Something Good and Something to Pray About

Something good: Today was a very happy day in the lives of the Salvador team. Our brand new Sam's Club opened! It was a madhouse but it was so wonderful. It has great deals on a number of things that are hard to come by here. We were excited to see Kraft Dinner and Heinz ketchup in the "gourmet" section! (See? It's always the little things...)

Something to Pray About: This Sunday is Election Day here in Brazil. While we don't necessarily have strong opinions about politics here, we are concerned about the impact that any outcome will have on life. Brazil has made great strides in the past fifteen years and we pray that they are able to keep making progress. So we ask for your prayers as people hit the polls (voting is mandatory, so that's a lot of voters!).

Happy Wednesday (Quarta-Feira)

Today is quarta-feira, the fourth market day of the week. I am chillin' with my dog Sammy. It started pouring around 5. I can only remember a handful of mornings that were so dark and misty; it's a nice change. Life is pretty sweet. We are feeling an incredible sense of growth at ICOS, and our short-term goals have the potential to unite everyone even more. Our team is praying for more involvement and leadership from our members so that our mission team can take a step back and become a truly staff-run church. Bahians are stepping up and volunteering in worship, service, and especially youth. Thanks for all your help to reach this new and exciting phase. PS- our youth won a city-wide contest among the Churches of Christ that was like a Spirit Week competition that involved games and collecting food for the needy. Way to go guys!

The Smallest Things...

Several months ago, I caught a bus to a hospital on the other side of the city. The husband of my language teacher had been there for a month with meningitis. I gave him the Max Lucado book "It's not about me" in portuguese, which he thanked me for. I just wanted him to have something to do; his friends never even called during the five weeks that he was ill.

Yesterday, his couisin Eduardo stopped me before worship. He read a single chapter of the book while he was using the computer at his family's house; and in his words, it was if I had put the book in his hands on God's behalf.

Now he is studying with Travis each week; he started an online discussion group about the concepts of the book b/c he cannot stop thinking that his life is not his own. Praise our Father in heaven today for Eduardo. There are incredible things happening because he accepted that without God, life doesn't make sense. Right on.

Thoughts

We've had Samson for a week now. It's been a tough week--puppies are a lot of work--but he's settling in quite nicely. Now he's just a member of the family (a member that doesn't have access to every room in the house). He has started getting excited when he hears our voices. It's nice, though, to have a little friend to greet us when we get home from a long day.

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Yesterday I brought a book about Winnipeg to share with one of my readers. She was amazed by how different it was. She couldn't believe that there are houses made of wood. She found the pictures of the lush green summers absolutely beautiful but when we got to a picture of winter she said it was ugly. Now, in February when the accumulation of a winter's worth of sand on the streets turns everything a dingy grey, you may be able to call it ugly. But this was a picture of a tree-lined avenue (in River Heights, I think) right after a blizzard. It looked absolutely magical. But Nina disagreed. Oh well, she'll probably never see snow. I wonder when I'll see it again! (It's not all disagreements with Nina. She makes me laugh, sometimes deliberately, sometimes not. I'm trying to break her of calling coffee "cough". I've explained the difference but old habits die hard!)

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It seems like every day we have moments that expand our perspective. A recent example: For the past several years in North America, churches taking the name "Church of Christ" off their signs has been a source of controversy. But in Salvador, the fact that we have the name "Church of Christ" on our sign (or that we have a sign at all) has been an issue with some of our brothers and sisters in town. Who is right? I am, of course!

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I guess that's it for today. I just had several little things running through my head, none of which seemed to warrant a long post. (Well, I probably could have rambled for a while on the third one but it wouldn't have been fruitful.) It's Saturday morning, Russ is out for a bike ride with a guy that works in our building and I'm hanging out, listening to K-Love and enjoying the fact that I managed to make it through my crazy week. I think I'll go make some celebratory (fresh) mango juice. (Sorry, just had to throw that in to make you jealous!)

And His Name Shall Be...

...Samson.

Announcement

Puppy!, originally uploaded by russandval.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are proud to present...um...our dog. Okay, he doesn't have a name yet. He's a Yorkshire, though a dog that small isn't the first choice for either of us. But he's sweet and precious and, as I said before, nameless. We will gladly hear your suggestions but here are a few things to bear in mind:

1. We'd like a fairly masculine name.

2. The name has to be relatively easy to say in Portuguese.

3. Val loves when pets have human names (Exhibit A: Virgil the cat) or are some obscure pop culture reference (See Exhibit A).

4. Russ has veto power.

God Is Good

Right now I'm sitting on my balcony and reflecting. We just got chairs for our balcony--they were entirely an afterthought--but they seem to be meeting a need in my life. As I sit out here, I get drawn into moments of reflection that seem hard to come by anywhere else in my life. There's a definite peace to sitting out here in the morning, though the soccer court at the apartment building next to ours is full of teenage boys, the apartment upstairs is somehow still undergoing renovations, and the sound of trucks being loaded at the central post office occasionaly wanders over.

I started to write a long post detailing what I'm thinking about this morning but sitting here in my reflection seat, it ended up a little more personal than I'd like. (Maybe this isn't a good place to sit and blog from!) So I'll try to keep it short. These days, I'm trying to get out of the Job phase of my life and to be more like David (the king, not my brother, though he's pretty cool, too). I keep coming back to a song over and over--when I'm not listening to it, I'm running the lyrics over in my mind, contemplating them. So here you go, a little something for your own mediation time this morning:

Blessed Be Your Name
by Matt Redman

Blessed Be Your Name
In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name

Blessed Be Your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed Be Your name

Every blessing You pour out
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be Your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's 'all as it should be'
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, blessed be Your name

Squirming

I told myself that after everything settled down I would get on a schedule. My schedule for the past few months has been project-based. I've been the one free to run and buy things for whatever was going on at the church, the one able to do things at a moment's notice. But I found myself longing for some sort of schedule. Maybe it was just so could feel like my work could be compared to my teammates. Maybe it was because after a month in bed I needed some sort of structure. Whatever the reason, I wanted it.

And yet now I find myself with a regular schedule, at least in the mornings, and I'm squirming. My freedom is gone. Once one part of your day is scheduled, you have to schedule everything else around it. If I go to a study on Monday mornings and need to go to the grocery store, I know that Monday afternoon will be when I have to do it. (Unless I play hookey like I did today and go to the movies instead of getting groceries! Guess I'll be shopping on Tuesday afternoon!) I'm just missing the flexibility.

On the other hand, there are some wonderful benefits. Every day I have to get up and walk to the church building for my studies. That's exercise I wouldn't have gotten. And I'm getting even more familiar with that walk and the people on it. Today I learned which magazine stand will always have recharge cards for my cell phone (and is courteous enough to cover up the porn!). I'm learning which little grocery store is better to stop in for a snack and which has a better selection of fruit.

The best benefit is, of course, the time I'm getting to spend with people. I'm doing several one-on-one LST-type studies and am getting a great chance to build some new relationships. My beginner class is progressing and the students are really bonding. Even though we're not actively advertizing the class, there are new students almost every week because the current students keep telling their friends! God continues to bring us new contacts!

I know I'll get used to the schedule thing. I did, after all, used to work at a "real job". But I'm sure I'll still squirm for a week or two!

As Promised!

Monkey, originally uploaded by russandval.

That's right, friends, more monkeys. Keep reading and you'll find out the details. First I have to fill you in on where we've been.

For starters, we were getting our schedules back on track after our vacation and my parents' visit. Then the unthinkable happened- the laptop died again. Died for real this time. But it died during the week that the Parkers (read: free tech support) were moving, so we weren't able to do much about it. Then Monday we headed out on a team retreat.

Someone commented recently, "You guys seem to go on a lot of retreats!" Well, lately we have. The one in June was postponed from March (we were a little busy getting ready for the church to start). That was strictly a working retreat. We reviewed what was happening in the church and how that compared to our strategy. We reviewed our strategy to see if that's still what we wanted to happen. We evaluated our ministries, ourselves and everything else under the sun. Definitely not a vacation. (It even stormed the whole time we were out there, so the beach was not an option!) The latest retreat is our annual spring retreat. It is strictly for renewal and relaxation. Most of us (okay, mostly the women) even avoided saying the word "church". We spent three days going to the beach, swimming in the pool, playing games and eating.

Which brings me to the monkeys. We rode out with the Maberys and were there several hours before everyone else. While we were eating a fabulous lunch of imported food (peanut butter sandwiches and chips and Rotel!), something all of a sudden landed on our table. Russ and I turned to look and saw a monkey! There was another one in the bushes behind us. After lunch, we were in hot pursuit of the monkeys. There were four adults and a little baby one, who I tried to convince to come home with me. We spent the afternoon watching the monkeys and laughing at the Maberys' puppy, Nala, interacting with them. Once everyone else showed up, the monkeys got a little scared. They came back one other time, but not like they were the first afternoon.

We got home from the retreat Thursday and managed to get our new hard drive and all our programs installed that night. Now we're back and will hopefully be blogging a little more.

Where in the World?

We're still alive, but we're temporarily computerless while we get our new hard drive set up. More soon, I promise. (Including...monkey pictures!)