The nature of progress is an interesting thing. Sometimes it feels fast and you realize it is slow. Sometimes it seems like it is non existent or in reverse and you realize it is actually rapid.
Saturday, I had the opportunity to realize a little. We did another lunch for the hurting of our community, it was our most successful numerically speaking and probably had the most truly down and out so far. I got the chance to share a few of God’s truths with 3 different groups. The first and second were groups of 2 and 3 men from the favela and the third was a group of children. I was able to share a few of the words of Jesus with them in Portuguese. I had a few corrections to my grammar and verb tenses by the Brazilians with me but everyone understood what I was saying. For me this is a big deal.
As a missionary you leave your church and move to a new country because you want to share the gospel with people. You want to make a difference and discover you are useless because you can’t order a cheeseburger without pickles. Language is huge.
Later that day Warren and Sheri Yoder arrived at our house. We had spent the previous weekend with them at a retreat for Calvary Chapels in Brazil. It was great but how much more refreshing is it to have friends here we have known for more than 7 months. Warren was the first person to hire me in the cabinet business and they were mentors for us in marriage and life. Don’t blame them for our problems, we did that. Today we went to Paraguay with them and some new refreshing friends KaKa’ and Lillian. He is Brazilian and she is Norwegian, they are planting a church in Priah Grande. We had Chinese food.
After the retreat we feel the Lord is speaking to us that it is time to begin practicing more ministry. Not that we haven’t done any but that he is going to begin building us into the ministry he has for us. We feel this is going to be the beginning of a new season. We still have kids, the poor, and possibly vocational training on our heart. Not to mention we still feel our future points to involvement with the less reached. Pray we have wisdom as we close in on our first year in Brazil, our first year as full time missionaries and what we believe to be a turning point from full time learners that do a little ministry to full time learners that do more ministry 
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Love you all,
Ben and family.
So wonderful to have spent time with you guys! We are excited to watch and see what great things God has in store for you. We were blessed to see you begin to process your "next steps". Our prayers are with you.
ReplyDeletethe pics are very cute. the girls found stuffed animals bigger than them! :)
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