Strategy Review

This week has been a great week. For the past four days we have met as a team, studied God's Word, prayed for guidance, openly talked about successes and failures, and recommitted to an all out pursuit of God. God is good. My teammate Val has blogged about the retreat and said some great things. if you get a chance you ought to check out her post from the past several days. http://www.quireys.blogspot.com/.

September Prayer Calendar

Just wanted to offer our September Prayer Calendar for any that want it. You can click here or on the image below to download the calendar.

Pray!

Today, say a prayer for the Salvador Church of Christ.

Pray that God will act mightily in this place. Please pray that we as missionaries and our members will have boldness to share the gospel and that God will give us words. Pray for our church to be a place of defeat for Satan and all his schemes. And pray that this church will be a place of victory for those seeking the Truth found only in Jesus Christ.

To God be the glory forever and ever, Amen!

A dear friend is home

We have been away at retreat this week and came back home last night to find out that Bill Nash passed away on Monday. Bill is a man we met at Highland. He worked as a minister for around 20 years there. He was a man full of love and acceptance. Every time I met him he always seemed to have time for me. He wasn't a man of many faces. What you saw when you met Bill was himself. He did not try to be someone else or make you think he was someone he was not. He was a true person. I only had a few short years to get to know him, but his spirit and life were such that I will forever be touched by his life. He is a man in which God has fully declared His "Yes" through Christ. Welcome home my friend.

Here are some comments from others who knew him better.
Preacher Mike - Bill Nash

Itu Inaugural

this weekend we are in Itu, a town close to São Paulo. We are here because the church here is inaugurating their new church building. We are also here because the missionaries, Antenor and Phyllis Goncalves, are supported by Highland in Abilene.

Our time here has been such a blessing. We arrived on Thursday and have spent several days doing this and that to help get ready. This morning the inaugural service started. What a wonderful morning. The place was packed with well over 300 people, which for a Church of Christ in Brazil is a great Sunday. regardless of how many people came today, though, it was a great Sunday. The church itself is so excited about their new building and how God led them here. They are excited about how God will continue to use their building as a light to the city and safe haven for those seeking shelter from a life lived without God.

As we got going this morning I had a wonderful thought about how this can one day be us. I thought about how we one day hope to have a place the church in Salvador owns and is able to use long term for the Lord. Until then though, we will continue to use what we have, where we are, to declare that God is God and in Him alone is our salvation.

Finishing Classes

Tonight was the final class of an 8 week series I have been teaching up at the building. It is part of an effort to reach out the community and create more opportunities to people about God. I have used our evangelistic Bible studies as the basis for the class. Although the class has not had our desired result of attracting mostly non-Christians, I have enjoyed the class immensely. The first time I taught the class we had a hard time keeping up consistency, but this time was completely different. Early on we settled in with about eight people, one of them being one of our members and another being a seeker from our neighborhood.

The classes have been very lively. Each week we worked through my basic outline and each week our discussions led us beyond my outline into discussions about who God is and how we are able to live with Him in relationship. Tonight as everyone was leaving I felt a little sadness. Over these eight weeks we have grown together and shared much of ourselves. I am sad we don’t have next week to look forward to be together again.

It has been a great class and I pray God’s blessings on all those who came. I pray the most for Othon who came out of curiosity and has now received the seeds of the Gospel. I pray they will grow and that he will be open for more opportunities to journey together on this road.

Couples Night

One of the great (and sometimes confusing) things about being a missionary in a foreign country is the holiday schedule. While we cannot celebrate them all (we would never get any work done) it can work to our advantage.

Some of the holidays are the same (Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day). Some are close. For example our state celebrates both the national independence day and its own independence from Portugal. The state independence day is on July 2, close to both Canadian and the US independence days (July 1 & 4). Of course there are some holidays new to us because we are living in Brazil now (i.e. Tira Dentes – literally “to pull teeth” celebrating a dentist important in Brazil’s independence) and some that we miss all together (I totally missed Memorial day this year). But every now and then we get to celebrate some holidays twice. Such was the case last night.

Because we were on furlough this year Jennifer and I got to celebrate Valentine’s Day like most of you in February, and because our furlough ended before June, we also got to celebrate it in Brazil too. To celebrate we invited all the couples we have at church over to the house for a night of burgers and a movie. In the end we had 8 couples, including one of Travis and Alicia’s neighbors.

It was a great night. I made “American Hamburgers,” which simply means I made the hamburger patties by hand and cooked them on a grill (most hamburgers here are bought pre-made and are cooked on a griddle). Jennifer made her wonderful potato salad and we ate to our hearts content. We watched Baz’s new movie Australia starring Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman.

Here are a few of the pictures from the night.