Amy in Brazil

I’m sitting at my desk. It’s a glorious Monday afternoon (I can see clear blue skies from my classroom windows), and I’ve just graded my first papers of the new academic year… It was a good day.

School officially started for the students last Monday, August 11th. And now with a full week completed, everyone appears to be settled in and ready to work. Even the sixth graders who spent last week entirely baffled by their class schedules managed to clear the hallways during passing period without too many confused cries of where to next…

I’m teaching six classes this year: 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th-grade English and 12th Grade Bible/Philosophy. My largest class, my eighth graders, has 13 students and my smallest class, 9th grade, has only 6. Yet, in spite of their size, they seem to generate a surprising amount of paperwork, though I imagine that they would argue that as my fault as I do insist upon giving them work to do…. I am thankful that the new year has had such a smooth beginning, and I look forward to the promises that it brings.

In addition to the work at the school, I have already reconnected with the two church- groups where I attend regularly. It looks like I will be helping out with the worship team at the International English-speaking church twice a month. And I’ve been working on the planning committee of the Covenant Church Plant group over the last few weeks, helping to organize for the immediate and potential needs of the church. We hope (me and a few other teachers) to have English and Portugeuse classes ready to go with that group starting in September. So I have many activities to look forward to that will keep my hands full.

But perhaps the greatest blessing in returning to Rio has been rejoining my friends here. A few weeks before the summer, I was eating dinner with a group of girlfriends (one from the school where I work, one in Rio with Word Made Flesh (a missions organization dedicated to ministering to the poorest of the poor), one here with Shell, and one native Carioca), and one of them said that it was amazing to be in a foreign country–pressed together with people because of common background and language–and discover that the friends that you’ve made are the friends you would have chosen anyway had you had unlimited options… I feel so loved, like God prepared a family and a community in advance for me here, and it was so delightful to come home to them all.

-Amy

Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen so that you may live.  Isaiah 55: 1 – 3