September 7th is a national holiday in Brazil, Independence Day. Monica and Ivanildo planned a Work Bee, cleaning the church, followed by lunch down by the river for all the helpers. Everyone who participated really enjoyed themselves! How did you spend your last National Holiday? Do you think you had as much fun as this group did?

A small confession: I helped clean the church, but I mostly took photos. I went to the river with the group, but once again I only took a few photos, and was glad to see how much fun was going on. I did not stay, or swim, or eat the food. For me personally, being part of a large crowd down by the river is hard work. Since so many from our team consider this easy, I left them to it and went back up to our house and main campus. No one was up there, which is rare and not too wise. Being up here alone is easy for me. Maybe this is the way God gives gifts to the church. He lets us love different things, making us a greater group because of our diversity.

We’re changing it up. We are going to focus on how to make our church Good News to our community. This means us leaders will all spend more time praying about our activities, and especially about if the results of our activities are increasing our church attendance. The more people that come to our church, the more exposure to good teaching, the more questions get answered, the more our neighborhood will change for the better.

How can we be Good News to our neighbours, in a way that THEY consider to be Good News? If we simply say, “We know this medicine tastes bad, but you have to take it to have a better life,” that is minimally helpful. For one thing, the medicine does not actually taste bad. As we change our diet, our taste buds become more sensitive to what is really good food, and our happiness index will go up. Does that make sense to anyone but me? I know it’s true.

Let me put this another way. “I know our meetings our boring. But this is the pre-req for getting to heaven.” No church leaders would say those words, but how many of us think this? Does it make sense to you that the author of Life would have boring meetings while the author of Death would have fun, lively meetings? It doesn’t make sense to worldly people either. I am not saying we have the answers, but having the question is a long way towards the solution. And deep down we KNOW the author of Life has Great Meetings in His storehouse, if only we can learn how to get them off the shelf.

In this first photo we are talking to our Church Leadership Team about some of the upcoming changes, fielding questions, looking for suggestions. It’s all pretty new now, but I think we will see really positive results by Christmas.

In the second photo, we are breaking ground on an expansion project for a new front face for our church, in line with our vision for church growth.

In the third photo…more changes. The guys do the dishes after the Leadership Lunch, while the girls go downstairs and play Wii Dance. This hints of a Major Cultural Shift for our neighbours.

Two years ago Phil, Jen, Faith, and Luke came to visit us for a month. They went home, prayed about it, talked to their church, family and friends, and started taking steps towards becoming full-time Long Term Cross Cultural Workers. LTCCWs. This week they arrived. It is amazing to me how God takes us on incredible journeys when we step out in faith.

Phil and Jen lived just down the road from Art and Cyndi, back in Ontario, Canada. David, the Rae’s oldest son, worked for Phil in construction for a season.

 We celebrated their arrival by having a team lunch!

 

September 7th is Independence Day in Brazil. Monica and Ivanildo planned a Church Cleaning Party in the morning, followed by a Barbeque lunch at the river. 

Bella and Emma want to plant a herb garden, with maybe some other things too. I told them to put some seeds in some dirt and we would get working on it. What do you know? The seeds started growing. Here people have their gardens in wooden boxes, off the ground. We take Monday’s off. Last Monday I went and bought some boards, and the three of us started building. Hopefully we will finish their “canteiros” tomorrow, so they can get they plants into deep ground.

The bicycle race track was 450 meters long, twice through the ravine, which included some jumps, and then around the top part of the mission/church property. The prizes were a donated bicycle and two donated cell phones. The entry fee was R$15. Lots more kids wanted to race, but they do not have bikes, or dads to buy them bikes. Moms can buy bikes too, but in our neighbourhood, if there is no dad, the mom is probably busy trying to figure out how to keep some food on the table and the electricity bill paid. Some kids rode on borrowed bikes.

The purpose of the event was:

1. To have a fun event in our neighbourhood…to be good news.

2. To give our church a good name in the city as a group working to help at-risk youth.

3. To help link the words fun and church together.

4. To get people through our gate who would otherwise not enter a church property. If we can get them to come in once, the next time is much easier.

5. To raise money for the church sound system. 

Ivanildo rigged up a way to water the dusty bike trails in preparation for the race. This is the trailer that used to pull the airplane out of the water and put it in the hangar. It serves in a humbler capacity now, but it is still serving. Ivanildo told me it takes 8 minutes to get to the river, and about 20 to load up. Quite a bit of the water gets all the way back to the trail.  It worked well since the city water truck was unavailable (we tried to get them to donate a couple of loads) and the newly made trails had a couple inches of powdery dust. The water helped pack the trails, making a faster racing surface.