Favelas not Fables

Hey Everybody,

Thanks for your encouragement and support. Your prayers help in more ways than you can know. We finished the clinic with the team from Tennessee, we saw a crazy amount of people, I don't remember the numbers, but then again I don't care about numbers. Friday also started a 3-day rain fest that hindered our activities for the weekend, but it was good. The beach will just have to wait. I was able to sleep until 12:30 on Saturday, I haven't slept that late, maybe ever. It was good to recoup from a week of work.

Sunday night Michael and I went to a small favela church for a short evening service. By short, I mean 90 minutes. It was good because I finally got to hang out with some Brazilian kids. It amazes me that even at 22 kids still like me. I got asked all the important questions like, am I rich, do I have a girlfriend and who is my soccer team. On an aside, I am going to have to choose a soccer team very soon. There are 12 teams in Rio and everyone has a team they live and bleed for, much like college football. 75% of the men wear soccer jerseys down here. I was going to choose the team with orange and blue, but alas, there is not one. So I think I will go with the one best uniform or name. The short list of candidates are a team named after an animal(Flamingo), another is named for a famous Portuguese explorer (Vasco de Gama) and another has a name that I have no idea what it means, but it sounds cool (Flumenence). I am leaning towards the team that sounds cool, but I have yet to see their uni's.

Today we got to go to a favela, Rio das Pedras. We prayer walked for 3 hours this afternoon all around the favela. It was amazing to see how many people were crammed into such small area. The community was just like a mini-city. Its kind of like how micro-machines used to be. Everything was there but in a smaller scale. All the houses and shops are about 30x30 stacked on each other like building blocks. I have posted a few pictures of the favela and the past week.

BTW I have started the official ticker: Mark 1 Brazilian Women 0