sharing, and the strike

This morning at our briefing we learned we would be split up into teams and assigned to different facodajes (colleges) on campus for the rest of project on mondays and thursdays. My team consists of two freshmen and another senior, Andy.

Today was the first we were on our own to get to the USP campus using the public buses. My team got to campus after a ½ hour ride, and almost missing our stop. But we found our facodaje with no trouble- FEA, which is the business college.

Andy and I ended up as evangelism partners for the day. Both of us have colds so we were still tired and groggy at 11am, and I wasn’t very excited at all. In the first 15 minutes we talked with three people, one of which was not interested in hearing our views on Christianity, and two of which were interested but had class. We told them we’d be around for the next few weeks in FEA so they could talk with us if they wanted, or saw us wandering around. One of the students, Carolina, was very interested in talking with us, so we told her we'd be around at 130 when she got done with class.

We decided to eat lunch in Sweden, an expensive buffet on campus where they calculate how much to charge you by the weight of your plate (very cool), and ended up sitting with two Brasillian doctorate students, one of which was Catholic, one Agnostic. I shared my testimony, but we didn’t really get anywhere else spiritually. We talked with them for about an hour and learned a lot about Brasil, at least.

After that we just hung out and paced the building until 130. Carolina was still sitting there, and smiled when we walked up. For the next hour we sat with her and shared the Gospel with her using the Knowing God booklet that Crusade prints (everyone I’ve shared with so far has wanted an English copy, not Portuguese, which is pretty surprising). She believes in Spiritistism, which is kind of like reincarnation + Catholicism, in a way. She believes in God and Jesus and the Bible, but thinks we just keep living our life over and over and learn more and more until we hit perfection, or something like that. (this is a common belief on campus and in Brasil). As we shared with her, she understood everything we said and continued to ask questions and express interest in a relationship with Christ. At the end of the booklet we explained praying to receive Christ, and she indicated she would like to pray, but not in the public place we were at (Brasillians don't pray in public very much). I explained she could take the booklet and pray it later if she wanted to, but it was her decision.

An hour later, we had basically the exact same conversation with another student, Fernanda, in the same part of the FEA building. Pretty cool that in 2 hours we shared the Gospel with two students and both were interetsed in the idea of a relationship with God.

Some of the project students were supposed to go to the dorms but weren’t allowed inside, so we had 10 students sharing their faith in FEA for 5 hours – we couldn’t even walk through the building without seeing the little blue booklet in a Brasillian student’s hand. It was an awesome site to see.

As a sidenote, some of the facodajes do not have class right now because their students are on strike. USP is funded by the government, and is free for students who pass a very hard exam. Yep, college for free. It's cool because most students aren't really interested in hurrying through college, and they don't need to because they don't pay anything. Anyway, the strike is occuring because students and professors believe that they should receive more funding from the government. A lot of students believe something should be done, but not necessarily a strike. For our team, the strike limits the number of facodajes we can visit and evangelise in. Both good and bad - then we can focus on students in concentrated areas, but we would love to be able to spread out over the whole campus.

I think that's all for now ... hope any and all reading this are well.
Tchau!

Amy

my weekend in Brasil

Here is an update from Brasil for the past few days...

Thursday we met in the morning with the team, had lunch and discipleship and then partnered up when we got to campus and tried to talk with students. Me and two other students ended up talking with Eric (ereeek) for about an hour, and went through the knowing god booklet with him. We gave him a Portuguese copy but he read English fine so we gave him one of those then, too. It was cool to learn about him and what he thinks about things, especially that he is still deciding where he is in his own spirituality – he agreed with a lot of what we said about Jesus, God and sin. He kind of believes that there is one truth and then all the other religions lead to the same place, which seems to be a common North American belief. We had supper at a small restaurant in one of the facodajes (colleges)… amazing cheeseburgers! :] way better than the Maltese in Medora. :]

I feel like sharing on campus is like opposite as in the U.S. At USD, usually approaching people is ok, but the conversations don't go well because people don't care about spiritual things or don’t want to talk about it. Here it’s like once you get over the awkward “Excuse me, let me interrupt your fast-paced Portuguese and ask if you speak English?” the conversation is fine. Mainly, if they say they speak English they don’t, and if they say they know a little, they know a lot. We tell them we are touring brasil and want to learn about their culture. Then they look at us funny but talk to us for like an hour about stuff and we eventually ask them about their beliefs. It's a great system. All the students on campus HAVE to know English to get in, so that's good. all over the rest of the city, no one really knows English.

The language barrier is ok sometimes, not good at other times. Thursday night on the way home we found the bus we were supposed to take- it wouldn’t open it’s doors right away, but eventually it let us on. We ended up getting dropped off at the bus stop somewhere and they made us all get off and we had no clue what to do. Luckily a few people speak Portuguese decently so they figured something out with the bus driver.

We eat breakfast free all the time in the hotel. Depending on the day we either eat lunch or supper on campus - always at least one meal. The other we just go out to eat somewhere. We don't have a kitchen anywhere so we can't make food. One US Dollar is almost 2 Brasillians dollars (hay-ice) so we can buy a really good quality supper for about 12 hay-ice, which is only 6 US dollars.

Had a great weekend – Friday afternoon we hung out on campus and tried starting a game of ultimate- the only people interested in playing sports with us were a group of guys with a soccer ball so we did Brasil vs. America after they had all warmed up. And guess what….WE WON the first game! 10 minutes or 2 goals- we scored 2 before they scored any, I think. That night we as a team went out to supper and I had some amazing food – a huge piece of chicken, rice and beans, French fries and Maracuja, my new favorite drink. :]

Friday night we had community time – we all had to do skits. Basically ours was a musical about two students dating on project without the directors knowing - I played one of the directors (Londa). At the end of the skit the other 'director' was singing this love song to me because we were secretly in love the whole time ... I felt kind of awkward but it was funny.

Saturday a few of us went to the Eldorado mall and got starbucks and spent time in the Word there- the cashier spoke English, but I only found that out after ruthie ordered for me in Portuguese. :] After that a few of us went to the grocery store and I “almost got hit by a car” as everyone else says. It wasn’t that close. If it wasn’t for the ambulance a few cars back, I would have been fine.

Sunday morning we walked for about ½ hour I bet trying to find the right bus to take us to Calvary International Church, (English speaking). Once we found our stop it was another ½ hour by bus and we got there just in time. It was about 2 hours- a lot of standing up and sitting down, the music was decent, good message. A lot of people didn’t like it, but it reminded me a bit of Hillside. People wanted to visit a more charismatic church, so I think I might go with them next time just to see what it’s like. It will probably freak me out.

Sunday night we hung out as a team for 4 hours – spent time in worship, which I helped with (and was really missing!!) and just spent time getting to know each other. For the last hour or so we spent time in the Word in small groups. I was really tired and wasn’t looking forward to spending MORE time with the group. My small group consisted of me and 3 other guys I don’t know super well, so it was good for me to spend time with them. And I really enjoyed looking at examples of short term missionaries in the Bible and applying the things that I learned from the examples to my time here in Brasil and when I get back on campus. I will be a senior and needing someone to fill my shoes, and carry on the movement when me and my friends are gone, which is the same place Alfa e Omega (Cru) is at here at USP.

First day of sharing in aussie-land

Magically, I"m back on the internet again...but today we're in the shopping center, in the infamous library. So i thought i would share about our first day on campus today!
Our goal for the morning was just to talk to the Aussies about their lives...get to know the cool places to go in the country, ask them about brisbane, etc...nothing spiritual unless it came up. For that, Melissa, Lindsey and I went and chatted with a guy (Chris) and a girl (Em) for the entire morning and had lunch with them. Then in the afternoon we all did quest surveys. Melissa and I were getting a little discouraged because we couldn't find any good conversation areas to enter. But we went up to two women who had just got done eating and they declined our request to do a survey. However, the three girls in the next table over overheard our question and yelled at us that they wanted to do a survey. So we went through the Quest survey and had a great time with these girls (they're really funny) and made a lunch date with them in the Campus Pub on Wednesday. We were just encouraged to meet up with the people we meet again later so as to truely develop relationships. So I'm excited to hang out with them again, they're really fun, and they're not believers, but two of them are hoping that there is something greater than this life. So if ya'll could pray for Kate, Lauren, and Tegan that would be great. It's sweet to actually start a fun relationship with them and Melissa and I are just praying we can have the opportunity and ability to shine the light of Christ for them!
I need to get groceries now, the shopping center is about to close...
G'day ya'll! :)

PS - Court - no problem :) Love you, PP!

"I come from a land down under"

Hey all!! Alyssa here....(that was for Allison D. so that she knows this is my post:) ) First of all, I'm on timed internet and I only have seven minutes remaining so this may have to be short and sweet. A fun fact of information - It's sunday here, and as I write this it's only saturday in the states. Muhahaha...I'm basically in your future.
Anyway....the plane rides went well. We were on four different plane and it ended up taking about 24 hours altogether. Luckily, though, our longest flight was only a little over thirteen hours from San Fransisco to Sydney. We got here bright and early in the day. Jet lag isn't all that bad since we're so far around the world. We've all adjusted pretty well, considering the circumstances. We've spent our time so far touring the campuses and yesterday we went to down town Brisbane.
Funny story - I got seperated from the group when we went to get our library cards. They booked it out of the library when I was looking at a book...oops. I promise I was keeping an eye on them. But they didn't notice I was gone so I looked up and they were gone. We were in the library which is inside of a huge shopping center (NOT a mall), so I looked all over for them in places they may have been. Then I walked back to our Brisbane Holiday village about 3/4 mile away to try the phone numbers they had given us but none of them worked. So I cried a little, without any other options to try except to hang out in the BHV until late night when they got back. Thankfully, though, one of the guys ran all the way back when they realized i was gone and brought me back to the shopping center to find the rest of the group who was at the bus stop. It was a little traumatic, but it all turned out well. Nothing like being lost in a city of millions without any way to contact anyone. It gave me a better understanding that this wasn't America anymore.
So once i caught up with the rest of the group, we met for discipleship time downtown, explored a little bit, and then the Student Lifers (Student Life is their "Cru") threw us a barbie (Barbeque) so that was really fun to get to know some of them. It was a little intimidating, but they're so much fun.
We've been learning that evangelism here has no hope unless it's relational. It's a huge step up from what we would call relational evangelism even in the states. Basically, if you share the Gospel with them the first time you meet them, that's great....but you're probably never going to see them again. They need to know that they can trust you and that you really care about them. Australians inauthenticity, so they would not be receptive at all to Americans trying to force something on them. American doesn't have the best conotation to it - they don't idoloize us at all, like we hear other countries may do. In fact, since they watch American TV, they pretty much know everything about our culture. It's important for us to not act better than them, etc... Americans and Aussies are the same in that they both think their countries are better than the other.
We're also learning a lot of terminology - like "good on 'ya" means "good job/way to go"..."Uni" for "university"..."major" is acutally more like a "speiclization/emphasis"....they have first-year, second-year, etc. not freshmen, sophomore, etc....So I would be a fourth-year student at Uni with a degree in Psychology majoring in Disaster relief and response.
Everything here is about twice the price that it would be in America. A box of mac and cheese is 2.50...ehh. Some things are the same though, like pasta is still 50 cents. I was eating cream cheese and a bagle a couple of nights ago and I noticed the cream cheese was a little bland, so I looked and saw that it was actually a "cream cheese/cottage cheese blend". AKA - it was mostly cottage cheese. Australia is also in a VERY severe draught, so we want to be cautious of that. Very severe meaning 10-12 year draught. Brisbane is at a 10% water supply level and they aren't allowed to wash cars, water their grass, take more than a four minute shower, etc.

Our Brisbane Holiday Village (BHV) is GREAT! The cabins (units) that we live in are really, really nice. They're small, but super cute. And the staff is great...we've gotten to know our housekeeper pretty well. She's originally from New Zealand and is the nicest lady. Actually, everyone here is MUCH nicer than Americans, as a generalization. The people are great, pretty much.
I've been blessed with really great roommates, they're great. We're getting along really well, so far.
We'll be actually starting ministry on campus tomorrow, so I'd love your prayers for that! We're all excited to actually start the reason we've come for. Hopefully next time I blog I'll have a lot more to say about that.
Well this is getting really long - thankfully one of my roommies just let me borrow another $2 coin to extend my internet time so that ya'll can have a very comprehensive list of what's up with me :)
Dan and Jordan are doing well, too! (I think anyway) I don't see them most of the time, usually only during group activities, but they've been doing all of the same things I have, so they'll probably just agree with everything I said.
Thanks for all of your prayers and support! Love you all! Please leave a comment and say hello :) (I would actually prefer this to facebook....less Internet roaming for me)

Flight & First Impressions - Brasil

After a few days of team meetings and preparation for our summer, the Brasil Summer Project left Minneapolis at 2pm, arrived in Atlanta around 530pm. I bought my last mountain dew for 6 weeks. :( Flight was smooth. We grabbed some supper and took off for Sao Paulo at 730pm. As I stepped into my row I was greeted by a screaming child two rows away. Great. Once we got in the air we watched Music & Lyrics, (it was ok). Didn't sleep, along with the rest of the team, which left us all incredibally grogging, stumbling around the Sao Paulo airport at 6am, trying to find the money exchange. Prime targets for theft - tho, no problems.

As a project are reading ‘Calvary Road’ to discuss in discipleship groups periodically. Looks like it focuses on brokenness, repentance and confession - I’m excited to read it and grow in those areas. Right now it’s focusing on the Spirit and the choice we have to keep ourselves walking in its’ power, along with preparing our hearts to be broken by God- because He won’t unless our hearts are ready and in the right place. Good stuff.

I am on the operations ministry team (1 of 4 teams we have) – just me and Ruthie so that’s cool. Looking forward to using some talents I have and doing things I love, like handling and tracking project money.

We are staying in a hotel for our time in Brasil and I have two other roommates- Megan from Rhode Island and Vanessa from Florida. Excited to hang out with them and get to know ‘em better. They’re pretty cool!

Our basic schedule is team meeting in morning to prepare for day, ministry on campus for 6-7 hours, then meeting at night with bible study, discipleship group or ministry team. Saturday’s are COMPLETELY off which is pretty awesome. And Sunday’s I think we have the afternoon off after church. Heard the church we’re going to is pretty crazy compared to what I’m used to. Not sure what that means, yet!

One surprising thing I’ve found is that a LOT of people on the team are very musical. Excited to jam with people (tho I did leave my guitar at the Crusade Office in Minneapolis b/c there are two others going with us). I’m not officially on the worship team here but will help out if needed.

First impression of Brasil ... dirty. graffitti. what's up with this RAIN!?. why is the sun setting at 5? oh yeah it's winter. holy cow, people really do kiss each other hello here. and goodbye. not knowing portuguese isn't going to get me super far. the students are awesome to talk to, and are usually interested in (North) Americans. we have to do WHAT with the toilet paper?

More to come! Boa Noite-

Amy (as the Brasillians say, 'ahh meee')

sao paulo brasil!

back on the USD Summer Project Blog again! It's interesting to read last summer's blog posts and crazy to realize that I will be in Brasil in a few days ... far far from Medora and Vermillion and the FH. Medora was so awesome. Time for another challenge, another test of faith and another summer of intense growth and amazing experiences. can't wait! I'll probably be posting things here this summer, as I will have my laptop and regular internet access. some things may be posted on my regular blog - http://ordinarylogic.blogspot.com.
As a sidenote, I'm still working on support, so the next time you find yourself in prayer, send one up for me if you think about it.
tchau!

~amy

A new summer, a new world

Hey ya'll!!
Welcome back to the lovely USD Summer Project Blog. Things have changed since last summer, though, because we have some males going on project also...so excuse the "summer project ladies" sign-in, please :) I tried to change it, but I don't think I can.
I'm just starting to pack for Australia. Wow...three days!! Well, I actually have to be packed by tomorrow to go home for a day or so, then the three days will put us all in Minneapolis!
So I'm planning on doing about the same thing on this blog that I did last summer, hopefully even more so since I'm not planning on having a phone or a TON of internet access...so that's the deal. I'd love for you to say hello in a comment if you read a post or two :)
Hope you all have a wonderful summer!