God has gifted her with an ability to share His Good News in a way that disarms people who come with preconceived notions about the Bible. Her humility is one of the things that I love about her. I love that she doesn't think of herself as someone with a deep understanding of scriptures who also has the ability to share those truths. Her humility naturally draws people to Christ.
Recently an older Christian man (whom we love very much) in the states said this to my girlfriend, "It's obvious that God has gifted you with a special understanding of His word, why would He give that to you if He didn't want you to use it?"
Even though my wife would never repeat that to anyone and will be embarrassed when she reads it here, those thoughts are my thoughts exactly.
I share all of that to share the following: Since we moved to Brasil over eight years ago we've always tried to have some kind of Bible study in our house during the week. We've studied specific books and specific subjects. My girlfriend has led every one of those studies. I've been blessed to see lives changed and spiritual lives deepened through those studies. It's always been a blessing and it's always fun. We love to laugh and be goofy. Our studies can easily turn into goofiness. I like that.
Two weeks ago, we began a new study on Wednesday nights. It is a study based on Ephesians 4 that helps us think about attitudes that will improve our relationships within our family. We printed up little invitations and invited lots of people to come.
This past Wednesday night, we had nine people in our house for the study. You need to know that we aren't number counters. In fact, we hate that so many people seem to define "church" by how many people are at a certain function. I'm not doing that here, but the number part of this story is very encouraging to us. Why? Because almost half of the people present were visitors - not regular participants in our faith community. The cool thing was that my girlfriend and I had not invited any of these visitors. Every one of them came because of someone else in our house church. Two were invited by our daughter, Ansley, and two by our sister, Ivoli.
You see when you are working with so many new Christians, it is easy to get discouraged. To always feel like we are the givers, the inviters, the planners and the more mature (stop laughing if you know me) people spiritually. To be honest, sometimes I don't want to lead by example. My selfish nature wants to take over.
Those things I mentioned aren't always true. Not by a long shot. God has blessed us with some good teammates and Brasilians to walk side by side. Some of those teammates have already moved back to the states and some will be moving back in a couple of months. It's just that it feels that way sometimes.
There is this feeling of "If we don't do it, it won't get done." Not really the situation that you want to be in as a missionary. We want this family that we are a part of to continue on, whether we are here or not.
Wednesday night reminded me that God is definitely working and we have a group of partners in this ministry. Partners who are getting stronger and stronger in their relationships with Jesus.
We are all catching a vision of what "real" church is. We are working together to bring heaven to earth one person at a time.
We could not be happier and can't wait to see what God has planned for our future together.
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