Posing

Kara Korthals posing with the very-well-protected cello. Gil, her dad, wins the "best packer award" having beat out Ken, who previously held this prestigious title, which is only awarded to travelers bound for Brazil. I am sure it will be included as an Olympic sport in the next summer games.

Here I am posing with the now unprotected cello. To be honest with you, I am not even sure I have the right posture and everything, but I have managed to play almost all the songs in the first Suzuki book. Just waiting for someone to come along to tell me that I am not doing this right.

Ken is posing with his new hammer drill. Yes, it actually did break up that strip of concrete. Talk about a lean, mean machine. Ricardo, behind him, is showing us how to do it the "old" way. Notice both these guys, who each own a pair of boots, are wearing their flip-flops. Don't come running to me if you chop your leg off.

VACATION 2007

Anabel at the National Park Serra da Capivara









Several years ago we decided that our kids were growing up too fast and before we knew it they were going to be gone. If we wait for the "right time" when everyone can appreciate a family trip, that time may never come. Right then and there it became official...family vacation during our school break in July. Come what may, our plans were to stick to it no matter what.

Since then we have visited many, many friends, gone to 5 national parks, met many new people and have had some surprising and fantastic experiences that were never planned or imagined.

This year we put on another 3000k on our car just to make it to 2 national parks in the state of Piauí. It took us three days to get there. Each night we stayed at friend's homes along the way. Once we got to the park, we stayed in a hotel. After seeing everything we wanted to see (and our time was up!) we made the trip back to Fortaleza in two days, but, boy, were they two really long days! It was all timed so we could pick up Ron and Ranelle and family at the airport on their way back from furlough. After 10 days we walked into our dusty, but very familiar home...the best part of the trip!!! Here are some of our highlights.



The Ribeiro Theater was built in 1860 by a Frenchman living in the area. The doors were closed, so Anabel suggested that we each stand in a doorway for a picture.

The girls enjoyed riding horses at a friend's house in Ceará (something we never expected doing on our trip).


We celebrated turning 140,000 K the 2nd day of vacation.

Translated, the sign says "hell"...where in the world is this leading us?!?!?


This is where we ended up...go figure!



Jessica got to try her hand at the potter's wheel at a small factory just outside the national park. The factory's purpose is to employ the locals and teach them a trade. We bought a few of the pieces at the end of the tour.

Right before my eyes should appear? A playground!!! Anabel couldn't appreciate any more of God's Creation till she had a chance to climb over everything. :)

Some of the thousands of Indian paintings we saw on the rocks.

And finally...the "monkeys" that were observed wandering all over the park!

9 Women and 2 Guys

Abby, Erin and Jessica (in the back) and Kara (in the front) just after stepping off the plane

They came and went. It was a fast and furious 12 days right at the end of our first semester and into the first week of vacation. Gil and Kathy came from Bondurant, Iowa to spend their vacation with us. I spent some of my growing up years with Gil in George, Iowa, and was in their wedding many moons ago. Their first daughter is named Jessica and so is ours (pure coincidence!)

Ken and Gil loading up the van. Kathy wasn't sure we would be able to fit all the stuff and everybody else into the van. Everything and everyone got stuffed into the vehicle. Three hours later we were able to breath again. :)

Gil and Jessica were here 4 years ago and helped with some construction and English at ALPHA. Just so they wouldn't feel bad, we managed a bit of construction for Gil again and gave Jessica a chance to teach some English. All four girls helped with music at school and church, taught English, corrected tests and workbooks and entered grades (just to name a few).

Gil pulling buckets of concrete up the pulley to pour the second half of the roof at school.

After school got out, we visited 3 beaches, climbed and then ran down a very large sand dune, squeezed in a dune buggy ride, did some shopping and ate lots of good food (some of which they brought and made!!!) I still have a couple boxes of mac and cheese, a can of mushroom soup and a can of corn on the pantry shelf. Thinking of when might be the perfect time to use them!

Then there was the Geo Cache...make that TWO Geo Caches. We were sent on a goose chase with a GPS into a (just slightly) restricted area to find the "treasure". If you are even remotely curious, check out the official web site @ http://www.geocaching.com/ This gave them their first foreign country in the"high-tech" hunt for hidden treasure. The entire Stucky family was enthralled with the whole thing, especially Anabel, who got to pick out something from the treasure "jar".

The Korthals crew and our girls on a look-out point over the Atlantic.

Finally, they were on the plane, the van was a lot emptier and things were a little too quiet. We watched the plane take off and then headed on to the rest of VACATION 2007....

Stay Tuned!

The Day I Fought With a Shoe

Clara, our little black dog...not to be confused with a shoe.

Let me just say...it has been a long week.




You know it has been a long week when...

• you try to run Friday's schedule on Thursday. I tried to teach a class to the wrong students.


• things are breaking as fast as you can touch them. The most interesting ones were the mixer that went wazzo just before the program, the flat tire on the van while trying to take a borrowed mixer back to where it belonged after the program and Ken's neck that still hasn't recovered from the trauma of putting on the spare tire. (mixer: a piece of sound equipment)


• you finally manage to squeeze in Tuesday's Date Night on Wednesday at 9:30 pm. We made it home by 10:15 pm...record time!


• you can't remember the last time you cleaned the bathroom. (So why am I sitting at the computer?!?!?) Hey, at least I have been keeping up with the dishes and the clothes.


• you try to scold a shoe...Ok, so that's gotta be the wierdest of them all.

It was 5:30 am and I was taking a load of laundry out to the porch where the washing machine is. We have had trouble with the dogs trying to sneak into the house when they think we aren't looking. The door doesn't always get closed. Hmmm. And wouldn't you know it...here was the dog all curled up just inside the door AGAIN! Well, before I made too much of a ruckus, I did check it out a little closer. You see, the sun hadn't come up yet and it was still quite shadowy in the house. Turns out that the "dog" was one of the kids' black school shoes that didn't make it all the way to the bedroom.

So far in this very-long-week we have made it through two special programs back to back. More people than you can imagine packed out the sports court for the lower elementary Cultural Expo on Tuesday night. The following evening, the Jr. High kids who played in the recital received a standing ovation after playing their closing number, the Brazilian National Anthem. Ken, along with 19 other guys, did the BIG POUR back on Monday. Will finish the rest of it next Monday. The tractor that has been in the shop for 4 weeks finally came home. The guys have been hauling and cleaning and hauling and cleaning ever since.

Before the POUR: Steel laid out on top of the styrofome that enabled us to have a much larger span without columns in the middle of the downstairs room.

About the middle of the POUR...the plan was to do the largest section this day and save the other part (a section about 20% smaller than the first) for another day.

Hey, getting close to done, but it was about to get dark...sunset was only minutes away. They worked till about 7 pm with some make-shift lighting.

The following morning gave us a good view of the finished product. Now we wait 30 days before we can build on top and start pulling out the supports below.

Still to come this week: guests from the States. Ken and I are leaving to spend Friday night near Fortaleza and then plan to be at the airport super early to pick up a family of 6 who will be spending the next 10 days with us. This is extra special for us, because most people who come to visit leave most of the family home. This entire family is coming and all their children are GIRLS!!!! I could almost feel sorry for the men, but I won't. :)

Mother Boards and Baby Carrots - Part II

Last month I wrote about my crockpot and how much I was missing it. (see: Mother Boards and Baby Carrots - Part I) Some time before that Ken had dismantled it after it was discovered that it wasn't working. I suspected a short in the wire. He mysteriously wisked away the outer part of the thing while the naked insides sat on my counter for about 3 weeks. I finally gave up and put it back in the pantry thinking that it might never get put back together.

Probably two days after I had given up on it, I found something glowing in the dark on the shelf in the pantry. What do you know...it was the crock pot...put back together and painted...yellow? Hmmm... Someone made a flat out judgment call and bluntly stated, "It's ugly".

Ok, fine. I will have had it a full 18 years in August (wedding gift). As long as it works, I don't care too much what it looks like, but it kinda did need a little help. Then I remembered those cute acrylic stickers that I had been saving to decapoge something special. After debating for about five minutes where to put the first one, it dawned on me that I probably couldn't make it look any worse than it already did. With no inhibitions left, it took less than a minute to get all those pretty little flowers randomly placed on the front and sides of the canister.

So next time you are in town, don't forget to stop by for lunch. I will be sure to prepare it "à la crock pot" in style.

Cleaning UP!

There was an attempt to get everyone in order youngest (top) to oldest (bottom), but some of them didn't quite figure it out. Bosco, 4th from the bottom by the rail, is turning 40 this Friday. Now I won't feel so bad when it is my turn later in the year!

This morning (Sunday) we had about 25 people out at the church mowing, scrubbing, sorting, sanding, raking, hoeing and EATING!!! Starting with breakfast at 6 am, we worked through till 9 am and ended with a prayer time. It was beautifully cloudy with a nice cool breeze.

The rains have continued a little longer than we anticipated (no one is complaining here!), so the weeds are still wanting to take over, thus the mowing, hoeing, weed-wacking, and raking. The bathrooms always need attention and the Sunday School cabinet was needing a sorting through. Some of the younger girls provided us with constant music by singing at the top of their lungs as they sanded those little holes you see above everyone's heads. ;) Everyone was happy with the progress that was made in such a short amount of time.

Pray Without Ceasing

Just got back from our 24 hour prayer chain that started at 5 pm yesterday and ended at 5 pm today. This was decided just this last Saturday night at our leadership meeting. Even being put together at the last minute, I counted 29 people who came to participate. 10 came just for the last 1/2 hour to close the time. I can't count all the people who got prayed for. Only HE knows that.

This is how it worked...

• A sign up sheet was made with 24 - 1 hour blocks.
• People signed up for the hour that worked best for them. Several slots had more than one person praying.
• Designated prayer place: Mom and Dad's little guest house.
• When the new hour started and the new person showed up at the "prayer" place, the people already there praying would pray for the new one coming in.
• People wrote requests on the white board that they wanted others to pray for, left pictures, scribbled messages and notes, etc.
• There was a missionary corner with a copy of Operation World (in Portuguese), a world map, picture of our church's missionary and missionary letter.
• Another table had members of our church on pieces of paper that would get rotated so everyone would get prayed for.
• The method was up to the prayer: sit, stand or kneel.
• Coffee, water and hard candies helped keep the late night/early morning prayers awake.

A tiny little church out in the bush has helped inspire this event. They started with a 24 hour prayer chain like this and then took the plunge to pray from 5 am Palm Sunday to 5 am Easter Sunday (a full week around the clock) this year. Ken and I participated in one hour of that. That one hour went by so fast I could hardly believe it.

Now that I think back, there were several other times I have participated in something similar. In Bible college we had an all night prayer vigil. Several years ago a few of us did 24 hours of prayer and fasting.

I am praying that each person who participate will be changed...at least enough to realize that in spending time with Jesus Christ, it isn't enough to say, "Hey, God, just checking in with you to let you know that I am awake for the day and headed out the door again to everything that is so terribly important and demanding in my life. So keep me safe and my family, too, and I'll check in with you again tomorrow, amen."