Our first Chapter

Our house is almost complete. Everyday we add more furniture. We finally have chairs…so we no longer have to stand.
Last Sunday we went to the store and got the beans and rice and pots and pans and plates and knives and forks and our Brasilian friend Leila told us how to make beans and rice. Then Tuesday we finally got our kitchen up and running. We have a fridge, a stove and the propane tank for the stove, so things are good. We were all getting pretty tired of spending so much money on food eating out every night and we can’t wait to start cooking Brasilian food. So Lance decided to give it the first attempt and it was an excellent meal…but enough to feed an army!! Kelly and I laughed that we would have to have some sort of rice soup for Chapter dinner on Wednesday. Kelly planned on stopping by the supermarket on the way home to get chicken and vegetables for our rice soup.
Unfortunately on the bus ride home she nearly fainted and needed to be helped off the bus by a team of Brasilians. The combination of the heat and not eating, and probably not drinking enough can be pretty dangerous. I stocked up on yogurt smoothes, (which are really good and full of real fruit). Anyway, so she didn’t get a chance to go to the store. By the time she got home it was around 7:30 or 8:00 and we were both tired and hungry. All we had in the house was rice and beans…some eggs and some broccoli. Lance said that we could order Pizza if we wanted, but we were determined to have soup for our first official Chapter. So he said that he would put something together. Kelly and I looked at each other and flashes of Fr. Gary’s stories of chapter in the old days came to mind. But, here we are as missionaries in Brasil, so lets give it a try. While Lance cooked Kelly and I said our office in our little chapel. We didn’t yet have an altar, or even a table, so we were bowing to the candles on the bins. When we were done the soup was ready…well almost, Lance said that the rice needed more time to cook but I was too hungry to wait any longer. Then Kelly looked at me and said, we don’t have any bowls. What?! How did we forget that? We also don’t have a ladle. We had one mug and little classes. So we used the mug for a ladle and we had our soup out of the glasses.
That was Wednesday. On Thursday both Kelly and I went out and bought bowls, so now we have plenty of bowls, which is a good thing since we finally have ice cream in the freezer too. Things are getting better.