Art and The Gospel

MJ and one of the girls from the project. These kids are soooo cute: )

In case you didn’t know it, we’ve got a couple college aged girls here with us here in Brazil for 3 months. Both of them have been on short term mission trips to Brazil before. But this time they’re here with us so that they can experience what it’s like living on the foreign mission field as a full-time missionary. Both of them have just finished high school and are searching for what God’s will is for them as they launch into adulthood. 

We’ve known one of the girls (Amber) since she was about 7 years old. Her and Maryssa are close friends and grew up in church together. MJ and I actually served on staff at a church in Atlanta with her parents for a few years. It’s amazing to see what a solid woman of God she’s grown-up to be. She’s been a HUGE encouragement to Maryssa (being here in Brazil) too. We’re actually thinking about “not” letting her go home. Sorry Dean and Monica (that’s her parents). lol!

Amber a two of the girls on week 4 of the project.

Amber giving her testimony to all the kids as Ruan translates.

The other girl that’s here with us (Anna) is from our sending church (Crossroads Church of Walton County) and is a very talented artist. She also has a vision for using her gift to help orphans and children here in Brazil. So we’re trying to help her, as much as we can, to get her ministry started. We have friends in different parts of our state (Parana) that have ministries that are actively helping orphans and at risk children. We’ve been working with a couple of them by going and teaching art to them. One of the ministries has a day program for street kids that we’ve just finished doing a project with. What we did was assign each child one of the 6 days in the creation narrative. And, whatever day they were assigned, that’s what they painted. They were all given a canvas to paint on and that canvas was placed together with all the other canvases to create one huge painting. It actually turned out great and is going to be displayed on a wall in the main sanctuary of the ministry. Here’s how the project happened:

Anna and a couple of the girls from the project on week 1.

Anna explaining to some of the boys how to paint and rinse their brushes.

The first week that we met with the kids we read Genesis 1 and talked to them about  creation. Then we gave each child a blank piece of paper and asked them to draw the thing that stuck out to them the most in the story. Then we collected all the papers and took them back to the Camp so Anna could see what the kids drew. This was so she could assign a day in the creation story to them the following week. There were 55 kids and we met with them all in groups of 10-15 at a time each week. So it needed to be planned out perfectly so that the finished product was square (or rectangular). 

Anna and Ruan explaining the project to the first group of kids on week 1.

Week one began with each student sketching their interpretation of creation.

Before each child was given their canvas on week 2, Anna laid out all the canvases together and wrote “Jesus” across all the ones in the middle of the group so that when the canvases are placed together you can see “Jesus” written across all of them (which ties them all together as one piece of art). Then we passed out all the canvases so that everyone could draw and paint their interpretation of their particular day. The kids had no idea that some of their canvases contained part of the word “Jesus” on it either. We just told them not to paint on the areas that were marked on their canvases and they would see why later. We wanted them to all be surprised when we finished.

One of the boys as he began sketching on week 2.

Week 3 the kids started painting!

Jim and one of the boys building the frame for the art project.

Week four and all the paintings are almost complete!

Amber talking to the kids as they completed their paintings on week 4.

Starting to attach all the paintings to the frame.

Here's all the paintings after we attached them to the frame.

Amber and MJ touching up the paint on the "Jesus" part of the painting.

 Jim and 2 of the girls after the project was completed.

The project took 4 weeks to complete and was a great way for us to allow the kids to show-off their art skills. But, more importantly, it gave us an opportunity to share the Gospel and hang out with kids who definitely need to experience the love of Christ. The girls, Ruan (our translator-and Anna’s Boyfriend) and I all had an opportunity to hang out one-on-one with most of them. And, one week, Amber was able to speak to all of them about what Jesus has done in her live as well. It was an honor being able to hang out with such an amazing group of kids the last four weeks and the project turned out great!

The finished project. Fifty Five kids painted 55 paintings that once
 the paintings were all put together... created one beautiful work of art.

I know that I say this all the time, but “thank you to all of our supporters who allow us to do the things we do here in Brazil.” You guys are impacting children and teenagers lives in ways that none of us will ever fully understand until we see Jesus. But I know that we’re making a huge difference for the Kingdom, so thanks!

Next week we start another art project for the house mothers at an orphanage in Columbo. Then the following week we do one with the 40 kids that they take care of. We’ll keep you posted on our progress: )

Love Ya,

Jim

Real Facebook Status Updates

Me and MJ this past weekend. The dog tags have the name of one
of our closest friend's (Jono and Heather Long) newly adopted
child on them... Sawyer Vitya Long. Even though we're not there
to celebrate with them (in person) we have something that helps us
 feel connected (thanks Kelley!) all the way from Brazil.

Our little house in the jungles of Campina Grande do Sul, Brazil.

I was talking to a friend of mine several weeks ago (whatup Jono!?) and we were talking about how bogus (do people even use that word any more?) a lot of Facebook status updates were. You know what I’m talking about, right? It’s where all people do is post things that make their life look more appealing and better than yours. Or it’s where they say things to people they care about publicly on Facebook rather than just getting off the computer, going into the next room and telling the person ‘in person!’ It goes something like this: 

“Hey baby, today’s our anniversary and I just want to tell you how much I love you and that I’m sooooo blessed to have you as my lifelong friend and partner and I couldn’t imagine being with anyone but you and I still can’t believe your mine! xoxoxoxo”

Seriously? Why do people say that stuff on Facebook and not just do it in person? Is it because they’re too lazy to get out of the chair and walk across the room? Is it because that’s just the day and time we live in and technology is king (rather than communicating face to face)? Or could it be that we trying to create the illusion that our life and our marriage is better than the next person and that we’re soooo much in love and we have no problems? Because if we’re just stating the truth why don’t we post the opposite side of the coin too? I can’t ever remember reading a status update that said: “today’s our anniversary and we just argued for the 17th time and it’s only 9:00am! I can’t believe we’ve made it this far without killing each other! PTL!”

And probably my all-time favorite post is when someone posts what they’re eating. Really? Is this what we’ve come to? Posting a picture and a status of what we’re eating? Do we really think people actually care that we’re eating Tetrazzini Alfredo with a side of asparagus spears tossed in a homemade garlic sauce? And do we actually think that people are so interested that they want to see a picture too? For some reason I don’t think so. And, why we’re on the subject, why not post the picture of you eating  PB&J or Ramen noodles because you ran out of money and Friday’s still 2 days away?

Or rather than only posting the picture of the beach you’re at and how relaxing it is, why not post the picture of you sitting at your desk (at work) buried under a mountain of paperwork and moments away from quitting. Then you could post the caption under the picture- “my boss is such a jerk and he’s lucky I don’t come back here with an uzi and mow this whole place down.” Where are all of those status updates? 

Now I must admit I’m just as guilty too. I don’t think I’ve ever been totally truthful either. I mean, who wants everybody else to think that your life is crappy? And who wants to admit that their life isn’t all about eating awesome food, hanging out with the coolest people, being at the most amazing vacation spots, being so much in love with your spouse that anyone within an 8 mile radius has to take a shot of insulin just to avoid going into diabetic shock because your relationship is so sweet? Not me. 

And when it comes to statuses, I’m only posting the wins, not the losses. You’ll never see the post (with the picture, of course) of me emptying out our change jug to buy groceries because not enough support came in that month. You’ll never see the picture posted of me sitting with my head in my hands (all depressed) as I’m trying to figure out how we can get back to the U.S. ad out of this place because it’s so stressful. And you won’t see me posting a picture of one of my kids report cards where they’re failing almost every class accompanied by the caption that reads “ 3-F’s, 1-C and 1 D... I think my kid may be  retarded!” And scriptures? Forget about it... because I’m only posting the encouraging scriptures that talk about how victorious and blessed that I am rather than the ones that talk about persecution, trials and the hardships that Jesus “promised” we’d face. Because Facebook is all about how awesome my life is compared to yours. And I’m not stupid, right? Why would I want to post stuff that makes my life look less exciting and less glamorous than all my friends lives?  I mean, they’re all my “friends” and I’ve got an image to uphold, right? haha!

What would Facebook statuses look like if we were all being truthful all the time? Sure, there’d be good stuff, but there’d also have to be negative stuff sometimes too. Because life isn’t always good, right? Just a thought.

Now just because I ranted for the last 5 minutes doesn’t mean that I’m gonna start posting stuff that makes me look like a loser and that my life isn’t as amazing as I want you to think it is... I’m too much of a wuss to do that : )

Living My Awesome Life,

Jim

Camps, Camps and More Camps

In case you’re wondering, yes. We’re still alive. Our internet has been down for almost 2 months. It has worked sporadically but only enough to basically check emails and most of the time it won’t even let us send any emails out. So, posting blogs has been out of the question. It’s sooooo frustrating. But a lot has been going on nonetheless. Over the last 2 months we’ve hosted several camps. One was a camp of kids from a church in Piraquara, one was a group of kids from an orphanage in Colombo and the one we just finished was a 3 day camp with kids from a church in Curitiba and kids from the mountain here in Terra Boa.

A group from a church in Piraquara we hosted in September.

A group of kids from an orphanage in Columbo we hosted in September.

A group of students from a church in Curitiba and some of the students from the mountain.
 This camp was a couple of weeks ago and was a 3 day camp.

One of the main things we do here in Brazil is hold camps for children and teenagers. When we were given the property back in 09’ (click HERE if you have no clue what I’m talking about) a camp had already been established here but had been sitting idle for a couple of years. Daniel Van Dyk (a pastor from Canada) and his wife Ligia had bought the property and started building a camp for kids here and they actually had the same vision that we have for reaching students for Christ (to use  camps as a way to further the Gospel). And that’s exactly what we’re doing.

This happens in one of three ways:

Option 1 - This is where we just host the groups (only church groups) and they bring in their own programing, food and activities. They pay a small fee (R$10 per day, per person) for our services and the use of the camp.

Option 2 -  With this option we host the groups at no cost (FREE) and we take care of all the programming, food and activities. The cost for this type of camp is taken care of by our generous supporters and these are our favorite camps to hold.

Option 3 - Is a new type of camp we just started. It’s where we host the group and charge a small fee (R$10 per day, per person). They take care of programming, activities and food. But the difference in this camp is that we only charge for the “church kids.” We encourage the “church kids” to invite their unsaved friends and we let the unsaved friends come for FREE. The only stipulation is that the church has to commit to discipling the kids once they get back to their churches. Our goal is to get students involved with the discipling process rather than just experiencing a camp and then just going home to wait until “next time.” (And the cost for the unsaved kids is taken care of by our supporters!)

With the last 3 camps we’ve held, we’ve been able to hold all 3 types of camp too. All 3 were successful, Jesus was lifted up, the Gospel was preached and kids lives were changed in all 3 camps. So, if you’re one of the people who prays for us and if you you’re one of the people who gives to us financially... “Thank You!!!!” We literally couldn’t do this without you. We’ve been here over a year now, we’ve completed so many building projects to improve the facilities and make it so that we’re able to attract more children and teenagers, and it’s all because of you. So, “thank You!” I really wish you could be here to see the kids, to look in their eyes and to know that they’re experiencing- not just a camp- but they’re getting an opportunity to meet Jesus. It makes all the struggles and all the difficulties worth it: )

Love Ya,

Jim and MJ

Part 2: Just Because You Have the Suit Doesn’t Necessarily Mean You’re An Expert

If you didn’t read yesterday’s blog, click HERE to read it first. Otherwise this won’t mean as much to you (not having the full story, that is.).

OK. 7:00am came and went and the bees were still in full force. So much for them “swarming away on their own” even though it sounded great. After mid-morning came and went I sent Matthew to go and tell Rato that they (the bees) were all still there and we needed to know what to do next. After Matthew told him he said, “he wanted to bring over his smoke canister and another suit so that someone could help him.” It was kinda drizzling outside so he wanted to do a daylight extraction this time. Typically bees don’t swarm as much at night or when it’s raining so doing it during the day (while it was raining) seemed like a good idea to him. And again, since he had all the equipment, it seemed like he was the expert in the situation. So we were going with the expert’s recommendation.

When I asked Matthew who was gonna help him (and be brave enough to jump inside the other bee suit) he told me that Eli (one of my nephews) was going to do it. Only problem with that, is that Eli had gone into town with his parents and wasn’t home yet. So then I asked Matthew if he was gonna do it and he didn’t even hesitate... to say, “no,” that is. lol! That left... drumroll please... you got it right. Me!

So Rato shows up and I’m the only one there that can help (or who was willing to), so I suited up. I was trying to act brave, but inside I wasn’t real enthusiastic about going into battle against a bunch of bees with a 17 year old kid. Especially one who had already proven that just because you have the suit doesn’t necessarily mean you’re “an expert bee remover guy” (sorry don’t know the correct term). I wasn’t real optimistic, but I put the suit on nonetheless. And then I had MJ put duct tape around the part where the gloves go over the sleeves (of the bee suit) so that there was no way a single bee could possible get inside my suit. I think I saw that on Discovery Channel or something: )

That's me (reluctantly) suited-up and ready to "battle the bees."

We went upstairs and Matthew locked us out on the porch. As the door locked, I knew  there was no turning back now. Rato got his smoke canister going and after he put smoke near where we were going to be working (and after a quick photo) we started to take the wood off the house. 

Rato getting his smoke canister ready.

Smiling on the outside but crying on the inside.

Rato and Jim, ready for battle.

And, when we did, the bees started hitting our suits and gloves immediately. They were all over the place and they were mad. Although there was a smile on my face it was all I could do not to poop my pants. It was soooo scary and my adrenaline was pumping at an all time high . MJ, Matthew and Maryssa stood with their faces pressed against the glass of Maryssa’s bedroom window laughing at me and all the bees. It was crazy.

Starting to remove the wood unleashed the bees in all their fury. 

The bees starting to attack as we were smoking them out.

Matthew mocking me from the safety of the "inside" of the house. 

After we removed the first outside board we could see a big honeycomb with a bunch of bees on it. The bees were really mad now so I put down my hammer and grabbed the smoke canister and started dispersing the smoke. Nobody told me to do it and I had no idea what the smoke was suppose to do, I was just afraid to move (swinging the hammer) anymore. I was paranoid that the suit was gonna tear or something so holding the smoke thing seemed like a safe thing to do.

The hive was exposed after we removed the first board.

As the bees were attacking I grabbed the smoke (even though I had no idea what I was doing).

Rato started removing more of the boards and as he did I was shocked! There was such a massive bee hive that I was literally in awe. And not only was there such an enormous hive (filled with honey) but we had just unleashed tens of thousands of bees! And the fact that we had just peeled away the only thing (the wood) that was previously separating us from them, gave them no other alternative but to attack us. There were so many bees on my gloves, hood and suit that it was freaky. I grabbed the camera and took a few shots because otherwise nobody would believe this. 

I even shot a quick video so that you could see the scope of what we were dealing with and so that you could hear the sound of the bees too. 

Rato started scraping off all the honeycombs from under the inside of our roofline and putting them into a big empty trashcan (that I had given him, he still didn’t bring a bucket like he said the night before, haha). And, when he had finished, the honey probably weighed about 30 lbs inside of the can. It was pretty amazing. 

Rato removing honeycombs and placing them into a bucket.

At that point the bees were still hitting us but they started to form a big cluster on top of the roof of the house too. We carried (down a ladder) the trashcan full of bees and honeycombs and stood off on the distance for about 20 minutes as the bees started to disperse. There were thousands of dead bees on the ground already, from the night before, but now there were thousands more. My heart was still pounding from being that close to something that could potentially of killed me and I felt exhausted. Who would’ve ever thought that I’d be wrangling bees on the mission field? After a while we went back up and removed the residue that the honeycombs had left on the underside of our roofline. Rato said that the bees would come back for it if we left it there. And we didn’t want them to come back, that’s for sure.

This was something that was so outrageous that I never would’ve imagined I’d ever be doing it. But there’s also a lesson that I saw in it as well:

Just because someone has a bee suit doesn’t make them an expert bee remover. Sure, they may have a little experience, but that doesn’t make them an expert. But, even though they’re not an expert, if someone needs bees removed, they’re gonna call someone who “has the suit.”

It’s the same with us as Christ Followers. When we profess to people that we believe in Jesus (i.e., we’ve got the suit), and then tragedy strikes in their life or when they’re in need, they’re gonna come to us for help. So rather than not being prepared (i.e., forgetting to bring our bucket, not putting on our protective stuff at the right time, etc.) we need to be ready and trained. And our training doesn’t only come through experience. Sure experience is valuable but preparation is too. So how much time are we spending in preparation for someone who needs us (by studying God’s word and applying it to our lives)? Are we gonna be prepared for “a spiritual bee invasion” in someone else’s life when they call on us? Because if we’re just depending on experience it’ll be a lot more difficult than if we spent time in preparation. As a matter of fact if we’re not prepared “we could get stung”: )

“For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk and not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”

                                                                                   Hebrews 5:12-14

Love Ya,

Jim 

Part 1: Just Because You Have the Suit Doesn’t Necessarily Mean You’re An Expert

OK. If you read about the bee fiasco the other day, the saga continues. If you have no idea what I’m talking about click HERE to catch-up. Otherwise this blog probably won’t  make any sense to you. 

Anyway, we knew that after we were attacked and held captive by the bees,  we had to do something. It was way too dangerous to try and co-exist with the bees now that they were being so aggressive. So Matthew told us that one of his friends here on the mountain was a professional “bee guy” or something like that. He said that, “he had one of those bee suits and everything (and I guess if you have one of the suits that it makes you an expert, right?).” So, I told Matthew to go ahead and ask him to help us. 

The guy’s name is Rato (pronounced hot-too, which means rat in Portuguese). I know what you’re thinking, don’t ask me, I have no idea. Anyway, Rato agreed to help us out of our dilemma. He planned on coming over after the Thursday Night Discipleship Meeting. Rato is one of the young men that attends periodically. He’s 17 years old and seems like a pretty nice guy (in spite of the fact that he’s named after a disease infested rodent).

After the Discipleship Meeting- Matthew, Rato, Maryssa, Amber, Anna and 2 of my nephews all came to the house to be part of the action. Rato had all of his gear with him and we all watched and listened as he was putting on his suit and making jokes about what he was about to do. After he put his suit on he told me his plan. The first thing he was going to do was pull some of the wood off of the side of our house to expose the hive. Now, the place where this was going to happen was on the 2nd story of our house. There’s an open-air porch up there and the bees had built a nest in the outside wall that separates the porch from Maryssa’s bedroom. Then he said that he was going to pull the hive off and place it in a bucket and take it away. When I asked him where the bucket was, he had no response (and no bucket). He just laughed. This was when the red flags started going off in my mind, but I just went along with it. Then, he explained that the next step was to take gasoline and spray it on the house around the area where the hive use to be. Say what?! Did he just say, “spray gasoline on the house?” OK, hold on there “Mr. Bee Expert.” Everything sounded good right up until the point where you talked about spraying a flammable liquid on a wooden structure way out in the middle of the jungle with hardly any available water and no way to put fires out! So back up... let’s talk about this. How much gas? He said, “about 2 liters.” Seriously? 2 liters!? For some reason the red flags that started going off inside my mind earlier were waving in full force now (I’m perceptive like that, haha). So we talked about it and he told me that it was important because the fumes would keep the bees away. But still, gasoline? It’s flammable and gasoline costs about $1,000,000 a gallon here so can’t we use something else? I had some old diesel fuel in a bottle and he said, “that would work.” I was thinking, “it’s flammable but at least it’s harder to start a fire with diesel than gas,” so we went with that.

So all of us went into the house, up the stairs and then Rato went out the door and onto the porch by himself. I closed the door behind him and locked it from the inside (didn’t know why I locked it, I just felt inspired to, lol!). Then we all went to the windows to watch “the bee professional” in action.  He grabbed the crowbar and started pulling the wood off on the side of the house and the bees started swarming in full force. Man, they were ticked-off. But then something seemed wrong... wait a minute! He only had his suit on. He didn’t put his gloves or hood on yet! 

As you can see, he started without his hood and gloves!

Then as the bees started stinging him it’s like the lightbulb went off, “oh yeah... I need the rest of my protective equipment on.” So we all watched in disbelief as he frantically put the hood and gloves on. Then he grabbed the 2 liter bottle of diesel and started spraying it everywhere! We could tell that he was still getting stung (bees were inside his hood) but we couldn’t help him. Bees were all over his suit, his gloves and basically weren’t very happy with him. 

Rato frantically putting on gloves and hood.

Rato spraying diesel fuel everywhere.

Then, all of a sudden, he ran over to the door and tried to come in, but I had locked it earlier, remember? haha. So he started yelling for us to let him in. Really? Dude, I feel for you but you’re covered in angry bees and there’s a lot of people inside here that really don’t want to be stung. So he he started ripping off his protective suit and swatting bees off of his body then he yelled, “clean!” So we opened the door, he ran in and we slammed the door closed behind him. The girls were screaming, the dogs were barking, the guys were laughing (I actually think it was some type of macho-guy-defense-mechanism-thing to deflect the fact that they were terrified of dying by multiple bee stings), it was total chaos. You could hear all the bees outside hitting the windows, doors and the side of the house. Great! Now we’re hostages inside our house again. There were several bees flying around inside the house too. Especially in Maryssa’s room. We tried killing them (with bug spray and this handheld bug zapper thing somebody sent us from the States) while we waited for the “bee expert” to tell us our next move.

So now what? What’s plan B? As we waited for the bees to settle down (so that everyone could make a run for it and go home) Rato said, “the bees would probably all swarm away on their own in the morning around 7:00am.” How he knew the time, we’ll never know. And who am I to argue? He’s the one with the bee suit so he must be an expert, right? So around 11:00pm the bees had slowed down a little bit (i.e., they weren’t angrily hitting the doors, windows and side of the house anymore.) and the swarm had subsided enough to where everyone could bundle-up and make a run for it. So we counted down... 3,2,1 go! Everyone ran out in a pack and I slammed the door shut behind them as they made their way off the property.

It took until about midnight to kill all the bees that were flying around inside the house but, when we finally killed the last one, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. But I think I might have an ulcer because of all the stress this whole “bee thing” has caused. So now I’ll guess we’ll wait until morning to see if they all “magically” swarm-off somewhere. So, come back for Part 2 tomorrow to find out what happens. But until then bee blessed! Get it? Bee blessed!? Sorry, that was lame, I know. But I couldn’t resist: )

Love Ya,

Jim

Mission Team Update: Kinda Like Disney World

Anna and Amber at "Dinner Ridiculous" at our last camp. Everybody had to dress up for dinner in something funny.

Amber with her face painted (in her teams color) at the field day at camp.

Anna putting a harness on a camper before he climbed up to the tight-rope walk.

Amber playing with the kids at the local elementary school in Terra Boa.

The worm/maggot that we pulled out of Gabriel's head.

A not-so-friendly spider we caught at the last camp

Amber, Jim and one of the kids from the orphanage in Colombo.

Anna. during the last camp.

Our internet here on the mountain has been horrible for over a month and a half now. We’ve had either no connection or the connection has been so slow that we’ve barely been able to open our emails. So posting blogs has been impossible. I haven’t even been able to open my blogger account, much less post a blog... it’s very frustrating. But we’ve had a lot of stuff happening nonetheless.

On September 18th we had a couple college students come to intern with us for 3 months and to experience the mission field... “the real mission field.”

The reason I say, “The real mission field” is because although “mission trips” (the ones that last a week or so) are great and are life-changing for the people who come on them, but living on the mission field is totally different. It’s kinda like the difference between going to Disney World vs working at Disney World. 

Going to Disney World is awesome. The rides and attractions are soooo fun and exciting. Everything is done with excellence and everything is so fresh and clean all of the time. The people that work there are so nice and helpful. The landscaping and all the flowers are perfectly maintained. Between all the rides, music, fireworks and all the Disney Characters walking around...it’s like sensory overload because of everything going on. 

But working at Disney World is different. To keep everything so fresh and clean, it takes thousands of man hours each week and so many things have to happen that most people never know about. For example, there are over 10,000 paint colors inside the Magic Kingdom. And each one is used to freshen-up everything and anything that doesn’t look new each day. The landscape crews work all through the night so that the visitors at Disney never see work going on. And the reason that you don’t see workers emptying the trash (anywhere inside the park) is because all the trashcans are part of a network of underground tunnels that, once trash is placed inside of one of the cans, it shoots the trash to a place underground where it’s disposed of. That’s why there’s no trash liners that need to be changed. And you’ll never go more that 30 steps without reaching a trash receptacle (because of research they did, that showed that people won’t carry a piece of trash more than 30 steps before they drop it on the ground). I could keep going, but it’s pretty amazing to read about all the stuff that happens at Disney (that people never know about) just to keep it running the way it does.

And it’s very similar when you go on a short term mission trip vs living on the mission field long term. On a short term trip (the week that you’re there- wherever it is in the world) every moment is packed-full of stuff that blows your mind. You see the great need for the Gospel. You get to minister in churches, on the streets, in orphanages, in the schools... basically everywhere! You get to feed the hungry. You get to build stuff that helps the people that live there. Each and every day is meticulously scheduled so that every moment is full of things that you’ll never forget. And it’s all good. But when you live on the mission field (or stay long term), rather than just visiting (short term), most of your time is spent just trying to survive. For instance, this past week our water went-out at least 5 times. And by went out, I mean- it stopped working. Which meant that we had to climb up “the hill” (or “the hell” as I like to call it), at night of course, just to find out that our water source had dried-up. So then we had to figure out how to get water to 3 houses so that 12 people could flush toilets, drink water and cook. Fun, huh? Our electricity has gone out for several hours at a time (only at night, of course) at least 3 times over the last few weeks, our internet is non-existent 99% of the time (which only compounds the feeling of isolation and loneliness here on the mission field), we’re continuously inundated with spiders and bugs of every shape and size (see the photo of the spider we caught during the last camp), Me and some of the kids have had intestinal worms several times over the last year, the altitude that we live at (combined with all the moisture) causes mold to grow on everything from the walls to clothes to shoes to decorations in the house... you name it, mold is on it. It’s gross. And just this past week we had to remove a worm out of our son’s (Gabriel) head. He had bumped his head at school and some type of insect then decided to lay an egg in the wound. Then over time (several weeks) the egg hatched and some type of maggot-worm-thing grew in it (See photo. I laid it next to the chapstick just for scale). That was in his head! MJ and Matthew removed it with tweezers but still... this thing hatched and grew inside my son’s head! And, as I’m sitting here writing, Maryssa just came running in the house yelling because bees just attacked her and were stuck in her hair. One of our dogs came in right behind her and had about 30 bees stuck on her (stinging her as she flailed around on the floor), one bit me on the temple, they started attacking MJ as they (the bees) started swarming into the house. As we were getting stung, MJ and l tried getting them off of Maryssa and our dog after I slammed the door shut and closed all the windows in the house. You can actually hear the bees hitting the door and windows trying to get into our house right now. “We’re literally being held hostage in our own home by a massive swarm of bees!” What's up with that!? And I can see Amber and Anna (the girls here on the mission trip) out my window. They’re standing off in the distance because the bees chased them and a few of our kids off when this all went down. Welcome to the mission field: )

Sure, we have ministry stuff happening, but it seems like there’s more “just trying to survive time” than there is “ministry time” happening. Being on a short term mission trip (visiting Disney World) doesn’t allow someone to really experience this. But going on long term trips (working at Disney World) does. And that’s what the girls have been enduring alongside of us since mid September. Between all the camps, working with street kids, visiting orphanages, ministering here on the mountain, etc., they’ve had their share of drama as well. But that’s what living on the foreign mission field is like (especially with a new ministry like ours that, although it’s growing, is still in it’s infancy stage).

These girls are just out of high school and trying to decide if foreign missions is something that God is calling them to. So, our prayer is for them to experience God in a way that they never could at home and in their own environment. That’s first and foremost. And another one of our goals is for them to see what it’s really like being on the foreign mission field long term. So we’re not flowering stuff over and doing the whole “one week mission blitz” (which is still an awesome thing), we’re just allowing them to walk alongside of us as we’re navigating through what God has called us to do here in Brazil. So, please pray for them as they’re here with us until mid December... they need it! lol! 

Love Ya,

Jim

PS- they’re actually doing great if you’re wondering. But still, please pray that God moves mightily in their lives.