Our New Home in Brazil

Here's a picture of the house we just rented in Natal:

We've verbally agreed to a year lease.  The owners of the house happen to be former missionaries to Natal.  He's a Brazilian and she's American.  They built the house several years ago.  They are now living in the States.  They contacted us by e-mail for a totally unrelated subject and we started to talk about their house.  It turned out that they were trying to rent it.  God is good.  

More Good News

It's taken me some time to get this post published, but I've been so anxious to share it with you.  While we were staying in Colorado John not only studied the Bible with his dad, but he also studied with our niece's boyfriend.  After a few days, Anthony was excited to start his life as a Christian, so John baptized him in the bathtub. 

Later that same evening, John married Anthony and Amanda in the living room of Amanda's parents' house.

Their baby Adam has no idea how his daddy's decision to be baptized and marry his mommy will forever change his life for the better, but we know how blessed he is.

New Life

John baptized his dad today.  He told John on the phone recently that he would like to discuss the Bible the next time we came to town.  That being our vocation, we made sure to come to town as soon as possible.  They studied together for two days then, by his dad's request, John baptized him in his bathtub this morning.  He said he felt great and was happy that he lived long enough to be sorry for his sins.  By his own admission, he has always believed in Jesus as the Son of God but only now understands how that relates to his life.  John has never had a close relationship with his dad, but now, he says, he has an eternity to get to know him.

Departure Date

We are in Colorado visiting John's family now.  We'll be here for several more days, then it's back to Texas.  We're scheduled to leave for Brazil on March 3.  We still don't have a working fund, but we plan to get settled in then focus on the work.  If that means just teaching the Bible in our living room, so be it.  Our plan has been to open a Bible school for the Brazilians but we may end up just opening our home to them instead.

By-the-way, our e-mail address is due to expire any day, but we just downloaded SKYPE.  You can download it at www.skype.com, then we can call each other on line when we're living in Brazil for free.

Getting Acquainted with Springtown

This is Jonah and Andy's class at the Springtown church.  They especially love Rocko the puppet.  They are making friends and doing well.

This group met at David and Candice Pearson's house to pray for the missionaries that the congregation supports.  It's great to have a team like this on board.

Howdy from Texas

We sold our house!  I'm excited about that because it means we're one step closer to Brazil.  Now we're in Texas with our new sponsoring congregation: Springtown Church of Christ.  Since we cancelled our Internet service in Nashville,  we only get it when we go to one of those Internet cafes. Our e-mail address will be good for a few more weeks, but you can always comment on this blog to contact us.  We have a new computer and I promise to post some photos as soon as I figure it out.  You'll be the first to get our new contact information in Brazil too.  Until then, check the blog.  Please pray for this mission.   If you have any interest in financially supporting us, we're still in need of a working fund.  Even the smallest monthly commitment would help. 

Our Trip to Colorado

After spending a week with John's family in Golden, we drove to Colorado Springs for Mission Training International's (MTI) Debriefing and Renewal (DAR). Among other things, it's a retreat for returning missionaries. Although we've been back from Brazil for over two years now and plan to return in January, we found it to be an invaluable experience.


The place we stayed for the week-long getaway was a lovely Christian ministry center tucked away among the trees and mountains. It was very peaceful. Here's the room where we stayed:
And the yard just outside the back door:Sixteen families were there, having returned from countries all over the world. We were divided into two groups for the sessions. Here's a photo of our group: These fine people served as missionaries in Haiti, Costa Rica, Thailand, Japan, Malawi (look it up), and Belgium.

This wonderful couple, Bob and Linda, facilitated our group. They spent time in Haiti and Africa and raised two daughters on the field. They shared from their hearts, which spoke to ours. Simply listening to the others' stories and experiences helped us more than we expected. There was a mutual understanding and appreciation of the missionary life style that encouraged us.

We worked together on most assignments but occasionally divided up then came together to compare ideas. Many revelations resulted from our brainstorming sessions. This was my personal favorite: The missionary leaves his homeland as a person yellow in color. He goes to another country that is blue in color. After living as a yellow person in a blue culture, he is forever more green. Therefore, he never again fits entirely into either culture, but instead somewehere in between. It's been observed that children of missionaries feel most at home on the plane between the two countries.

We ate three wonderful meals a day and milled around the foyer during breaks, where we got to know many other missionaries more intimately.

The kids had classes and activities all week. They couldn't have had better teachers. Jonah developed a love for drawing and Andy just asked me this morning if he could go back to his class. They even took a field trip to Whit's End at Focus on the Family.They had a great time hanging out with other missionary kids (MKs) from places like Siberia and Thailand.

John and I even got to sneak off to the Garden of the Gods without children.The whole group came together during our last evening to share talents and stories from the field. I learned that every missionary - and I do mean every - has a funny bathroom story.

The DAR program is appropriately named. We feel we finally had the opportunity to debrief and be renewed. Now we are ready as ever to make the transition back to Brazil. Thanks to all the kind-hearted missionaries we met and to the MTI staff who cared so well for all of us.