Forget the Village, Bring Back the Parents.

Who wouldnt want to be working in their math book in THIS classroom?

We finished making our rosemail bowls today (we went to the thrift store yesterday to find some wooden bowls) and they are coming around nicely!

I put on some scandinavian music and the girls went to town. Love these hours when we get to spend time learning about other cultures.

We are smack in the middle of reading about Nate Saint who was a missionary who died while bringing the word to savage Auca (now called Waorani) Indians in the Amazon. Today’s project was cutting out and putting together a plan that the MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) use to fly missionaries to remote villages all over. But I also put on the last bit to Beyond The Gates of Splendor on Youtube that showed what became of the family of Nate Saint. Not only did his wife (who was probably still grieving) choose to go finish Nate’s work with the same people who murdered him and the husband’s of her closest friends but they invited his son to live with them, as one of them. Could you imagine doing this? Choosing to, everyday, be around and live side by side the people who killed your husband, your father? Imagine the amount of forgiveness it would take to do this. This is something that only Jesus can give us! Choosing to love and forgive those who hurt us the most prevents us from building a savage village of our own in our lives- a devouring demon of hurt and anger and bitterness. I can only hope that as we continue to study this, that my kids can fully grasp the meaning and just how incredible this is and apply it to their own lives.

Something that haunts me a little is knowing that God has a road ahead for all of us and that times might be darker than I could ever imagine. I see movies of loved ones killed in horrific ways, lost, gone of this world and wonder how such evil could exist and how one might overcome it. A mother who’s whole family was murdered and old signs of them around- hand prints on the ceiling from where they could reach via their bunkbeds. How could you live around the memories and forgive those who did such harm to tear those people from you?
Only God. As we go through all these experiences learning about forgiveness I pray that I never take my loved ones for granted and that I would be spared the grief so many have not.

-Jyn

Today we have had a lot of rain. All over the Willamette Valley there is flooding going on. People’s car have even been dragged into canals killing them. But this is our yard this morning. The creek literally overflowed across the road. It’s been like this all day and I’m thinking that if it keeps it up much longer the water might get into the garage… Maybe we can build sailboats and sail them on our new waterfront property.

Gracie's Mask

Last week we ended with making Brazillian masks (since we are in Brazil). We had a lot of fun! Last night the girls sealed the masks and have been painting and decorating them today. I felt kind of reserved on the costume masks lesson because… I’m not a big fan of Marti-gras or of Carnival. There is a lot of sexuality that is inappropriate involved for my girls but… I think decorating costumes can be great fun for creativity. I also taught them about Capoeira and the history behind it. We had a lot of fun doing cartwheels and spinning in the living room and now the girls want to go take capoeira lessons (which I would love too, if we had the $$$). The lot of us are now sore. Gracie and I broke muscles in our back and Abigail has sore muscles on her arms and her thighs, haha! Sometimes when you are having fun you forget it’s a lot of exercise and we probably need to stretch first.

But we learned that Capoeira was formed from the African slaves that were brought to Brazil to work the plantations. They wanted to teach each other a way of defending themselves without letting on to the slave owners that they were training to fight. So the fighting dance was formed. They would train and then when the owners would start to come see what was going on, they would transform into their dance so the slavers would just say to themselves, “Oh, it’s just the Africans dancing…”
Next week we enter into Europe so we are enjoying the tropics of South America at the moment.

We did a video of making the masks, albeit low resolution (I will fix it later) but it was fun. Here it is.