No, this is not a fake photo...this is the type of natural beauty we enjoyed during our week in the mountains at the beginning of the month! Each year, missionaries among Churches of Christ in South America take turns hosting a conference for our spiritual renewal and fellowship. The past two years, our team has been responsible for planning & organizing the gathering. This year we were blessed to have Dr. John Willis as our keynote speaker. Dr. Willis brought some tremendous lessons to us from the Old Testament and we were all energized by these reminders of how great our God is!
There are plenty of fun moments during the conference as well. One of the highlights was the banquet, which this year was a murder-mystery play. As you can see, there are quite a few characters among these missionaries! We also enjoyed playing sports and taking time to just visit with one another and catch up on happenings around the country.
Waleska and I were also privileged to spend a few days of sightseeing after the conference with our friends Antenor & Phyllis Gonçalves, and their daughter and son-in-law Alice & Mark Kaiser. I first met this family when I was doing Let's Start Talking in Itu, Brazil in 1997 & 1998. Antenor has been a great mentor ever since then, and he was one of the officiators of our Brazilian wedding ceremony. They love to come to southern Brazil whenver they have vacation time, and we make it a point to see them. God is really using them to bless the people of Itu!
We were also privileged to make the
acquaintance of Dottie Schulz, a missionary for many years in Holland and now working for Missions Resource Network in missionary care. Dottie came to the conference to serve as the women's resource speaker. She stayed with us the night before we went up to the conference, and she & Waleska really hit it off, became good friends. It is wonderful to be able to meet people like Dottie who have so much wisdom and experience to share, and enjoy sharing it with such enthusiasm!
The southern Brazilian mountains have a certain charm, and we were certainly charmed by the presence of the Holy Spirit in so many different ways...through the people we met, the friends we saw again, the powerful messages we heard, the conversations we had, and the amazing scenery around us!
It's that time of year again, Carnaval (Mardi Gras) in Brazil - four days of street festival, music, dancing, parades, samba presentation, and holiday. Here in Porto Alegre, the street festival aspect of Carnaval is not as big as it is in other cities; many folks end up going to the beach for vacation with family or friends. It is a great opportunity for us as church to have some quality time together with those who decide to stay in the city. The previous two years, we had an all-church retreat in the coastal mountains. This year we decided to change things up a bit and planned a different activity for each day (Feb. 2-5).
On Saturday the 2nd, 30 of us went to Itapua, a state park that is about 1 hour from Porto Alegre. Itapua preserves the last vestiges of the original rainforest environment in our area. It is one of my favorite places to visit around here because it is relatively close and on a sunny day, the views and trails along the Guiaba River with the rainforest are spectacular. The weather did not cooperate like we had hoped (it rained like crazy on the way there) but the skies dried up long enough for us to have an American style barbecue, swim and enjoy the river beaches and mountain scenery.
For the guys, there was futebol, of course - that's how men bond. Judging from the quantity of sweat on my shirt, you wouldn't think that I was an in-shape marathon runner!
I have to include this shot of a butterfly we managed to capture that was fluttering around in the woods - in sunlight, it literally glows a sensational daytime brilliant blue. My camera flash jazzes it up a bit too much...I wish you could have seen this butterfly. Divine poetry in motion!
