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