New Housemate

New Housemate

Well, this was an out of the blue nice suprise. I was hoping from a room mate and she dropped out of the sky. Her name is Zelia. She comes from a land far away. Fortaleza, Brazil. She likes to talk and is zealous. She has one interesting story after another. Her family was very opposed to her learning the truth. As her priorities shifted from money, to putting the Kingdom 1st her family became more and more infuriated. One night she came home from a meeting at the Kingdom Hall and her dad  threatened her, holding a machete to her throat, he swung it back and then toward her throat... but her mom stopped the fatal blow grabbing his arm and said "Don't kill that thing. If you kill that thing, you'll go to jail, and I'll go hungry." Zelia now had new priorities. Her dad 'would live and die' over a certain court case. Since she had started helping him with it though, every conversation had been about the case she told him, "I don't want to be your lawyer anymore, I want to be your daughter." She had given up half million dollar cases and finally freed her self altogether of her 5oo clients and started to travel where the need is greater for more people to preach the good news of the kingdom. She spent 7 months in Africa in Mozambique Angola and South Africa. While there every two weeks she was sent by the branch to help a different congregation with their sign language and stayed with special pioneers along the way. She said it was super filthy there and Angola was very expensive Even costing $5o.oo for a plate of food at the most simple restaurant. She likes to be close enough to her family that she can make a trip over easily if need be, and she wanted to learn English, so here she is, with me in Lethem, Guyana for the time being. We speak Portuguese in the house. That part is hard. Communicating in a different language is exhausting and I can really only manage a couple hours in a row but as I learn more, my energy to listen lasts longer and longer. I speak like a baby, jumping words and using bad grammer and am not understood a lot of the time. Its smoothing out, little by little. But heck, I get tired even of listening to English for hour after hour. Another thing thats different is that Brazilians are very social and love to do everything together, where as me, an American, who grew up in the counrty, appreciates that, but is inherently a more solitary creature. So we are trying to find our balance with that. It is nothing to do with personality, I love her personality and we have a blast together, but I just needed a little elbow room. That's bound to happen with anyone your sharing a tiny room with. The other day I was feeling like I needed a little space. I went outside and shut the door and got in the hammock, she came out and sat in the hammock with me and started talking. I just gave her a blank stare. She read me and went back inside, a few minutes later she came out and asked me "do you feel suffocated?" I told her that that was too strong of a word, but explained our above stated culture differences, plus the fact we were only communicating in Portuguese and I was feeling exhausted. Once we cleared that up things have been a lot easier for me and she's learned a lot of english already.  I can tell you right now I am going to learn a lot from her. She is an excellent teacher, and already a great friend and is good in the areas where I need help. We're making a good team. The budget alway stretches with an extra person around too so that's good. She is also a super go getter with exercise. She asked me if I would be her work out buddy. I said sure. She asked me about my routine. "Ideally, I said, I like to work out 3 times a week for a half hour each." She said, "The bear minimum acording to the publications, congradulations! My work out routine is one full hour 5 times a week. So how about we come to a happy medium of 1/2 and hour 5 times a week." Ugh! And she has up'ed it since then to every single evening. It feels good though. I feel like I'm sleeping better, thinking better, getting in shape, and hopefully putting off future diseases too! I call her Pharoh now cuz she cracks the whip about exercise. Zelia has made great sacrifices for the kingdom and has forgone much wealth to put preaching the good news first. Her family thinks she is a fanatic. She feels bad when she thinks about how her family dissaproves and doesn't understand her new focus in life. This makes me so happy to have a loving supportive family and friends that I can share my happenings with and who is proud of me. Thank you famliy for your support! And you go girl, Zelia, for doing what's right whether your family is behind you or not and everyone else out there who is doing the truth on their own too! 

This morning we went out to buy new flooring. it'll be only about $3o.oo for a lanolyum type thing the stuff we have now is so ripped up and nasty, it is quite an embarassment really, living shredded flooring, so it'll be refreshing to have a new floor. 

Since a new illustrated comic-strip-like Bible story has come out, that was our study with the kids. They really get into them and we like splitting up the parts and the kids read the lines from thecharacter they are assigned. The study ends with Miriam singing "Sing to Jehovah" so I asked a very zealous little newly baptized one where that song is in our song book, off the top of her head she immediately says "song 132" she and her twin sister are amazing. They have many of the Bible stories memorized and rattle them off in unison. The twins pride them self on memorization and often have their meeting parts memorized. They are amazing girls. So before the study I would sing them The Victory Song, song 132, and then at the end of the study, after they got the tune, we would all sing it together, and the kids really like it. Its neat when they're involved like that, and they're bright to pick up the tunes so quick!

Crystal the newly baptized twin during some modeling shots

I enjoy taking pictures a lot around here, it seems like there is always some new plant or animal to take a picture of. And some plants bloom out just for a few days before the searing heat of the sun body slams them back into the ground. But while the lillys were out I got some cool pictures. 

Lilly's we only out for a few days

Thanks for coming along, and please feel free to leave a comment. :) 

Cortny Vee