The Marathon

Sunday was the Porto Alegre Marathon. I usually don't go and check it out and I certainly don't run in it, but this marathon was different. It was special. Our teammates, Matt and Kevin, got a team together of 6 guys from the Chácara to run a relay part of the marathon. It was a 40K. Including Matt and Kevin the team had 8 guys that ran 5K each. If you don't quite get the "K" it means kilometers. 5K is just a little more than 3 miles and 40K is almost 25 miles. It may as well be 100 miles for me because I just don't run (unless I am being chased)!

These guys who ran have never really done this type of thing before. A few months ago Matt started training with them so that they would be ready to run the marathon in half-way decent shape. Well, they did great! In fact, in their category, out of 13 teams they came in 4th place! They all received medals for finishing the race and will receive a trophy for finishing in the top 5.


After the marathon our church family met together for our monthly Celebration. We had a fellowship time with lunch and then we worshiped the Lord together. There was a great theme of running the Christian race and being a support and encouragement to our brothers and sisters in Christ who are running the race with us. It was a great day.

As we closed our worship service we showed a couple of very inspirational videos (translated in Portuguese) for our church family that were really powerful. They were about a father and son, Dick and Rick Hoyt, that do Ironman Triathlons. The son has such a binding physical disability that he has his father carry him through the triathlons. These videos were amazing examples to us of how our heavenly Father carries us through the marathon of life and how we should carry and support our brothers in Jesus who need encouragement.

I encourage you to take the time to watch these 2 videos. It will take about 10 minutes in total, but it is well worth it. You will be encouraged.

"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."
2 Timothy 4:7

Family Vacation - Part VII

I hope that these last several links to posts about our family vacation have been enjoyable. We really wanted to express how amazing this country is and how blessed we have been to be here. Instead of making you go to another site to view a slide show of our time in Foz do Iguaçu I will embed it right here for you. Enjoy!

Family Vacation - Part VI

To read about our adventures checking out the waterfalls in Argentina click here.

Family Vacation - Part V

This was a really exciting day for us! Click riiiiight here for some great pictures!

Family Vacation: Part IV

Click here to read all about our experience at the Itaipu hydroelectric plant. It is the largest in the world!

Family Vacation: Part III

I have the 3rd installment of our trip up and running on our other blog. Click here to read it.

Family Vacation: Part II

If you are interested in checking out Part 2 of our family vacation, click here. You might find it interesting...

Family Vacation: Part I

Read all about the first part of our family vacation here.

The Storm

We have had a few big storms over the past few years here in Porto Alegre, but this weekend was one to write about. We ended up with a damaging cyclone early Saturday morning. It started raining here late Thursday night and we didn't get a break (just a few minutes) until mid-morning Saturday. Since then it has stayed cloudy and has rained consistently. In fact, it is raining as I write this post.

Today we went to Cachoerinha (cash-o-air-een-ya) for worship with the Salgado family and on the way we visited with Paulo Renato (Paulo has been going out to the Salgado's with us for worship for a couple of months now). Paulo was telling us about the effects of the storm that he experienced. He told us that the C.A.S.A. that we are renting has been without electricity since the early hours of Saturday morning. That wasn't a surprise because we knew that most of the population of the greater Porto Alegre area was without power for most of Saturday (approximately 20,000 homes)! He said that 2 large trees fell on top of a house and 3 cars just across the street. No one was hurt, but there was a lot of damage. As we continued on our way we saw billboards completely destroyed and lots of debris scattered throughout the streets.

I read about some of the damage that the storm/cyclone caused over the weekend in today's paper. There are some pretty amazing and yet scary statistics recorded. From 12 am Friday until 9am Saturday we received 5.77 inches of rain (it looks much worse when you see the metric number of 146.6 mm and when you see stranded cars in the streets!). That may not seem like much rain, but it is 122.2% of Porto Alegre's average rainfall for the month of May. So, it is much more than what we typically get. Most of the problems and damage was caused by the cyclone winds. They were recorded at 62 mph (100 km/h) on Saturday morning. At about 3am Saturday morning I ran down to the garage to find that the garage door had been blown open by the winds! They ripped up trees all over the city. I read that one individual stopped his car on Saturday morning to help move a fallen tree out of the road and was hit by another falling tree in the process. Unfortunately, he was killed. I haven't heard of any other fatalities due to the storm, but I know that approximately 300 people had to completely abandon their homes.

We had some minor damage at our house, but nothing worth mentioning. In the wake of this storm/cyclone I feel compassion, confusion and awe. I have thought a lot about the folks who live on the street and don't have any shelter or warm clothing. I have thought about the families and individuals who have been stranded or have been forced to leave their flooded homes. I have though about those who have been wounded or killed.

Storms like this leave me praying for those who are in these difficult situations, yet I am in awe of the Lord's powerful hand to bring such forceful winds and rain. I can't wrap my mind around what it must have been like to be a disciple of Christ in the boat on those tossing seas or to be on the Earth when the flooding rains came in the time of Noah. This storm wasn't really that big, but it disrupted a lot of lives. I sort of feel like I am rambling now, but it makes me think about how we need to be and should be in awe of God's mighty hand. Whether engineering a beautiful landscape of snow-peaked mountains or bringing torrential down pours He is amazing - he is powerful in the storm.

Church's Mini-Spiritual Retreat

Yesterday our church family had what I like to call a "mini-spiritual retreat". I am only calling it "mini" because it only lasted several hours. Normally when I think of a retreat I think of leaving the city and going somewhere different for a couple of days. It was a holiday here in Rio Grande do Sul (our state) so it was easy for most people to get together to talk about what is going on with the house churches and Celebrations.

We met in a gazebo at the Botanical Gardens for the morning session.

We decided to meet at the Botanical Gardens here in town and have a time of reflection. We spent about an hour and a half remembering the blessings that we have experienced in house churches over the last year and a half or so. There were many wonderful things that were commented on. To list a few we mentioned:

• That we have learned that house churches really do challenge you to develop close, intimate relationships with those you meet and worship with. Superficial relationships get thrown out the window!
  
• The offering that is given in house churches is usually given to an immediate need. Although we are renting a house (the C.A.S.A.) it is not that much rent and upkeep. If someone in a house church knows of someone that really needs financial assistance - we help right away with what was given!
• The environment of a house church helps you see the needs of others. You can perceive much easier when someone in your group needs help. Plus, our house churches try to do regular service projects in the community. We are challenged to serve!
• House churches allow everyone to participate and use the gifts they have been blessed with to in turn bless the body. Anyone can read a scripture, share a word of encouragement, lead a prayer or a song, etc.
• In house churches, individuals are given more freedom to interact and question during the Bible study. It is much easier to retain what you are being taught (or even teaching) because of the discussion that takes place around the study. Not too many people ask a preacher a question about his sermon... during the sermon!
  
• We are learning that anyone can lead or host a house church. You don't have to worry about money for a new building to start a sister church. They can reproduce and multiply quite easily!

Around noon some of us went and did our own thing for lunch. Because the weather was getting much cooler it was a little hard to stay comfortable and concentrate on the task at hand. So, we all ended up meeting at our house for the afternoon part of the retreat.

In the afternoon we briefly reviewed the blessings that we had experienced in house churches. Then, we spent some time reflecting on some of the more difficult and challenging aspects of house churches. We realized that there are some common themes in what a lot of people were saying. Most of our struggles centered around:

• Lack of communication (on different levels).
• Lack of feeling of celebration in the Celebrations - no real dynamism.
  
• Lack of feeling responsible for others who are not in our own house churches. No consistent encouragement.

There were a few other struggles that were mentioned that we need to address as well. Benay Blume read a passage from I Peter that really helped put us all in the right mindset as we talked about our challenges. We know and trust that the Lord can use our struggles to stretch and mold us. It is important to remember to be positive about struggles. We know what we need to improve on, so now we will spend time praying about how to actually make adjustments to bless this church family.

We needed to spend some time brainstorming about how to do better where we struggle. The group decided that the best way to go about this (because we ran out of time yesterday) is to pray about these blessings and struggles and come back together on May 22nd for a time of brainstorming. May 22nd is a holiday too, so we hope to at least have the group that participated yesterday.

This is the group that met in the afternoon at our house. What a blessing it is to see all those smiles right after we spoke about our failures and challenges as a church family. I really believe that the Lord blessed those who were present with the right attitudes, mind-sets and hearts.

I feel so blessed by the way people handled themselves and spoke up yesterday. We all realize that this is just the beginning of an incredible journey that the Lord is guiding this church family on. Please partner with us in praying that He be the one to lead us and that we don't try to achieve any thing on our own. Please pray for our focus to be on God and His family. Please pray that He bless us with ways to resolves the issues that we see are problems. It is our constant prayer that what we do in the following days, weeks, months and years will bless many people and will help grow the Kingdom of God in Brazil.