Weekend Ministering in a small town church

It has been really on my heart the last few weeks to go on outreaches to plant churches in "the interior" (the villages, towns and cities further inland, in the countryside).  The places that have been less reached with all forms of the gospel.

And a few weeks ago a minister from a small church in a little community, Serra do Felix, of about 3,000 people, found our team and asked us to come share with them about missions… or something.  It was really vague, but yesterday 4 of us went to do a meeting with their church Saturday night and then today about 30 of them had breakfast with us at the church and another time of worship and ministry.  I was so refreshed by the dirt roads, and random donkeys and cows and chickens roaming the streets, and being able to walk across town in 15 minutes.  They were so hungry to experience more of God.  I really felt that they have a kindred spirit with us as a group, and that some of them will go out as missionaries and that they have a heart to cultivate the presence of God and to pursue him diligently and to love well.  It was my first time to go with our Iris Fortaleza team somewhere outside of the city.  

God really met us, and met the people there.  We came with great expectation, but God really surprised us and did more than we could have imagined!  We were sooo excited to participate with him. God really brought out a new level of authority in teaching, and preaching and leading in Ned.  And God introduced something of a new intimate and personal way of worshipping there.  And he gave Bruno words of knowledge for healing, and all of us many prophetic prayers and words for the people there.  And he healed a mans vision who had cataracts.  And he gave Paulinha a prophetic encouragement for the church.  And he let many people encounter his presence thru prayer and impartation.  I got to practice a lot of Portuguese!(and Praise God its getting fun to successfully communicate some of it)  Since I didn't have a translator during ministry at the end of our first meeting, I felt just to hug the first person, without asking what they came to receive healing for… And it was one of those hugs that became really long and I could tell God was doing something, she just melted in my arms and eventually she just fell back on the ground and laid there.  And I thought to myself, oh, thats what God is doing.  ok then.  So I just kept praying over people gentle and slow and hugging/singing/ saying actual words occasionally.  The people were in no hurry.  They were encountering God personally. I asked several different people from the church to help minister to one another to come help lay hands or pray or hug another person.  One mom who was struggling with depression, really got touched and a lot of soaking prayer from different people and she really had break thru.  And a group of teenagers at the end of both meeting would just stand in a circle together worshipping/praying and laughing or crying or whatever, just wanting to keep experiencing more of God.  It was really amazing to see so many people's countenances change after their encounters with God.  He is so good, and so personal, and he loves so well.

In our time together this morning, after worship, we felt to pray for the kids and to have them minister to the adults.  But by the time we finished praying for the kids, they were mostly all lying on the floor continuing to receive from Jesus.  One boy, Santiago, 9 years old, he really went for it as we brought him to pray for people.  It was amazing!  And he and another teenager prayed for a woman's shoulder injury to be healed, and her pain left.  Some of the other kids kept coming to get us to pray for their other friends that had wandered into the meeting.  One boy, who was a trouble maker, they asked to Bruno pray for.  And during the prayer, he fell back and afterwards Bruno asked what he had felt, and he said that he had a vision.  He had been taken to heaven and Jesus was talking with him and asked him to sit down, and Jesus prayed for him in the vision.  Whoa!  

One of the young people asked me afterwards if we had an anointing at our church for people getting slain in the spirit and falling over, haha.  I said, 'I don't know, I guess now sometimes we do, this has never happened to me so much before.  God does something different all the time' :)

It was a beautiful beautiful time of loving and showing the love of God and seeing all the unique ways that God was touching people.

I felt that I wouldn't be surprised if some people from that church come with us on outreaches to plant churches in less reached parts of the interior.  They seemed like partners and family in the Spirit.  God really connected us on purpose :)  I am praying we can go back soon and maybe some of them will get to come to some of our training weekends here.

More of you God!!!  Thank you for showing up in love and power!  And thank you for such a bold and hungry team to run with!

prayer processing

Part of my prayer today-

'In the midst of loving living here, I am also experiencing the phases of cultural adaptation, including being disenchanted.  Some things about life here are very disenchanting, like walking on the pier at night on the beach; and seeing very boldly close rats and cochroaches crawling by.  And the overtones of sexual perversion covering the people on the streets, the beautiful homosexuals and transvestites, the prostitutes who try to adapt and cope with life in "the program" and lose hope and self worth.  It also feels weird to be here as a missionary, as an evangelist, because there are so many preaching partial gospels and religious gospels without power.

God, I really want to know and experience you and your gospel in fullness.  I want to know the raw power of your love.  I want to trust you enough to dream with you and to walk each day radically and willing to do with you the crazy normal stuff of your upside-down, supernatural kingdom.  

Many days still feel so 'normal' and I wonder again, am I really trusting you enough?  

Am I really giving you freedom to do anything you want to thru my life? 

 ... I don't know.  

But I do know that I want to encounter you today.  

More than yesterday.  

I want to invite you to take over new places in my heart.

And I want to enjoy the process with you.  I don't want to live in a constant state of frustration about where I'm not yet  (or how much Portuguese I haven't learned yet) or what greater works I haven't experienced with you yet.  I want to be like the child who gets hungry often, but knows that my father will give me good food.  Just the right nutrients at the right stages of development and that he will walk with me into maturity.  I want to trust you today.'

This is an unrelated picture of from a community outreach this week.  I was checking the bloodsugar  of my dramatic Brazilian friend and laughing at her pain.  
Because I'm a good missionary :)

Fortaleza Day 20 and Day 22

Fortaleza  Day 20

10/16/12

Wow time is flying. I can't believe i've been here for 3 weeks almost.  I feel really ready to have a more normal schedule, just the disorganization of everything is kind of overwhelming.  I am kind of caught up trying to get several projects done simultaneously to get ready to host this next team in two days.  They will be here for 10 days and have more of a planned schedule, which I is pretty refreshing to me at the time.

Maybe the second month in Brazil I will get to practice Portuguese :)  haha,  I got to escape to Nadyla's house yesterday to spend the night and day there. It was so refreshing!  I loved staying in the slum.  You hear the birds chirping different good morning sounds, and neighbors calling over the wall or at the door hollering throughout the day to talk to Nadyla, or for her to come get a plate full of food from the old lady next door who treats her like a grandkid :)  I know all those same things can wear on you after a while, but I thought it was so refreshing.  And to be in a small simple space, instead of a gigantic house was nice for a day too.  And I was just soo happy to get to practice Portuguese all day.  Even though in the morning I hardly said anything, it seemed so hard, and like my brain was in slow motion.  But slowly I gained confidence and I am at a place now where even though I know I am making many mistakes in each sentence and pronouncing most of the words wrong, especially the new ones, and using a lot of spanish grammar instead of portuguese, I am so glad to be at a place where I feel able to practice what I do know.  Now I can learn more as I go.  Like I made it over my first hurdle in communication!!

And we had a birthday dinner in the House of Prayer for Lorelei last night, with just our Iris Fortaleza team (10 people).  I love being with those guys, my new family here.  

Praying for health for everyone, several team members have gotten sick with cold and fever this week.  

Last Saturday night outreach at Beira Mar, a beach with a lot of bars and prostitution etc.  It was so surprising to me what God's agenda was like for the night.  A group of us ended up walking into this tiny catholic church that was open late that night, which they've never seen open.  Turns out that they were doing street outreach that night too, and some were in the church interceding and others on the street visiting with people.  They were surprisingly joyful and passionate about preaching Jesus and many of them had also given their lives to be missionaries and share the story of Jesus.  Outside of the church, one of the leaders shared about a powerful encounter he'd had with God and how it changed his life and we shared a few testimonies of healing from our journeys. We wanted to pray and prophecy over them, and they asked us to pray for them to have more of the gifts of the Spirit and to minister in power.  Then they invited us in to the front of the church so that they could all pray for us.  They all started praying outloud in the Spirit.  I was so humbled, honored, and surprised.  I was really touched and cried like a baby, which I haven't done in a while.  It was an amazing moment.  I felt like we had met our cousins in the Spirit or something.  It was a really big deal to our Brazilian team members because here there is a huge enmity between the catholic and evangelical churches, they don't usually talk or associate, and are kind of like rivals, and certainly we didnt' expect to have such a common vision or passion.  It was so great to get to bless and honor one another.  And who knew God had some reconciliation like that on his agenda?!? we didn't.

Now I am listening some of the Iris Latin America team playing soccer in the courtyard and wishing I could go to sleep :)  Have big plans of going to the food market in the morning and getting Aliza (a missionary from Australia) to show me around and show me all the coolest stands and friends she's made there in the past 2 weeks of helping to cook for the team.

Fortaleza  Day 22

10/18/12

What a ride.  Yesterday was busy with a lot of projects around the house.  We are trying to get beds/mattresses in for the new team that is coming today.  And install a new tiny bathroom while we have a construction genius from the first team still with us!  And many other tiny projects.  Its quite a transformation of this house to get it ready to host people straight out of America.  I want them to all at least have mattresses and a fan or I feel they will just be exhausted and miserable instead of able to enjoy their time here and to enjoy giving what they have brought to impart.  I was a bit stressed and scatterbrained the first half of the day, until I had the courage to delegate almost every little project I was taking responsibility for and to let go of the last one until today when Nedson can help me with it.  Then I felt so much peace, and relief, and so grateful for all the help!

God you are so good. Only you know what each one of your kids can handle, and what challenges are good for us, and how we can give to one another and encourage one another at just the right times.  Your giftings are beautiful.  Your love makes all things beautiful.

Then last night we did another soup outreach at the prayer house.  The most soup I have ever seen in one pot in my life.  In my baby Portuguese I told the amazing woman from the community who cooked it, that it was like the love of God… deep and big :)  haha.  And so good!  It was so different from last week, everytime with God is different.  Only the kids were going upstairs last night for prayer/worship.  I was downstairs serving soup and could hear them playing so hard for a little while, then suddenly it was quite for the rest of the night, but all the kids were still up there.  Later I went up to grab a coffee (with lots of sugar) for a woman we were ministering to downstairs, and I saw all the kids chilling out around the prayer room worshipping/praying/resting, it was so peaceful and amazing time in the presence of God.  They had listened really well to whatever Nedson shared with them and there they were receiving the love of God.  At first Nedson had been kind of disappointed that there were less people than last week, and only kids going in further, but then he saw what God was doing this week, and it was awesome.  

So downstairs, a 51 year old woman was receiving prayer, and God healed her vision to be able to see every detail on the face of a watch where before she could hardly make out anything on it.  Then we were encouraging her and sharing the gospel.  She was afraid to receive Jesus in her heart because a nearby Catholic church helps her with food every week and had said that if anyone became "a Christian" they would not help them anymore. (its that weird religious rivalry mindset that seems prevalent in many churches). And then come to find out she believed that only babies who have never sinned can go to heaven.  I realized that this was a moment like in "Peace Child" where she believed a lie that could actually help her understand the truth.  I told her, yes!  Thats true.  Only a baby without sin can enter heaven.  But the Bible says that when we believe in Jesus, we are born again, and we become like new babies, without sin.  She said, "but how can we be born again?!"  You should have seen Nadyla and Bruno's faces when she said that! Just like Nicodemus.  So I ran to get show her a Bible and Bruno showed her how that exact conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus, and eventually she did want to receive Jesus.  When she did, then also a reoccuring pain she had had in her head behind her eyes, disappeared.  Praise God!!!  Haha, what a fun day.  I wish I had a video of all Nadyla and Bruno's faces throughout that conversation, and of them preaching the gospel so simple and thorough.  It was a fun moment, and I was glad that they helped me participate even though the woman and I couldn't understand each other's Portuguese most of the time.  :)