Being Jesus

Being Jesus

I met a friend today. I was walking to get lunch and I saw my friend. He was working – something all of us are familiar with. He has a wife and a lovely daughter. Alaelson is a great guy. He loves his family dearly and will do just about anything for them.

I first met Alaelson after church about two months ago. He was kind of hesitant to come into our church. He didn’t think he fit in, and he was worried about his clothes. We assured him that we didn’t care about what he was wearing and we didn’t care about status. That reassured him a little, so he brought his family inside. Even then, they didn’t sit on chairs, they sat on the floor.

Alaelson is homeless. He washes and guards cars outside Itaigara Shopping near our former apartment. At night he, his wife and 1 year old daughter sleep outside near our church.

Our church is helping this family. Alaelson wants to work – he loves his family and wants to provide for them. He just need a break. We are trying to help him with some sort of source of income and more permanent housing.

But what I have learned about being Jesus is something very different from what I have read. The one thing that has made the difference in Alaelsons life and our relationship with him? I believe it started with one thing – respect.

Looking him in the eyes, realizing that he has feelings.  Common, everyday respect. One trait of Jesus we can all work on.

Happy Birthday Brandon

Happy Birthday Brandon,

Well, today Brandon turns 3. It seems like yesterday we were sitting in hospital room watching a tough little 6 month old recovering from surgery, and now he is a happy–go–lucky character!

One of the things Brandon got for his birthday was a trip to the emergency room! On Sunday morning, Brandon was watching tv with Brock on the top of their bunk beds and – well – he fell off. He fell off onto the bed below and the bridge of his nose broke the fall. Amazingly, he didn’t break his nose! He has a nice bruise to show for it, he is a little sore, but that is the extent of his injuries.

One good thing is that we now know where the pediatric emergency clinic is!

We are supposed to sign the lease papers today on the house we are renting. We are so ready to be in a place where the kids can run and play. We live in a place with perfect weather and unfortunately the kids don’t get to enjoy it all that much. That is changing soon!

Our Canadian LST made it home safely. We are grateful for the work they did and now for us, the work is beginning. We have around 25 people we are continuing studies with and about 60 others we are putting into group classes. Given the religious climate in Salvador, we feel it necessary to show that our church cares for people. We don’t view them as a space on a pew or contribution in the offering.  

Have a great day. Tchau for now.

New update

New update

Hello blogger friends. Greetings from 13 degrees south. Hope that this finds you warm and cuddly (ha.) with your record highs. We are starting to warm up as well. The rainy season is making its exit and with it comes amazing weather.

As the large rain clouds leave, we are left with skies that are clear and blue. The shade of which is impossible to describe – I call it an “impossible blue” sky. With the sky overhead and the beautiful Atlantic ocean spread out in front you don’t know whether to run and jump, cry or just savor the moment. We have had to make some tough choices living here!

Speaking of living – Stacey and I will be moving to a house soon. We are really excited about that. This is a few steps down from where we live now. If you aren’t familiar with the Parker Motel, we have 4 bedrooms, an extra room, 6 bathrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen and 2 maids quarters. Yes, we have storage out the wazoo (technical term – stay with  me). Yes, we do have rooms we normally don’t go in for weeks, no months at a time. At the same time, We hosted all 10 Park Plaz-ians and it wasn’t a big deal. We have had 3 LST’ers living with us for the past 6 weeks – again, no big deal.

This will be a change. We will actually have a morning commute again. We are also back to a house with limited storage. But, we have a yard, a giant bar-b-q, a huge area to play soccer and basketball, tracks for walking and riding bikes. And, oh yeah we are 150 meters from the beach. (of course our apartment is 2 kilometers from the beach now).

There are actually 2 things that really excite us about the house. The first is that we will be saving a TON of money on bills (our electric bill is unreal!), the second is that it is peaceful there. One of the things that we noticed when we came back on furlough was that it is really quite in America. Here, we live with the windows open and we live on a busy street. We are constantly being barraged with noise.

LST is doing a great job! One of the things that Stacey and I believe is that “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”.  That is the same with Christ as well. That is why we believe that LST will be something that will impact this city for a long time. English is such a valuable commodity here. The fact that a church is offering free conversation “classes” (sorry Jamie!) is unheard of here. Churches are supposed to all about the bottom line – how many, how much, how often…  That is why we weren’t surprised that the first week, we only had 25 or so readers. We now have between 80 and 90 people attending either one-on-one sessions or group sessions. These are the “unreachables”. People that we wouldn’t or couldn’t reach through traditional methods, but through this program, they are in our church at least twice a week.

Many of these people are searching. Some have a history with churches, some don’t. All are friendly and grateful. Most importantly, we have expanded our circle of influence – we have new friends.  My friend Daren Mitchell says “you don’t marry your enemies”, and you don’t get baptized by them, either!

Speaking of… Wednesday night a friend of Mary, Lorena decided to be baptized. This was awesome for many reasons. Our Canadian LST’ers were able to be there, several people we are studying with were there as well. And, several of the ladies in the church were, as usual, there with open arms. It was great! I will have more on this later. I want to get pictures and post them. I should have them later today.

Well, this was a nice long one, sorry for the time in between. I will do better.

Happy Birthday Stace

Happy Birthday Stacey

All the kids are at school and I have a few minutes to blog, so here goes.

Today is Stacey’s birthday. We have big plans tonight – to watch tv. Heh heh. Actually tomorrow night the Sass’ are going to watch the kids and we are going to the opening of Pirates of the Caribbean.  We were fans of the first movie so this ought to be fun.

As you all may know, we are buying a car. (Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore) – funny, Toto and Kansas aren’t rock bands anymore either. Never again will I complain about going to the auto mall. At least there, you are done in two hours. Here, going on week 3. what a pain.

LST is going great. We have been having a number of no-shows, but the students that are coming are going deep really quick. The team is having conversations at a level that 2nd and 3rd year teams are having with other students. We are optimistic about the response both to the English classes and the fact that a lot of the students are “getting it”.

Gotta go. Time for Portuguese class. Yes, that tower of Babel incident is still hurting people even today!

Hey blogger friends

Hey blogger friends,
Sorry about not updating, things have been pretty crazy but it looks like they are starting to settle down a little bit. As many of you know, Stacey’s friend Nancy lost her son to cancer a few days ago. It has been really difficult not being there, both for Stacey and for Nancy’s sake. But it is amazing to watch Stacey minister to people, some she hasn’t talked to in several years – and most of this is being done by internet. I can remember thinking email is going to revolutionize the way we do mission work. It truly has.

We are also trying to buy a car. We made it over a year on foot, taking busses and taxis. It is now time to join the modern world. As you might expect, trying to do business in a foreign country can be difficult. Doing it here has proved to be slightly insane.  We are thankful our neighbor has taken us under his wing and helped us cut through the bureaucracy. We are hopeful that tomorrow we might be able to take delivery.

One other thing happening…LST. Let’s Start Talking has arrived and is in full swing. We were really worried. Many things happened to set back this ministry activity – delayed and canceled flights, low numbers of people signing up and general skepticism, but God is good and LST is now really going.

When the LST people arrived we had 23 people signed up-but had room for 40 more. After a week of doing their thing, word got out that this is really legitimate and we now have well over 50 readers and 35 people coming to a first time (marginal English skills) class. We are really excited. We are now planning our follow up.

Gotta go.
Tchau for now

Another reason to hate france?

Well…. It’s over. Brazil is officially out of the world cup.
There are a lot of disgusted fireworks going off. These aren’t the normal fireworks. Those are accompanied by horns honking, and cheers and shouts of joy. These fireworks are different. They are serving as a loud and popping disgust – mostly focused at the Brazil national team’s impotence against France.

So from my expert opinion – it will be Germany playing France. Germany will win. Probably 2-0. (if the home team is fairly decent, they will make it to the finals, and this year Germany has a good team.)

Good news though, tomorrow is Bahian Independence Day. (Bahia is our state) So, at least our neighbors will be able to use their fireworks tomorrow.

It will be interesting to see the mood around town tonight and tomorrow at church. Normally, we show the games at our building but because there are so many people traveling this weekend and the workload for Sunday, we decided not to show it at church. But, the mood should change seeing as how we had a baptism last night!!!

excellent news

Just a quick update. We had some exciting news today! Giseline, a single mom who has been attending our church (ICOS) for the last 2 months was baptized tonight.  I know you will be interested to see more so… go to

www.missionsalvador.com/baptisms/baptism.wmv

the file is about 10 meg. I will try and get up a smaller file tomorrow.
More tomorrow hopefully with an update on the world cup. Gooooolllllllll!