Huh.

I'll try to update a little better, since I have some stolen time before my second church service...

Yesterday, Tiago and I celebrated our three-month anniversary with an amazing buffet of fare from Minas Gerais (his home state) and a trip to the Modern Art Museum. The food was fabulous and gave me a great desire to learn how too make angu and puré de abobora e carne seca...but not desserts. Doce (or dulce, for you Spanish speakers) de leite is NOT dessert unless it is in something. As a stand alone, it is most decidedly disgusting! Most of the “art” was rather bizzare, gory and/or quasi-pornographic (go figure, it’s “modern!”) but there was a wonderful photography exhibition with a couple of Sebastian Salgados that made my day, if not my week. It was the first time I did a double take at a piece of art and thought, “That’s in a book I own...that’s something I’ve admired...and now I’m looking it in the face.” There were just two: one of a child’s funeral in Mexico or Guatemala, and another of a wedding ceremony, the bride tall and gaunt and flanked on either side by Mafia-esque men, who are short and frowning in very un-partygoer ways.

Today we attended the Anglican church. It’s been three years since I visited there; the first time was while on my Servant Team. We’d been starved to hear English, visited and were invited back for lunch by the gloriously English and marvelously crazy, parsonage dwellers. I’d completely forgotten about the church’s existence after that, as it was far away, until yesterday when we passed it on the way home from the art museum. We arrived early this morning because my memory is poor and I thought the sign said 10 am, not 10:30. So we sat under the guardhouse and watched the rain come down...Tiago was a little confused at first, because the Episcopal/Anglican church is liturgical and very similar in some ways to the Catholic church. But we both loved it. Maybe more than I’ll ever be able to put into words. I wasn't looking for an English speaking church, and I certainly wasn’t looking for a group of ex-patriates. But there was this African woman with a tiny hat and wonderfully inviting eyes that I was dying to talk to, and a mother who didn’t feel any shame in slipping her shoes off during the liturgy, and a Reverend who spoke with such a wonderful British accent...we’ll be going back. I need liturgy. I've known that for a long time...I need communal silence with God as much as I need the crazy, dancing, loud singing celebration with the charismatic Baptist church I attend. It’s nice to know that I can maybe have my cake and eat it too...

After church, I signed Erica into the hospital, she’ll have her surgery tomorrow morning. Please pray for her—she’s nervous! Oh, time's running out...more later...:)