We had a wonderful Thanksgiving here in Rio, even though we are missing our families during the holidays.

Our Thanksgiving festivities started at school, where my American History class and I celebrated by reading historical Thanksgiving documents, including George Washington’s and Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamations. The kids brought in desserts to share after the school cafeteria’s Thanksgiving turkey lunch, and I baked them a pumpkin pie, since most of them had never tasted one before. Then, we watched Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving, in true American tradition.

After school, we were invited by our friends Rhonda and Chris to their family’s Thanksgiving celebration, where we ate far too much Cajun-style turkey, stuffing, and pie with some fellow teachers and friends from church. It was a great holiday, and we are thankful that we had wonderful friends to spend it with.

Yesterday we were fortunate enough to attend the 33rd anniversary concert of a friend’s singing group. Our friend Julio Carvalho, from Union Church, has been a member of the Sons of Israel (Filhos de Israel) men’s octet, a group that travels around to churches in southeastern Brazil performing inspirational music.

The concert was at a little Baptist church about twenty miles outside of Rio–just imagine your church stuck out in a crumbling suburb, surrounded by green hills, bicycle shops, hamburger carts, and laundry hanging from people’s balconies. Add peeling paint, wooden slatted pews, and a picture of a waterfall painted on the back wall of the baptistry. We were the only English speakers there, and the service was entirely in Portuguese. It lasted from 7:30 to 11 PM. It was wonderful.

There were four singing groups other than the Filhos de Israel, including a large men’s choir, another men’s group, a quartet of young men who sang some very cool modernized hymns and some old Michael W. Smith in Portuguese, and JeVi, a mixed septet whose name stands for Jesus e Vida, Jesus is Life.

One of the greatest blessings of being here is seeing Jesus praised by so many different kinds of people. Going to church last night with Julio was one of the highlights of our time here so far. His wife and daughters and some grandchildren were there, as well, and we had a great time after the service trying out our Portuguese and licking cake off napkins in the Brazilian style.

Two events, back to back, broke up the standard school calendar for us at the end of last week. On Friday, we had the first high school service day. These are days set aside to practice service to the communities and various organizations. We did a project the school had done last year–creating Christmas ornaments and other decorations that will be sold at the Christmas Program on December 5. The money raised will go to a ministry in nearby Niteroi that works with street kids and their families.

Then on Saturday we had the Family Fun Fest, an annual school carnival that raises money for the PTSA. It was a fun day, but hot and tiring–we’re only just now recovering from our missing Saturday.