Hello Dear Friends,

Thank you for the e-mails, snail mail, and phone calls. We so enjoy hearing from you guys and the goings on in your lives. It's been busy here--great, but busy. I've been taking pictures, but haven't had time to upload them yet. Since, my last post, we've had several tropical storms. The first violent storm we encountered was the last week in October. Andrew and I woke up at 2 a.m., to the sound of screaming wind attempting to whip our windows open. It was at this moment that I realized why all of the windows around here have a metal or wood covering over the outside that you use at night. It sounded like the windows were going to burst from the pressure, so we grabbed the girls and put them in a sheltered area away from any windows. And, that's where we spent a large part of the night. Samantha described the wind as wild cats fighting. In the morning we suryved the damage--tons of debri, our poolside table and one chair was broken, and everything that we had outside was gone or scattered to the end of the yard--thankgoodness for our high walls around the property, or else we would have lost everything. Many houses had their roofs blown right off, inluding our church and a part of our language school. The school had extensive flooding. The town next to us reported 1,000 houses with roofs torn off. Crazy.

Another interesting aspect to life in Brazil is the sensitivity of our power and water. It seems at least one day a week we are without power, or water, and more often than not our phone and internet. We've been without power for 4 days at one time, and water for 36 hours. We are fully stocked with drinking water, so it's not a huge deal...but, on several occasions I've had to use the pool water to wash my dishes!!! I never thought of myself as a camper, but I think that maybe by the time we get back home I'll be able to "ruff it" with the best of them. Thankfully we have a gas stove, so I am able to boil the water prior to use. I actually have to boil the water when washing the dishes because our house is not plumbed with hot water. Two weeks ago (3 months since I had had a relaxing bath) Andrew and I attempted to fill our whirl pool tub with hot water. We had four pots of water heating at one time, and a hose attached to our shower pumping water into the tub. It took us 2 hours to fill it, but it was so WORTH it. :) Don't ask me why we have a whirl pool tub with no plumbed hot water.

Andrew's work is going fine. He's able to understand everything in his meetings now--not every fine detail, but he can follow the topics well which is a nice break through. The girls are also enjoying their activities immensely and speak Portuguese beautifully. I will upload some pictures of the storm soon. Take care and God bless!

Love, The Foerderer Family