Rain, challenges, growth!

a little discipleship on the beach :)

Hey everyone, I wanted to wish you all a happy new year, but it’s already almost February, so I don’t think it counts anymore :)  I got back to Fortaleza on Dec 30th just in time for working day and night to get a live transmission of the New Years Eve service from our two church locations in the city.  The hardest thing was not transmitting it live from one location to the next, it was that our pastor wanted to be able to “chat” with the pastor at the other location.  Praise the Lord it worked!

Sunrise of Jan 01, 2011

But that was just to start the night, the young adults from our church planned a New Years party at the beach, where we prayed, ate, played Uno, made new friends, then watched the sunrise on January 1st.

So what’s with the rain?  It just rained for about 3 days straight here, and the last day, we woke up to our house flooded…the water was seeping in from the wall!  Just to get an idea, Herbert couldn’t squeegee the water faster than it was coming in.  But thankfully that day it stopped raining, so everything is about back to normal again :)

fun with friends from a cell group

So something cool that happened now in January is that since the majority of our pastors are on vacation, they asked me to preach one Sunday at our satellite church!  How it works here is that whoever preaches at the satellite church gets the sermon outline that’s going to be preached at the main church, watches the service be preached twice at the first two services, then studies it over lunch until he preaches it that evening and night (yeah, I preached the same service 2x in a row b/c there are 2 services at our satellite church, 5pm and 7pm).  Not going to lie, the first service I was really nervous, stuttering, shaking, losing my place in the notes.  But praise the Lord both went well and hopefully I’ll be a lot more calm next time :)

I'm serious, it doesn't hurt, it's awesome!

belly flopping on balloons doesn't hurt!

It’s exciting to learn and experience so many new things!  I’m learning a lot about cell groups, discipleship, planning meetings (didn’t know that could be so hard :), dealing with bigger problems, delegating, training, etc.  Something I always say is that I like to always be learning, and usually that comes with challenges.  Right now I have two main focuses:

1. Sector Meeting – a meeting I’m hoping to have about once a month with the cell leaders under my supervision.  I’m hoping to be able to invest more and more in them to see them become stronger Christians, disciplers, cell leaders, and soul winners.  A lot of them have come back from Christmas vacation excited and thirsty for more and I’m right there with them.  Our first meeting will be this Saturday night.  Please be praying.

2. Young Adult Camp during Carnival – we are having a 4 day Spirit-filled intensive camp for the young adults this March during carnival.  And again, I’m right next to Pr Sandro, our youth pastor, helping to plan and coordinate this event.  Even though our focus is our church here, there already are people from across Brazil signed up to come and participate with us.

Gonna sign out for now, but thanks again for all your prayers and support!  And like I always say, come and visit me sometime and see the work you are a part of here in Brazil!

Much love!
Paul