Saturday- final day of English camp

Today was very bittersweet. This was our final day of our English camp and we all were looking forward to this day because we will soon be heading home, but also we don't want to leave the people that we have created amazing relationships with.Our day started very early because we were making an American breakfast for the Brazilians. Gene, Scott, Anna, Terri, and Logan all prepared pancakes and eggs for all of them to try. Pancakes were made from scratch which meant the process started days ago when the ladies went out shopping to prepare for the food. Gene calculated the ingredients for 200 pancakes.

The kitchen was nothing like we are use to in the U.S. There were propane stoves lit with a match (no ignighters), and no griddle to cook the pancakes on. This meant trying to find frying pans that could be used which wouldn't burn the pancakes. We had several sacrificial pancakes as we were trying to get the hang of how the pans worked. Eggs were made in a pan the size of a small bathtub... just kidding, they were made in very large misshapen pans, which would cost much to replace. Many of the Brazilian enjoyed the food, but a lot of them did not want to put syrup on them because they did not know how it would taste. Following breakfast we began our activities which included more stories of life in America by team members.

Next we had 6 different activities for the teams to rotate through. The activities included: Ultimate Frisbee, Mafia, I have never, charades, pictionary, and uno. They have never heard of Ultimate Frisbee, so it was a fun and entertaining thing to try and teach them. It was hard to play many of the games because some groups had beginners in English, and that was the language that they needed to use (it was very fun though).

After all of the activities, we "took" them on an American picnic. We ate hamburgers, potato salad, beans, and jello. We also had Coca-Cola to drink for that too. One small glitch we had when making the burgers was that the frozen patty's wouldn't come loose from the foil. After all the work getting the foil off of the patty, we were finally able to start cooking them on a small makeshift grate, outside the kitchen. Everything came out tasty, so the extra time cooking them was worth it. When many of the Brazilians were eating their burgers, we noticed that almost all of them wrapped them in napkins, we learned later that when they eat they don't want to get their hands dirty, which is so different from what we use napkins for, but they did enjoy eating it :). Following the lunch we had more American stories.  This prompted many questions about our Christian life.  One question included asking of why we were wearing the wordless bracelets.  This gave a great opportunity to clearly share the gospel.  What a great blessing this was for us.  Following this we had more activities including a scavenger hunt. At the end of our time together we all got to make homemade ice cream. The process for making this included: the ingredients inside a bag, and that bag inside another bag with ice and salt. This was a chance for the Brazilians to experience Minnesota cold. It was very shocking on how cold it was, and many of them couldn't handle it.  This time ended our retreat.  As we said earlier, it was bittersweet.  Many pictures were taken and email and facebook addresses were exchanged.  We want to thank God for the new friendships we have made and the lives we have had to share our faith in Christ with.  Please continue to pray for our new friends as we pray that the ministries here in Brazil might have in the days to come opportunity to contact some of them and that some of the English students will contact the churches here and get in touch with the Leonards.