When my alarm went off this morning, the last thing I wanted to do was get out of bed. I wasn’t necessarily tired although I definitely could have slept longer. Rather, I just didn’t want to get out of my really comfortable bed and go running. But I took a break two days ago, so after laying there for almost an hour, I finally got up and ran.

It was wet outside, so it was obvious that it had rained overnight. I got up to the seminary road and had run only a half lap around the campus when it began to rain again! So I just kept running…in the rain…in the desert. I don’t do that often, but today I had the chance. It didn’t stop raining either as I ran my five kilometers.

When I got back I read Acts 7. Man, Stephen knew Israel’s history so well! He knew it so well that he could quote what God said to Israel when he gave commands to them. Imagine the sorrow and consequences that Israel could have avoided in their early days in Canaan if they had the same grasp on their history that Stephen had!

Furthermore, I was struck by the fact that the first martyr was not an apostle, pastor, or missionary. He was a layman in the church, faithfully fulfilling his responsibilities and sharing the gospel!

I had never considered it before, but Stephen is a prime example of how the men in our church today should function. You don’t have to be “called” to full-time ministry to do great things in ministry. You don’t have to be a pastor or vocational missionary to study and know Scripture well. Just look at Stephen. Because of his passion for the gospel as a layman in the church, he was put to death. Wow.

For breakfast we had cinnamon rolls, baked oatmeal, papaya, and orange juice. Rest of the morning I spent writing my blog and studying for the message I preached this evening. Halfway through the morning, it started raining again! It poured monkeys and donkeys for several minutes, something that never happens here at this time of the year. For a moment I thought I was back home in Iowa…

Soon enough it was time for lunch, and we ate chicken lasagna and fettuccine alfredo with cooked broccoli and cauliflower for the vegetables. We didn’t know when supper would be, whether it would be in a couple hours or not until after the evening service.

We left at 1:30 to go to their church’s Sunday School for the children at the school. Due to a huge Brazilian holiday known as

Because I slept in with no exercise yesterday, I determined that I had to run today…and I did. My legs felt much better, so I ran five kilometers (three miles), and it feels like I’m starting to get back into the running shape I used to have. The sprinting isn’t there yet, but the endurance is coming back.

I did my devotions in Acts chapter six. It is neat to see how God continued to work in the church, strengthening it and multiplying it through the ministry of the six men chosen by the church to help the apostles. Do our deacons and other laymen in the church have that same impact today as they serve?

It’s interesting how the chapter ends. Stephen was put on trial for preaching the gospel, and it says, “And all who sat in the council, looking steadfastly at him, saw his face as the face of an angel” (Acts 6:15 NKJV).

You know how we often think of some kids as being “little angels,” or we look at a naughty little kid and don’t want to punish him because he looks like an angel? Well, in this case, Stephen was doing everything right, and he literally looked like an angel because he was suffering shame for the glory of God. He had God’s blessing upon himself!

I checked my email and read EBM’s dissolution statement and thought about the role of a mission agency. The night before, I had also talked with Pastor Jim about the concept of mission agencies requiring missionaries to retire once they got to a certain age. It’s interesting to think through these things and try to figure out the responsibilities of mission agencies, especially in conjunction with local churches.

For breakfast we had baked oatmeal, pineapple, and papaya. After breakfast, we drove back to town for a couple errands, and then returned to the school to re-install the school’s lights. The issue was with faulty florescent bulbs. They all had loose ends, so the connectors just detached and didn’t conduct electricity. Apparently the school had bought a batch of bad bulbs. So Pastor Jim bought new, good bulbs and replaced them all, and now they work fine!

While we were at the school, one of the church members walked by. She’s an older lady, and she stopped to talk to us. She got really emotional and told us that she knew Christ was returning soon. With all the protests and unrest in Brazil right now, she’ convinced that the end is near. She had been awake until 3am in the morning, praying about it, and she told us to watch and pray too because Christ was coming back!

For lunch we had tacos, and I spent the afternoon uploading pictures and getting some other small things done. Around 4:45 I was summoned to the athletic court on campus where several of the seminary students were gathering to play soccer. I was so excited!

I could barely contain a smile as I quickly got ready and walked up there. I finally got to play soccer with Brazilians in Brazil! It was something I had hoped to do, and my dream came true. I played a few rounds with them on their hard court, and I did fairly well. The first time I touched the ball, I almost scored but was

I woke up to run…and I didn’t run. My legs were so sore that I decided I should take the day off after breaking them back in the last couple days. So back to bed I went, and it felt good to sleep in for the first time all week.

Acts 5:33-42 was the passage for the day. For anyone who didn’t pick up on it, I’m reading through Acts right now. It seemed like an appropriate passage of Scripture for Brazil, and just the right length too. If I read half a chapter each day, I could start shortly before I left for my 50-day trip and finish shortly after I return.

Peter and the apostles had been imprisoned, freed, and were now on trial again. In this passage, the Pharisee Gamaliel stood and spoke wise words to the angry council: “Men of Israel, take heed to yourselves what you intend to do regarding these men…And now I say to you, keep away from these men and let them alone; for if this plan or this work is of men, it will come to nothing; but if it is of God, you cannot overthrow it – lest you even be found to fight against God” (Acts 5:35,38-39 NKJV, emphasis mine).

What a great encouragement for the day! Whatever goes on in life, if it is of men, it will surely come to nothing. Brazilian futebol, NBA basketball, health care reform, prosperity gospel…it will all come to naught! But if anything is of God, no one can overthrow it. Opposition to God is a bad position with God.

But then in verse 41, it says of the apostles, “So they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name” (NKJV). Whoa…rejoicing because you got to suffer shame for One’s name? Why? Because ultimately it is only the opposition of God who will be ashamed.

So that’s how the morning started. Breakfast was cinnamon rolls, bananas, and papaya. Man, I didn’t really like the papaya two days earlier, but now I’m beginning to like it a lot and look forward to eating it the next time.

After breakfast we went downtown to finish the errands we could not complete the day before. We paid the bills, transferred a land title to a church, bought some eggs and went to a small children’s school to fix some lights. I learned some interesting things related to each of these four tasks.

First of all, when you pay your bills, you go to a place that is specifically designated for payments. This place also sells lottery tickets, and the lottery is owned by the national government. So Brazil has a federal lottery. You can go to buy tickets and pay your bills at the same time…makes sense, eh?

We stood in line for about half an hour to get to the counter to pay the bills. This is typical, and it may be longer. However, a few people cut right to the front of the line and no one bothered to stop them. Here in Brazil, if you are old, pregnant, or toting young children, you are allowed to cut to the front instead of waiting in line. Makes sense, but SO unlike America.

As for the land title. Pastor Jim had worked to plant a church in a few Brazilian neighborhoods, but he intentionally didn’t focus on getting property for a building. Instead, groups of people met in houses and once a week they would get together at a specified location, but it was always a different one.

However, the nationals said that because they didn’t have a permanent location, some people would not join the church. Without the building, people didn’t view the church as having any validity. So now they are getting land and building on it.

Okay, the store where we bought the eggs was literally just an egg store with stacks and stacks and stacks and stacks of eggs. Just look at the picture. I’m sure many countries around the world do this, but I’ve never seen it in America! So I thought to myself, do they really sell out on these eggs in one day? But no, if they don’t sell, they sit there…and when people bring eggs home, they set them out until they’re ready to use them.

Huh? It’s Brazil- it’s hot!

I found an old blog post that I intended to publish three months ago and for some reason it never happened. Anyway, it’s short and sweet and I hope it brings a smile to your face.

March 10, 2013

Somehow I completely missed out on the news about Daylight Savings starting this weekend. But fortunately, my church emailed me yesterday to remind me to set my clock ahead, and today I arrived on time.

But I found out that my church was doing more than just preventing people from forgetting about DST. I walked through the fellowship hall and discovered that they were also prepared to help everyone who might be feeling the effects from an hour less of sleep.

I’m not a coffee-lover, and as much as possible I try to avoid caffeine and function solely on my own body’s energy from regular food, but I thought this was funny and picture-worthy.

Went running again this morning at about 6:50am. This time I went up to the seminary and ran on the road that encircles it, supposedly measuring a full kilometer in circumference. So I ran three times around, not even a full two miles (1.8) and I was tired. But I think it was more than yesterday, so hopefully I improved a little. For breakfast we had homemade caramel rolls and cinnamon rolls, papaya, and milk. At 10:40 I went to the seminary where Pastor Jim gave an exam to the student in his missions class. After taking some pictures of them, I went around campus to take a few more pictures, and then I spent some time working on some Portuguese words that Pastor Jim printed for me. Lunch consisted green beans, rice with Brazilian green beans and cheese, and manioc root with cheese and sun-dried meat. Oh, that manioc was SO good! I learned how to peel it just last night, and it’s really easy to do, so I liked doing it. But it also tastes great. In the afternoon I read from Acts 5 and worked on memorizing more of Colossians and Hebrews. I was encouraged with the reminder from Acts 5 that when God’s people are doing God’s work, nothing will stop them from accomplishing God’s will. Then in Colossians 1 I was reminded of the great salvation we have from God through Jesus Christ. We went downtown mid-afternoon to do several errands. First we bought some dog food, then we stopped to buy a couple kilograms of cheese, and then we went to the bank. We also got some medicine for the dogs at a pharmacy. In Brazil you can go to a pharmacy without a prescription and just get what you need. As long as you can tell them you need it, you can get it. All of a sudden, stores and shops started closing down and the streets emptied! As we walked along, Pastor Jim said, “Is it a holiday or something? Everything is closed.” He stopped to ask a store owner who was closing down, and he told us that Brazil was playing Mexico in a few minutes. So when Brazil plays futebol, the whole city begins to shut down and everyone goes home to watch the game! The only places that stayed open had TVs. People gathered in those places to watch and cheer on their team. We couldn’t finish half the errands on the list, so we just drove back to the house. When we arrived, we saw students gathered outside on a porch and in the yard to watch the game. It is finals week and they have big tests for which to study, but they had set up a couple TVs and were taking a break to watch the big game. Soon we heard loud cheering in the streets, and Pastor Jim said that Brazil had scored. He said there would be fireworks, and less than 10 seconds after he said that, we heard them. The game was not even in this city (it was in Fortaleza where I flew in), but fireworks went off because Brazil had scored. Mrs. Leonard said that patriotism in Brazil was watching Brazil play soccer. When they won, it was good. When they lost, well, as Pastor Jim said, they weren’t so patriotic. I went out to join some of the students and watch the second half of the game, and fortunately for the country, Brazil won 2-0. While I was out there I was treated to a Brazilian hot dog. It’s just like the ones we eat in America, but they chop the hot dogs into pieces, mix it with a light sauce and maybe a little corn or something else, and then scoop it into a bun. It was really good, and a nice variation on the hot dogs I rarely ever eat anymore back in the US. We went to a Bible study in a nearby village after supper. It is a weekly Bible study with a family- a couple, their two daughters and a husband, and three grandchildren. They are going through the Hope Bible study, the same one that we’ll be doing at the English retreat later this summer.For supper we had a huge lettuce salad, something I haven’t had since coming here. But it was good, and I had a banana for dessert. Last night they used the laminated visuals that I brought down with me, and that was a big help to the Leonard’s and it helped draw in the attention of the children. So it was exciting to see them use the visuals already! This couple was unsaved for many years, but after some hit men came to their home and shot the man in the stomach (trying to kill a man by the same name who lived a couple houses away), they eventually were saved. The man almost died from his wound because the hospital refused to treat him and he was badly infected. But God spared his life, and he decided that God wanted him to be saved. Now they are slowly changing and the sanctifying process can be seen as they rid themselves of worldly things without the Leonard’s even prompting them to do so. They are just learning more and more about the Bible, and as they do, God convicts them of sinful habits and other things that need to be put off. Amazing! When we got back home, I read a few chapters from some books in preparation for Aventura Brasil later this summer. That’s about it for the day! What a great taste of Brazilian culture in both the seminary, the city, the soccer game, and the Bible study.

I came to Brasil hoping that I would also find time to exercise and get in shape for my last season of futbol at Faith Baptist Bible College this fall. So I woke up this morning and ran for almost 20 minutes, hating every minute of it. Running is the worst. But I did it, and hopefully I’m in much better shape at the end of the summer than I am now.

Today I also found out that the Leonards just started a diet, so maybe that will work in my favor too since I have gained a little weight since soccer ended last fall. Anyway, that’s how the day began. For breakfast we had homemade granola, papaya, and milk.

At about 9:10 Pastor Jim took me to the campus proper of Seminario Batista do Cariri (the houses are suburbs to the main campus, but on the same property). In English this school is known as Cariri Baptist Seminary. I got a quick tour of the place and the history the property.

The place is SO beautiful! But it’s not because of all the exotic foliage and the mountains in the distance. Yeah, the palm trees and such are beautiful, but take them out, and the place is still a wonderful sight. The buildings are nice too, but what I really love is the stone landscaping.

The seminary is built on a natural incline, and rather than paying to pour concrete for sidewalks and such, they went the cheaper route of buying and laying stone trucked in from 600 kilometers away. So everywhere you look there are terraces of steps leading from one place to another, constructed of huge, rectangular stones.

Most of the rest of the ground is covered in stone with a few flower gardens and some areas of grass here and there. Running down the middle of the campus is a large fountain system that runs during special events, and it runs into an ampitheater that sits in the middle of the campus.

I really don’t know how to explain how pretty I think it all is, and my pictures are too narrow and unrealistic to really communicate the beauty, but they kinda give an idea of what it’s like. Anyway, the layout and design really impressed me.

I met a couple students who knew English fairly well, and one of them, Junior, sat wit me in chapel. He did his best to translate all the Portuguese for me during the service. Chapel started at 10:50am and lasted until about 12:20pm. I was kinda put to shame as I thought about the 40-minute chapels at home and how I often wish the speaker would let us out early.

Chapel started with a congregational song, two songs accompanied by sign language (so I was trying to understand both languages at once!), and a quartet vocal. The message was given by a man who just earned his doctorate degree from Central Baptist Seminary a few weeks ago. He talked about Lamplighter’s Intentional Discipleship method of Bible study.

As we went along, I started to understand more and more of what he was saying, mostly because I could read it on the screen, and I was able to make sense of a lot of the Portuguese writing. Junior also did his best to translate for me and a few times went across the aisle to a friend to ask how to say some words in English.

Pastor Jim’s mom visits every Tuesday, so she came to chapel and then ate lunch with us. We had fettuccine with California mixed vegetables and alfredo sauce with ham on top. For dessert we ate some pina fruit. I learned that you can crush up the papaya seeds and use them as meat tenderizer.

I spent the afternoon sorting through pictures from school the past two years. In the evening I was going to speak to AMEN, the student missionary group at SBC. A rough English translation for the acronym AMEN is the

This morning I probably woke up around 7:30 and guess what I had for breakfast? Yep…fried cheese, chocolate/vanilla swirl cake, bananas, hot milk, caja juice, some pina fruit, and bread with butter. Have I grown tired of it though? Absolutely not. That fried cheese is SO good. It squeaks like fresh cheese curds from Wisconsin.

Franklin and his wife Suzy and Matthew- three of the seminary students- joined us in the car for the ride to Crato. Along the way, we stopped at the camp that belongs to the Brazilian churches in the state of Ceara. It is a large, beautiful piece of land with a man-made lake lying between two mountains. The lake is really deep, 6 meters at one point.

It is a rustic camp without most of the conveniences of a

This morning I slept in until 7:30, ate a breakfast of cake, fried cheese, banana, and caja juice, and left for church. On Sunday morning they have Sunday School and then in the evening they have their main service because that’s when most people attend. Sunday evening at home is the exact opposite.

Sunday School is at 8:30am. I just now realized I’ve never been to Sunday School that early in the morning! Most churches back home start at 9:30, and my home church (www.faithbaptistmc.org)

Today I woke up at 6:30am, quickly took a cold, refreshing shower, and packed all my stuff. At 7am we were on the road, headed out of Fortaleza. People were already awake and moving for the day, but traffic wasn’t too bad yet.

Shortly after making it out of the city, we stopped at a roadside restaurant for breakfast. I enjoyed eggs and cheese rolled up in a tapioca tortilla wrap thing, and I drank cashew juice for the first time. Mmmm!

We drove for several more hours, experiencing ALL the road conditions imaginable. We had nice, new paved roads, paved roads with a few small potholes, paved roads with a few big potholes, paved roads with lots of big potholes…get the idea yet?

The paved roads were laid by the government, connecting pre-existing roads in small villages. However, these village roads were not paved with concrete or asphalt, consisting mainly of smooth cobblestone, rough cobblestone, rocky cobblestone with potholes, cobblestone with lots of big potholes, cobblestone with valleys, stones with canyons…hahaha.

So driving the highways wasn’t too bad because we could usually cruise along at 100-140 km/hour, but in town we often came to a slow crawl so that we could make it through without getting seasick. It makes even more sense now why lots of people drive motorcycles instead of cars. They are less expensive and easier to navigate on bad roads.

I’ll talk about the other roads later (yes, they got worse). Along the way I learned about the countryside of this part of Brazil, a desert area getting rain only about three months out of the year. We are just coming off the rainy season, so everything is in full bloom, green foliage for kilometers and kilometers in the distance.

But within two or three months, most of it will die, leaving the cashew trees and cacti (and a few other plants) to dot the brown landscape with whatever green they can muster. It’s beautiful right now though. To think that I just left a part of the world that is kinda ugly because the rain won’t stop pouring….wow.

Oh, and another thing I saw that I thought I had left behind- corn! Cornfields with rows of healthy corn! Granted, the corn stalks I left are midgets, trying to keep their heads above water so they can grow their ears, but corn is corn, and it looks great here.

I have also never seen corn growing next to cacti with coconut trees and banana trees in the background. Pretty much, it is the best of both of my parents’ worlds- the corn that Mom grew up with in Iowa and the tropical plants that Dad grew up with in the Philippines- all here in the desert with cacti. Fun stuff.

Let’s see…oh! Monoliths! We drove by several mountains before coming upon equally-large scenic monoliths. These massive rocks had my camera’s name written on them, so Canon obliged and shot a few of them. With so many large caves (and me being an adventurer with a love for rock-climbing), the rocks also had my name on them (in Portuguese, of course), but all I could do was wishfully zip by them.

As mentioned, we drove through small towns on the way, all bustling with activity. Aside from everyone driving by or working, several people just sat on their front porches, talking to others or staring as we drove by.

As I learned, Brazilians are an extremely social people, taking any opportunity they have to converse. The home is for sleeping, and the porch is where rest of life seems to take place. SO unlike the US where you can drive through a neighborhood and only see people if they’re out mowing their lawns, watering their grass, or raking their leaves.

We also stopped a couple other times alongside the road to buy some food. In the same day that I first drank cashew juice, I also ate fire-roasted cashews, straight from the source. Man, they were so good. God sure made some good food that I don’t always get to eat back home.

Oh man, for having spent so many hours in a car, I sure experienced a lot today. Less than halfway through explaining my day and I’ve already written so much. Why must my fingers be so long-winded? Hmmm…maybe because they take off on rabbit-trails like this, and nine fingers are quite the task to corral (I never use my left thumb when typing). Okay…back to my day…

So, eventually we left the wonderful asphalt roads and the nice cobblestone streets and did some off-roading. Now, I thought the gravel driveway to my house was bad. This was like driving back and forth on that driveway for an hour…only a little worse.

Since we’re in the desert, the roads are red, and at times they are nice and smooth. But more often, they are filled with large potholes, filled with large protruding rocks where the dirt washed away, or flooded with large puddles of water. We were headed to the smaller villages that were inaccessible by car only half a century ago.

We finally arrived at a village called Palestina (Palestine) where we ate lunch with the local pastor. Palestina is a village with an interesting history, but for sake of time and space, I’ll save the details for those who ask (or receive my email updates).

Anyway, the pastor is a national who was saved and came to Palestina as a laymen evangelist. He has now planted a growing church, and during the week he visits surrounding villages to preach.

He and his wife were such hospitable people, preparing a large meal of rice, lettuce salad, beef roast, beans with hot dogs, and lasagna. For desert we had a passion fruit pudding that was SO good. I love sweets, and I love new fruits, so I had a lot of it.

After lunch we walked to the new church building that they are constructing. Mr. Leonard gave the pastor a check to help pay for the building, the funds being provided solely from national money (nothing from US churches). It was exciting to see the project and hear about the future plans.

We returned to their house where the son asked me to play video games with him. Fortunately it was the Lego Star Wars video game, one that I had briefly played several years ago. Unfortunately, we couldn’t figure out how to get past the third phase of the first level, so we couldn’t continue the game.

It was funny because the game is in English, so here I am in Brazil, playing this video game with a kid who understands only Portuguese. But I’m the one who understood the storyline and could read everything in the game…and still neither of us could figure out the level. I also laughed when he turned on the TV, and the system’s menu said something about

After boarding the airplane yesterday in Detroit and departing at 7:50 EST, I arrived in