December, a little good, a little challenge

Sorry all for the long delay in an update. We have had a very busy December with what ended up a nice Christmas. We returned from Sao Paulo right before Christmas and rushed into Paraguay to do our shopping. Thanks to parents, grandparents, aunts and some friends for making presents for the kids possible.

I’m happy to report that the work at the boys prison, Ciade is going well. We had been meeting in a small room with 2 to 3 groups every Friday. Early in December rain had forced them to move some projects into that room. They provided us a speaker and microphones and we preached from a courtyard in front of the cells. It was a huge breakthrough. Instead of being in a room with boys they normally only see in passing they were in their cells with their normal cell mates, they paid a lot more attention. Also boys that had been choosing not to come got the chance to hear the gospel. After that we changed to this method every week. These are hard boys, who have seen death, even caused death. They have been listening to the gospel for a few months and asking good questions. Praise God Heitor and I received a present on Christmas eve. Marcos Santana a very pleasant young man of around 16 told us he really began to believe as I shared that day. God is so good. It really isn’t difficult to get people who have grown up in a highly religious Catholic culture to repeat a prayer, so we really have just been preaching and sharing truth without asking them to do that. It was so encouraging to have one of the boys share unprompted that he is becoming a believer.

Our time in SP went fairly well. God provided a financial gift that covered most of the expense for going and paying for Alannah’s passport, birth certificate, and a document we hope satisfies the federal police in our application for residency. Pray that goes well as we have reached the end of our allotted time with a tourist visa. We had a good time catching up with our friends Junior and Vania and though we are sad we aren’t working with them, we know we are where God has us. Melissa and I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary there. We had a good time but would have had a better time had someone told us before we went out that there are now 4 or 5 Outback’s in Sao Paulo. Next time.

Christmas was good. Here the main event is dinner on the 24th. Our friends Ramses' and Jackie invited us to spend it with their family. He is Brazilian but from Lebanese decent and she is Columbian. They have 3 daughters, 20, 15, 13 I think, we had a very good time. We ate at about 9:30pm and came home around 12:30. He made pork loin, ham, turkey breast, pork back strap, an Arabic rice, salad, garlic sauce, spicy garlic sauce, pineapple sauce, wine sauce and much more. I made a chicken and stuffing. None of them tried the stuffing until after their oldest daughter Vanessa tried it and liked it. We have noticed Brazilians are very slow to try new foods. 

We are also becoming better friends with Clem and Lynda, southern Baptist missionaries here. They work with a seminary here and a few other things. It is good to get to know more missionaries and learn how to target groups of people. They have 4 kids as well and our kids get along well with theirs.

Pray for us as we apply for residency, continue to try and get established financially and learn the language. I am doing fairly well but Melissa and the kids need to practice more. Pray we have wisdom about putting the kids in school. Pray we have wisdom of how to minister here.

Steps

It is funny how hard the first step is and how easy the rest can be. I remember jumping off cliffs when I was a teenager. The first jump you would linger at the top with the whole "you go first" routine, but once you felt the water surging past your face you couldn’t scramble back up fast enough.
Today we went to Argentina and took a first step towards loving some tribal people. We went to Puerto Iguassu and had lunch. Then we bought oranges and bread. When we drove up to the area there are normally quite a few tribal people we discovered they were mostly gone as it was the middle of the day. We began to get nervous about how hungry they might be or whether or not the food would be an insult. Daniel and Juliah were dying to give some oranges to someone. Finally they took the oranges to the guy “watching and parking cars”. He a woman saw and wandered over. We offered her bread and oranges, the rest saw and there were no more nerves. We gave out about fifty little French breads and 2/3 of our 50 lb. sack of oranges. It was interesting as it was obvious the guy didn’t want to look hurting but really wanted some too. We made sure we got his name “Gabrielle” and found out he lives in Paraguay and is from the Macca tribe. He tried to teach me to say thank you in his language but it might has well been “knock knock clickity click bing bang boom”.
I look forward to seeing how God develops our ministry to the poor and hurting. Especially the tribal people.

Act vs. React

We are learning so much of what it means to live in Brazil and we are truly loving it. There many things that are difficult but the people and the potential to love the unloved make up for the difficulties. One of the difficulties is time. You bleed time day in and day out. Government bureaucracy leads to bureaucracy with companies. Bureaucracy at business takes away motivation to get things done. Solving one problem leads to two more.

Yesterday I went to the church with Tim to look at making some swings for children’s ministry. The area we were looking at wasn’t going to be strong enough so we began looking at others. We now realize we need a ladder to put up and take down the swings as well as many other things, but that is another days problem. When we settled on something we went down to the ranch store to buy some rope, a hose for cleaning, and hooks. After selecting all our stuff we went to pay. You are required to give your CPF number here for big purchases, it is like your social. We had cash to pay but because our receipt printed wrong and didn’t say approved we had to wait what seemed close to 30-40 minutes to get someone to come to the computer who knew how to reprint it. The short of the story is that we still don’t have swings, we did purchase the stuff, and we have one less afternoon. Three of us.

Many of you know in the past we owned our own business and early on made some bad choices that led to debt. The thing I learned most in that process is that you can’t allow situations to dictate your choices but make choices to produce right situations. Act, don’t react. We were in such severe debt we no longer could make choices about our finances or lives we simply reacted to whatever crisis was at hand. This led to crisis in all aspects of our lives, spiritual, financial, marriage, family, etc... When it all began to crash we realized we had to take control of our lives back from the situations at hand and do what we needed to do regardless of the consequences. We were forced to let debts go, put marriage and God before work, come to our lowest point. When we began seeking God we became very purposeful at the same time. We got rid of cars we had payments on, we began to trust God to provide so that we could settle debts, without bankruptcy. We became purposeful about how many days I would be out of town, we hired employees to get jobs done more timely. We weren’t spending less money but we were spending it rightly and it was producing more. We weren’t less busy but we were together. So on and so forth. We were acting with a purpose.

When we had accomplished the feet of erasing the bulk of our debt we began to hear God saying it was time to go into missions. In fact I remember telling my parents in the midst of the hardship that we believed we would be out of debt and in missions within a couple years. This was before our worst financial times and right after the worst time in our marriage and my life. We began acting in this direction. We started turning down large jobs that demanded time or were 6 months to a year away. We became more prayerful as a family. We governed our lives by the priorities and direction God was giving us. Things fell into place as we sought God and made purposeful decisions and moved away from urgent responses.

Now here we are challenged in this area. Problems and reactions are taking the bulk of our time. How do we reapply what we learned in our new culture? We are trying to take control of our lives back from problems with power and water bills. With lack of discipline in schedule on our part. With general problems we can face every day. We need to schedule a day to deal with all bills. Days for family, for ministry for other things.

We believe God has called us here to love the unloved. To feed the poor, to disciple the lost towards Jesus. This probably includes a property for vocational schooling and tutoring. Perhaps a business, or other side ventures. It may include more people than us, it may include our church body at home. One thing I know is none of it will happen if we don’t begin to act, to purpose our lives around our calling and make decisions before we have too. Pray for us as we are learning how to take control of our normal lives here.

Love you all,

 

The Lyon Family.

Exercise, Training, Athletics I now know why Paul used these analogies.

Having been in Brazil 4 months now it is easy to loose focus on today and become frustrated with all the things we would like to be doing. We want to work daily with the poor and broken. We see the Guaraní people, the street people pushing carts with their kids to pick up trash. Yesterday we seen a woman with a 4 year old girl hiding by her cart of trash sucking on a pacifier while her mom went down  a street to look for recycling. Possible the most filthy, dirty absolutely beautiful little girl I have seen. I wanted to take her home. They are the forgotten people. I was limited by language, understanding and resources from doing anything beyond acknowledging this little lindinha with a smile and a bom dia.

We have to remind ourselves we are in a season of training. We have to be thankful that we get some opportunities to touch and reach out now. Cidade Nova and Ciaadi, are a glimpse of our future, a poor community where we help a few bible students with a kids program and the prison for boys. This is only part of our training.

1 Chor 9:24-27 24Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. 25Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; 27but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.

We are in a season preparing for the competition that is to come. Disciplining ourselves in prayer, reading of the word (especially together as a family), learning language, culture, where and when to buy food. If we want to be effective this time in the gym and on the practice field is vital. If we get impatient and run out to meet the desperate needs before we are prepared we will be unorganized, ineffective and accomplish far less then if we train as if we are going to the Olympics in 4 years. I am constantly encouraged thinking of the years of preparation, planning and coming together of people to put on Willamette Celebration. This is our time to train. Our time to run is within site and just around a corner. Pray for our patience, our discipline, our endurance as we train to love the hurting.

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Ben and Melissa and the children in Brasil, from a grandma’s perspective.

I have been here in Brasil with my son and his family for about 10 days. I feel like I already have so much I want their friends and family to know about their life here. As most of you know, they have recently moved into what is to be there dwelling space for the next year. It is a nice place and seems to suit their needs well. However, moving into a rental here is not the same as moving into a rental in the states. They have borrowed mattresses to put on the floor for beds, they store there clothing in storage tubs, they have borrowed dishes, pans and utensils. We shopped for a couple of days to find a kitchen faucet, sink, countertop and cabinet for the kitchen. They had previously purchased a stove and refrigerator when they lived in the apartment for a month. Today, Ben built a very small shelf with the tools he purchased in Paraguay and I am waiting to see which place Melissa will choose first to fill the need for storage. Somewhere to put groceries, dishes, pans…or something else? I would love to see them have a table and chairs to sit at for home school, for eating, or just for somewhere to sit around and play games together. I would also like them to have beds to get them up off of the floor away from creepy crawly things and a car to transport them to some of the many places they have to go. They walk miles every day to purchase the daily groceries, to go to church or for Portuguese lessons. Doing without what seems to be essentials in the states, going to bed late and getting up early, all the walking, purchasing used appliances to save money only to find out it is broken and spend more money to fix them. The list goes on but what I want to say most is how I see them all dealing with the daily stresses that come there way. The kids are generally very content and make life fun wherever they are. They walk without grumbling. Melissa loves the people and encourages the kids to participate in ministry to the other children in need. They all feel blessed beyond those they are ministering to and say so often. At Melissa’s birthday party, Moriah saw a man she thought was in need and asked mommy to give him the leftover food and cake. Ben works hard to help his family focus ahead on what God has for them. If a mom and grandma is allowed to be proud, I am VERY proud of Ben, Melissa, Moriah, Daniel, Juliah and yes, even baby Alannah who spends much of her day being toted miles around in the sling her  mommy wears. They may feel like Gideon but there trust is in the Lord our God to work in and through them in this place. Please remember them in your daily prayers :o).

School is over, Ministry is taking off

Wow two months went by fast. We really learned so much in the ITMP, even though at times the information seemed like review. Melissa and I both have a fair missions background. What amazed me was how much we learned from Tim Rogers and how much the information begins to go from facts and theories to reality when you can sit in class with a 10 year veteran and discus the issues. Now for language school (I am beginning to do fairly well with language, if I would just study).

We need a lot of prayer as we are  beginning to get involved in ministry with the church and around the city. We will be working under Tim at Refuge, Calvary Foz. This means some of what We do will be focused on growing the church there, evangelism, youth ministry stuff like that. Also we desire to see people in the church reach out into other areas of ministry with the extensive poor and broken around the church.

We began going to Ciadi a juvenile prison facility 3 weeks ago. We go every Friday and share the gospel with 3 groups of 5-13 kids each. They are very hard kids but choose to come even though they have other things they could do. We are going to go through the book of John with them. I pray ,and ask you to join me, that they would experience life changing transformation. The opportunity to disciple right in the prison on a weekly basis is amazing.

Last night I went out with 2 guys to do evangelism at a local college campus. I approached a few people in Portuguese and shared with them for a little bit without any idea if I was speaking rightly or making any sense. You know when you are evangelism at first people stare at you blankly anyways. The funny thing was it was incredibly scary and the first person I got the nerve to go up to was a Christian who translates for missions teams with his Methodist church when they do evangelism. All that courage for nothing. The interesting thing doing evangelism in a heavily Catholic country is everyone accepts there is God and has some sort of belief in Jesus. However none of them practice and none of them seem to have a good understanding of sin or payment for sin. They aren’t walking with God and are hindered from finding salvation by their poor understanding of who God is. We talked to 3 people for 2 hours and it wasn’t until the last 30 minutes they seemed to understand who Jesus is and what the cross is.

Also this week we went to lunch at a Lebanese restaurant. Melissa became friends with the daughters of the owners and they want to take her around and show her some schools the kids could go to. This is the most heavily Muslim restaurant down town. The girls where the traditional dress (here it is Sunni, they have their faces showing) and the girls are both getting married in what seems to be arranged marriages.

Today we are going with the kids Portuguese teacher to Cidade Nova. A very poor community just outside of Foz. Her and some friends do a little children’s ministry there every week. Tuesday is children’s day in Brazil so they are doing a big fair today. Several people from the church have decided to go with us including the family we had been living with. This is a great opportunity to begin involvement with the massive population of hurting peoples.

Yesterday a girl of around 17 or 18 came by asking for food or clothes. She had a small child hanging from her breast and was covered in dirt. We gave her food and watched her hopelessly walk down the street. She was native, Indian, from Argentina. She would have been quite pretty with a shower and decent clothes but do to the nature of life for some people here she will never experience either.

Melissa also is looking into going into Paraguay once a week to serve at a house for kids with hiv. Parents have either died or abandoned their kids there. Lucimar, our kids Portuguese teacher, goes to clean the house and do bible stories with the kids. What  a blessing to meat and develop relationship with a young Brazilian already willing to love the poor who speaks English. God is providing so much.

We need prayer for finances as the next few months could be a bit tough. We owe double rent through November to get a 3 month deposit to the landlord. We need prayer for wisdom as we have many ministry opportunities. We need prayer as we look to build relationship with more churches in the United States.

It really is amazing what God is doing. Brazil is home now. We love it here. Melissa is having her 30th Birthday Monday. We are renting a soccer field and having the church all come to play. The guy who rents the field also makes bbq and is giving us a reasonable price. She is really excited.

Love and miss you all,

The Lyon Family