Check this out!!

We are so excited and proud of our church family in Brazil.

Yesterday was a national holiday and they spent the day in service!  They laid a tile floor in one of our church members' home.  This is a family who lived in a favela (like a slum) near the airport.  With the expansion of the airport, they were given a very small duplex-style house.  However, it only had concrete floor and walls and the moisture was making the little ones in the house constantly sick with coughs.  Our house church saved money, bought the materials and laid a tile floor for this family.

While the men did this, the women were busy putting together Christmas gifts to take out to the drug rehab center in a few weeks.

Check out our sister, Leni's blog here to see pictures and read more about the story.  You can use the google translator on the bottom right side of the blog page to translate to English. The translation isn't perfect, but it will give you the idea.

We can't describe the pride and thankfulness we have for our Brazilian family.  Come down and get to know them!

And He keeps on rolling.....

The other day I shared how we've been blessed to be a part of some amazing things that God is doing in our city. He's on a definite roll and He did some more cool, unexpected stuff yesterday.

Stephen and I were running some errands all day yesterday and were just returning home around 5:00 when I got a call from our brother Freitas (owner of the hardware store). He asked if we could come to the hardware store to talk to one of his friends/clients about a Bible story that he had some questions about. The friend's name is Giovanni and I've gotten to be friends with him during the times I've gone to the hardware store to just hang out. I didn't really understand everything about the situation but we pulled back out of the driveway and went to see Freitas and Giovanni.

We got there and a few minutes later Giovanni came in.

Turns out he is a spiritist. They believe in Jesus and God and they also believe in reincarnation. Honestly I don't know everything that they believe in but I know that they believe that the way you are in this life will affect what kind of life you will have when you are reincarnated.

Giovanni is an incredibly friendly guy and I've always loved to be around him. He laughs easily and is easy to talk to so I was excited to hear what he wanted to talk about.

Turns out he is teaching a weekly class at the spiritist center to young kids and every week they teach a Bible story. His next lesson was about Jesus multiplying the 5 loaves of bread and the 2 fishes and he really wanted to hear some different ideas/opinions about the story.

So we got together and Freitas read the verses from the story. We then just talked about what those verses meant to us and we pointed out some cool things about the story. We talked about faith (how little the disciples had before this happened, how God may have used 12 basket's full of leftover food to grow the faith of 12 disciples....maybe one for each one to pick up?, how little faith we have and how we have to have faith to believe in Jesus). We also talked about how Jesus is the only way to God.

If you know me, you know I'm no Bible teacher or scholar. I think what helps people not be afraid of "church" when they are around me is that it's not uncommon for me to say, "I don't know" when someone asks something specific about a certain passage in the Bible. I'm not afraid to admit that I don't know where the story is and that we need to look it up on google. I love google search! It helps people to see that as a "missionary" I'm no different than they are. I don't know everything. I don't have all the answers, in fact, I'm searching just like they are. I'm not some special guy just because I came here to share God's word. It's for all of us to share and study together.

During our time together yesterday Freitas wanted to share an encouraging verse with Giovanni but he couldn't remember where it was. What did he do? He googled it of course. I loved it. We even used how we use google to share with Giovanni how his transparency, with stuff like that, will encourage the kids to want to come back and learn Bible stories from him. To not be afraid to say, "I have no idea but let's study together." Only good can happen from that.

I loved our time with Giovanni because he felt comfortable enough with Freitas to ask if he could come to the hardware store, during business hours, to talk about the Bible.

If you read this blog consistently then you know for the past few months we've had a support/prayer group that meets at the hardware store every Thursday morning at 6. If you haven't read about that then you can click here to check it out. 

Since we've started that group the owner of the bakery next door to the hardware store has become a regular member of our group. Yesterday in the middle of our talk the owner, Silvio, came in and sat down and shared with us as well. This was at 6 p.m. on a Friday night. He was putting kingdom over bakery sales.

Giovanni told us later that he had seen Freitas with his Bible and had seen verses taped to his computer (we've written down scripture, cut it out and passed them out before on our Thursday morning prayer time)and he knew he could ask Freitas about some doubts he had about the Bible.

The coolest thing? For the last few months Freitas and I have been talking about how to include Giovanni in our church family. Bar-b-que? Invitation to house church? Invitation to our support group? Soccer game? We've been talking and praying about Giovanni.

When he left the hardware store yesterday Freitas and Silvio both invited him to be a part of our group on Thursday mornings. Freitas then looked at me and said with a smile on his face, "We've been talking for a while on how to reach out to Giovanni and we didn't have to do anything. God did everything and brought him to us. How cool is that?"

Very cool indeed.

When I got home from the hardware store Giovanni had already sent me an email thanking us for spending time with him and how much it helped him. I loved that it was the body of Christ (Freitas, Silvio, Stephen and myself) who spent time with and just hung out in the word with Giovanni. More and more I'm seeing the body become the true body here and I feel so blessed to see what God is doing through our church family.

We don't know where this will end up but it was another obvious moment for us to see God's power and see how He is in control of stuff. He put Giovanni on our hearts. We talked and prayed about him and God did the work. We know that as we study more together God will share with Giovanni through His word or through us just what he needs to hear. This is one thing I'm certain of and am seeing it more and more.

We would ask you to pray for Giovanni and for us to have many more good conversations with him and spend more time just hanging out together as well as in the word together and for us to allow God to do His thing.

And He keeps on rolling in Porto Alegre.

God Roll

You know when you can sense, I mean really sense, God doing some amazing things around you? Like He's on an awesome roll?

Okay, I know that God is always on a roll and He's just waiting for us to see where He is working and join Him. He's waiting for us to join Him and roll with Him. But he's definitely been on a pretty cool roll lately here in Porto Alegre.

A couple of weeks ago my girlfriend did a blog about a new house church in Leni's sister's house. You can read about it here. 

Last week we did a blog about a couple of new house churches that are getting started from the house church that meets in our house. If you didn't read about that then you can just scroll down one post to read it. More very cool God stuff. 

Yesterday God blew us away again. 

Leni couldn't go to her sister's house so she asked if we would be able to go. So Benay, Giovanni and myself went there to do whatever God asked us to do. We had no idea what was going to happen or what it was going to look like. We are trying to be more and more open and less and less "planned" when we are church with a group of people. 

Our time with Leni's sister couldn't have been more of a blessing to us. 

We showed up and Isa (Leni's sister) and her husband Marcelo were waiting for us. There was also another couple (José and Ines) who were there. We spent some time sharing and reading from God's word and it was awesome. In the middle of our study another couple showed up. There names were Americo and Nara. We finished our time together with a prayer. 

They joyfully invited us to stay for lunch. Unfortunately we weren't able to stay but we will definitely be going back and plan on sharing a meal together. Benay overheard Americo telling Isa that we need to be added to their couples suppers. We are looking forward to spending more time together with our new friends and seeing what God wants to do with this new group. 

You might have noticed that I only mentioned Giovanni going with us yesterday. Why? Because the rest of our kids along with our summer/winter interns (Stephen/Weston) went back to Everton and Daiana's house. 

They also had a great time, had a good worship time together and Stephen even blessed them with some much needed groceries. Family taking care of family in all ways. 

Later Bronwyn told Benay that Daiana asked us to come back to go and have a worship time together with their neighbors who used to be a part of God's family but have since moved away from God and His people. 

The stuff that is going on reminds me of the last few verses of Acts 2: "And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity—all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved."

Keep praying for us and for our church family to stay strong and continue moving on wherever and to whomever God leads us. 

And He keeps rolling on in Porto Alegre. 

Yesterday

Yesterday was a wild and good day. Or as Anderson might say, "Better than good!"

We awoke to Carys crying and saying she felt like she was going to puke.

We thought it might have been because she stayed out past midnight the night before as she went to the Harry Potter movie with Bronwyn, Ansley, Stephen and Weston. Sometimes when our kids get less sleep than usual they say they feel sick.

Her pain didn't go away so she stayed home and didn't go to house church. Bronwyn offered to stay to take care of Carys as well as to fix lunch and tackle the mounds of dirty clothes that we had.

The rest of us went to Everton and Daiana's house.

If you read my girlfriend's blog post last Monday then you know that going to their house was something that was already planned.

Our house church was divided three ways yesterday. Our family went to Everton and Daiana's to start planting a new house church there. Others from our house church went to Daniel and Miguelina's to begin a new house church in their neighborhood and Leni has been working on starting a new house church at her sister's house. Again, go back to read Benay's blog post for more details.

It's really cool to see these new things happening and to see our Brasilian brothers and sisters taking initiative and doing spiritual things on their own. It's the dream of every missionary to see real fruit and to see their church family rely less and less on them as they move towards full dependence on God. And God is blessing us so much we are see our family here thinking outside of the box and starting to get out of their comfort zone as they realize that God has equipped all of us to do His work, to be his family and to start house churches wherever He tells us to do so.

Our time at Everton and Daiana's was very encouraging. They were excited to have us in their home and we were excited to be there.

We sang some songs (some led by the children) and then Benay had us read some verses from Philippians 4. The kids and adults shared what those verses meant to them. It was very encouraging to hear the kids share what God's word meant to them. We then shared some prayer requests and had a prayer and asked God to bless Everton, Daiana, their kids, their house and their neighborhood. We prayed specifically for some people in their neighborhood that they had invited to come to house church but that couldn't. We believe that next time some of their neighbors will be there.

We had a blessed, fun time together.

We got home and Carys looked like she was feeling a little better. Bronwyn had been busy doing her thing but told us that the dryer stopped working. She had put some shoelaces in the dryer which had gotten sucked up into the motor and locked it up.

We really don't have the money to call a repair guy to fix the problem and I'm really not a "do it yourself fix it guy" but I found myself getting aggravated that two little shoe laces were going to set us back at least $60 for some guy to come out and do what was probably going to be a quick fix. So what to do?

I kind of decided to take a piece of the dryer off to see if I could do the quick fix. One piece became two which became about seven. Before I knew it my girlfriend assistant and I had taken the door off, the back, the top, the side, the covering of the motor, the covering of the vent, etc. It looked like a jig saw puzzle and I was wondering if I would be able to get everything back on in the right place. Just as I was reaching the end of my patience level (me and fine motor stuff don't go well together) we saw the wire that had been cut. We were able to re-connect the wire, cover it with electrical tape and put everything back together. And it worked! Amazing. My girlfriend and I high fived when we were done. A definite, unexpected victory and money saver.

We got through with that job around 5:00 and by that time our teenage boy had ants in his pants about going to the Inter game. We left at 5:20 and made it to the game, that started at 6:30, in plenty of time.

We probably should have stayed home. It was cold, raining and our team took a 3-0 beating. But we went and made the best of it. Stephen and Anderson even got to take a picture with a gorilla. Come on, does it get any better than that? I don't think so.

We actually didn't get to see the whole game. We headed back home with about 20 minutes left. Why?

Anderson told us just after halftime that he wasn't feeling that great. He's done that before at lots of games but it turns out he was just hungry or tired and sleepy. We were planning on getting some supper after the game so I told him just to hold on for a little bit longer. Hoping it was the hunger bug. If you know Anderson then you know drama is his game. If he says he's going to puke 9.99 times out of 10 he doesn't. So we figured we were right in line with the 9.99. But I told him if he was going to puke to shoot it away from everybody else. Sympathetic I know.

About 5 minutes later we found out we were getting the .01 time out of ten as he, sitting right in front of me, begins to bend over. I watched him but couldn't see anything. He's quietly puking on the concrete between his feet. In between puke bursts he turns around, looks at me, doesn't say a word but points down to where he is ralphing to let me know what's going on. Poor little guy.

He finishes and we all jump up and head to the car (a 15-20 minute walk from the stadium) to try to get him home before the second wave possibly hits. About 5 minutes into the walk his big brother asks if he can carry him. Anderson agrees and for 5-10 minutes Garrett holds and takes care of his sick little brother.

Garrett gets tired and sets Anderson down. Anderson says he's okay to walk. So as we are walking along the street, he asks me if I could pray for him to feel better. I told him I was already doing it. He said, "You're going to when we get to the car?" I told him I was doing it right then in my head. He got closer to me, brushing me as we walked, and asked, "Could I get in on some of that?"

He felt a little better all the way home. We kept asking how he was doing and he kept saying, "Okay, but weird." He got home, took a shower and got in bed. He's slept peacefully through the night with no problems. Thank You God! Seems like he and Carys may have gotten some kind of bug together.

My kids have taught me so much about praying about everything and I literally saw God blessing and taking care of so many needs yesterday through simple prayers.

God is really doing some cool things here. It reminds me of two responses from two people I love and respect.

1) I read one time where people would often ask Mother Teresa what God was doing where she ministered to the poor, sick and dying of India.

Her response?

Come and see.

2) I know God does things in our lives that sometimes we just don't see because we don't have the simple faith of a child. He's waiting to do amazing things if we just allow Him access to our lives and souls. He's also, if we just look around, doing some cool things in our lives and we just need to be ready to ask the same question wise Anderson asked, "Could I get in on some of that?"

As you read about what God is doing here we would encourage you to "Come and See" for yourself because I promise you that God would be super excited to see you "Getting in on some of what He is doing here."

He is moving in our city. The invitation is open. Our house is open. Come see for yourselves.

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.

Grupo de apoio

A couple of weeks ago we went around in our house church and everyone shared what we would like to see in our lives spiritually in 2011.

We aren't content to just stay with the status quo. As much as we love house church it can become what happens in bigger churches at times without us wanting it to.....a social club.

People can become very comfortable with it being just our group and forget that Jesus commands us to look outward.

So our house church talked about what we needed spiritually and what we wanted to do for Jesus both individually and as a group in 2011.

What I shared that I needed was a group of men who could get together regularly (preferably weekly) to spend about an hour together. Praying, confessing, prayer requests, etc.

I confess it was a selfish request. I'm feeling on the fried end spiritually and I need to be a part of a regular group - a grupo de apoio.

Grupo de apoio means "support group."

For the last few years I've had this in my life with some really strong brothers. I could share whatever with no fear of judgement. All the men shared lots of spiritual strongholds that our enemy had in their lives. Unfortunately for me, they've all moved away.

God created His family for a purpose. We don't need to try to walk this faith walk alone but it's very easy to just do our day to day stuff and not make getting with your family a priority.

Right after I shared this with our group, Jorge, who participates with our group but hasn't yet given his life to Jesus, leaned over to me and asked me if I wanted to start working out with him.

I told him I had no extra money to do it and he told me that this new gym allows him to bring a guest for free 10 times per month. He invited his girlfriend but she wanted to stay at the gym where she works out so he asked me if I would be interested. He goes twice during the week and once on the weekends.

He works at Dell and leaves his house about six in the morning so the only time he can work out during the week is starting at nine at night.

If you know us then you know our family crashes pretty early. I try to be in bed by ten because I wake up most days between four and five. So, as you might imagine, my first response to his workout starting at nine at night request was NO.

Then I started thinking that maybe God was using Jorge to give me the group that I shared I needed. Maybe God's purpose was for me to spend even more time with Jorge to be able to share more of God's love to him.

I accepted and we started last week. I won't lie, getting home at eleven is tough on this old man but it's worth it to be able to spend some time with Jorge.   It has been one answer to my prayer.

This morning four other men and I got together to have our first grupo de apoio.

We met at six this morning. We met at a hardware store. Three of these guys are in their twenties and the other just turned thirty in November. I thought having an early morning prayer time would be tough for them but they all jumped at the chance to do it. One got on a bus at 5:40 to make it and he's got six kids at home. It encouraged me so much to see their dedication to being a part of this.

Only one had a little bit of difficulty getting up. See if you can tell which one it is.

So within ten days God gave me two grupos de apoio.

I don't know where they will go or how long they will last but that's not even something I'm thinking about right now.

Right now it's very encouraging to me to see these young guys, the now and the future of this church family, making some sacrifices to get into God's word together.

House Church

I'm biased. I realize it and I'm not afraid to admit it.

I love house church. I love everything about it.

I love the fun things and the messy, hard, real family member things. Like tough conversations, like confessing our sins, like not playing church but being the church.

I also love the spontaneity of house church.

We are going into our fall season and the weather has been amazing the last few days. Every day has been around 84 (29 C) and around 66 (19C) at night. Every day has been the same and it's been perfect.

Benay thought it would be a good idea to have house church at the city's botanical garden today.

So a couple of days ago she started making some phone calls to the people in our house church. She also invited another house church. They in turn decided to come and invited some people who aren't a part of a church family as well as people from another church.

God's creation just naturally flowed in the conversation during worship. The songs just plugged in to the conversations about life and God. We prayed together, out loud while standing and holding hands. We shared the Lord's supper and then we all shared a meal together.

After our worship a visitor told me the only reason she came was because it was outside in the nature. If it is inside she usually doesn't want to be a part of it. She told me if we had another worship time outside then she would be there.

As we ate lunch I thought about how good our time was and how this is how God's family should be. Everybody was told to bring food for their own families as we were going to have a picnic after our praise time. Everyone shared everything they brought. There was no "this is for my family" mentality. People brought extra and gave to those that had none.

As I looked around I thought how really close this was to God's kingdom.

We were outside praising God for the outside that He made. We were a group of Brasilians, Americans and Germans. We were a group of men, women and kids. We were a group of white people and black people. We were a group of single people and married people. We were a group of recovering alcoholics and drug addicts. We were a group of biracial marriages. We were God's family.

And it was amazing.

Sunday

This past Sunday we had a special time in our house church.

We actually had 3 house churches together to be with João and Clarice and their boys one last time before they move to Brasilia.

People shared from their hearts what João and Clarice meant to them. João and Clarice shared. People cried and hugged and prayed with them one last time.

I've shared before but I can't tell you what this family has meant to our family.

Our teammate Matt led a strong prayer to close our time together. He prayed for their new baby Levi. He prayed for each family member and their upcoming move. He thanked God for how He used them here and how He will use them in their new city.

We will miss them but it was a happy time.

In sharing from her heart, my girlfriend brought in a big spool of yarn. She showed everyone about an inch of it and said, "This is our life on earth." She then showed the rest of the yarn and said, "This is eternity. Even if we never see João and Clarice again on earth, we get to spend eternity with them."

Very cool and very true.

God was with us on Sunday and we were all blessed.

5 Years Later-Part 2

There are four guys in our house church family that like to run.

My brothers Sergio, Matt, João Spencer and myself. I shared a little bit about our running history on one of our old blogs. Click here if you want to read about that (Part 1). 

Last week we ran one last time together. It was a revezamento (or relay team) of a full marathon. That meant we each ran a little more than 10.5 km. 

We didn't win but we did okay. We never really worry much about our time. We always get in a little circle and pray before every race (we do that whether it's 2 of us or all 4 in a race). We always pray to have fun, to be safe and to run to give God the glory. 

I mentioned one last time because João and his family are moving from our city next month and Matt and his wife are moving to the states in January. 

I'm really going to miss those guys. At our last celebration they both talked about their families leaving. It was kind of emotional. While Matt was talking, Benay leaned over to me and said, "I'm going to cry when Matt leaves." We feel that way about both families. 

It's going to be weird without them here. They've been a big part of our lives but it's like João said that celebration Sunday, "It's time for God to open up a new chapter in our lives and for the life of this church family as He sends us to a new city to do His work and as He keeps bringing new people in like Freitas to do His work here in POA." I could not of said it better. 

I feel blessed that our running group got together one last time. In this photo (if you've never met my brothers), going left to right, Sergio is in the blue shirt with João next to him and Matt on the end. 

God has really used these men to bless my life in so many different ways. I know I am a more spiritual person because of my time with them. 

Please remember Matt and João and their families in your prayers as they begin God's work in other cities. And please pray for us and for Sergio as we continue His work here in our city. 

Yesterday

This past week someone from another house church called my girlfriend and asked if there was anyway for us to loan them money to pay some bills. They needed a temporary loan. They are due to receive some money in the next month but don't have enough right now to pay those bills. They asked if we could loan them the money and then they would pay back half in December and half in January.

In the past, my girlfriend and I have always tried to help in a situation like this. We wanted to help this time but we also felt it was a great situation to let our house church help as well.

We brought this up during our midweek bible study and we asked everyone to pray about it and decided that yesterday's tithe would go to this family. Since this family asked for a loan and wanted to pay it back we also decided that we would save this money, after it's repaid, to add on to future tithes so that we would be ready to help when the next need arises.

You need to know that people in our house church aren't wealthy people. Some don't have jobs, some have just started new jobs, some have debt and all of us have monthly financial struggles.

The amount needed to help this family was more (by alot) than this house church family has ever given on any given Sunday.

What happened?

The entire amount was met for this family.

To me, it was nothing short of a miracle.

This house church family gave so sacrificially. It was an amazing thing to be a part of.

My girlfriend called this couple last night to tell them the good news about them being able to pay their bills. She also took a teaching opportunity to let them know that it wasn't the American's that did everything. It was their Brasilian family that took care of their need.

I know the Bible speaks against being proud but I must confess how proud I am to be a part of this house church family.

It's such a blessing to be a part of this group.

Small Group

My girlfriend is one of the best Bible teachers I know. I know I'm biased because, well, she's my girlfriend but I've also heard the same comment from many Brasilians and Americans as well.

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. 

Noggin Thumping

I love it when God just smacks you on the head, or noggin, with something.

I felt that way yesterday after João and Clarice left our house.

The house church that meets in our house is studying Francis Chan's Crazy Love book.

I've shared before that my dad has a ministry (one of many) to me and my girlfriend of finding good books and then sending them to us. He gave us Crazy Love last Christmas.

I read it first and just loved it. Benay then started reading it. We both agreed it would be good to study with the house church that meets here.

Today we studied Chapter 2.

Last night as I read from this chapter I felt God reminding me of what I did not see in João and Clarice. The following comes from chapter 2:

"When I am consumed by my problems--stressed out about my life, my family, and my job--I actually convey the belief that I think the circumstances are more important than God's command to always rejoice. In other words, that I have a "right" to disobey God because of the magnitude of my responsibilities.

Worry implies that we don't quite trust that God is big enough, powerful enough, or loving enough to take care of what's happening in our lives.

Stress says that the things we are involved in are important enough to merit our impatience, our lack of grace toward others, or our tight grip of control.

Basically, these two behaviors communicate that it's okay to sin and not trust God because the stuff in my life is somehow exceptional. Both worry and stress reek of arrogance. They declare our tendency to forget that we've been forgiven, that our lives here are brief, that we are headed to a place where we won't be lonely, afraid, or hurt ever again, and that in the context of God's strength, our problems are small, indeed."

In João and Clarice I saw no worry or stress as they dealt with their upcoming move to a new city or the upcoming birth of their new baby around the same time.

I want to see God move in the lives of all His people in these house churches in our city to not react with worry and stress when problems come. That they can meet these problems head on and even be thankful for them because they know God is still in control. I want to see this more in my life.

Benay chose the following verses to share with everyone this morning as she led us in prayer. These verses just fit perfectly in what we saw in our friends yesterday and how chapter 2 led us in our study this morning.

Philipians 4:6-7


Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.  Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.


I love it when there is no doubt when God is sharing something with you. 

House Church

Earlier this year our friend Freitas wasn't able to come to house church any more because he decided it was best for his family and his business if he opened on Sundays to try to generate more customers at their hardware store. 

Benay and I grew up in church environments that said, "Well it's a shame that he has to work on Sundays now and can't come to church. Maybe he can come back to church soon."

Which meant maybe one day he can come back to "the hour" at "the building" on Sunday. 

Unfortunately we lived like that for many years.

Thankfully, God isn't done with us and He continues to open our eyes to so many things. He continues to show us that His people are His church and where they get together is where His church will take place. 

When Freitas said he wouldn't be able to be a part of house church anymore we had two options. 

1) Talk about how sad it is that he couldn't be a part of "church" anymore and continue doing what we do or 2) take the church family to Freitas. 

Over the years, we've talked about how much we like house church because it's mobile. It can go with the flow. 

So the men in our house church chose option two and we started meeting every Sunday morning at the hardware store while the women and kids continued meeting in our house. 

It was, as it is in our house, very informal.  But very good. 

As we studied, each man would read certain scriptures from a certain chapter and then we discussed any questions we had about those verses. That just naturally brought up lots of good questions. 

As we studied, customers would come in. We would stop, Freitas would help them and then we would continue. 

There is a bakery next door to the hardware store and the owner, Silvio, comes in to the hardware store all the time. He and his family are good friend with Freitas and his family. Anyway, there were a couple of times he would come in and listen to our study and then go back to his bakery. Very cool. 

I mentioned earlier about the type of churches Benay and I were raised in. It was normal in those days to see church as a specific building, time, etc. It was kind of the general mindset at that time. 

One thing that I can't be around are people who have all the answers in their Christian walk and have no room to continue to grow. However that looks. I've been around older and younger people who felt like they "knew" all they needed to know about the Bible and just stopped growing.  Content in their faith and where they are spiritually and not feeling a need to continue to study, grow and, if needed, change. I don't do well around those people. 

Thankfully God has blessed us with parents who haven't stopped growing. My dad, when they were here, went with us to the hardware store and just fit right in. 

He made comments and felt at home in the hardware store. I'm thankful for a father who knows that people are more important than tradition. That a hardware store is the church when God's people are there. 

Meeting at the hardware store went on for a few weeks and then Freitas one day told me he was going to close his store on Sundays so that he could be back with the entire family. 

So we are all back together and growing, and it's great. But we are ready to be mobile again when God asks us to do it.

We feel really blessed to be a part of what God is doing here. 

Our family is learning a lot. God has really changed us, in many different areas, since we moved to Brasil. We continue to study, and grow and change. It hasn't always been fun or easy but God continues to grow our faith.

God has also blessed us with a church family that grows more in Spirit each day. We are blessed. 

House Church-Soccer Style

We've mentioned before but one of the things we love about house church is that it can change as needed because the bible says we, the people, are the church. It isn't some fixed building with some fixed hour on some fixed day of the week.

The church should be mobile. It should be able to adapt to the needs of the family. I might share more about that later but today this blog is about yesterday.

Brasil played in the World Cup yesterday afternoon. We've mentioned before house the country literally shuts down for 2 hours when Brasil plays.

Yesterday, the house church that meets in our house shifted it's normal routine to have house church around game time.

It's funny how much our family has changed since we moved here eight years ago.

Eight years ago we knew "nothing" about soccer. Nothing. We were, obviously, raised on American sports. I could tell you lots of things about Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Michael Jordan, the Cubs, etc. But soccer.....nothing. We didn't know the rules, the teams, the players. Nothing.

Eight years later it's our favorite sport (except for Benay who still holds on to college football). It's wild. Every day for the last 10 days there have been 3 World Cup games. We've watched as many of them as we can. I've even heard the girls getting frustrated with American people on Facebook who have made disparaging remarks about the World Cup. We've have to remind them that we were those same people eight years ago who would have making those comments.

Living in another country can change your opinions so much about so many, many different things.

Futebol (or soccer) has happened to be one of them.

Yesterday we had an American bar-b-que for our church family.

We cooked out hamburgers. Bronwyn made onion strings. We had a great time and everyone ate a bunch.

We then had our worship time together.

One of the best things about our worship yesterday was that some of our good friends were there for the first time. Machado, his wife Juliana and their kids Lucas and Lara were there with us. They are the family in the picture above. We met Machado a couple of years ago because he was Garrett's soccer coach. We love these guys and were blessed to have them in our house and in our worship time with us.

We don't get to see them as much as we would like because last year they moved to another city which is about a 30 minute drive from our house.

When we have visitors we always like to share with them what house church "could" look like and what they "could" expect. We say "could" because it can change on any given Sunday. We told them it was really informal and we have a good time when we worship.

We like to share because sometimes people come in with an idea of what it may look like.

Who doesn't do that?

It's normal to be expecting, if you've only ever been to a Catholic church or a Pentecostal church, something that might look like a Catholic worship or Pentecostal worship because that's all you've ever known. Other people that have been here have never really been to a worship type of any kind and the only thing they know is what they've seen on television and, to be honest, that normally doesn't shed a good light on God's family. So we just try to take all their worries and/or preconceived ideas away and let them know it's probably not like any other worship time they've ever been to.

If you want to talk, talk. If you don't, don't. If you want to sing, sing. If not, don't worry about it. If you have questions, ask. If you don't want to do anything except just sit and listen then that's great too. We want them to know that we are just happy that they are with us.

True to form, after letting them know how informal we are, we had to stop a song one time because one by one everyone started laughing. Jorge started laughing and that got Benay laughing and then it just snowballed. We don't have enough other people with strong enough voices to continue singing when 3-4 stop. It's not, obviously, like a family that has Pretty soon everyone was laughing. We stopped, finally quit laughing and Jorge started the song again.

Benay then gave a great lesson on Joseph and his trials.

We then shared the Lord's Supper together as a big family.

As soon as we finished it was game time.

As you can tell by the picture above, on game day it's very common to wear the countries colors. Green and yellow. Adults and kids wear them.

Even little toddlers get into the spirit with Brasilian soccer shoe/socks and borrowed bandanas.

Once the game got started Benay brought out some cookies that she and Bronwyn made. Giovanni didn't move too far from the cookie table.

We had a great time together and Brasil won 3-1.

It was a good day. Tiring but very good.

I love how God can use a soccer game to bring people together in His name.

Sunday-Part 5

After all the good stuff that God did on Sunday there was no better way to end it than by singing together as a family.

We sang together before Paulo Renato prayed for and Bronwyn and Grace served the Lord's Supper to everyone.

We then sang to end our awesome day together.

I don't know what Grace and Bronwyn were doing but I love this picture that Bronwyn took of Grace.  Her face just reminded me of the fun time we had on Sunday.

Of course we ended our festive, celebrative day with what else?  More cake.

What a great day of rejoicing both here with our house church family and in heaven!

Family

The picture above is from our celebration time together from this past Sunday night. 

My mom took it while we were praying for a special brother.  Everyone had gotten together to lay hands on him and on each other.

We've been in Porto Alegre almost eight years and I honestly could not be happier with what God is doing here.

Has it been easy?  Absolutely not.  Are we some perfect church family?  Absolutely not.  We are a bunch of sinners who continually goof up but we, as a family, are learning to live by God's grace.  As we grow together God is teaching us what it means to be a true family.

As I look at the picture I think of how normally we don't get to choose who is in our family.  We get to choose, or are Spirit led, with our decision of a spouse or an adopted child but we don't get to choose our parents, our brothers or sisters, our grandparents, cousins, etc.  Those decisions are typically made for us by the decisions of someone else.  They are out of our control.  Those people in our family may be different than us but we do our best to make it work.  If you live for God you do whatever it takes to live in peace and have true fellowship with people in your family. 

It's the same way in our church family.  We don't make the choice of who is or isn't "worthy" of fellowship with Christ.  We open the door to every person in our city.  Warts and all.  Honestly, who doesn't have warts?  The warts are the reason Jesus died on the cross. 

Eight years ago I had no idea what this ministry would look like or who would be part of this family.  Eight years later I could not be happier with where God has us.  We are a part of a strong, and getting stronger, body of believers.  In that group we have recovering alcoholics, recovering cocaine and crack addicts. We have single moms, teenage moms and unwed moms.  We have white people and black people. We have mixed race marriages and mixed culture marriages. We have single men and women.  We have small kids and babies. We have new Christians, people who have been Christians for a long time and people who aren't yet Christians.  We have Americans, Brasilians and Uruguayans. We have people that have some money, people that have little money and people that have little to no money.    

We could not be more different in our life experiences, but we are family.  We are learning to share our joys and heartaches. We are learning to confess our sins to God and to each other. We are learning to pray together.  We don't judge one another and we are open to any person who wants to be a part of this church family.  We are learning how to reach out to the lost in our city.  We are learning how to disciple.  

We are learning how to be God's family.  

Our goal is to be an Acts 2 church family:

"And all the believers lived in a wonderful harmony, holding everything in common. They sold whatever they owned and pooled their resources so that each person's need was met.  They followed a daily discipline of worship in the Temple followed by meals at home, every meal a celebration, exuberant and joyful, as they praised God. People in general liked what they saw. Every day their number grew as God added those who were saved."

I'm not sure, eight years ago, where I expected us to be today.  I just know that I had no idea how good this would be or how much God would have blessed us after those eight years.  

We have been blessed to see Acts 2 in action here and it has moved our hearts. We know God has much more planned for this church family.  

We have a real family here and it's incredible. 

Church at Table Number Two

After our last blog about the email we received from a brother sharing about some things going on in Northern Brasil, our teammate Matt sent me a link to this story today. I sense God working on a theme with us this week.

It's encouraging and a great example of how every Christian should "be church" to this world. Go to those that don't have a relationship with Christ, don't wait on them to come to us. Meet them where they are, where they are most comfortable and take the gospel to them.

It's really simple if you think about it. It's time to act out our faith.

The following was written by Bill Hoffman from www.house2house.com:

“Would you like us to pray for you about something?” I asked. Immediately the eyes of our waitress opened wide as she blurted out an answer in the affirmative. It was Tuesday evening and our men’s accountability group had gathered for our regular meeting at a local coffee shop. For the past several months we had been offering to pray for those who waited on us. Most of the requests we received were fairly superficial. “My grandma is sick.” “I have a test coming up tomorrow.” “My boyfriend needs a job.” But when “Fran” began to share her needs with us it was like someone had backed up a garbage truck to our booth and dumped its contents out onto our table. Her daughter was suffering from cancer. A grandson had been born with serious medical problems. And her adult son had been thrown out of his home along with his three-year-old daughter. Fran had sacrificed financially to set them up in an apartment nearby but they had no furniture and her son had no job. She was working two full-time jobs to support them all and was still sinking quickly into debt.

“We will certainly pray for all of these requests,” I promised, “and we will see what else we can do to help.” Over the next few days we managed to come up with some leads for employment for her son and found a few items of furniture for them to use. On the following Tuesday Fran, who turned out to be the night manager at the restaurant, was again our waitress and once again we offered to pray for her. By the third week Fran was sitting down with us in our booth and joining us in our prayers. This was the evening she dropped the bombshell that has revolutionized the way we’ve been doing church.

“Thank you so much for your prayers and for all your help,” she gushed with a huge smile. “You guys have meant so much to me! I look forward to Tuesday night all week. Other people have invited me to their churches but they all meet on Sunday mornings when I am always working. So, God brought you guys to me on Tuesday nights.” After spreading out her hands toward the rest of us sitting at the table she joyfully declared, “This is my church!”

I’m afraid the first thought that crossed my mind was, “No it’s not! This is a men’s accountability group.” But the Lord suddenly revealed to me that this is exactly what we had been praying for. For months we had been moved to fervently pray for “workers for the harvest” asking the Lord to specifically connect us to a “man of peace.’” These prayer directives came from our study of the book of Luke, chapter 10: 1-7. It dawned on us that we had just found a “man of peace” even though the “man” was definitely a female and her house was not a house at all but rather a restaurant.

At first we attempted to invite her to our weekly house-church fellowship that meets at our home on Sunday evenings. However, her schedule made this impossible and her own apartment was in a community some twenty miles away. So, we just resigned ourselves to accept the fact that the Lord of the harvest had just morphed our men’s accountability group into a rather unique church. Early on Fran provided the name for this special gathering when she related to us a conversation she recently had with a fellow employee.

“You’re doing drugs, aren’t you?” Fran asked one of her co-workers with a tone of compassion rather than accusation. “Don’t try to deny it because I’ve been around and I know the signs.”

The young waitress just stared back at her through dilated, bloodshot eyes waiting for the expected pronouncement of her termination.

“Don’t worry,” Fran continued, ‘I’m not going to fire you or turn you in to the police. I’m just concerned about you and I know that whatever your problems are this is not the answer. Jesus is the answer! We need to change your work schedule so you can be here on Tuesday nights. Then you can go to church with me.”

Feeling somewhat relieved, the drug-addicted waitress responded by asking, “Where is your church located?”

As her face erupted into a huge smile Fran pointed over to a booth in the corner of the restaurant and proudly proclaimed, “Table number two!”
From this point on our gathering has been called “The Church at Table Number Two.”

Not long after Fran revealed to us that our gathering was in fact a church, she told us she had a surprise for us. She then excused herself from the table, went back into the kitchen, and brought out the cook and his assistant. After we all introduced ourselves we asked the two men what we could do to help them.

“We have heard all that you have done to help Fran,” began one of the Hispanic men speaking in heavily accented English. “We both live in very small apartments and have very large families. Could you perhaps find us some furniture? We especially need beds for our children.”

“I don’t know if we can help you,” I responded. “But I know who can. Jesus was the one who found help for Fran. Would it be okay if we asked Jesus to help you, too?”

Within a couple of weeks we had found some used furniture for these men and we began to connect every Tuesday evening with the cook. He led us to another family in a nearby community who was also in dire need of help, a young, recently widowed Hispanic woman with three young children and very little means to support them. We soon began meeting regularly in this woman’s home taking the Love of Jesus with us and doing what we could to help. Before long we were also traveling regularly to the cook’s home and “doing church” with him and his family. The cook, his wife, and her mother have all placed their faith in Jesus and God continues to open up doors through them into the Hispanic community. This has all been truly amazing to us since neither my wife nor I speak any Spanish and most of these new acquaintances speak little if any English. I’m not even a fan of Mexican food, but God’s Word tells us to “eat what is set before you.” (Luke 10:8) So, I’m learning to sacrifice my tongue and digestive tract for the greater good of reaching out to a people group in our area who are in desperate need of the Gospel of love. We are learning that the love of Jesus can break through any ethnic barriers.

I believe it is significant to note that not one of these individuals have ever attended our own home gathering. However, we are perfectly content with this development. It’s not that we wouldn’t love to have them; it’s just that they would most likely have a difficult time adjusting to our way of doing things, not to mention our food. Besides, the Lord has been teaching us to change the direction of our focus. For years our goal was to grow our home gathering to the point where it would be obvious we needed to split off and start another group. We would then commission a few of our members and send them out to plant the next church in another home. It’s not that this concept is terribly wrong; it’s just terribly slow. Meanwhile, the harvest is ripe and waiting.

These days we are not asking people to join the group that meets in our home. When we come across a “man of peace,” or discover someone interested in doing simple church, or lead someone to the Lord, our first instinct is to plant a new church in their home. We ask them to gather together their family and friends, especially those who are not yet Christians or who don’t attend church anywhere else, and we proceed to help them plant a church in the surroundings they know best, where Jesus can make the biggest difference, in their homes and workplaces. The results have been truly remarkable. But why should we be surprised? This is exactly how Jesus taught us to do it.