swimming........

last night at grupo familiar I was talking with one of the ladies about me wanting to go into Lisbon today and she told me that there was suppose to be a storm and that there was a yellow warning for the weather. But I thought, "Hey, a little storm can't be that bad...right..." I woke up early this morning and got ready and peaked out the window and I thought there were only grey clouds so I headed out. I had a pretty cute outfit on too! I was wearing brown khakis a cute top that I stole knowingly from a friend and brown close-toed shoes. Once I stepped out of the apartment building I realized that the grey clouds were also leaking moisture everywhere!.....as in raining...just in case you didn't get that! I had the little voice inside of me say, "maybe you should forget about this and just go back inside," but I decided that I could brave a little rain. Hello duh! I go to school in Oregon!

I hopped on the bus got to the metro station and road into Lisbon and as I went up the stairs from the metro I realized that everyone was standing inside the building and nobody was leaving. When I got close enough to the rain I realized it wasn't just raining it was doing something 5,000,000x worse! I stood by the door for a while and realized it wasn't slowing down so I decided to brave the rain. Once I got to the street I realized that I had to cross a 4 ft. wide creek on each side of the street but I figured no big deal that will probably be my biggest problem and plus I really wanted to go to the Fado museum. In Lisbon there is a main street that is closed to all automobiles and is strictly a foot traffic street. This street was no longer walkable because it was now a rushing river! Once I saw the river in the street I decided I just needed to call it quits and head back home. I probably ended up walking about 75 yards away from the metro station before I decided to turn back. By the time I got back to the metro station my pants were soaked...actually my whole body was soaked! I had an umbrella but it was raining so hard that the umbrella didn't stop much of the rain.

I got back on the green line to head back to Campo Grande where I could catch a bus home but there are about 9 stops between where I was and my last stop. We were about three stops into the trip when I realized that we were sitting at this stop for quite a while! We sat in the metro for about 20 minutes before they told us to get off and then we sat outside of the metro for about another 10 minutes before they kicked us out of the metro station completely so we were back on the rainy street in the middle of Lisbon somewhere! All I could think was, "Passa por Vialonga?" I wanted to call the Fairbanks and tell them that I was stranded in Lisbon but I decided to figure it out on my own. So I started walking until I found a bus stop that might have taken me back into the downtown area of Lisbon. While standing and waiting forever for the next trolley or bus to come I saw a little old lady go down the metro station stairs and I waited to see if she would come back up but she never did! I was so excited I could actually make it home!! I was able to catch a metro and eventually got home!

By the time I got home I was starving and freezing! I changed and went down to the cafe and had some super delicious pork with beans and rice. Beans and rice in Portugal is very different then what we get at a mexican restaurant. The beans are usually cooked together and are usually on the saltier side. I think the main lady at the cafe is starting to like me and my abilities to fumble through Portuguese....or atleast she is always happy to help me. After lunch I hoped in bed and burled up in all of my blankets until I could get warm again. By the time I got warm I realized that it stopped raining and if stopped raining in Vialonga then it definitely stopped raining in Lisbon...yep that is how my brain works!

I got dressed again hopped on the bus got to the metro station and went to get my 24 hour pass that I had bought earlier out and realized that I left it at home! So I had to buy another 24 hour pass! By the time I got into Lisbon I decided to run to the shop I needed to go to before heading to the museum because they were suppose to be open till 9 or 10 pm. I walked to the museum and got lost on the way in typical Diane fashion and by the time I got to the museum it was 5:45 and they had already locked the place down because they were closing at 6 pm!

So with all those adventures I learned to listen to that little voice in the back of your mind that says, "maybe you shouldn't do this!" Because mine was definitely saying it every time I went somewhere today and I didn't listen once!

Well that was today.....hopefully tomorrow will be better and drier!

Peace Out!

Little update about my parents: Everyone is out of the hospital and they are all now at my house having a gimpy party everyday! Please pray for continuing recovery!

Prayer Request

I just wanted to write a quick note to everyone that may read this. On Saturday night my grandma Ruth and her friend Irene were flying back from a hiking trip in Utah. My parents went to pick them up at the airport and on the way home the car was in a three car accident. From what I have been told it sounds like my parents' car was t-boned by a large delivery truck and the truck by another car. The jaws of life were used to cut the doors off of the drivers side of the car and everyone was taken to the hospital. (If you live in Salinas and were watching KION 10pm news you may have seen a quick little blurb about the accident.) My mom and grandma were taken to Natividad hospital in north Salinas and my dad and Irene were taken to Memorial hospital which is about a couple blocks from my house in south Salinas. My mother was released from the hospital that night with a large bump above her eye and very colorful black eye. My dad is still in Memorial with 6 broken ribs and hooked up to a morphine drip, although the hospital is hoping to release my dad maybe today, Tuesday, or tomorrow. My grandma is still at Natividad but she is only being monitored for aches and pain because she is pain from the accident. I don't know currently what is going on with Irene but if I hear anything I will let all of you know.

It is difficult for me to be so far away from my family when something so scary happens at home but if I want to work on the mission field full time then I need to learn to trust God when it comes to these types of situations. I really feel like God is trying to teach me to rely on him during these situations because unlike when I am in the states I cannot run home at the drop of a hat.

Please pray for a quick recovery among my family and comfort for me and the rest of my family during this time.

American Invasion!

Thursday night I met a group of American college students that are doing basically a semester abroad program and Portugal was their first country on their multi country trip. There was about 20 students in total and there was a small group that I really connected with. The next day they were going to be going to Belém to have pastries and tour around the area and I was invited to join them. We enjoyed a nice breakfast of pasteis de Belém and coffee. Afterwards a group of us broke off and I became the tour guide of the water front for my small group of four students. Most tour guides in Portugal have some kind of random thing that they hold up in the air so that their group can follow them, usually an umbrella, fan, or fake flower. So, in tour guide fashion I had a starbucks bag, because I had bought a togo cup, that I walked around the water front holding it above my head whenever we were going to be continuing on in the journey or when we were passing another group. 

I took my group to the important monuments such as the Navigator monument and the tower of Belém. Because I had been to both locations before and have done some research on the monuments I was able to give cool facts like the Navigator has one female on the monument and the tower was actually built by Muslims and was used as a jail that held people like the King of Spain. It was really fun and I had a great time showing the group different things that I had learned about since being here in Portugal. I love it when you are given the opportunity to help other people and by doing so you realize just how much you have learned from the trip.

After we walked the water front we rejoined most of the group for lunch at a restaurant. Many restaurants have a huge outdoor seating area where you sit and eat your lunch, so we enjoyed our lunch under an outdoor tent. Just about everybody at my table ended up getting sardines even me! I am not usually a very big fishy person, except for sushi, but I have began to enjoy seafood more since being here. When you order sardines there are two basic ways that you can get them, the first being grilled and the second being sautéed. If you decide on the grilled sardines then you get about five 6” whole sardines and it is then your responsibility when you begin to eat them to remove the back bone and bones attached to it, the tail, and the head; usually you can do this all in one piece. The grilled sardines are then served with a couple small boiled potatoes.

 If you decide to get the sautéed sardines then you are going to get about 6 filets that have been breaded and then cooked and it is usually served with a very healthy serving of a beans and rice mixture. I decided to go with the grilled sardines because it was a go big or go home situation. Besides having to debone and see all the insides of the fish I actually really enjoyed it. It reminded me of tuna in flavor but not so much texture. Along with our fish we got a salad, olives, bread, a drink, and a dessert of our choosing. I chose a DELICIOUSSSSSS chocolate mousse. 

When we were done with lunch we decided to walk up a huge hill to the palace of the last King of Portugal. It was so amazing and so beautiful and I so wanted to take pictures of things but unfortunately they didn’t allow photography and their were people sitting in every room “to answer your questions” but I am pretty sure they were there just to make sure that we didn’t take any pictures. In one room we met a French woman who worked at the palace and wanted to so badly to answer our questions that we didn’t really have any to ask so instead she just started telling us random facts about the different room. One room she told us about was the banquet room on the next floor that is still in use to this day for presidential parties and President Obama is going to be there in November!  Booya! We were pretty excited to see a room that the president would be enjoying a dinner in next month! I guess I will be going to Belém everyday next month. Maybe I can give Obama a tour also!

At 3:30 we had to meet back up with the rest of the group because some people wanted to go back to their rooms because they were going to be leaving for London early the next day. However I had a group of three that wanted to go into Lisbon with me so we headed to Lisbon and I showed them the main free sites of Lisbon. We walked up a hill to the oldest church in Portugal and also to a cool shop that sells pieces of art made by artists in the area. We then walked around the main walking street and met a guy from Poland that was setting up to do his street mime show. He was a very interesting character and we wanted to see his performance but after about 15 minutes of watching him set up we decided to move on. We headed to the top of another hill to go to my favorite t-shirt shop and on the way we got a bag of freshly roasted chestnuts which were amazing! I think I might have talked about the t-shirt shop before but it is a shop of a different Lisbon shirts that have been designed by young artists. The shirts are really awesome and are not the usual tourist shirt.

 I helped my group of Americans by their train tickets and sent them on my way and I ran to another station to catch a metro to a different train station where I was heading to Cascais, which a beach town. I was meeting my group of youth from Vialonga there with a couple other leaders to have a beach day. The girls and I went and walked in the water a little bit and we went exploring for cool shells. There were tons of mussels along the rocks. We also had a fun game of 2 truths and a lie. Where most of the students made their lies so crazy that you could totally tell what the lie was or they totally forgot the lie altogether. 

By the time I got home I was exhausted and sore. I had left my home at about 7:30am and didn’t return home until 11:30pm. When I woke up on Saturday I was tight and sore and could tell that I had been walking up and down hills the entire day before. I am pretty sure Portugal means the land of trillions of hills!

My tour group from Lisboa!

5 down 8 to go....

I have been in Portugal for 5 weeks now! I am becoming more and more comfortable in my surroundings, although, my language is still lagging behind.  My love for Portugal is becoming stronger with each day I am here. I love the lifestyle here! People are so relaxed in a way and find relationships and community to be very important.  I love being able to walk to market and by fresh produce and bread that is right out of the oven. If something isn't within walking distance then public transportation is easy and always close to where you are.

Every Monday I have an evaluation with the Fairbanks and this week Ron asked me what I am thinking about Portugal. I told him that my love for the country is growing more and more everyday and he responded by asking if I thought that my call to Portugal was being solidified by being here. This made me think, I mean I love Portugal....I am pretty sure that I love Portugal more then a quad white americano on the rox from the Cherrybean! I love the culture, the mindset, and the people in general.  I am always confronted with the need for something for youth here and I am beginning to understand the difficulty in helping start a youth ministry. I can't wait to return to Portugal full time after I graduate and be able to dive into ministry full time here. However, currently I am working in the Lisbon area and although I love this area I don't think this is necessarily where God wants me to work full time. I have always felt that God has wanted me in the north. Many districts in the north have no evangelical presence and that to me is disturbing. The mindset to evangelical Christians in the north is very different then here in Lisbon. Here in Lisbon people are very open to what ever religion is being talked about for the most part but in north the Catholic church still has a very strong hold on the population. I have heard stories of the priests telling their congregations to ostracize an evangelical Christian and especially missionaries. I will get the chance to experience this closed door society in about a month when I spend a week in the north with a missionary there. While I am in the north I hope to get further conformation that Portugal is where God wants me to be.

well that is all I got now....

Peace out!

New Grandmother....

Last Thursday I moved from PBI in Tojal to an apartment with a grandmother in Vialonga. She is an 87 year old great-grandmother and her grandson with his two daughters live in an apartment on the second floor. This apartment building is basically perfect! I have a coffee shop right outside the entrance to the complex where I go every morning and get tosta mista and galao escuro, which is a panini style ham and cheese sandwich and a cup of coffee with milk. I am also now in walking distance to the Fairbanks house and the Chaveiro house so I no longer have to ride the bus everyday! Basically, our houses are laid out like this....there are three little hills and a deep ravine between each hill and we each live at the top of the hills. I am the first hill and then the Chaveiros and lastly the Fairbanks. Dan Chaveiro is Dalia Fairbanks' brother and he is married to Rebecca and they have a daughter and a baby boy on the way. When I am working with the youth in Vialonga and Povoa, I am working with the Chaveiros.

Also near my new home is a gypsy market. They sell everything at this gypsy market and it is all "the real thing"! They gypsies set up their market in this big empty parking lot every saturday and they have everything from underwear to gucci purses. Shopping here is very overwhelming though because if you look to long at something or touch something then they try and get you to buy it by yelling at you. There are also the gypsies that just yell at everyone passing by "1 euro!" or there was even a guy who was yelling, "I am sleeping with the boss' wife! Because I am the boss!" When you walk out of this market there is another indoor market but this one is produce, bread, and fresh fish. This market is way better because you don't have people yelling at you about who they are sleeping with or how much products are. Also, in Portuguese fashion, there is a cafe attached with this indoor market. I think there are more cafes in the small village of Vialonga then there are in Portland!

well that is all I have for this post....

Peace out!

The recipes

Caldo Verde


2 lbs potatoes
1 package Chouriço de carne (Portuguese Chouriço)
2 Onions
3 Cloves of garlic
2 Bay leaves
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tbsp. Salt
250 g kale


Peel and chop potatoes and onions, place in a large pot of water with about 2 knuckles above the potatoes. Also place in the pot the garlic, the bay leaves, the Chouriço with the casing removed, the olive oil, and salt. Bring to a boil and let boil for 15 minutes. While the pot is boiling take your kale and slice it into thin strips (in Portugal you can buy this already done but I doubt you can buy it like that in the states). When the pot has boiled for 15 minutes and the potatoes are soft remove the bay leaves and the Chouriço. Puree the potatoes and the onions in the water making sure that there are no chunks left. slice the Chouriço in about 1/4-1/2 in. rounds. Add the Chouriço and the bay leaves back to the potatoes. Also add your sliced kale at this time. Simmer for another 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.


This is a really simple soup and it is the kind of soup that is better the next day because the flavors of the Chouriço are able to mix more into the soup.


Bacalhau com Natas
Salt Cod in cream sauce


2 lbs Potatoes
500 g. Bacalhau*
1 large onion
Olive oil
grated Mozzarella


White sauce:
2 wooden spoons of butter (about 1/2-1 cup)
2 wooden spoons of flour (about 1/2-1 cup)
2 cups milk
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup cream




*The Bacalhau will need to be soaked over night with the water changed a couple times to remove all of the salt from the cod. In Portugal you can buy the fish frozen with the salt already removed and I am not sure if it is available in the same way in the States. You might also need to remove skin and bones from the fish depending on the bacalhau.


Peel and chop the potatoes into about 1/2 in. cubes. Place in water and boil for 5-10 min. You are not needing to cook the potatoes all the way but you do want them on the softer side. In a seperate pot boil the bacalhau in water for 5-10 minutes. Drain the bacalhau and the potatoes and set aside but do not mix the two ingredients. 


Slice the onions into small pieces. In a saute pan add the olive oil and the onions and cook until the onions are translucent. Add the Bacalhau and incorporate the onions with the Bacalhau. Set aside.


Making the sauce:


In a sauce pan melt the butter and mix with the flour, allow it to cook a little bit. Add the milk to the butter and flour and continuously whisk to get rid of any lumps. Add the cream and whisk again. Put the garlic through a garlic press and add to the sauce. Let the sauce simmer and thicken about 5 minutes. You may need to add more milk to the sauce to thin it out a little bit, you want the sauce to be thin like the thickness of cream. 


Assembling the dish:
In a 13x9 pan put all of the potatoes on the bottom. Then spread the bacalhau and onion mixture on top of the potatoes. Pour the cream sauce evenly over the bacalhau and potatoes. Take the grated mozzarella and sprinkle it over the dish. Bake the dish for 20 minutes at about 375, the cheese should be browned. 

certifiably marriage material

I have been taking my lessons on cooking, the culture, and the language. I have learned to make very key
dishes such as caldo verde, which is a soup made with potatoes and kale, and also bacalhau com natas, which is my first salt cod dish (bacalhau) in a cream sauce. The Fairbanks family have had to eat...or choke down....everything that i have made. Fortunately I have been told that both of my dishes were amazing and a common saying in Portugal when someone cooks something that tastes good is to say that the person is ready to be married. So, I am now ready to be married! All I have to do now is find the guy.....

I also remade caldo verde on my own and served it to the people who are also living her at the Portuguese Bible Institute and one of the Portuguese guys turned to me and said, "you are now ready to get married." I thought it was awesome to get that kind of a compliment from someone who ate the same soup made by their mother for lunch that same day!

if you want the recipes let me know and I will post them in a separate blog.

the writers block.....

So, the writer's block has hit me....I have done things this past week but nothing seems grand enough or exciting enough to write about....

I mean I have gone to Belem and I have tasted their amazingness but my camera died as soon as I got there and we ended up not being able to go inside any of the monuments. We walked by the Navigators monument and we walked by the Tower of Belem but I guess it was to expensive to go inside but really it was probably good that I didn't go inside of them because I didn't have a camera.

When we walked from Pasteis de Belem to the waterfront where all of the monuments were we took a little underground tunnel to walk underneath the street. This little tunnel had great acoustics and there was a man there that was singing some Fado songs. I am not sure what song he was singing or what he was singing about but it was beautiful and it was only his voice, no instruments to help him out. Which reminds me that I still really want to go to Fado house and listen to some live Fado singers while sipping some wine. Doesn't that just sound delightful!?! I just need to find a group to go with me!

I was thinking I would also give you some cultural information.....

In my Portuguese culture lessons I learned many things about the Portuguese, such as, no does not always mean no. When ever you go to someone's house and they offer you something you are first supposed to refuse and then after many times of them asking you if you want some then you can say yes. Here is how it would look:

"Would you like some coffee?"

"No, thank you."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I don't want to be a bother."

"It is no problem. Are you sure you don't want any?"

"No, it is ok."

"Are you sure? It really isn't a bother I already have some made."

"Oh ok. I would like some."

Basically, the Portuguese will not give up until you take whatever they are offering you. Also, when you are eating at someone's house and you are getting full or just don't want anymore food make sure you leave a little bit of food on your plate because if you don't the host will continuously try and put more food on your plate. You need that little bit of food on your plate so when they offer you more food you can politely say, "No, thank you. I couldn't even finish all of my food because I am full." If you say this then you are automatically off the hook of having to eat more food.

When you are wanting to cross a street and you are at a cross walk do not just walk into the street because the car will not stop for you. You might think that because you are in a cross walk you have the right of way but your wrong. The car always has the right of way. Even though it is a huge fine for the driver if they hit a person in a cross walk, it is super difficult to prove that you were in the cross walk when you got hit because you usually fly through the air and land some distance away. So, when you want to cross the street just make sure that you wait for traffic to stop before you venture out into the road.

well that is it for this blog.

Peace out!