Church on Wheels

One of the great things that God is teaching us about "being church" instead of "doing church" is the creativity that the Spirit wants to bring to our daily lives. He is not boring and he has new and exciting things planned for all of God's children. We just have to listen and then follow through. One of those things happened last week. Our house church felt led to take a road trip. We felt God calling us to back to simplicity......calling us back to what He has created for us. So, we went to the waterfalls and enjoyed a day of worship, breaking bread together and having fun.

We invited another house church to join us. As we got closer to the day, some people were unable to go because of different reasons. That is another cool thing about house church, we can encourage the people that come to our house to go and visit another house church. One thing God has taught us since we moved here is that His quality is always more important than our quantity. We (humans) want to base success on "how many" people there were at any given "church" event. God is radically turning our world upside down on what is and is not important in how He wants to grow His family.

We still ended up with 4 cars in the caravan (one was our bus and it was full with 12 people) and had a great time together. Three of Bronwyn's high school friends (who haven't yet claimed Christ as Savior) came with us as well as three adults who also haven't yet given their lives to Jesus. It was really an exciting time to "be church" to these people.

Benay shared some thoughts and truths from the Bible about God and nature. Our brother João then prayed and encouraged everyone to look at God's nature during the prayer and thank God for it. One of Bronwyn's friends, Giu, noticed that sunlight broke through the trees when João began to pray and it stopped when the prayer was over. God has a way of adding some emphasis to a prayer doesn't He? Then it was time for lunch.................and, of course, lunch was followed by the mandatory game of how many fandangos (like a little round corn chip) can you shove in your mouth. This is Giu. Yeah, this is Bronwyn. She tied Giu for 1st with 36 in her big mouth. Maybe she should get extra points for having 36 chips and 3 different hands in her mouth.
We are so proud! We are praying there is a college who will give a full scholarship for something like this. She's very gifted. After we worshipped and praised God together, we kept the theme going as we went out and played in His playground together.

We swam through waterfalls. We sat under waterfalls.We walked on waterfalls.

And of course, we jumped off of waterfalls. This is Sascha demonstrating the spring jump. Ansley and the weeeeeeee jump. Giu and the running jump. Bronwyn showing her variation of the pencil jump (Blume family invention). Garrett and the spread eagle jump.
We also had the crouching spider jump by Carys. We had dads(João) who jumped off the big rock with their sons (Joca)......... .....and dads (Garigran) who took the plunge off the smaller rocks with their sons(Arthur). Throughout the day we took a break from fast paced city life and enjoyed what God has put around us for us to enjoy.............. ......and those He has given us to enjoy it with.During the day two people had bouts with sickness and there was a car that briefly broke down on the way home but we let nothing deter us from praising God as a family. Sometimes we just have to be intentional in making time for the good things and good people He has already surrounded us with.