“Oh Lord, please let Your healing water flow through our church.” This is my main prayer every Sunday, during our worship service. We just cannot heal ourselves or fix ourselves up. I see many who come to this gathering with filthy, infected wounds, coming to the hospital for help and encouragement. When the wounds are physical, in some ways it is easier to show compassion and help people in practical ways. I don’t know how to help people who have been abused emotionally and spiritually except to ask God for more healing and grace. I see God’s river running in crystal clean through the west wall of our church, and flowing out the muddy color of the Amazon out the east wall. It flows in clean, swirls through us and carries out lots of junk. I see people’s wounds getting cleaned out, and some healing happening. Our hope and prayer is that people will leave in better shape than they came.

In preparation for our sending church’s annual Mission’s Sunday they asked for some photos of me ministering. I am usually the one taking photos, so I am in very few. I found it kind of strange to give two of the guys in our church each a camera in order to capture some idea of how I look in a Sunday service.

Here are the photos that Izak took last Sunday during our main service.

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.