Sunday at COL!

Today was a different kind of Sunday. We are used to waking up in the morning and heading out to church right away in the morning. Here in Brazil you can sleep in and relax on a Sunday because their church service starts at 7pm (this is my kind of culture)! In the morning we worked on finishing up our paintings in the gym. Luckily we were able to complete them after church tonight and the project is completed. It feels great to leave something beautiful behind for the kids to love.

For lunch today we went out to eat with most of the people who had helped us translate during the eye clinics. This was our way of thanking them for giving up their time to help us. The clinics would not have been possible without their help and willingness to serve.

We were once again fortunate to have beautiful weather here. Before arriving we heard that the weather was cold and that the previous group was extremely cold so we brough lots of warm clothes to wear. However we are having the opposite weather. Since we have been here we have only experienced one wet cold day and all the others have been beautiful. We feel extremely fortunate for what we have been given.

Tonight at church was an interesting expereince. The entire service was in portugese and there was no translator. If I am to be honest I didn't get much out of the sermon!!!! However I did get a lot out of the praise and worship band, when singing worship songs it doesn't matter what language it is in. We also had a great prayer time in the service where the whole congregation paired off and prayed for eachother. It was a neat experience praying with the kids from COL with us praying in English and them praying in Portuguese.

Today was also a sad day for us here. We realized that today was our last full day here at COL. We will spend most of our day here at COL tomorrow and then we will drive to Porto Alegre and fly to Rio. We have mixed emotions about the next part of our journey. We are exciteted to see more of Brazil and experience a different part of their culture, but we are also sad because we have to say goodbye to kids who have deeply touched our lives.