Tiago

In the last 2 posts I have put on this blog I have written about our good friend, Tiago (Chee-a-Go). I think that it is time for me to give as much of his story to you as I can.

We first met Tiago in 2004 when Let's Start Talking did a campaign with our church. He was one of the readers who came to practice his English using the Bible. I didn't really know him well back then, but I remember him coming to church a couple of times. I recall him being very laid-back and reserved in those days.

Tiago continued to come in and out of our lives with LST coming again in 2005 and with an English class that he had with Tessa Sexton. He studied with Tessa one-on-one for some time before their classes eventually ended. He was a part of the "Growth Group" small group study at the Klein's home from June 2006 until December of that year. As we made our transition out of the building and into house churches Tiago came to be a part of the group that meets in our home on Sundays. We praise God that he has been a regular part of our group for the last year and a half. In addition, Tiago has also been a consistent participant in the Men's Ministry studies and retreats.

Here is a picture of the group of men that went on a retreat in July of 2007. Tiago is circled.

Tiago is only 24 years old, but he comes across as someone with a lot of experience, maturity and wisdom. He wasn't taught anything of significance about the Gospel before coming to our church family, but has always carried himself with integrity and humility. He is an upright young man that we are all very fond of. He has given out of his own pocket to help those of our church family who have been in need and is always available to listen and encourage when someone needs him to.

Tiago and I went camping a few weeks ago. On that trip I had an opportunity to visit with him a little about his faith and where he is at spiritually. I tried not to put pressure on him, but I wanted to let him know that I was concerned about his salvation. He had let me know before in a previous conversation and again in this one that he wasn't sure when he would be baptized, but he wanted to spend more time in reflection about Christianity. He told me that he saw something powerful in the family of God, but didn't quite know how to grasp it or how to have it in his life. We talked about the Holy Spirit and the power that comes through confessing Jesus as your Lord and being baptized. I talked about my personal faith walk and how much of a journey it has been. We were very open and honest. I left that conversation feeling like he was on the right track and that one day he would indeed give his life to Jesus.

Since mid-March Tiago has been a part of a small group that has had an English class with Jennifer. Every Tuesday and Thursday evening this small group meets up at the C.A.S.A. to study English grammar (fun!) and read through the book of James. Every now and then Jennifer would let me know that Tiago was taking a deep interest in what they were reading and talking about in James. The book of James is some real, convicting Christian living stuff. It really started to take hold of Tiago and eventually started to touch his heart in a way he hadn't yet been touched.

A couple of days ago I wrote about how Tiago told me he wanted to give his life to Jesus. I am still so moved that he has allowed the Lord to penetrate his heart. Tonight Tiago and Paulo Renato came over for a pizza dinner to close out their English classes with Jennifer. After dinner Tiago and I had a chance to talk alone while we prepared the bathtub for his baptism. I explained to him how we would do the baptism and that I would read some scriptures beforehand. I told him that this is the most important day of his life and that in just a few moments he will have a new life in Jesus. He then told me that when he first made the decision to be baptized it was when he knew that he would travel to Australia. He began to think about how he wouldn't be with us on Sundays and that bothered him. He wanted to be connected to us through Jesus. He then told me that at first he thought that being baptized would be something simple to do. However, after studying scripture over the last few days he realizes how serious of a commitment to Jesus it is. He realizes now that this is a life-altering event and that he will never be the same. Amen!

Sascha & Tiago immediately after the baptism.

Paulo Renato welcomes his new brother into the family of Christ!

Our family with Tiago after his baptism.

Please remember to keep Tiago and his new walk with Jesus in your prayers. He will leave us on Friday to spend a few weeks with his mom in his hometown of Santiago, Brazil. On June 9th, he will board a plane for Sydney, Australia and will be there until December.

One Nice Long Weekend

As it happens our weekends are sometimes much busier than our weeks. We find that it is much easier to fellowship with folks and strengthen relationships when we aren't all "working". What better time to do that than a weekend? This weekend was pretty long, yet very good. Most people include Friday in the weekend so that is where I will start with this post.

Friday I went to lunch with Tiago. Tiago (James in English) and I have become pretty good buds. We really enjoy each other's company (see this post), so it wasn't something out of the ordinary for him to want to have lunch. I did think that something might be up because he "wanted to talk". "Wanting to talk" is always code for something serious is going on in my life! So, Tiago came by the house and picked me up. We went to this pretty good buffet and were just having causal conversation when he hit me with a bomb - "I'm leaving for Australia on June 9th". What?! He wants to go to Australia to study English and work for several months. He expects to be back in Porto Alegre sometime in December of this year. He didn't want to say anything until he knew for sure that things were going to work out. He has his passport and just got his visa so it was time to share the big news. Then he hit me with a super bomb!!! "Before I go to Australia I want to be baptized". Awesome! I can't tell you how pumped I was (and still am) about this. He is telling me all this in the middle of the restaurant. I seriously took his confession right there at the table in front of the food. It was great! I asked him if he wanted to study regularly after he is baptized and then he hit me with "I am leaving on Wednesday for my hometown and won't be back until right before I leave for Australia". What craziness! All I can say is that his heart has been touched and he is ready to live for Jesus. I have more to say about this, but I will wait a couple of days and dedicate a post entirely to his story.

Friday night Jennifer and I ended up having Tiago and his girlfriend, Lili over for supper. It was a great time of fellowship and food.

Saturday started off with us going up to the CASA for a class that Jennifer teaches. She has been teaching the teenage girls of our church family a study on the book "Just Like Jesus" by Max Lucado. This is a really good book and a really good study. Please keep this study, the young girls involved and Jennifer as the facilitator in your prayers.

I went along to help watch Elisa with our good friend Rute. Elisa has really had a hard time being left with other people. She is going through a stage where that just really scares her. I ended up taking her home after only an hour so that she could take a nap and get ready for a play date.

Saturday afternoon we went over to the apartment of some old neighbors. We hadn't seen them in about a year and a half (since they moved out of our old apartment building). They called us out of the blue on Thursday and wanted to visit. We were very grateful that they remembered us and wanted to renew our friendships. We had tried to reach them several times over the last year without success. Eduardo and Fernanda are their names and they are really fun. They have 2 kids, Mariana and Marcelo. We were over at their apartment for about 3 hours on Saturday and we all had a great time. Jennifer and I got caught up with our old friends and Elisa got caught up with Marcelo and his really cool toys! All we heard from her for those 3 hours was "OOHHHHH! TOOYYYSSSS!" She was in heaven!

Saturday early evening: we got Elisa home in time to eat supper and get ready for bed (which is around 7pm). Bronwyn Blume arrived about that time to babysit, then we got ourselves ready to go over to Matt and Waleska's apartment for a couple's ministry meeting. Once a month Matt and Waleska lead a study at their apartment for married couples. The subjects are designed to help grow and strengthen the relationship that you have with your spouse. In March the subject was communication. This month was the first of 2 studies on dealing with finances as a couple. The second study will be toward the end of May. I think we got home around 10:30 or 11pm last night, but is was worth it. It was a blessing to encourage one another with such a difficult subject. Please keep the marriages of our church family and the Couple's Ministry in your prayers.

Today (Sunday) we started the day off by getting ready to receive the Lima family for lunch. This family has been a party of our church body from the beginning. They are Lauro, Lorena, Gabrieli, Lucas & Gabrieli's boyfriend Guilherme (William). Lauro makes pretty tasty food and recently started his own business. We made a deal with them that if we bought all the food they could make it! They happily agreed! So, we feasted on some amazing churrasco (Brazilian bbq) and salad and garlic bread, etc. It was great! They are some of our favorite people here in Porto Alegre, so even without the food it is always fun being with them. We are grateful to have such wonderful, tender-hearted people like the Lima clan in our church family.

Grillin' the meat! Yummm!

Here is one picture with Jennifer and one with me just to prove that we were both there!

You can't blame Lucas for taking the time to let the meat settle!

After a few hours with the Lima family we got ready for our church's once-a-month Celebration. The last Sunday of every month all of the house churches get together for a big gathering. There is always singing and some form of lesson. We share the Lord's Supper together and sometimes have some kind of a meal. After our time of worship people usually hang around and visit with each other. There is always strong fellowship in the Celebration gatherings. Today, instead of a meal, we had a baby shower. There is a girl in our church family, Daniela, who is expecting a baby. We threw a simple bash for her with cake and presents. Please keep her and the baby in your prayers. Their entire family needs prayers for strength and wisdom.

This picture is of Paul Morrow bringing us a word from Psalm 23 during our Celebration.

Here is Daniela opening some of her presents at the baby shower. By the way, it's a girl!

After the Celebration and baby shower started winding down we headed home to try and relax a little. Elisa is already down for the night and Jennifer and I are sitting at our computers. This wasn't necessarily a typical weekend, but it wasn't out of the ordinary either. It was simply one nice long weekend.

Camping With Tiago

Over the last few weeks I had been trying to recruit the guys in the 2 house churches and 1 small group that we participate in to go on a camping trip. I thought that a little get-away would be a good bonding time for us. Most of the guys (7 of us in total) where excited about it. As time for the trip got closer most of the guys had to bail out due to work or being sick.

So, it ended up just being me and Tiago (Chee-a-Go). We went to the waterfalls where we had a house church meeting a few weeks ago. Not being regular outdoors men we don't own any camping equipment. We had to borrow a tent from Matt Rehbein and sleeping bags from the Blume family. It was a great time to go camping. We were the only people at the site until Saturday morning. That gave us free reign on whatever without having others interrupt us. It was the ideal situation.

We weren't familiar with Matt's tent, so we took pictures of the assembling process just in case we couldn't get it broken down! It was really fun - and easier than expected!


We spent most of our 24 hour camping trip (Friday afternoon to Saturday afternoon) talking about God's creation and how small we are in the grand scheme of things. The nature that we experienced was awe-inspiring. The trees, the water, the flowers, the animals (little wolf-like creatures and monkeys) and the night time sky really blessed us. Here are a couple of pictures of the camping area that we enjoyed.


Tiago and I really had a great time grilling hotdogs in the dark and making "Smores". It was his first "Smores" experience. I was glad to accommodate! We are moving from Summer into Fall, so nights and mornings are a little chillier. We appreciated the warm, relaxing fire in the evening.

Tiago warming himself by the fire.

Munching on "Smores"!

The place where we went has 5 waterfalls. I believe that you can jump off the first 4 (and I did jump from the 2nd one!), but the last is pretty large and dangerous. We hiked down a trail on Saturday morning to get a first-hand look at this monster of a waterfall. It looked like something out of an adventure film. It was, along with most everything else we saw, incredible!

I am standing next to a zip-line that goes over the 5th waterfall.

This 5th waterfall is just over 108 feet tall and the water is almost 40 feet deep! Needless to say there was no jumping off this one!

Tiago and I had an amazing time that blessed and grew our friendship. We plan on taking another trip like this one in the future, but with more of our buddies.

Please keep Tiago and his search for Jesus in your prayers. He is an amazing young man with many talents. I know that one day he will do wonderful things for the Kingdom!

Dani - A New Sister

When our team moved here in June of 2002, Dani was one of the first people they met. Dani, being a language teacher, was the team's initial language teacher when they arrived in Porto Alegre. Over time the families on the team decided to hire individual teachers instead of all having the same one. Although Dani had formed relationships with everyone on the team, she only continued teaching Kyle and Leslie Klein.

When Jennifer and I moved to Porto Alegre in 2004 we began our friendship with Dani. She was our Portuguese teacher for a little over 2 and a half years. During that time we really became good friends with her and her husband, Alexandre. We were there when their little girl, Ana Luisa, was born (she is now one of Elisa's best friends). We have gone on several family vacations with Dani and Alexandre and are planning a big trip for next month. In the four years that we have been here; through dinners and outings and many Bible studies we have become very close friends.

Last Thursday night we were in our Bible study in the South Zone of the city. This is a study that Dani has been frequenting. In the study we were talking about Jesus' authority versus the authority of man's teaching. We eventually started talking about the power and the gift of the Holy Spirit. We have had many discussions in the past with Dani about similar subjects, but I don't know that they were penetrating her heart. After about 30 minutes of discussion on Thursday night though, Dani asked to be baptized!

We have prayed consistently for this over the last few years, so when the day of her decision to follow Jesus arrived we were ecstatic! We knew that we were not the ones to touch her heart. We have been patiently presenting the truth to her and praying that the Lord would touch her and that she would accept Jesus as her Lord, and she did!

She and Alexandre and their daughter came over last night after Anderson Blume's 4th birthday party for her baptism. Due to the cooler weather we stayed indoors and I baptized Dani in the bathtub. It was a such a powerful and blessed event.

Please let this be an encouragement to you as it is to us to pray for those in your life who haven't accepted Jesus as their Lord. Sometimes we need to be patient. Jennifer and I feel fortunate that we were able to witness Dani's confession and baptism, but we know that there are many others that we may not see come to Jesus. Just because we aren't there doesn't mean they won't though. It maybe today, tomorrow or in 20 years, but God does answer prayers for the lost.

Dani's baptism!

Jennifer embracing her new sister!