..Never despise the ordinary..
·
If any of you are feeling a little twinge of
jealousy of me being out here in hot Brazil, out in the sun. It might make you
feel better that it has been on and off raining for a week. And it’s not light spittle
that covers the city for most of the day, it’s pretty torrential, and
everything is now wet. So don’t be jealous, yet, the sun is yet to be the
primary component of weather here. Personally, I am loving it, the weather is
helping me acclimatize, and means I have an excuse to drink tea.
·
It has been a busy and a little bit of a
stressful week. With the new building, meetings with the outreach groups,
weddings and 6am cycles. But mostly we have been a little preoccupied with
little Baby Samuel’s health. He has not been very well this week, and we have
been to the hospital twice with him. Thankfully, today he seems to be on the
mend, and is more active and giggling, but it has been stressful for both Tomas
and Carol, and I have been trying to help in any way I can, which has mainly
been sitting and watching Masha and the Bear on the laptop (my new favourite
children’s programme).
·
I have spent a lot of time this week on google
translate, trying to prepare material for different activities and programmes
in the church. There is a lot of great material out there today for many
different courses and studies that the church can run, but there is very little
that has been made available to those who do not speak English. I have been
trying to work out the difference between need and want for some of these
courses. Many are unaware that they are even available in their content for
their community. In particular I have been concentrating on two specific
translation ‘projects’. One is, the Village Church’s ‘Beautiful Design’ sermon
series, and bible study. Which I have found personally incredibly encouraging
and helpful, but this is a series of about 10 sermons, and one sermon takes me
about a full day of hard translation work to get into any kind of
understandable shape, and to be fair, someone who is native speaker will have
to do even more work with it after that! So, it is not an easy process, but I
feel that it is a very worthwhile one! Although my fingers are numb and my head
sore by the end of the day.
The second project that I have
started to develop this week came from several conversations I have been
involved in this week in particular, about people’s anxieties. Both those in
the church and those outside of it. And this is one of those subjects that has
been reoccurring for me in the past 5 years, no matter where in the world I
have been! The universal issue of money and personal finances. In Scotland I
was blessed to be able to be a part of the CAP network, but CAP is not
available to be run as a course here in Brazil, nor would it be relevant to the
context here, because, although the route of the issue is the same, how it
works itself out is somewhat different in Brazil, then it would be in the UK,
and this has to do with the availability of Bank Accounts, Finance Laws, Card
Payments, and so on and so forth. So, the bigger project that I feel I have
ahead of me currently, is to try and contextualise that which I have learnt
through CAP into the context here in Recife. As usual though, it appears God is
moving ahead of me, as my research is made easier daily by new material
available in the sermons I have been listening too, or the blogs that I have
been reading, or as the main article on the Gospel Coalition website.
Universally, the issue of personal finances is coming to the forefront. The
Church (worldwide) has finally begun to recognise its position in the training
and leading of people in managing their personal finances. The liberation that
this brings to people, the ability it gives them to be generous and to live
their lives abundantly regardless of financial income, and the alleviation of
stress that this brings in the realisation that money is not in charge of a
person, but that it is there to serve them, what a blessing and what a freedom
to live with more joy in a godly manner. This is what we are aiming for. I have
2 weeks to put my material together, before my first group that I will be
leading. This group is a prayer meeting of pastor’s wives, after this, I am
hoping to roll this material out to people within the church, and finally to
use it in the community/social context.
Please continue to be praying our big move that is
coming up in 2 weeks. We are trying to make sure we have working toilets and
some working lights at least for our first Sunday in the new building. I must
say that I have learnt a lot more respect for our Elders involved in the
building project at Hebron, as I have watched from very close by Tomas,
Maurilio, and the leadership of the church handling all of the finances and
organization for the new building, trying to work out what it means to be a good
steward, who to hire for the building project, what is a priority, and so many
more other decisions that need to be made, alongside all the other everyday
business of church life. So, Thank you Elders at Hebron. And I’m sorry I didn’t
say it more often.
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