General:
First week at home! Too much has happened and there is a lot to figure out about this whole summer! This week was of many meetings and conversation with the leaders of the church, presenting my projects and finding out the real situation at the church.
As for the projects, the pastors as well as the youth seem to be very excited as to the opportunities ahead! Great excitement is being built with the promotion of inter faith dialogue with Catholics, the monastic retreat and most of all “Altos Papos” which is a Q&A with pastors about the situation of the church in this post modern era we live in.
What is sad though is coming back to a group divided. The youth group, th
ese last four months suffered a lot through separation of its members. Many have gone astray because of quarrels, others because of leaders being bad examples, in some cases going as far as fornicating. This is simply sad. However, Jesus came for those, to save those, and I believe this summer is now much more meaningful for me and Aaron as we seek to BE the difference we want to SEE at the church.
In spite of finding out this horrible situation, I feel strengthened by the support of the leaders in starting over, in finding out what should come ahead, and giving some hope to the youth. While I was leading a small group on Tuesday night, I sensed just that, that even though people are not interested in the things of God, they WANT to be interested and are only waiting for someone to lead them towards Him. May Aaron and I be these lights as we serve here in Brazil.
Specific Testimony:
There are two. First of all, one of the homeless from last year’s ministry came to church on Sunday (mother’s day) to give his testimony of how this last year had changed in his life. His testimony brought me to tears and saw the great hope found in Jesus that these homeless are longing for. His life was made anew and his mother could not have asked for a better gift in mother’s day then having her son back to her house. It was a great modern day illustration of the prodigal son story.
Secondly, yesterday we met for the first time with a group willing to talk theology and philosophy on life and Godly matters. At first, only Zac (an American friend living in Brazil) and I were going to meet; however, an agnostic friend of ours took interest and came along. We had a long talk with him, (from 7:30 til 12:30) five hours of talking of the church, the role of sex, why marry and so on. I felt like I had learned much about people’s impression of people from church and how I am included in these stereotypes. However, the greatest thing is that when one is presented with the real Jesus, not the Jesus we have learned from church, or we have grown up talking about, there is no getting away from Him, He is irresistible. And that is the beauty of the Gospel!
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