Neighborhood Stories

One of my favorite things to do in Fortaleza is visiting people in the community.  IRIS has a House of Prayer there that we rent from one of the old drug dealers.  He doesn't live in the community anymore, I think for fear of his life from rival drug dealers.  A couple months ago, someone burned down all his other properties, but they left our House of Prayer alone - they know that we are using it to bless the community and represent mercy and grace in that place.  God has given us so much favor and protection.  I never feel afraid there at all.  Of course I always walk around with friends, but still, our level of protection is ridiculous.

Last week at soup night, Ned and Herb sat outside the house of prayer on the sidewalk, praying with one of the neighbors and preaching the gospel to him.  He was very sick with Tuberculosis and thought that he was about to die, so he really was open to hearing about Jesus.  They prayed for him and promised to come by and check on him and share with him more when we are visit again.  Last week Ned and I saw him in the street, looking strong and healthy and with a bright shiny face and a big smile.  I couldn't believe it!  (But Ned just told me as I am writing this that he got sick again and Andrew took him to the hospital for care last week)

Rosie - One of my favorite women to hug and pray for there.  She has a really soft heart and soaks up love when she can get it.  She has two daughters and is really addicted to drugs, and begs and used to sell her body most of the time for food for her kids and herself and to take care of her addiction.  But everytime I see her she smiles and cries everytime I hug her.  One day I walked across the railroad bridge into the community to meet my friends there, and she walked up behind me without me seeing her and gave me a hug.  I would have thought it would startle me, since I hadn't seen who it was, but by the feel of her hug, I knew immediately that whoever it was, they loved me and had my best interest at heart.  It really was so welcoming!

Marcia - She is one of the most joyful people I have met in the community, she became a Christian last year, and got free of her drug addiction too!  Now she is a testimony to her family and neighbors of the power of Christ living in her.  She is really hungry for more encouragement and discipleship and I am hoping that God will show us more clearly how to help those who are hungry to grow up in him.

Thanks for praying for us and with us!  More of you Lord!!

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 :)