There are days when you are transported

to those shadowy underworlds of fantasy novels you read as a child, the ripples of word pictures coming back to haunt you with a sort of dejâ-vu...

It has to be almost raining. And the wind must be just right. But when the conditions are perfect, sometimes I feel exactly eight and a half again, with my head turned into the wind, sure that I am preparing to witness a miracle, a supernatural anomaly, something to explain why my skin is a mess of goosebumps and my scalp tingling with anticipation (or fear?)...

I was standing at the bus stop on Democraticos today at 1:27 pm when two men clattered by in a rickety cart pulled by a mangy horse and three full-grown pigs tied down sideways to the cart's wooden floorboards...and then a bicycle came towards me, the man at the handlebars driving hard and against the wind as his long trench coat fluttered like a pair of ragged black wings behind him...something between a Nasgul, the Wicked Witch of the West, and a Susan Cooper novel...and then the light turned green and everything went more or less back to normal.

I still felt haunted all day.

That could be because the man across the street has made it his new pastime to stare at my house. He's there almost every time I pass the window in my front room. He's more than a bit odd, and appears to be interested in the "gringa" as he's given me both his telephone number, a lame invitation to go out sometime, and a thinly veiled request to be invited to one of my now-famous parties. Gr. Not interested. "I only go out in groups..." with creepy neighbors I don't know. And I invite who I want, thank you very much. (When Junior was over today I asked him about that guy and if I know my friend at all, he'll find a way to let the dude know he should get lost. Or at least keep his eyes away from the second story window...)

And that's all for today, folks.

Little Yasmim, who is a spunky eight-year old

friend from church, told me today as we walked to her house to watch the Brazil-Ghana game that I used to be from "Eua, but not anymore. Now I'm Brazilian," just like her. That first word was pronounced "ooh-ahh," which would be the phonetic spelling of E.U.A. (Estados Unidos de America). Kids are funny...

The game rocked, though it was both a little violent and more than a little unfair to the Ghana side. Although, they were spreading all sorts of nasty rumors about the Brazilians way before the match...so a couple of unnecessary yellow cards and an illegal goal were perhaps not all that much of a problem. In any case, Brazil won fair and square, 3-0 or 2-0 depending on whether you count the second goal or not.

I felt super housewifely today, not just for the impromptu babysitting and the dubbed Lizzie McGuire movie we watched together, but also because I made more than one casserole, froze it and some meat and some vegetables, and am currently debating the wisdom of putting a pot of beans on the stove. I'm all out of my tiny one-serving size frozen stash...

The stove's gas canister, blessed by God, is still going strong since Ben left it to me in December...and each time I use my stove, a say a little prayer of thanksgiving. When I have to get a new one, I think we'll throw a party in honor of putting this miraculous "botijão" away!

There are two cats outside who are either engaging in completely inappropriate activity or are being cruelly tormented...and they really scare me. I've never heard sounds like that coming from anywhere other than the Lord of the Rings movies...yipes!

It's late and I'm craving chocolate. I think I'll go to bed, curl up with a book, and fall asleep reading...

You know those times when the perfect moment

to say something important but potentially hurtful comes...and goes, because you let your cowardice snap that four and a half second window out of your life? And then you have to live with the 20/20 hindsight that will torment you until you actually go through with what you set out to do in the first place? I'm in that place right now. Dang it. Why can't I just be forthcoming and direct? Something is getting lost in the translation.

One of my “things I need to do while in Rio before it’s embarrassing to admit I haven’t done them yet” list

has now been checked off. Today I was treated to a fabulous afternoon at Pão de Açucar, the famous “Sugarloaf Mountain” that, along with the Christ statue, is one of the distinguishing landmarks of Rio. You take two cable cars to arrive at the top, where the view of the city is stunning. And as the sun sets, the lights of the city go on one by one: first a few out at the airport, a billboard here or there, and then suddenly, the city is awash in light and the sun is glaring gold and red and flaming orange over the mountains. And then it’s gone. Magical. Beautiful. Perfect. Of course, I'm sure the experience is colored by WHO you're with as much as WHEN you go, and so I'm quite endebted to Tiago for the company...he was beyond the perfect gentleman. It was a bit film-like, with the surreal cityscape stretching below and our flowing Portuglish conversations...like someone who popped out of time and just happened to land in 2006 Rio de Janeiro, he kissed my hand and referred to me as "Vossa Senhoria," which is quite possibly the most formal and proper address that exists in the Portuguese language. Until tonight, I had NEVER heard it used in conversation, casual or not. I'm having a princess experience right now!

Remind me again why it's a bad thing to be spoiled???

Puxa flew today.

She’s afraid of the broom, and should be after the mess she made with her litter box today. Scattered, stinky litter covered a quarter of the floor in the sitting room and smelt so bad we noticed it the minute I opened the door after church.

When I went searching for her and tapped her out of her hiding place under the cabinets, she jumped up onto the sink, clawed up the wall, hung by the window ledge, leaped into the corner, did a double back flip through the air to come to a screaming, hair-raising stop on the floor before ducking back into her killer-attack mode beside the stove. And then she did it again, all the while screaming like a five-pack-a-day female smoker with enough power in her lungs to stop a funk party.

I think maybe she doesn’t like men.

Or she has a demon.

I’m locking her out of my bedroom tonight and if it happens again, she can just stay outside until Rich and Rebecca come back.

I’ve already received one unsolicited offer to put her in permanent cat purgatory. It’s been declined for now...August and Rich and Rebecca’s return isn’t THAT far away...but today I seriously considered it!

Superstitions

I didn’t knock on wood when I answered the question I knew I should have avoided answering:
“How are you feeling?”

Because this has been almost a full month of not feeling even one twinge of arthritis. It’s lovely to lay down to sleep without that pressure in my joints, and even better to wake up forgetting that there are parts of your body that are supposed to hurt.

I was stupid and said that I was feeling great, amazing, wonderful. The next day the right side of my body was swollen. Coincidence?

Now I know why there are tribes that won’t say anything positive about (or even name) their babies until they’re out of the “danger zone,” why the slightly obsessive compulsive KNOW that the world will crash if their routines are interrupted...there’s some sort of logic here. Coincidences happen a little too coincidentally...

Some people say that watching "What Not to Wear" and

similar television shows are a waste of time, that trashy mags like Cosmo and Glamour and the like rot your brain and are useless in the day-to-day...

Well, I'm happy to say that as a missionary, these things have become essential to my ministry. Or at least, were as of yesterday.

You see, the two volunteers/directors/important people at Projeto Vidinha are getting married on Saturday. And everyone has been gently roped into providing various talents and services because no one has enough money to throw a shindig like this unless some of it is homemade. My contribution? Hairdresser, makeup artist, personal shopper and manicurist. What would I do without Carmody's helpful eyeshadow tips, hints on how to make the bride's lipstick last through the ceremony AND the photo shoot? How else would I know how to style VERY kinky hair, unless I'd spent at least some of my free hours poring over Essense and Black Hair Fashions and wishing that I too, was gorgeous and dark with hair that didn't look ridiculous in dreadlocks???

We'll be posting pictures as soon as the film gets developed and I find someone with a scanner...I gave up on the digital camera. Gr.

And I'm having the time of my life!

What looked like a disembodied arm just

wriggled under the couch cover...that darn cat is being weird again. And she’s emptied her food onto the floor and scattered litter in delicate piles all over the floor. Ben, aren’t you excited to be taking her back to her rightful home?

Normally, trips to the Policia Federal are not the sort of occasions that have one giggling uncontrollably while leaving the building. Usually they are times for a few choice words, after waiting in long lines for hours only to find out that you need to pay just one more fee, or get a document that you don’t, of course, have on your person...

But today, I was giggling. The kind of mirth that makes passerby and taxi drivers and people hanging out of the windows of buses give you long, quizzical stares. Because they go to the Policia Federal too...and no one leaves happy. It’s like a darker, evil-er Department of Motor Vehicles.

I went to get my identification card, a process that involves a little stack of paperwork and then waiting five months for a card that will at that point, only be good for another six months anyway...typical bureaucratic ridiculousness. I had to sit in line and play musical chairs as the line moved up one person at a time, then have my fingerprints taken and a solemn-looking young guy stare morosely at my pictures that hardly match up anymore, ask questions about my previous visits, and congratulate me on my Portuguese. Then he told me to wait in the front of the line until someone called me by name to give me my passport and my temporary id, which is just a slip of paper with some writing on it, a stamp, and my face glued in the corner. High tech. This has to last me for five or six months, which is, in its own way, something to rant about. But I digress...So I sit down and crack open my book. Pleasantly minding my own business, I suddenly get the feeling that I am being watched. Looking up, the man behind the glass is pointing at me and talking with his buddy. They are obviously, overtly talking about me. And POINTING. This is so incredibly R.U.D.E. In any culture...unless they're just messing around.

But I'm a little concerned, because no one just jokes around in the Policia Federal, much less the agents themselves. So I mouth, because he's behind a sheet of glass, "What? Did I do something wrong?" And he breaks out the laugh he's having with his partner to give me a stern look and motions for me to wait, pulling out a sheet of paper and starting to write something down. When he's done, he holds it up to the glass:

C.I.A.

What????? They think I'm a CIA agent? That's priceless. I start laughing so hard I nearly fall out of my chair. The agent, who's a young guy and not all that unattractive, is enjoying the attention and giving me a hard time, all from behind the glass. After a bit, he calls me up, and someone who looks like a superior is behind him, asking me a question that at first I don't understand. And then I get it: "Who did you come here to spy on?" Well, my friends, there aren't many good answers to that sort of question when you're surrounded by Federal Police agents. So I opted for the answer that has now made me at least two friends in the department of foreign affairs and will probably keep me from having any trouble there in the future, provided that I go on Wednesdays around noon:

"Who did you come here to spy on?"
"The men, of course!"

I feel like I've just done my residency training...

or something along those lines. The benefit about being a translator for the doctor was that I got to PLAY doctor. For real. And translate and rework and play with my cultural knowledge to transmit the right info to the patients. Things like knowing dietary trends, common skin ailments, worm symptoms, and the like have finally come in handy. I felt like my foreign trivia was well used these last five days!

I had the chance to interact with a lot of interesting people.

The lazy and slant-eyed seventeen year old with a bad bowl haircut and lanky walk, who scrupulously ignored my tactful questions about drug use when he came in complaining of immobilizing migraines. Scoring high on caffeine use, nicotine, and alcohol pretty much sealed his fate, even if he wasn't going to admit to using marijuana or cocaine. (Although probably only the latter would have really affected his medical condition adversely...) I reamed him out about the smoking, told him that he and his whole group of friends should just stop smoking together, because besides being bad for his health, it was driving the girls away...and got hit on even after all that!

A father who came in with his toddler and then lifted up his shirt to show us the bruises where he'd fallen into an open SEWER...looked like he'd been run over by an eighteen-wheeler. Miraculously, nothing broken, popped, or hurt worse than serious bruises.

And lots of mothers with two or three kids, with fifteen-year old pregnant daughters, with simple cases of worms and difficult cases of never-been-diagnosed-let-alone-treated Parkinsons' disease (the tremors of which she was sure were caused from moving furniture...).

A beautiful woman with a stressted smile and wiry curls popping out all over her head who was simply undernourished and overworked with four small children and at least one grown one and a teenager that died last year from an overdose...she was having anxiety attacks. Her address was a perfect complement to her stress level, being well within the danger range during heavy shoot-outs, so we prescribed breathing exercises and meditation and lots of time talking to God...in addition to the meds the pharmacy gave her.

The lady whose hair was falling out...and two or three or was it four? small children...

Most of these women just needed a week off, some vitamins, and childcare.

Can that come in a pill form, please?

Twisted giggles.

Something about living here, in this particular place with these circumstances, makes us laugh in the face of terror. I've been reading a book whose main thesis is soley this: laughter is a response, a defiant response, in the face of unbearable circumstances. Black humor runs rampant in the favelas, as I've come to realize. Where others shudder or shy away from even commenting, we tell and re-tell and find humor. Whether it's a off-the cuff comment about cremation that brings even the most timid to venture a comment about the dumpsters and their free funeral services, eliciting knowing laughs, or a group of us favela dwellers laughing as we shock the better-off with both our stories and humor as we tell about the invasions, about the police with their armored cars and loudspeakers that play such uplifting tracks as "We're coming to suck out your souls..." I am pleased to report that I have never suffered having to hear THAT, but I still vividly remember Christmas Eve and the rollicking Santa laughs that rippled through the air as the cops came in shooting...

It reminds me of an anecdote I remember, from some missionaries working in a war-torn country...how, as they hid under the kitchen table during a bombing raid, someone thought to grab a hand-held tape recorder. And they made a tourism tape, a ghoulish invite to their beautiful country, complete with heart-racing adventures, trips under the furniture, and every day a new landscape due to the bombings...

Manguinhos isn't that bad, in comparison. I just hear some gunfire at night...

But the laughter remains. And I find that it separates me, that this laughter makes a distinctive mark between the classes. Those who laugh, laugh because most of their "weapons" have been taken from them. They are citizens without rights in a system that does its best to ignore their existence. Those who laugh, do so because it is the only response left other than disabling fear or disabling anger. Laughter lets off the steam, and gives those who are willing a chance to refocus on something more productive. It lets us be creative. When we are neither imobilized in our anger nor paralyzed by our fear, we are a threat to this corrupt system. Those who do more, who laugh in the face of terrorism (for that is what this is), are a double threat. Our laughter provokes the oppressors because those who laugh have power. Or are crazy. And either way, they are no longer easily manipulated.

Christians are good at laughing. We should be...we're both crazy and on the winning side. And that must drive a lot of people and demons and slimy spirits mad...

Writing for the Masses 101

That last post was irritatingly like something out of a college assignment. Part of what makes this blog such good therapy for me is that I can get out in English what is going on, what I’m feeling, the highlights and lowlights and bits and pieces of this craziness that is a single American girl living in Rio de Janeiro.

Taking myself out of the equation turns this into, well, something for publication. And as any writer or wannabe knows, forcing yourself to write for an audience, "scratching itching ears" and generally twisting your voice to fit a certain mold, NEVER goes well. This blog isn't the place where I'm necessarily going to do a lot of theologizing. It's not the place to find my prayer letters. This is where I worship God in the day to day, in the funny, ironic, vain, boring, sad, scary details of something that at some times feels more like a low-budget indie flick (with a bad 80's soundtrack) than my real life. But it is. And a real life includes such mundane things as dates, shopping disasters, favorite television shows, and grandiose daydream fantasies. Maybe this is my outlet...until recently, I was the MISSIONARY. You know...that completely unknowable person that everyone knows. I'm finally starting to become human to more than just my close friends here...they're understanding more of who I am and why I'm here and what I left behind and all of my sticky defects and character flaws...and I'm scared (judging from some of the comments and emails I got in the last month) that I'm turning into a stereotyped idea for people in the States. Please don't do that to me! Human. Human. Human. And likes to write about her life. Thanks. That's all. [smiles. bows. blows kisses]

The medical campaign started today, with a slow but steady crowd of church members and their friends, family, and at least one generous drug dealer who offered his translator “anything you want; cocaine, marijuana, a nice watch...” in exchange for the free examination. Lovely. My job was a blessing sent directly from the hand of God. I had been discussing with Erica and others the thought that this week would either make or break my dream of being a translator. Either I would be:
1. terrible
2. good but hate it
3. good but love it
4. mediocre
I’m number three...and today was the one of the best days I've had in ages...I could have gone on for ever and ever! Saw so many people from Manguinhos that I knew or whose kids I know from Timonis...people that I will for sure run into again...God willing. And that is all for tonight because it is late and six o'clock will come early tomorrow. I can't believe I get to do this ALL WEEK!!! Hooray! Até amanhã!

Huh, 'Ne.

Apparently, this blog "is a bit too much "all about me".

That makes sense.

It's about my life. But I'll spare you tonight, at least, for the next few minutes. Because people that talk about themselves all the time are, in Brazilian terms, "chato." So for the rest of this post, the words "I," "my," and "me" will not appear. Not once. After all, I would like repeat visitors. And not to chase away my friends...(though any comments inflating my ego and/or in support of the content of the past few posts/months/year would be greatly appreciated and valued and perhaps even framed.)

* * * * *

Five stars. That's how many times Brazil has won the world cup and are proudly displayed on shirts around the community, spraypainted on the walls, and shellacked (or shellaced, depending on how you choose your grammar rules) on yellow, blue and green manicures. The United States suffered a painful defeat today against the Czech Republic...what predictable sadness. :(

The Tenessee Baptists came to town, busloads full of fresh faces and southern accents. Little children running alongside of the buses full of Americans today shout out "Merry Christmas" for no apparent reason...maybe because they were sporting new shiny smiles thanks to nasty fluoride trays, new toothbrushes, and several very handsome Tennessee dentists with their blond assistants and frazzled translators. Dental work may have been slightly less traumatic for the non-medically trained-the woman translating for the "surgery" room was a bit gray afterwards. Something about lancing boils...and at least one of the doctors was fed-up with writing prescriptions and went running around looking for, if not surgeries he could perform, at least wounds to bandage or a novel tropical disease to diagnose. Hundreds of people came through the doors...received a hug or a touch or a word of encouragement. Everyone got to meet with a Christ to serve...or be served by. There will be some new prayers being prayed tonight. Some for thanksgiving, as eyes are seeing details for the first time thanks to snazzy new glasses, others because body lice or ear infections or worm infestations are being treated with little medical miracles. Some are praying because their eyes were opened or their ears were unstopped, or because God touched their hearts in an unexpected way. And at least 60 of them will be back tomorrow, American doctors and nurses and dentists and evangelists and their Brazilian translators (with the exception of this author, who is American, at least in nationality!) in their scrubs and garden clogs, ready to dispense some more prescriptions and a lot more holy love.

Praise the Lord.

I have come to the decision that I am famous. And this is highly disconcerting.

Little girls ride by me on their bikes and shout, “Hi Jenna!” Kids run up to me for a quick hug or a simple hello. Shopkeepers call me by name and ask personalized questions. This is disconcerting because I DO NOT KNOW WHO THEY ARE. Not their names. Not how I know them. It’s worse with the people who have full conversations with me, people who want to know how my trip went, if the other missionaries are coming back, people whose words belie a history that I supposedly have with them. And for the life of me, I can’t remember.

There are small bands of adolescent fans, even adults, who are starting to at least talk about attending the various church services where I’m singing. They are fascinated by my Americaness.

On the other hand, the girls from church are fascinated by how I am losing it...the Americanness, that is. They have even gone so far as to tease me about my “Brazilian” walk and posterior. Having 8 women giving a small treatise on the various stages of your butt’s progression to full Brazilian status (“do you work out? what have you been doing differently? it wasn’t like that when you came here...”) is also somewhat disconcerting...and gives me no end of private giggles after the fact.

I have decided most of this not knowing people comes from my singing engagements. I can’t memorize the faces of everyone in these churches, but they can remember me. So I am trying not to let it bother me too much and am learning the fine art of a smile and a hug and careful avoidance of any situation that requires first name use!

Speaking of singing engagements, I sang last night at the First Baptist in H-. And then arrived at the rocking out Christian street party whose stage was in front of my house. Jessica, a friend from church, was on the singing schedule and she invited me to do a duet with her. It was a great opportunity which perhaps I will elaborate on later, one that has already brought up at least one more invitation, and probably several more in the works.

What happened to my stage fright? It ran away...

Unmentionable Cultural Differences

My “grandmother” who lives upstairs is this delicate wisp of a woman with a cap of purple-grey ringlets and a wavering, warbling voice that seems perpetually on the edge of emotional tears. She’s a sweet, sweet woman. I have brought her little presents every now and then, the sort of things I am accustomed to doing in the States: a sort of reverse “welcome-to-the-neighborhood” thing, little souvenirs because she’s a good neighbor and a lovely person.

Today, on my way out to buy food before the markets close, it being Sunday, she waves me upstairs. After chatting about her cataracts and husband’s need for new glasses and so forth, she gives me a little gift. Two pair of lovely, satiny, lace-embroidered, slightly granny-but-in-a-distinctly-Brazilian style...

underwear.

You might find this strange, and even though I was prepared, having read about this phenomenon of giving incredibly personal gifts to friends and acquaintances in a book about cultural differences...even with this, I was taken aback for a second or two.

But she got my size right. Which is nice, because I’m not sure that I would have had the courage to exchange them, regardless of whether or not the vendor had okayed it in advance!

I encountered this phenomenon once before, when I helped a friend brainstorm ideas for her American host mom. The idea of a sexy bra-and-thong combo was quickly scrapped from her list...just imagine the nice suburban Baptist mother-of-three and probably Volvo-driving soccer mom opening her thank you gift...

Crisis averted.

I am "possibly the most ridiculous person"

some people have ever met.

This makes me kind of proud.

Though this, too, is coming from someone who finds it humorous to mummy-wrap his wife in toilet paper and dab blobs of spaghetti sauce "blood" all over her as a party trick...who tries to grow American corn in a makeshift sandbox garden on his rooftop and ends up with a large litterbox for the neighborhood cats and only a few tiny ears in exchange...

So there.

Ridiculous is, as my Brazilian friends like to say, like "bundas. Cada um tem seu..."

Não é?

The Koreans came to town...

tried to take pictures, which got me some seriously nasty looks and THANK GOD they were just on the main street...you can't just go snapping pictures around here, you know? Made some apologies, got lots of stares as groups of foreigners normally don't pass through Manguinhos all that often, visited Timonis, Ben's old street, passed by the dealers and the soccer fields, and all-in-all gave a pretty good tour if I do say so myself. AND managed to get back before the rain really came down...

I am all filled up with compliments. On my language skills which are really just a very practical gift from God; on my living here; on the ministry that they saw; and on and on. I feel slightly puffed up and silly with all these good things floating around. Apparently, my name is starting to float around the Baptist circle in Rio. Josias said his pastor had already heard about me and the work I do here, and he pastors a church in Caxias, which isn't even in the Rio municipality! I've never been this popular, you know? I was always the gangly dorky one who flew under the radar and somehow I've morphed into the IT missionary girl, the one with the parties everyone wants an invite to...it's so absurd it makes me laugh. And that's all I have to say about that.

Erica made a nice little feast for us back at home, where we talked about missions and food and guessed the Koreans' ages. Hint: every one of these men looked MUCH, MUCH younger than he really was. The forty-year old I had pegged as the youngest, around twenty-three or so. The thirty-seven year old looked six years younger. Lucky them.

And now they're gone and I will do some much-deserved lounging. Yum.

So I went on a date last night with someone I met on the airplane.

My seatmate, actually. This night ranks high on the Rio firsts list: first time going to the lookout in Leme (gorgeous view of both the crashing waves and the city), first time eating bolinhos de bacalhau (fried codfish appetizer things that are heavenly), first overseas "blind" date.

Well, not really blind. We talked for half the flight...so that kind of made us already acquaintances by the time the plane landed, right? Anyhow, nice guy. (If you're reading this, Rafael, you can substitute "good" for "nice," okay!)

And we ran into some of my kids in Cinelândia, where I got on the metro to go home. They're hanging out in Lapa again, apparently, which is good. Easier to take volunteers down to...easier to get home...safer.

And now I'm prepping my home and my Portuguese for these missionaries. My house is almost empty of paper products and I have nothing in my house to eat...this is a problem. I think I'll make a quick stop at the market before I morph into tour guide and missionary extraordinaire.

I feel like I need some sort of theme song right about now. It's going to be an interesting day!

Will I be receiving Christian hate mail?

It's 8:30 in the morning and my heart is beating like a hummingbird. I dislike receiving forwards of any kind, but especially those piously heretical ones. Like what appeared in my inbox this morning. It was a prayer request for American soldiers that included a formal prayer that went like this:

"Lord, hold our troops in your loving hands. Protect them as they protect us. Bless them and their families for the selfless acts they perform for us in our time of need. I ask this in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Amen."

I could rant, and explain in minute detail why this prayer is shallow and at best, lopsided. I could lay out the definitely not-Christian theology I see in three out of the four sentences (not counting the Amen). Unfortunately, I have to clean my house for missionaries that are coming to see Manguinhos today...and I'm wary of the repercussions in my inbox, so if you'd like to know what I think, let me know and I'll email it.

What did I do, in my fit of what I would like to see as righteous anger? I responded to all with a prayer that hopefully added a bit more balance to the mix...a classic Christian prayer used for centuries that goes like this when it's been adapted to modern language:

Lord Jesus Christ, Who commanded us to love our enemies, and those who defame and injure us, and to pray for them and forgive them; You Who also prayed for Your enemies, who crucified You: grant us, we pray, the spirit of Christian reconciliation and meekness, that we may freely and truly forgive every injury, slight, and hurt, and be reconciled with our enemies. Grant us to overcome the malevolence and offences of people with Christian meekness and true love of our neighbor. O Lord, we ask You to grant to our enemies true peace and forgiveness of sins; and do not allow them to leave this life without true faith and sincere conversion and reconciliation with You. Help us repay evil with goodness, and to remain safe from the temptations of the devil and from all the perils which threaten us, in the form of visible and invisible enemies. Amen.

I would want my enemies to pray this for me.

If we believe that God answers prayers, this should be one of those prayers that stays perpetually on our lips. We're not simply asking God to bless our enemies, but to transform our enemies into intimates, fellow partakers in the Church, in the Body of Christ, to be our brothers and sisters. We are asking God to do what is humanly impossible: change our hard hearts and change theirs and effect true reconciliation between God and man. Wow.

Please, if you are my enemy, pray for me.

Because I think, after sending unwanted, and in this current state of events, probably unpatriotic (!), emails, I'm going to have a nice new crop of enemies.

Let's pray for each other.

Someone on the street yesterday asked me if I worked

for the United Nations. This is absurdly humorous. I can't imagine the UN types living here. Copacabana perhaps, but the Zona Norte? Not a chance. What is funnier, though, is that he asked because (apparently) someone has been passing out incorrect information about me. Huh. What I wouldn't give to hear the gossip about myself on the street right now...

Some lady at church asked me if I had gotten back together with Junior at church today and I'm afraid that I gave her a decidedly nasty look along with my rather sharp, "No, of course not." Can we say, 1) nosy, 2) rude, 3) none of your business? But perhaps it was because she saw a male presence in my house the other day. News to the street: it wasn't the ex, people. I know other Y-chromosomes in this town!!!

For those of you who may be out of touch with the rest of the world, the World Cup is next week. Soccer. Futebol. And if you were to walk down a Brazilian street, you wouldn't have any doubt as to who they're cheering for. There are new murals on the walls and the streets, the light posts are wrapped with colorful plastics in the national colors, streamers create a canopy stretching the length of whole streets, and little kids of all ages and sizes (depending on levels of drunkenness after a certain age) are running around blowing on these aggravating little air horn things. It seems almost impossible to go anywhere and not see green and yellow. Or the Brazilian flag. Or the caricatured faces of the BIG STARS with their gap teeth and long curls.

Viva Brasil!

It has been a long day.

And I have to recind my last post.

Because my seatmate was charming and friendly and funny and didn't snore and we talked for hours...

So I guess that is better than a couple of extra inches of knee space.

More on that later.

I'm exhausted!