She's Back!

Today we welcomed my beloved mother-in-law (yes, I love my mother-in-law!), Vanda, back to Porto Alegre. She spent the past year in Franklin, TN learning English, living with an American family, working as a nanny, and acquainting herself with our church and with many friends in the greater Nashville area. Waleska and I are very happy to have her back here with us, for a while anyway...Vanda is not one to stay put for very long. Who knows what her next adventure will be? Hopefully, she will stay in Porto Alegre with us for the next several months. Among many things, we will look forward to her being a part of our house church. I will also enjoy some of her home-cooked vegetables, fish and special salads...


Waleska and I would like to thank everyone at Fourth Avenue Church who made Vanda feel at home and welcome in Franklin, especially Walter & Mary Nelle Kriedel, for their wonderful friendship and "jeitinho" with Vanda! We would also like to thank Robert and Brandy for their hospitality and for adopting Vanda as part of their family.

You know your mother-in-law is great when she takes your side in an argument...thank you Lord for Vanda!

First Men's Retreat

We had our first men's retreat last weekend. We had 16 guys participate, which is more than we had expected. Though it lasted less than 24 hours, the quality of relationship and interaction was excellent! The theme was "Wild at Heart," based on the book of the same title that we will be working through together for the next three months on Saturday mornings. Sascha did a good job leading the group in some devotional thoughts based on the biblical principles of spiritual adventure in the book. At various points we broke up into small discussion groups to elaborate on our ideas and applications to our lives of what it means to be "Wild at Heart" in Christ.

We stayed at a farm that formerly belonged to a famous gaúcho traditional musician and songwriter, a farm that is slowly being converted into a sort of rural inn.

We played "tug-of-war" to get the guys kinetically experiencing the adventure of spiritual life and teamwork. It worked too well in my case...my team got to the finals, but I ended up being dragged in the mud by my brothers!

And where there are men, there is food...and there was plenty of food on our retreat. Friday evening was a community snack, Saturday morning was a hearty breakfast, and Saturday lunch was an entire roasted lamb, fresh from the farm. You haven't lived until you've eaten roasted lamb, my friends. It is difficult to prepare, but when it is roasted right, it leaves nothing to desire in comparison to beef. Check out the "before" and "after" pictures below:

So history is in the making! For three years we had tried to form a strong men's group in the church with little success. Now we are in a cycle where we work through a Christian book for twelve weeks (we had just finished working through Every Man's Battle), take a month off, have a one-night retreat, and start a new study. With the momentum we have gained from this retreat, we are excited to see what God will do in terms of calling us deeper into relationship to Christ and relationship with each other - discovering our wild hearts that God has given us and how we can use those hearts to God's glory.

Front row (l-r): Regis, Lauro, Spencer, Alexandre, Paul. Back row (l-r): Renato, Garigran, Paulo Renato, myself, Roberto, Ricardo, Sascha, Silvio, Tiago, Jorge. Keep this group in your prayers!

Feliz Aniversário...

Sunday was a special day in our house church meeting. We celebrated four birthdays (l-r): Clarice, Renato, Vinicius and Carlos. Clarice and Renato both have their birthday on July 16th, while Vinicius and Carlos, who are grandfather & grandson, share July 5th as their birthday.

Our meeting was another demonstration of the Holy Spirit's work among us. We started by having the guys share reflections from our men's retreat experience last weekend (which I will describe in my next post). Then we had a time of praise, where anyone could suggest the songs they wanted to sing. During this time, our brother John Spencer, Clarice's husband, shares a song on a CD that he had heard and that he wanted us to learn to sing together, so we listened attentively and agreed to learn it. As we sang, the songs prompted several members of the group to read a passage of Scripture and comment on the meaning of their faith (everything from Psalm 89 to Acts 2 to Isaiah 64). We shared the Lord's Supper together reflecting on 2 Timothy 4 and the apostle Paul's declaration of "keeping the faith." We took up a collection and since there was no immediate need, we set the money aside for future use. The previous two weeks, we had taken up over $500 to help a widow and her four children (her recently deceased husband was a minister in a Church of Christ in a town three hours south of ours). It was as if everything flowed together, one piece of a seamless garment knit by the Holy Spirit amongst us.

The best part for me was at the end. I wanted to pray specifically for Clarice and Renato, since their birthdays would be tomorrow, asking God's blessing on them and thanking God for their place in all our lives. One of our members reminded me that Vinicius and Carlos had commemorated their birthdays earlier in the month. So we had the four of them gather in the middle, and we laid hands on them and prayed blessings & thanksgiving for their lives, and also prayed for specific requests shared by some in the group. It was a very meaningful moment, as was evidenced by the smiles and tears I saw afterwards!

Well, maybe the best part was...the food! We had a lasagna extraveganza for lunch; let me tell you - it was dynamite. Waleska made the birthday cake (white with chocolate layered filling) and did a fabulous job. Before and after the meal, the group sang some traditional gaúcho pop songs to liven things up. All in all, a great day to be in house church. We are thankful for what God is doing among us!

Let me tell you today about two more members of our house church: Inês and Raquel, mother and daughter. They became linked with us because they lived near the building we used to rent for worship on Christopher Columbus Avenue. Even though we no longer meet at that location, Inês and Raquel decided to continue being part of our church family. They live relatively near our house (about a 20-minute walk).


Inês is in her mid-fifties and has been a Christian for many years. She has three children, of whom Raquel is the youngest. Inês works as a secretary in a doctor's office near our street. She hopes to retire within the next year or two so she can dedicate more time to one of her great talents: singing. Inês sings in a traveling choir that is run by one of the local commerce organizations. She is an excellent soprano! She is a lady who is very in touch with Christ and knows her Bible very well. She is not very outgoing, but when you get her talking, she will talk your ear off, in an edifying and encouraging way.

Raquel is in her mid-20's and was baptized back in January. She recently graduated from the Lutheran University with a degree in physical education. Raquel is currently working for several different schools in the south zone of Porto Alegre as an aquatic aerobics teacher, and is also doing a post-graduate course at the LU. I hate to admit it, but her greatest talent might be her ability to do dead-on impersonations of people, especially the missionaries with their thick Portuguese accents :) When she gets going, she can leave us in stitches1 Both Raquel and Inês are true servants who will jump in and do anything they are asked to do for the good of the church.

I want to ask your prayers especially for Raquel at this time, as she is suffering with major depression. She recently confided this struggle with us in hopes that she could find comfort in God's word for her depression. Pray for Raquel, that her medical treatments and her searching of Scripture will bring her the healing she desires, and that God will use this difficult experience to strengthen her faith and utilize her to help others.

We are very glad to have Inês and Raquel in our house!

Since January, we are being church in a new way. We got out of the building we were renting near downtown for worship services and began a process of morphing. We reorganized our congregation into four different house churches, each led by a missionary family. On Sundays, we meet in our house churches, except for the last Sunday of each month, when all the house churches meet together for worship and fellowship. We also have frequent get-togethers for men, women, and teenagers.

Why did we do this? After four years of work here, our church was fine, but already stagnating. We missionaries found ourselves still doing most of the work, even though we were trying to hand off responsibilities to our Brazilian brothers. We welcomed many new brothers and sisters into the Christian family, but saw several of these folks leave through the back door after several months. We began to pray, study the Bible intensly, seek advice from fellow kingdom workers - asking God to show us what we should be doing. We feel that God has answered by pointing us to the biblical, apostolic practice and vision of simple churches meeting in people’s homes, simple churches multiplying through each person using their spiritual gifts to evangelize, teach, encourage, and care for one another.

I think the best way to get a feel for our house churches is to introduce you to our folks, family by family. So in this post I’ll tell you about the Renato Signoretti family (from left to right: Wagner, Renato, Branda, and Guilherme)

Renato and Branda are in their early 40s and have been Christians ever since their teenage years. They came to us from another local congregation because they wanted to be part of a young and growing work. Renato is a bus driver for the military academy in Porto Alegre and Branda works in investments for the state bank of Rio Grande do Sul. Guilherme is 17 and in his last year of high school. Wagner is 15 and in his first year of high school.

Renato and Branda have become good friends of ours. Renato is quiet; he doesn't make waves in big groups, but he loves to talk with people one-on-one and he loves to use his spare time to visit friends and church members. He'll do favors when necessary, like transporting furniture or driving us to a retreat. He also makes some mean desserts: my favorite is sagu, little balls of flour that have been soaked in wine bottles and baked at high temperatures. Branda is outgoing and likes to take initiative; she is collaborating with Waleska in organizing a couples ministry, and also helps organize classes and activites for the teenagers. She is a very encouraging person and has been very supportive of us as we've made this transition to house churches.

Guilherme is trying to decide what he wants to study in college. Right now he's leaning toward physical education, but he's not really sure. He is an outstanding indoor soccer player; he could probably play semi-professionally if he dedicated himself full-time. Wagner is a goofball and likes to play practical jokes. Both boys are excellent guitar players as well.

That's the Renato Signoretti family...we are glad to have them in our house.