Aaron and Marcele

Aaron set out for an adventure to Brazil with a rough time frame of four to six months. During this time in, he enrolled in various Portuguese schools and travelled to different parts of Brazil. He made the most of his time catching up with old friend that he had already made (in both Australia and Brazil) while getting to know the culture and language better. After this adventure he had a ticket booked to London with the idea of finding work there.

Five months into the trip he returned to Rio de Janeiro where it all began - this is where he stayed for two weeks on his first trip to Brazil in 2009. He planned to stay there for a month with friends. But as he didn't have any schedule and had finished official Portuguese classes he looked for a church where he could get involved in some volunteer work. He found one where he had the opportunity to help in a local favela and teach English to children.

It was through this church that he met a young lady named Marcele. The first time they met, there were a number of people talking at the same time. Marcele took pity on Aaron as she perceived he didn't understand too much of what was being said (Aaron also finds it hard to understand when multiple women are tailing at the same time in English). While their first encounter was relatively brief, Aaron was most impressed by her kindness and outgoing personality (not to mention her obvious beauty) and didn't say goodbye without asking for Marcele's email address. He sent her an email that night to which to this day she has not replied.

However, undeterred a couple of meetings later they managed to go out for dinner with another of Marcele's friends - Jessica. Miraculously Aaron's quick wit and corny jokes somehow managed to win Marcele over, they both thoroughly enjoyed the night and it wasn't too longer after that they commenced dating.

Aaron promptly postponed his trip to London in order to get to know Marcele better. The ticket was changed from September to November. When November came, the ticket was changed to January. A couple more changes took place and it was no longer possible to change the ticket any more, but so be it - there were more important things afoot.

Early in the new year Aaron persuaded Marcele to go with him on a picnic. She had various other ideas that day, but when he finally got her to the park and they had eaten he took the opportunity to get down on one knee and ask Marcele to marry him. She started to cry, but he was able to verify that this signified "sim" (that's Portuguese for yes).

So nine months after it began in May 2011, they plan to get married and - with the Lord as their rock - live together for as long as their lives on this earth should last.

Healing on the street

The other evening my fiancé Marcele had a meeting to go to. She didn't feel like going, but realised that it was important and went. Afterwards, on the way back she saw a woman on the street who was begging for money. Marcele decided to give her some money and talk to her about the Lord Jesus.

Something touched the women and she started to cry. She called her husband over and Marcele also talked to him. Before going she offered to pray for them. After she did this the man looked surprised. He revealed that he had had a pain in his chest for the last four days which prevented him from working, but the pain was now completely gone - he was healed! Marcele didn't even know about this when she was praying, praise the Lord!

One year in Brazil

One year ago today I arrived in Brazil. When I arrived I hardly spoke any Portuguese. The first four months were spent studying Portuguese in a few different language schools in different parts of Brazil. I decided to study in different locations to get to see more of the country - in hindsight I'm glad I did.

My Portuguese is now at a level where I can have a decent conversation. I can also tune into other peoples conversations, this was always a lot harder - it's one thing when someone talks to you slowly, but its another when two Brazilians are talking with each other at full pace with their full range of volcabualary. So its nice that I can now do this. Although I'm still not fluent, have a strong accent and can't understand everything, it's nice to have seen the improvement.

I had originally planned to stay here a maximum of six months. So what happened? Well seven months ago I met a lovely young lady by the name of Marcele at a church I started attending in Rio de Janeiro. Seven months on and I'm glad to say that we're engaged and planning our wedding!

I have tried to make the most of my extra time here and was doing some volunteer work in a favela, although now a lot of my time is being used as we plan towards the wedding and future travel plans!