A whole lot of catching up

Giant vacation and then slam back to teaching, helping with the church, and doing various graphic design and communication stuff for World Renewal Brazil as a whole. If you are interested in hearing more about our vacation to Europe well you might just need to wait a little longer considering we haven't even told our parents that much about it yet. I haven't even gotten through all the pictures yet. That is mainly because we had about 2 days before everything started again when we got back from vacation. I have felt like the priorities of the ministry are more important than gathering our vacation pictures.

Things we/I have been working on:

1. Of course the Intl School is in full swing and has been for about a month now. It is a slightly more intense schedule for Lindsay and Emily because we were not able to get any short term teachers this semester.(we are looking for teachers for February!) But, it has been a blessing the Seth and Kari Bartal has joined the team and they teaching also.
2. Our home church is Lagoa de Itaenga. As many of you know we attend this church because it is the latest church plant that Ricardo Silva is pastoring. He is like my brother and it is hard for me to say no to him when he asks for things, which makes me stretch myself and get out of my comfort zone a lot. I am an elder at the church and responsible for running the powerpoint for the worship. Most recently (because I/we offered to run the youth group night alone when his wife would have the baby) I was given the responsibility of youth leader. Since Ricardo has started calling me a pastor of sorts, he also has asked me to preach at the church every other month. Again it is difficult for me to say no to Ricardo! It is a stretch for me to be comfortable preaching, but I think is a good thing and I know God can work through even me.
3. On October ninth World Renewal Brazil will have a booth in Greenfield, IN for the Riley Days festival. I was asked to design the banner for the booth. They also needed a T-shirt design (a very simple one) and an update to most of our brochures and such. I am also working on a business card for Tele to give out when he is in the US (in October/November). I am not used to so many projects all at once, especially when my wonderful design partner Roberto is at World of Life Hungary.  *Below is how the banner will look

4. We record most of the plays and special events for the Intl. school. I am currently behind on editing the videos for some of the past events. I am also creating some DVDs of the events to sell parents. I already provide all of the events free to watch online, but not everybody has internet acess and many want a copy for home. There are some big school field trips right now, so I am getting those pictures up online also. You can see the field trip of 1st -3rd grade at: http://tinyurl.com/24obpt7 (the Charles Darwin Reserve - no evolution being taught - just the name of the place).
5. Finally, we have been making some "home improvements." We installed some new cabinets/ shelves. I was able to borrow Ricardo's drill and put up our new shelves myself. I am very proud of this because the way things are put on walls here is very different than the US. First you drill a hole in the concrete wall. Then a plastic guard the nail is installed. Then you take a screw and hand crank it in.