The beautiful breakfast that Andrew and Makaela made for us...pancakes, vegetarian "pigs in a blanket", and fruit kakobs...

Samantha in front of the lot next to our house where they hold "Carnival" activities...which means as of the last 2 weeks and one more week to come we don't sleep very well, as they party until about 6 in the morning--lots of people and crazy loud music...along with a live band of drummers.
Samantha in front of our house...

This is the English school where we study Portuguese
Samantha's Sunday morning bouquet... Every Sunday morning I take one of the girls for a walk while Andrew and the other girl make a special breakfast (and we provide the bouquet on our return). :) The girls love to gather flowers along the way. There are so many varieties and they flourish like weeds...we find them in the ditches along the roads, cracks in the sidewalks, and on trees.

Our church here in Horizontina--it's only 2 blocks from our house
View from our church window...the house next door was demolished and the view is of another house. If you look closely you can see their washing machine on the back porch. Thanks to the tropical climate, this is very common. Most people don't use dryers, so having the washing machine outside is very practical.

At a local River Sabbath Afternoon
Posing in front of an "animals prohibited in the water" sign --lucky for Theo who detests swimming

Our friend, Shirley Richter, wrote us this poem before our move to Brazil. Her husband Jay, is the president of the Christian radio station KRQC, in Davenport, Iowa. Andrew was his right hand man while we were there, which will explain the adorable punch line at the end of the poem. Thanks Shirley! :)

Our Prayer

As we send you on your way

To a home far away

We assure you we will pray

For your safety day by day

For no distance can erase

The sweet memories we trace

Of the friendship so true

That we have found in you

We'll thank God for you

As you seek adventures new

And pray that He will guide

And stay close by your side

We will pray for His love

To keep your hearts from above

In all of your trials

You'll face across the miles

Now in case you failed to know

Our feelings deep we will show

For our constant prayer will be

Hurry back to KRQC!!

Shirley Richter

This is one lucky cow...I'm sure glad that the North Dakota cows don't know how good their cousins have it...
Sitting in paradise--Makaela, Samantha, and Camila

Autumn and Loda in front of a 100 year old church in Florianopolis, Santa Catarina, Brasil
Overlooking a beach with Junior and Camila

Oyster Traps
First beach we stopped to admire--very quiet and charming

A sparkly Christmas Eve
The girls each bought me a stuffed animal to replace some favorites I left back home :)

William and Andrew having some bonding time
Samantha reading a Christmas story to us

Merry Christmas to all and thank you so much for the phone calls and e-mails! We have the best friends and family! Lots of love to you all from us! :)

Riding in the "Pista"

Vegetarian Churrasco
Samantha at a local waterfalls Sabbath afternoon

Oops...girls cleaning up after "decorating" the wall with mud... :)
Baby Kisses

Kissing India Makaela trotting in the "pista"

Thanksgiving Concert for the English Language School where we study Portuguese
Theodore "loves" to swim...poor puppy

Three amigas--our neighbor girl, Laura, dancing with the girls

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Hello friends and family! I hope you all are enjoying the festivites of this season.

The girls keep reminding me that it simply does not feel like Christmas here to them. (Even though we do have a couple of plastic snowmen downtown). They miss our get togethers with close friends and family, caroling, delivering x-mas cookies, special plays, concerts, Silk Soy Egg Nog, fluffy x-mas trees, snow...I've been trying to make it as Christmassy as possible in this gorgeous tropical climate, but it wasn't until last night that I won them over onto my side through a beautiful song by Steven Curtis Chapman called "Christmas is All in the Heart." The chorus is: "Christmas is all in the heart, that's where the feeling starts. And like a fire inside it touches every part..and even if no white snow falls, well that's all right because, the joy can still be found wherever you are...x-mas is all in the heart" After this song they were feeling amazingly better, so we played our favorite Amy Grant x-mas song, "Sleigh Ride" and grabbed our mops and brooms and did our annual silly galloping around the house on our "horses"...while singing along. I wonder if they will still do this with me when they are 16--I hope so. :)

We have been invited to spend 10 days in Florianapolis over x-mas with some Brazilian friends, Loda and Marcos. We have chosen to stay here for x-mas eve and day and then join them in Florianopolis the 26th, so that way we can keep some of our x-mas traditions alive for the girls. The girls love to sleep in front of the x-mas tree every Christmas eve, and open their stockings the second their eyes open. The city we are visiting, Florianopolis, is along the southern coast of Brazil. We haven't been there yet, but are told it's gorgeous--hundreds of little islands with beautiful beaches. I guess we'll still have a white x-mas--it'll just be a sandy one.

Andrew is doing well. He's been crazy busy the past few weeks as there are several Americans here that he's helping. There is a project that requires considerable help from Moline over the next few months, so we'll be having many visitors which is nice. We enjoy having them over for dinner and talking in English!!! :) It's so exciting for us. The girls think it's the best thing to listen to people who can pronounce their names "right." And, they are gracious enough to bring things from home for us that we can't buy here--like peanut butter and fruit roll ups!

The girls have been very concerned that I didn't have my nativity this year, and have been asking Andrew about it. Andrew unbenownced to us asked our neighbors, Bernie and Tony, to find it in our storage room back home. (Thank you Bernie and Tony, we miss you guys!!!) Then our friend, Balaji, picked it up at their house, and gave it to one of the American's who was traveling down here. When it was delivered to Andrew, he took it in to a local store and had it gift wrapped with Portuguese writing and gave it to me this week. I obviously assumed it was a present from here. It was a special suprise find out it was my nativity from home. So, now I have my nativity and the girls are thrilled. I swear I married the sweetest guy ever.

I hope this finds all of you well. God bless and hugs from all of us to you.

Autumn, Andrew, Samantha, Makaela, Sir William, Theodore, and Tuletta the Turtle (our newest and tiniest family member)

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