Can You Re-Weigh My Bananas Please?

Here on the mountain there’s no Wal-mart, Kroger, Publix, Ingles or any other store that resembles one of these. But there is the person we call the “produce guy.” This is a local man that, twice a week, drives around house-to-house selling produce. Hence the name “produce guy.” Deep, I know. Haha. Well anyway, today was the first time he came to our house. He pulled up in a retro VW van (they call them combi’s here) filled with fresh fruits and vegetables. I’m talking amazing fruits and vegetables too. The kind that wouldn’t know what an insecticide, fungicide, or any other chemical was if you showed it to them. He had papaya, watermelon, lettuce, tomatoes, oranges, fresh eggs... all kinds of stuff. It was pretty cool. And whatever you wanted he would weigh on this little scale then he would hand it to you. Well, we were getting everything we needed for the week and we decided to get a bunch (literally a bunch) of bananas. He weighed them and they weighed 3.25 kilos (Whatever that is...why can’t the rest of the world use pounds? Whoever thought up the metric system obviously wasn’t American. jk. lol!). He went to grab the bunch of bananas off the scale then yelled out, “oi” and jumped back! We all looked down and sitting on top of this bunch of bananas that he just weighed was a giant tarantula! Are you kidding me? We almost bought a bunch of bananas with a big tarantula on it! Welcome to Brazil: ) He flicked the tarantula off onto the ground and Marlon stepped on it (thanks Marlon) and then he handed me our bananas. Two things went through my mind. The first thing was, “are you going to re-weigh my bananas?” Because your initial weight was with the tarantula and that thing was huge. The second thing was “this man was riding around in his van all morning with at least 1 giant tarantula and how crappy of a job is that?” So, since I felt sorry for him and the fact that he has a dangerous job (who knew delivering produce was dangerous?) I let him slide and just took the bunch of bananas and walked into the house. My good deed for the day: )

Thursday night, for over a year now, we’ve been having outreach church services at the camp (and at a school halfway down the mountain). These services have praise and worship, Bible teaching and fellowship. We usually have a local Brazilian pastor come in and do the speaking so that the message doesn’t have to come through a translator. Last night was our first service since we’ve moved here and Pastor Bart from a church in Villa Zumbi ministered. It was good seeing everyone worshipping together, listening to the Word, and responding during the altar portion of the service. To think, that before Hope and Life Brazil began ministry here last year, Thursday nights were silent. No worship. No proclamation of the Word. Nobody having the opportunity to meet Jesus. This is truly an honor being called here. Even though we’re still trying to figure out what God wants us to do “specifically,” as we’ve moved our family here, it’s great to see the Spirit of God already moving. So, for now we’re just going to get involved in His activity... which is the way we should always do it anyway, right? Please continue to pray for us. There are so many opportunities for the Gospel here that we only want to do “exactly” what God wants us to do.

Love You Guys!

Jim and MJ

Crying - Or the Lack of It

OK. One thing that I’ve been very surprised by has been the absence of tears and the fact that there’s been no crying since we’ve been here. Because honestly, I was expecting a lot of it (crying that is) once everyone saw where we were living and when they started to think about all the things (friends and conveniences) we left back in the States. And the fact that there’s been no crying has been amazing. I haven’t said anything because I didn’t want to jinx it (not very spiritual, I know.) and thought that since everyone was doing so good I wouldn’t draw any attention to it. But last night it finally happened. We made it through another day and when MJ got into bed I just asked her a simple question... “you want me to get you a snack?” And that’s when the tears started flowing and she said, through a barrage of tears-snot streaming, “I want a mint chocolate chip Klondike bar.”

Man, who knew? Who knew that the lack of Klondike bars in the country of Brazil would be the one thing that pushed her over the edge? Live and learn, I guess. Haha! (OK, for all of you who are psycho-analyzing the situation, I know that wasn’t the only thing that bothered her... I’m not that dense.) But really, the fact that there hasn’t been a lot of crying and complaining can only be attributed to the fact that God has dealt with the hearts of our entire family. Everyone knows we’re suppose to be here. And that has been a major blessing. I think the fact that we over-communicated with them about the “why” we’re doing this only helped as well. Sometimes as parents I think we miss the opportunity to help our kids grow spiritually because we don’t ever tell them what God is speaking to us. We just expect them to follow us and listen “just because.” We don’t ever share with them our doubts, our worries, our fears, our faith, our beliefs... and that’s not good. And believe me, I’m guilty of this as well. But in this (leaving everything to go to the mission field) we started communicating with them from day one. And it’s paid off. I believe it’s allowed them to stay focused on “the why” we’re here (glorifying God by sharing the Gospel), which is the most important thing.

Today Maryssa had the opportunity to go to the local elementary school in Terra Boa and help teach English. This is an opportunity that Brad and Carolyn have been leveraging to get the Gospel preached in the schools and they do it 2 times per week.

Tonight Matthew and a few of my nephews were given the opportunity to participate at an outreach ministry that a friend of ours started by using sports as an in-road to sharing the Gospel. They do a short Gospel message up front then they play organized soccer, table tennis (ping pong), muay thai (kind of like karate on steroids-it’s one of the disciplines in MMA) and basketball to draw teenagers and young men in.

We just got here and God has already given our entire family the opportunity to minister. Wow. And I always thought ministry was just for adults!?... I'm just being sarcastic, of course.

Well it's getting late and It's time to take that long walk home with my flashlight, here in the pitch-black mountainous jungle we call home... yippeee! I'm complaining, sure, but at least I'm not crying.

Love Ya,

Jim

First Impressions

After only 2 days in Brazil I’m amazed at how much this already feels like home. Now don’t get me wrong... it’s definitely not “the Hilton” or “a tropical resort” (although it is amazingly beautiful here) but it just feels like we belong here. If you looked at it from a natural standpoint it doesn’t look like we should be here though. Let me give you a few examples:

• We don’t have a vehicle and we’re 4 kilometers up the mountain (still don’t know how much a kilometer is... I just know it’s far) in the middle of the jungle and we have no transportation.
• It’s cold here and we don’t have a heater or a fireplace.
• MJ is washing clothes and hanging them out on the line (yep, we’re kickin it old school) and it’s gonna take days for the clothes to dry because it keeps raining periodically.
• We were told that the howling monkeys were all behind our house our first day here (didn’t see them but from what I hear they don’t get along good with dogs and we’ve got three!)
• Maryssa just came in the kitchen and said she’s sick and we don’t have a pharmacy nearby.
• We had to burn our toilet paper this morning because we can’t flush it (remember, we’ve got 9 people in our family and that’s just gross!) because the plumbing can’t handle flushing toilet paper.
• MJ is cooking lunch on a stove that’s the size of an easy-bake oven you’d have as a kid (look at the picture, haha!). She just said, “she feels like a giant cooking on it” lol!
• We’re up high in the mountains so we feel fatigued because of the altitude (plus the fact that I’m overweight probably doesn’t help either... just a hunch. But let’s blame it on the altitude, lol!)
• Everywhere we walk is uphill! Both ways... how is that even possible?
• We have no internet... let me say that again, “we have no internet!” For me, that’s crippling. I can’t easily access study tools (and I left all my books in the U.S.), can’t blog whenever I want, can’t contact anyone here or in the U.S. whenever I want, and the list could go on and on... really, it could.

So, taking all that into account and after a torturous 36 hrs trying to get here, our first day in Brazil was awesome. We had lunch with the most influential man in Terra Boa. He’s a businessman who owns the truck stop (actually it’s a huge complex... he employs around 130 people from Terra Boa there) at the base of the mountain. He and his wife are both christians and are so excited that we’re here. With the fact that there’s no evangelical church here in Terra Boa they practically begged us to do something to help disciple people here in their town. They said that God spoke to them and told them to help us do whatever we needed to do to further the Gospel here. As we sat with them, we were able to open the Word of God and share things with them and they were like sponges... soaking in every word. Man, it was awesome. I haven’t seen hunger for the Word like that in a long time. Just to be in a place where people want more of Jesus and His Word with no strings attached is an honor and a privilege.

This man has already been a huge help to what has already taken place here in Terra Boa but he wanted us to know that he’s in it for the entire journey... however long it takes. This is totally amazing! He’s even in the process of renovating a building on his property so that we can use it to start discipling people right away! God is so good to us and how He puts things together just blows our minds.

So, despite all the inconveniences of living here, the benefit of being in a place this wide-open to the Gospel far outweighs any struggle we have and any we will ever face. Please continue to pray for us because we can’t do this alone. And our prayer for you is that you’ll follow Jesus and do whatever it is that He’s called you to do as well.

Love Ya,

Jim and MJ

God's Radar

Have you ever seen a movie where a guy is sitting at a control console of a submarine or in a control tower with headphones on looking at a screen - just watching? It's usually a round screen with this green line slowly circling in a clockwise motion as it is sweeping the area for an enemy or a target? The thing they're using is called a radar (or sonar if you want to get all technical) . It finds things. You know what I'm talking about, right?

Well, tomorrow our entire family (except Michael... I'm still crying about this part of it) will board a plane headed for the mountains of southeast Brazil to bring the Gospel to a group of people who are on "God's Radar." That's a pretty amazing thing if you think about it. This group of people are on the "Radar of God," they've been targeted by Him and He's sending us to reach them!

That just blows my mind... first, that God actually searches people out (Luke 19:10) and second, that He chose us to do the reaching part. If you would have asked me a couple of years ago if me and my family would ever move to the mission field I would have said, "no." Not because we didn't think missions was important but because we never felt like we were the "typical missionary family" and we really felt like we would always be on staff at a local church. I mean, we were good at what we did, we loved our job, we loved the people we were serving, things were good. But then God started prepping us for this very thing. And when He asked us to go, there's no way we were going to stay where we were... in our comfortable familiar life. He had the people on the mountain on "His radar" and asked us to go... so tomorrow we do just that. And I know that God will be glorified and people are going to become fully devoted followers of Christ because of what we're doing. It's gonna be good.

Please pray for us as we travel. We are going to be video taping the entire trip and our new life in Brazil, so be sure to check back here on the blog and on our website at www.HopeAndLifeBrazil.com to see what's happening. Love you guys!

Passionately Following Jesus,

Jim, MJ, Michael, Maryssa, Marlon, Matthew, Ana, Diogo, Gabriel and Robert

Who Would Have Known?

OK. Look at the pictures above. Now look again.

OK, the girl in the first photo is 2 year old Havyn on her 2nd birthday. Beautiful, huh? Now look at the second picture. This is a picture of the same little girl in her adoption referral picture when she was an orphan in Ethiopia 2 years ago.

MJ reads a blog (http://buildingtheblocks.blogspot.com) and this couple adopted this precious little girl and were celebrating her 2nd birthday. When she showed the pictures to me I was amazed. Who would have known that behind the bloated stomach, the sunken eyes, the little malnourished body was such a beautiful little girl?! And what would have happened to this little girl had this couple not stepped-up and did what God called them to do?

In 2004 (sorry, it's the most recent statistic I could find.) there were 4.5million orphans in Ethiopia. And only a tiny fragment of these kids ever have a chance of being adopted. That's very sad. But my question is this... "how many people has God asked to do something and they haven't?" Seriously... how many? Because I don't know if you've noticed it or not but God's very serious about taking care of the orphaned. There are places in scripture where He's actually ticked-off at His people (the whole nation) when they neglected them ( Exodus 22:22-24, Isaiah 1:15-17, 21-26, just to name a few).

So, if God is the same yesterday, today and forever, why would we think He's not just as serious about orphans today? Because He is! So where does that leave us? Are we all suppose to adopt? Are we all suppose to fill our homes with orphaned children? I don't know but I do know that God has asked us to do "something." That could very well mean adoption. Or it could mean foster care. Or it could mean sending money to someone who works with orphans. Or it could mean giving money to that couple in your church who are going through the adoption process and could use the financial help. Or it could mean volunteering to the watch kids at the local foster care education class, in your hometown, while their parents are sitting through class. Or it could mean ____________, you get the point, right? We can all do something at some level. We have the resources and we have the Spirit of God on the inside of us to make a difference. So will you? Because who knows how many more Havyn's are out there just waiting for a fighting chance? And who knows, you could be the one who makes a difference. Go ahead... look at the pictures again... I think you can.

Love Ya,

Jim