New year

We have been very busy doing paper work to get our residency. It should be done now though. Tomorrow we go to turn everything in. We should receive our protocol number then, this is the number that will be on our green card when it is finished being processed. With this expense behind us as well as all the running around I think I will have time and money to enroll in language school. We are praying about buying a car on payments or waiting until we have money. Not having a car really limits us in ministry. It takes so long just to go to the grocery store, get paper work done, whatever that it is hard to get out and do some of the things we want to do.

 

		Daily life VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

 

We were encouraged last week by some Southern Baptist missionaries we became friends with to feel free with the first year. Learn the language, settle in, get comfortable with our situation as a family. They pointed to long term success being more important than the pressure for immediate results. They said you feel pressure from your self to satisfy supporters, to be busy for God, etc... They said there is nothing more important than to be a full time language learner.

We really have been learning a lot about the culture and the spiritual state of the nation. For us we are beginning to learn we have to be focused on a specific group of people. The middle class of Brazil has a strong Christian base. Certainly God will still use and is using the fact we are Americans living in Brazil to reach more people. That gets attention that a Brazilian would have a hard time getting. However we are finding our desire grows to reach the poor, who tend to be more prayed upon by prosperity doctrine movements than reached by the gospel and by people who desire to help. We take for granted the salvation army and union gospel mission. When you are somewhere the church hasn't grown to understand its responsibility you realize the health that is still present in the American church when it comes to fulfilling our responsibility as Christians. For us we are realizing our place within the church here is to disciple people to meet that need, to take on that responsibility. We also are have a growing interest to work with Muslims here. The community is huge. This is very much in line with what we were telling people before we came. The funny thing is reaching the Muslims and working with the poor seemed distant from each other as the Muslims are the upper middle class here. We have learned from people who are here working with them the importance of being able to say you do something else. You can't say to a Lebanese restaurant owner I am a missionary to the Muslims. Working with the poor we can say we came to Brazil to work with at risk kids or in the favelas. This disarms them a bit and allows you to build relationships. I think it is likely in the day time we will be doing ministry within the favelas and at night building friendships with Islamic families. If we want to satisfy our missionary hearts we can’t focus on middle class Brazil any more than we could have stayed in Albany and worked in a local church. We need to focus on group of people that is essentially unreached. That is our desire, that is the passion God placed in our hearts.

Pray for us as we learn language, learn culture, learn about our family and pursue God.