All my classes were canceled today so I thought I would catch you up on stuff. It's been a while since I've updated anything. Let's start back at the earliest thing, my birthday. I went to Belo Horizonte with a buddy from church to visit his friends and my friends now. I met them the last time I went there and they really liked me and so did their dog, or my leg anyway. Just good people, they remind me of southern folk.
We got there Saturday and went to a different church that my buddy wanted to visit. It's a different church than they attend. It's much smaller, only 30,000 members. They had a young adult service that was really cool. It was long like all services but it really held my attention. A preacher would come up and read a scripture and talk a bit and then people would come up and act out the verse he had talked about. It was really, really cool. They also had some street dancers do a couple of numbers. I felt like getting up there with them and doing the worm, my only break dance move, but I refrained myself.
We ate a meal when we got back with cheese fondu, meat and bread. Really good! The next day the wife woke up really early and blew up red and white balloons because they know I'm a big Alabama fan. She also printed off the Alabama logo off the internet and gave me a CD of my favorite Brazilian Christian artist, Fernandinho. (Side note: He used to be a truck driver and not a good person. His wife started going to church and one night he got angry at her and got a gun and was going to shoot her and she cried out to God to help her and the gun wouldn't fire. He ran out and got in his truck and kept thinking about what happened and came to a church that was still in service and surrendered his life to God.)
Before we had lunch on my birthday the wife wanted to say a few things and my buddy interpreted and she said that when they first met me that they invited me into their house because it was the Christian thing to do but now they invited me because they feel that God put me in their life and many nice things like that. Then the husband prayed and thanked God for me and asked God to bless me with a great wife and for his blessing on my life. I'm not an emotional person but I told them after the prayer the only thing I could say was "Thank You" because words couldn't say how much I appreciated it but the real reason was I didn't know if a tear of two might sneak out, of course I could have blamed it on allergies.
I actually got a couple of birthday cards which was a great surprise. A lady from my office at Blue Cross bought a card and had people sign it and another friend from Blue Cross mailed me one. It really did my heart good. I really miss the people that I worked with. When you're somewhere for almost 11 years you build a lot of good relationships.
I also got another care package from home last week. It had some Christmas presents in it which I've been told not to open, but what they don't know won't hurt them. I actually haven't eaten all the oatmeal cream pies yet nor the swiss cake rolls. I think it's some sort of record for me. I've been feasting for the past few days.
Oh yeah, weirdest thing so far. A week or two ago on Sunday night I hear this really loud music outside and I think,"Oh, it's some sort of street party." So I decide to go outside and see what's going on. I go outside and the first thing I see is a guy with his arm around another guy. The first thought in my mind was,"I think the guy is hurt and his friend his holding him up." Not so much. It was a gay parade in Copacabana. I start looking around and seeing all kinds of crazy things, things you don't see in Falkville. It doesn't take me long to figure out what I've stumbled into and go back to my room. My buddy from church calls me and said he and his brother are going to get some ice cream so I said sure because it would be good to get away from the area for a little bit. I go to the Metro and the line is all the way out to the street. I've never seen it like that before. I then decide it's better to stay home. I wanted to go back and take a shower. The paper the next day said 1.5 million people were in Copacabana for it. Craziness!
