Paraty Boat People
Greetings from Paraty, Brazil!!
Thank you so much for you who are praying so faithfully for me! This week is definitely presenting its challenges. We are here in Paraty, a very tourist-y town in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The people are more worldly and materialistic than in Atibaia. The church is pretty big, but it's hard to find people there that really want to serve and follow the Lord with more than their lips.
Each afternoon, we do home visits to people who are unsaved--we do kind of a Bible study, a little, and we pray and give them a 4 spiritual laws booklet. Then, at 6pm, we give English classes for the boat people--the guys who drive the boats and often need to interact with English-speaking tourists. There are a lot of them that showed up for the classes! The Gales created a crash course that includes phrases that they need the most. Other people started coming to the classes, too, and today we had 3 groups. Immediately after the classes, we hold a church service. The people of the church lead the worship, Paul gives the message, I usually sing special music, and sometimes we give our testimonies.
As I said, thanks for your prayers. First of all, nothing that we thought we had planned turned out as we thought. We are having to do a lot of things for the service that we didn't think we would have to do, and a lot of the English classes are on the fly. Also, Micheli and Ana (organizer extraordinaire and pro English teacher) both came down with a horrible flu, and Sonya Gale (the other expert English teacher) lost her voice almost entirely. So, that meant that Laura Gale and I both taught English for the first time tonight! You can imagine that we did a lot of singing in my class!
Satan is attacking in a lot of other ways, like with people who fell through and leaders that we thought would be here but aren't. . . just a bunch of random stuff that would take too long to explain. This is a place that really needs Christ, and Satan knows it. Pray that hearts would be open to the Gospel, and that God would open the eyes of the people of the church. It is not a healthy church...our job was to come teach English, but it's looking like God has a lot of other jobs for us to do here!
We are tired and sick, but on the other hand I found a little music school and they invited me to come visit one of their classes tomorrow morning, so I'm looking forward to that! Also, some more people from PIBA are arriving tomorrow, which will definitely be a huge encouragement and help! One of the pastors heard of our plight and all of the other people that dropped out on us, and he's coming himself to help with the preaching and the evangelism! Thank you, Lord!!
Ok, thanks again for your prayers during this week! Ate mais (until later),
Joy
Thank you so much for you who are praying so faithfully for me! This week is definitely presenting its challenges. We are here in Paraty, a very tourist-y town in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The people are more worldly and materialistic than in Atibaia. The church is pretty big, but it's hard to find people there that really want to serve and follow the Lord with more than their lips.
Each afternoon, we do home visits to people who are unsaved--we do kind of a Bible study, a little, and we pray and give them a 4 spiritual laws booklet. Then, at 6pm, we give English classes for the boat people--the guys who drive the boats and often need to interact with English-speaking tourists. There are a lot of them that showed up for the classes! The Gales created a crash course that includes phrases that they need the most. Other people started coming to the classes, too, and today we had 3 groups. Immediately after the classes, we hold a church service. The people of the church lead the worship, Paul gives the message, I usually sing special music, and sometimes we give our testimonies.
As I said, thanks for your prayers. First of all, nothing that we thought we had planned turned out as we thought. We are having to do a lot of things for the service that we didn't think we would have to do, and a lot of the English classes are on the fly. Also, Micheli and Ana (organizer extraordinaire and pro English teacher) both came down with a horrible flu, and Sonya Gale (the other expert English teacher) lost her voice almost entirely. So, that meant that Laura Gale and I both taught English for the first time tonight! You can imagine that we did a lot of singing in my class!
Satan is attacking in a lot of other ways, like with people who fell through and leaders that we thought would be here but aren't. . . just a bunch of random stuff that would take too long to explain. This is a place that really needs Christ, and Satan knows it. Pray that hearts would be open to the Gospel, and that God would open the eyes of the people of the church. It is not a healthy church...our job was to come teach English, but it's looking like God has a lot of other jobs for us to do here!
We are tired and sick, but on the other hand I found a little music school and they invited me to come visit one of their classes tomorrow morning, so I'm looking forward to that! Also, some more people from PIBA are arriving tomorrow, which will definitely be a huge encouragement and help! One of the pastors heard of our plight and all of the other people that dropped out on us, and he's coming himself to help with the preaching and the evangelism! Thank you, Lord!!
Ok, thanks again for your prayers during this week! Ate mais (until later),
Joy
posted by Joy | 9:22 PM
2 Comments:
What a beautifully composed "storytelling" photograph!
you sang 3 solos at church and two were new to you?!! IN PORTUGUESE!!!
LOL, we just had a practice...we can't wait to get our star performer ("SuperJoy") back
God Bless,
Scott
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