of trees and dirt and growing things
10. Antique fair. Old jewelry. Old clothes. Old furniture. Now I know where I'll be the first Saturday of every month....

He took lots of pictures, but they're on his cell phone, so once we figure out how to download them to my computer, you can all check them out!