Home Sweet Home

We are in Lisbon! After a year and a half of preparation and prayer, we are finally here! We arrived Friday night and were greeted by our entire team--3 couples and their collective 10 kids--as well as a Portuguese family who has basically adopted us in as family, the interim president of the seminary, and a Portuguese pastor. I doubt we'll ever be greeted by such a large, welcoming crowd again. We are overwhelmed with how welcoming and loving everyone was. We were given small gifts from our Portuguese family and then our teammates took us to our temporary apartment, which they had cleaned and put some groceries in to get us started. Afterwards, our entire team went to a local mall for dinner and coffee.

On Saturday, we slept in and unpacked some. Our hot water heater wasn't working, so Jonathan and I boiled water to take baths while we waited on our team leader to come and fix it for us. Yeah for hot showers again! That afternoon, some of our teammates who live in our same neighborhood took us exploring the neighborhood. We then walked across the park to their house and had dinner with them.

On Sunday we went to Queluz Church, where B. gave a testimony and J. preached. We had a community luncheon with the people there afterwards. Everyone was so nice and welcoming and encouraging--especially about B's little bit of Portuguese. She said a couple of sentences in Portuguese before switching to English and having J. translate, and everyone applauded instead of laughed.  :)

Today, we got to experience a Portuguese long line. Our team leader took us to get our tax id numbers. By time we got there, there were more than 50 people in line in front of us. It took a couple of hours, but we finally got our tax ids, which you have to have before you can set up bank accounts, get internet or utilities in your name, etc. We then stopped by the bank and opened an account here in Portugal.

The rest of this week and next week are designated for us to settle in and take care of setting up accounts, etc. before starting language school. Both B. and J. will take classes for awhile--B. to actually learn the language and J. to learn the culture. Our classes will be adjusted on a month by month basis--to see how much J. actually needs and for B. it will change monthly as she progresses in her pregnancy and Eliana actually arrives to give her time to adjust to the baby and life here.

Everyone has been wonderful. We truly feel comfortable here already--with all of our teammates and friends we've met so far. Pray for us to daily love the people, culture, and language more and for us to make friends. Pray for us to have opportunities to share our story with others and to truly get to know people in our neighborhood.