Celebration

Next week, we are having our monthly Women's Day luncheon. After service, the women of the church stick around. We share a meal together and then have a lesson time. For the last year or more, the women have been working through Richard Foster's book on spiritual disciplines. I was asked to give September's lesson, the final one in the series. I will speaking about the spiritual discipline of celebration. It's been a neat topic to explore, and I do have to say, we have had many reasons to celebrate recently in our church family. Let me share a few with you.

This is Gisele, our newest sister in Christ. She is 14, a member of our youth group, and this is us praying over her before her baptism. Leandro, her cousin is on her left and Dona Dulce, her grandmother is on her right.

Here is Leandro, her cousin who was just baptized in August baptizing Gisele in the ocean across the street from our church building.

We all surround Gisele to pray over her again after she comes out of the water.

We had a barbecue for all of our small groups at church. This is several of us playing Uno Attack. It was a lot of fun to celebrate together!

And of course, I had to include a picture of baby Calen. Isn't he sweet?

Thanks for reading and joining us in celebrating the good things God is doing here in Salvador! Please pray for my lesson with the women next week and my continued work with the children's ministry and beginner's English classes.

Return to Blog World

I'm such a bad blogger, I know, I know! Please forgive me for not posting more often. I really do want to be better at this and keep all of you informed about what's going on in my life here in Salvador. Above you can see the biggest change in our lives in the last month. This is my newest teammate and adopted "nephew", Calen Xavier Sass. He is so precious!!! I love holding him and letting him sleep in my arms or on my chest. There's just nothing that ministers to your spirit like a sweet newborn baby!

So, what's been happening since my last post, you ask? Well, my parents and brother came for a visit. We had a great time!! I showed them around Salvador, and they were huge helps in getting our building ready for the inaugural service we had on August 17. It was of course hard to see them go, but I'm so glad they got to come.

Now I'm trying to settle into the "routine" (if you can call it that) of "normal life" around here. I am down to two LST follow-up studies, and I'm shadowing Mary on an evangelistic Bible study to learn how to conduct one myself. I teach all of the children's time on Sunday mornings since Alicia is on maternity leave. Today, I also began teaching the beginner's English class now that Val is on furlough. I really enjoy that! Teaching adults is a new experience for me. It's a little different than teaching my peers in Spanish lab at ACU or the first-graders I'm used to, but it's still a lot of fun. Adults know how to take responsibility for their own learning and ask good questions, so that is neat! And I still get to teach them silly songs to help them remember the days of the week and months of the year! I'm also continuing my twice a week Portuguese class, and we're still offering a free hot lunch to our neighborhood every other Saturday.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a visitor come to our church named Ana Carolina. She is my age, and she has jumped right in to our life at the church, helping out with lunches, participating in English class and Women's Day. Last night, I went out to the movies with her and Leandro (see previous post), and tomorrow the three of us and some others are going to the beach. I think I might finally be making friends my age...yay!!!

I have to confess that I still get pretty homesick every once in a while. Alicia said I was going through some culture shock. My mom said I also have job shock (first September since kindergarten not to be in a school setting). And add to that fly-the-nest shock. Yeah, sometimes my emotions get the better of me. But I know there are lots of people praying for me daily, and that really keeps me going. Beginning to make friends here also helps. Please pray that I will continue to develop good relationships with the Brazilians here and to deepen my relationships with my teammates. Please pray also for our work here and that we will continue to glorify God in all that we do.

That's all for now, and I promise to be more consistent with updating from now on. Thanks for reading, everyone!