Storied from the Amazon - The Olympics

When I was 18 at the time of life where leaving home and learning how to be on my own was everything I wanted in life, my parents were urging me to go to college and figure out what I wanted to do in life. Really though, the only thing that made any sense to me was studying about horses. I finally was able to find out some information about a vocational college in southern California in a town called Bonsall. This was the age before computers and internet and looking back I really don't know how people found out information back then! How the times have changed and continue to do so at such a rapid pace. I applied and was accepted and we all flew to the United States and I got delivered to the college. The girls dorm was right above the main stallion barn in which was house a stallion called Colonel Freckles who at the time I had no idea who he was but now I know that he is a very influential and famous stallion in the Quarter Horse world. The vocational college was also a kids camp and a breeding and training farm and they used the college students to work in all the departments. They put 2 to 3 horses under each student for training and riding. We also took care of and worked in their petting zoo area keeping everything clean and fed. And when campers arrived we taught them riding skills, vaulting, about the other animals and much more. We learned about the horse business and riding, We were expected to ride our horses for our 2 hour daily lesson plus at least another 2 hours of practice time. We also got to learn how to start a young horse. I absolutely loved every moment of learning. I still remember the stocky little liver chestnut mare that I got to ride who's name was Oakey. It was such a profound learning time for me, doing what I loved and desired to learn about. However, it was the first time I had been away from my family and away from Brazil by myself and away from what I knew and loved and home and the culture shock was too overwhelming. I found the young people there of my age frame too immature and we had so little in common and I couldn't bring myself to stay any longer than that first semester. I went back to Texas and lived with my grandparents that Christmas, and found a couple jobs and started saving up my money. I joined the junior college and took a class on equine reproduction which I thought would suit my goals in life, and got a job at a horse breeding farm. The equine reproduction class was interesting because I was still this very shy girl of 18 but every time the teacher asked for a volunteer to do something in the class with one of the horses I jumped on the opportunity and volunteered, including leading the big stallion to the breeding chute for the first breeding of the season. All the other students laughed when they saw me volunteer to lead him. But I got him there and didn't die. One of my part time jobs that spring was working at the Walmart photo lab. That was when they had film cameras and one hour film developing. I learned how to operate the machines and became very good at my job. There was a little old man who would come in every week or so to get his film developed and he would only want the manager to develop it. One day after I'd been working there for a while she told me to go ahead and develop his pictures for him. I wasn't sure what the old man would say but she reassured me that if he was unhappy with the results whe would have a talk with him. I took more care than ever before and when he came to pick up his pictures he asked who had developed them. We all told him it had been me. After that he only wanted me to do the work for him. And he had beautiful pictures, artistic. I developed not only his pictures but a long term friendship with him. He became my adopted grandfather and we would go out and take pictures together. He gave me a lot of his camera equipment. I had an old nikon camera that I really loved and learned how to get great pictures on it. When I left Texas and went back to Brazil we would write to each other and send each other pictures that we had taken, and eventually the letters stopped which made me think something happened to him. During the summer after I did that year of college classes, I found out about a mission outreach at the Olympic games in Atlanta Georgia, with Youth With A Mission. That sounded like a very interesting thing to do so I signed up for it and shortly after, found myself in Atlanta and teamed up with a group of people and assignments for each day. We would go where the large groups of people were and hand out gospel tracts and evangelize and pray with people. I met lots of very interesting and unique people both in my team and also the ones I was witnessing to. I got an invitaion to attend the opening ceremony from a member of the Jamaica Olympic team. However, it seemed so strange and sketchy that I declined the invitation, which now I'm thankful I did. I also got an invitation to date or marry an Egyptian man, which when that conversation happened, I practically ran down the street the opposite direction. I'm pretty sure God had his angels working overtime during that time of my life. During my time in Atlanta, I really wanted to go see one of the equestrian events of the olympics. I really didn't care which one, just any one would do. We had a day off and there was another lady in the group I was with that also liked horses and wanted to see the equestrian events. We decided to take the metro system and go see if we could see something. She was so worried about how we would get tickets. For some reason I had bold confidence that God would make a way for us to see the olympics. I couldn't believe that I would have that opportunity to be so close and yet be denied to see anything. So she grasped onto my faith and we headed out early on our day off and found our way to the equestrian center. When we arrived she looked at me and said, "Now what do we do?" I said, "Let's go to the ticket office and see what happens." As we were walking towards the ticket office a man in a uniform approached us and asked if we needed tickets. We said yes actually. He took his hat off and there was a large stack of tickets. He started flipping through the tickets and finally pulled out two and told us these two seats were close together, and handed them to us. The friend's face was full of astonishment and I accepted the tickets and asked him how much he wanted for them. He insisted that we just take them for free and enjoy watching the olympics! We were overjoyed and amazed at how God had seen our faith and done that for us. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the show jumping and even got to see a famous jumper that I knew from magazine articles. That was the higlight of my time in Atlanta, not just being able to watch the equestrian event but the way it felt like God opened all the doors just right and gave me not just my needs but this silly little desire that I had. It made me think about how much God loves us and how it brings him joy to see our joy in the simple things.