Culture Shock!

Well, let me tell you. You can be acclimated to a foreign culture for years and still be shocked by some of the "cultural" things you observe. Jennifer and I witness stuff in Brazil almost on a daily basis that really makes us laugh out loud. Before I tell you this story, though, I want to apologize to anyone who may be offended if you or your child do what we saw today. Actually, I'm not sure I want to apologize, because in so many ways I think it is weird and wrong.

Today we were at the mall and we needed to go to the diaper changing station. At this mall there is a room that is set aside for mothers to nurse their babies and for parents to change diapers. It is a great setup that I think should be available in every public place. Anyway, we entered the room and Jennifer began to feed Elisa. There were several parents in the room with their children (mostly infants and toddlers). As we looked around we observed a couple who looked to be in their late thirties and their two children (boy approximately 7 years old and girl approximately 5 years old). We both took double takes as we noticed this perfectly "normal" 7 year old boy was laying across a chair, stretched out, drinking milk from a bottle! At first, I thought there was no way that he was really drinking from that bottle. I thought he was probably goofing off with his little brother or sister's bottle while their diaper was getting changed. However, we watched in disbelief as he finished the bottle, stood up, handed the bottle to his mother and walked out of the room with his parents and sister in-tow. Unbelievable! Truly unbelievable!

Please understand, not every 7 year old boy in Brazil is going around sucking on a bottle. This really got our attention and made us laugh a little bit (whether is was wrong to do so I don't really know). Anyway, we were shocked today and expect that it is probable that we will be shocked again.

Prayer Meeting

Every Wednesday night we have a prayer meeting with our church family. This has been a good way for more of us to be active and involved in each other's lives. Each time is in a different location with a different host. We have seen just 2 or 3 people meet and we have seen as many as 23 come together! The following pictures are from the meeting that Jennifer and I hosted last week. It was a wonderful time of praise and adoration to our Lord!

Brazilian Missionary Conference - 2007

Every year the missionaries in South America (primarily Brazil) get together for a time of renewal, relaxation and encouragement. This year our team hosted the Brazilian Missionary Conference in Canela, Brazil (1.5 hours outside of Porto Alegre). Our keynote speaker was the wonderful David Wray (Abilene, TX); our men's resource speaker was Bob Chisholm (Dallas, TX); our women's resource speaker was Jean Blackwell (Newark, Delaware); and our teen resource speaker was Andrew Deister (Lewisville, TX). We all had a blessed time! Thank you to all who came and encouraged!

a time of worship and praise!

more worship and praise!

even more worship and praise (this time holding hands)!

Here we are listening intently to David Wray's lesson on Spiritual Formation.

This is most all of the group that made it to Canela for the Conference this year. We would all appreciate your prayers as we reach out to the "not-yet" Christians of Brazil.

Out of the building! and moving on...

Sorry it has been so long since my last update on this blog. A lot has been happening with our transition into house churches and with our annual Brazilian Missionary Conference.

December 17th was our last Sunday in the building that had been our church family's "home" for just over 3 years. The week before Christmas (December 18th through 22nd) we spent a lot of time packing up the building and preparing for the move out. On the 26th of December the moving truck came and hauled almost everything to a storage facility. For the time being all of our chairs, desks, tables, office supplies, shelves, books, cabinets, etc. will be housed in this storage facility.

The 24th (Christmas Eve) was the first Sunday that we spent at the Blume's house for worship. We have been meeting in their backyard every Sunday since. We are currently looking for a house to buy and set up as our "Resource Center". We hope that this will be a place where our church family will come and fellowship throughout the week. This will be a place where the children can have an after school Bible study program, the men can have churrascos (bbq), the ladies can have fellowship and studies, and the youth can have devotionals. We hope that this will be a place where we can set up offices and have Bible studies and leadership training. Really, the list of what we can potentially do with this "Resource Center" goes on and on.

Our Sundays have changed a little bit. Of course, we are meeting in the Blume's backyard now. In addition, we are meeting at 9:30 in the morning instead of 6:30 in the evening. We are spending more time in fellowship and our class time involves us moving into a time with what will be our house churches. We currently have 4 groups that will transition into house churches.

So, right now we are meeting as a whole every Sunday. In the future, we will meet in our house churches every week in their designated locations. Once a month or so we will get together as a large Christian family at a hotel conference room or a school in order to worship and fellowship together. In two weeks we will have a huge (in our terms "huge") celebration at a park in a town near Porto Alegre. We ask you to pray about this celebration and the encouragement that we hope it brings to our Christian family in the Porto Alegre area. We also ask you to pray that our ministries and our house churches would thrive as we focus on reaching out to the "not-yet Christians" of our city.

Porto Alegre/Inter-Nation Coming Unglued!

I have written in the past about the 2 professional soccer clubs that are in Porto Alegre; Grêmio and Sports Club Internacional. Today, in Japan, SC Internacional won the FIFA Club World Cup against Barcelona! That means that they are the best team in the world (out of all the club teams-and there are a ton)! Barcelona has been considered the team to beat for quite some time. They have a lot of talent and experience and, not to mention, the best player in the world - Ronaldinho.

Today, however, belonged to Inter-Nation! I have been a fan on Internacional since before we moved to Porto Alegre (for over 5 years). To see this happen is really something special. When the game ended, the city came unglued! People have been shouting and running in the streets! All of the car horns and firecrackers make it seem like we are in a war zone. It is crazy!

Anyway, I just thought that I would give you a little cultural blurb today. I wouldn't expect the celebration to lighten up anytime soon; even with the 100 degree weather we are expecting. The celebration actually started last night (just because we were playing in the game). Every 15 minutes or so throughout the night we heard fireworks and firecrackers going off. It was a lot of fun for Elisa (sense the sarcasm)!

Transitioning in Faith

Our church family is in a time of transition. A little over a year ago our team started coming to the point where we realized that some changes needed to be made in our ministries in order to not only reach out to the "not-yet" Christians of the Porto Alegre area in a more effective way, but to leave a self-sufficient, growing and maturing church family. In September of last year we started researching different ways to minister to the people of this city. After several months of prayer and research we made a unified decision to put all of our emphasis on our small groups. We call our small groups Growth Groups. The reason for this name is that they are designed to grow! They are evangelistic groups. Our decision to put our emphasis on our groups goes a huge step further. We have been in a transition to move our evangelistic Growth Groups to a point where they can become House Churches.

Our small groups, or Growth Groups, have really been a great blessing to our Christian family in Porto Alegre. The Lord has chosen to use these groups to knock down the walls and barriers that exist between the "lost" and His family. In our time of study and prayer we have seen the Lord bringing us back to His church in the 1st century. We really want to take a step forward by looking at what the early Christians did in homes. We believe that the Lord has given us a vision that will allow His word to be taken to all people in Porto Alegre.

This past Sunday (December 3rd) Kevin, Paul and I shared our vision with our church family. With God's grace and our trusting in His guiding we will give more people the opportunity to have a relationship with Christ than we ever thought possible. Below is my part of the 3 part sermon that Kevin, Paul and I gave. I hope that it helps you understand a little bit about where we are coming from.

When Jesus chose his first disciples, he chose several fishermen. He said to them, “Come follow me, and I will make you fishers of men…” In the year 2000, our mission team, had this commandment in mind when we decided to come to Porto Alegre and start a church. We wanted, and still want, to be fishers of men. This is a task that all of us should take seriously – bringing other people to a relationship with Christ. So today, we want to use this analogy of fishing to explain to you where our church has been and where we want to go in the future.

There are two common ways to fish. One way is with a pole, line, hook and bait. The object here would be to put the bait on the hook, hang it in the water and hope that a fish is attracted to the bait, takes a bite and gets stuck on the hook. This way of fishing demonstrates the way that our church has tried to “fish” up to this point. We have tried to attract people to our church and a relationship with Christ. How do you make a church attractive to people? You have a nice, comfortable building, quality worship services, diverse activities for all ages, special events, a relaxed, comfortable environment, etc. During these last three years, we have worked hard to implement these types of programs and activities, trying to attract more and more people. Many events brought large crowds to the building, but few of those people ever came back.

In 2005, after the 2^nd anniversary of the Igreja de Cristo do Sul, we began to take a look at the results of our 1^st two years of existence here in Porto Alegre. We had done various special events like Friend’s Day, Kid’s Day, Women’s retreats, Youth retreats, Men’s retreats, Lets Start Talking, and VBS. Literally thousands of people entered our building through these events, and five people became Christians because of these activities. Today, only one of these people continues to come to this church. However, in this same time, people also became Christians not because of the special events, but because of their relationships with members of this church. In the end of 2005, there were 17 new brothers that became Christians because their friends or family talked to them about Jesus. Today, eleven of these people continue to come to this church. While we were happy because of the growth or progress that was made, we felt that God wanted and continues to want all of us to allow Him to do much more to reach the lost of this city through each one of us. We began to look for reasons for this slow progress. We could say that the people in Rio Grande do Sul are more resistant. They don’t open up their lives easily to new things. One thing that we began to realize is that many people here don’t feel a need for a “church” and so they aren’t even looking for one. The fish, so to speak, aren’t even hungry for the bait that’s in the water. However, we do see that people are hungry for something in their lives. They are searching for answers and we know that those answers are found in Jesus.

So, we began to think. We began to look at the way that we were “fishing”. We began to question “Is this the only way to establish a church here in Porto Alegre?” “Could there be a better way?” We began to study about the reasons that we do the things that we do and research other ways to “fish”. We prayed, and asked God to lead us and give us courage to make changes, if they needed to be made. We also have asked you to read and study the first example of church that we have in the book of Acts, and to pray for God to give you a vision of what this church could be in the future. In the meeting last month, you said that you wanted to see more emphases in the Lord’s Supper, more flexibility in the hours of activities, and more training for Brazilian leadership. Someone said, you have noted that we grow through prayer and that the church needs to have less religion and more spiritual flexibility. It needs to be a church that doesn’t depend on American funds and that it needs to better use its own resources. It needs to utilize more vehicles to promote unity like sports, theatre and music. You said that church can happen in a house or in any location. You said that we need to have a clearer purpose.

We want you to know that we have listened very carefully to you and have used your suggestions, along with our own experiences and study to come up with a new plan for this church. Above all, we want you to know that we feel the leading of the Holy Spirit in our decisions. Making changes takes courage, and we don’t take our responsibility as leaders lightly. We have prayed that God would lead us and he has and we continue to pray that you will have open and receptive hearts to the new vision that we are going to share with you today.

Staying Connected

Jennifer and I have been extremely blessed by our sponsoring congregation, Eastside church of Christ (Colorado Springs, CO). Yesterday they had their annual "Missions Sunday". This is a day when the mission works that they are supporting around the globe are really promoted and given the spotlight. They usually host an auction to raise money for mission efforts on this day. They sell all kinds of different items, most of which come from the countries where they are supporting a missionary family.

For the last 2 years this has been a great way for us to stay connected with Eastside. Last year they called us in the middle of the mission's worship service! One of the elders asked us some questions about our work in Porto Alegre and then he prayed over us - through the phone! It was really encouraging to us.

In yesterday's service they called me and another missionary (medical) that they support in Guatemala. Instead of asking us questions, Eastside gave us an opportunity to help lead the service. I was asked to lead the Lord's Supper over the phone. From what I have heard it went over really well. They had a picture of me and Jennifer and Elisa on the projection screen while I was talking and leading the prayers. I hung up my cell phone feeling a lot of love. I was encouraged by the Lord's ability to keep his family connected. Our bond is stronger than good phone service. We share the same grace and are washed in the same blood. Nothing can break that bond!

I heard that a couple of suggestions were made to do a video conference next year! Each year has gotten better, so I wouldn't be surprised. We'll just have to wait and see!

I want to encourage all of you who read this to try to do something creative like this to lift spirits of the missionaries that you or your church family are supporting. Do something to stay connected. You won't regret it.