Ebenezers. Places where the Lord shows up. I like to mark them. Sometimes with actual rocks like Samuel, sometimes with screenshots of text messages, sometimes with pictures, sometimes in blog form. This past week was full of provision and I am so grateful.

I have been in Brasil ten weeks so far and have not gotten sick yet at all. My diet still does not consist of sugar so and I am very active here so it’s been good. Over a week ago though my neck swelled up for the first time. I spent the day in my apartment resting and felt better by that night. The following two days I felt good, went to a sleepover with 12 tiny girls and life was good. Woke up the next Monday with a headache, fever, and a neck the size of China. It was so swollen and painful I could not talk. Provision 1-one of the workers here had a microwave in his house and I asked him if I could borrow it to heat up a washcloth to create a hot compress. He immediately went to his house and walked his microwave over to mine and let me use it all day long. Provision 2-All day long I had house moms knocking on my windows asking me if I was okay or if they could do anything for me or if I needed anything. Provision 3-My friend who speaks English just happened to be spending 3 days at the orphanage this week--something that rarely happens but the timing was perfect! So she took care of me and I didn’t have to struggle to speak Portuguese to her. Provision 4-One of my favorite workers here came to my house to check on me and laid her hands on me and prayed for me over and over beautiful prayers in Portuguese. Provision 5-The couple that runs the orphanage had been in the States until now and came back this week...PERFECT timing. I am so grateful. They know doctors and the right hospitals and speak English and as much comfort as I felt from the workers here there was something good about being with Americans. Provision 6-I went to the hospital reluctantly but I was not getting better and was so tired of feeling so sick and in so much pain and not talking. Provision 7-I didn’t die in a Brasilian hospital! Doctors were great, there were great nurses, the doctor who did an ultrasound on my neck happened to be an infectious disease doctor who specializes in necks so he knew what he was looking at and looking for. Provision 8-after 10 days of feeling like total crap I finally feel better due to a very large amount of medicine I have been given. I am so grateful. Life is good. I go home in 7 days (get home in 8) and I have never been so excited for anything in all my little life. Here is good though. The right now is good. I have been writing a lot because I'm doing this pretentious thing called writing a book (memoir--which sounds more pretentious) and I wote an entry on www.dearstranger.org so I feel a bit written out and I'm still recoveing but I wanted to mark this significant place. and Called Me Highe by All Sons and Daughters is playing and I can't ignoe that song or not blog to it so here it came.