After a long-gruelling-painful-tiring (feel free to inject every other negative adjective you could use here) 2 1/2 months of literally working ourselves into the ground it’s finally happened… we’ve moved into our new home and are no longer living on the mountain and in the jungle! That’s right, after 5 years of “roughing it” we’ve moved closer to the city and will hopefully get a break from all the craziness that has 'been our life' here in Terra Boa, Brazil.
When we signed the contract for the new place, on September 16th, we totally underestimated the amount of work and finances that it would take to actually get the house in a liveable condition so that our family could move in. I guess, if I was going to compare it to something in the States, it would be like buying a HUD home that had been vacant for a long time and not really taken care of when people lived in it. But after countless hours of painting, cleaning, plumbing, building and renovating- we are officially moved-in to the new place.
It's weird. We're able to take hot showers that actually stay hot the whole time and the water doesn't cut-off even once! And now MJ has hot water that comes out of the kitchen sink to wash dishes with (rather than having to heat water in a tea pot), we have internet (via radio waves) at home, our cell phones work (we haven't had any type of phone at home for 5 years), we're able to drive to town to get food in less than 5 minutes and I don't wake up in the middle of the night because of being bit by spiders! Sweet, huh? And those are just a few of the things that we've noticed: )
But don’t get me wrong- “Just because we’ve moved, we’re still in Brazil.” We’ve already had a porcupine attack on the dogs (which = another visit to the vet), I was attacked by a pit bull (I’ll write about it later) and am having to have surgery on my arm because of massive nerve damage, one of our dogs back on the mountain was attacked by a puma or a leopard (not good), Maryssa had a bat in her room last night, Robert killed a brown spider (extremely venomous) on my back as I was driving down the road yesterday… and the list could go on and on.
The point being, “we're still painfully aware that we’re still on the mission field.” But just moving closer to town is going to relieve so much of the pressure and stress that we’ve been carrying the last 5 years- so we’re very grateful.
We’ve especially been running ourselves ragged over the last few months. Trying to maintain a ministry, taking care of our family and getting the house ready to move-in to has taken everything we’ve had in the tank. I’m not gonna lie to you- we’ve been battling serious depression, fatigue and stress trying to get to this point. But we’re finally here. Sure, it’s not perfect and there’s still a good bit of work to go- but it’s liveable and it’s not the jungle.
Our prayer is that by making this move that we’ll be able to work in the orphanages and favelas even more than we have over the last 5 years and that we’ll be able to proclaim the Gospel to even more people than ever before.
And we just want to take this time to say that, "we couldn't have made this transition without Graystone Church USA and all of our faithful supporters who gave toward this new endeavour.”
So, thank you to everyone who helped to make this happen. We couldn't have done this without you guys!
Love Ya!
Jim, MJ, Maryssa, Matthew, Ana, Diogo, Gabriel and Robert
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