Acts 2

On Saturday we spoke to a woman who is part of the house church that meets in our house. She spoke of a need that she had. Her sister recently had begun to have seizures and had to be put in an induced coma. She has been in the hospital since the first of this month. Her sister lives in another part of our state and our sister in Christ wanted to go visit her this week because of some important hospital tests that would be done as well as to help the family out. She wanted to leave this morning but lacked the funds to buy the round trip bus tickets to get to this other city.

One of the hardest things that we've dealt with in our time of trying to "be church" instead of "play church" here is to get people to share their needs (financially, spiritually, whatever). I don't know if it's pride or embarrassment or both that keep people from being real, but I do know that Satan is active in keeping people from really experiencing the joy of truly being God's family by sharing all our needs.

Benay and I encouraged our sister to share her financial need yesterday. Before she shared in our house church worship time, Benay read from Acts 2 about how the 1st century church shared everything they had - including sharing with those who had financial needs. Our sister then shared her need and afterward we encouraged everyone who was there to help in whatever way they could. We put a box out for just that purpose.

Not only did this house church family meet her bus tickets need but they also almost tripled what she needed. This extra amount will allow her to buy food and possibly pay some bills while she is out of town.

One woman even came to our house last night to give. When Benay called our sister to tell her of one more financial gift she very joyfully said, "What a blessing!"

The last few days we've had a missionary couple(Mark and Ali) from another state in Brasil visiting with us. After our worship time yesterday Ali said she believes that what she saw was the most Biblical way for Christians to use their tithe. We agree.

Like we've said before, being real church has been the most rewarding, humbling, frustrating, exciting, crazy thing we've ever done. But God showed us yesterday that little by little we are understanding more and more what family really means.

Please keep praying for us as we continue to grow with our Brasilian brothers and sisters in Christ as we strive to be an Acts 2 kind of family.