Yesterday

One of our brothers (thank you Alan) in the states sent us an email encouraging us to participate in the Call 2 Fall yesterday.

You can click here to check it out.

It was a call for Christians in the states to pray for their country. To be humble, to get on their knees to confess their sins and ask God to bring a revival.

We decided that we would ask our house church to pray for Brasil as well as the United States.

Yesterday was the first house church we had in our new apartment where most of our church family was present. Stephen (he and Weston are spending their summer break working with our family.......more on them later) and I were able to take a few pictures of what God did here.

We had a family of 8 that wasn't even able to be here and, honestly, our apartment couldn't have held many more people.

We spent some time singing. Our brother Tiago has a gift for playing the guitar (as do Ansley and our brother Beto but yesterday Tiago led the way) and he put his special twist on a couple of songs we've been singing for years. He always brings a unique, cool twist to our songs.

We spent some time reading scriptures and then we all hit our knees in prayer. It was very cool. It's been a long time since we hit our knees in prayer together. You could feel the Spirit moving as many different people prayed.

We then laid our hands on Weston, who wasn't feeling well, while Bronwyn prayed over him.

Carys led the prayer for the Lord's Supper and we all, like we always do, shared in that time together.

Our tithe went directly to a family who had an immediate need.

We meet next week to prepare the group for our branching off into two new house churches in a couple of the poorer neighborhoods in the city.

We closed our worship with our sister Ivoli praying for our church family.

It's been super cold here lately. Mid to upper 30's  (3-5 celsius) at night. You see your breath inside your house as much as you do outside your house. There is no central heat here and so the cold gets in your house and stays.

When it's cold like this many people don't want to leave their homes or even get out of bed. Some of our house church members have to take buses and come a long way just to get to our apartment so it was extremely encouraging to see our apartment full of people who want to be a real family and be a part of what God is doing in this city.

We've shared before that being a part of house church is tough. It's real. It's ugly. It's hard. It's frustrating. It's family. And after a day like yesterday we wouldn't trade what we do for anything.