My Mom, America & Apple Pie

My mom will be here in less than 3 days! There is much excitement in this house! We're praying for pretty weather so we can show her around this beautiful country.

Today during our language class we struck up a conversation attempting to speak only in Portuguese. (Which we're supposed to do every class, I just always break that rule.) Our topic of discussion was "America". We told our teacher all about America and specifically the "American Traditions". You know.... homemade peach ice cream...apple pie....etc. About half way through the discussion I got a real yearning for my homeland. Not the little passing fancy I've had a time or two since arriving in Portugal, but a real strong tug in my heart to see the open highways, SUV's, McDonalds and Baptist Churches on every corner. To smell the clean smelling breeze instead of the fragrances that waft through here most of the time.

Our teacher was shocked that the average family in America DIDN'T eat rabbit, had a library where you could check out up to 35 books at a time, and owned an ice cream maker that costs less than 30 dollars. (They are about $150 here, IF you can find them.) We talked about how everything in America is done on a large scale. If you've never left The States, then you won't understand this, but America is a very unique place. Most Americans are very wasteful without even realizing it.

Mississippi has approximately 2,500,000 people. Portugal and Mississippi are about the same size. Only Portugal has about 11,000,000 people. So there isn't a lot of room for "large" things. The cars are tiny, the roads are narrow, the grocery stores are small and the people are short. Everything is very different....

Thanks for helping us pray about our paperwork. Today we made our 4th trip back to the office and finalized the details. We paid for all 7 of us and we're supposed to receive the cards in the mail sometime within the next 6 weeks. When we get them, we'll all shout and thank the Lord, then I'll take a picture of them and show you what all the trouble was about.

So what did you think about the surprise visit from my favorite guest blogger? Isn't he great?! Anyone up for a challenge? If you like to be featured as a "guest blogger, just send me an email.