A new direction.

So i figure since I have coined this space on the internet, I'd like to start using it instead of wasting it. I'm gonna take the Live Unburdened idea and actually run with it in the original intended direction I had for it for a while and see what comes of it. So here's the plan and thoughts behind the whole idea as it is in my mind right now, of course it's subject to change as God sees fit or the readers direct my writing:

Live Unburdened, "live" as pronounced when saying "to live your life" not as in "saturday night live" is a concept that popped into my head last summer when I really began to get serious about my faith in Christ. We all carry weights, scars, burdens, baggage, guilts, sins, etc that we've picked up somewhere throughout the course of our lives, and the concept of life unburdened is, to me, directly related to how God wants us to live. Hand in hand with that, is the concept that us living our lives unburdened by the sins and the crap of this world is exactly what Christ died for. So, here we have it, an amazing God with amazing grace wants us to Live Unburdened from our sins ultimately to greater glorify Himself.

My goal for the new direction of this blog is going to be a conglomeration of meditation on things i need to be released from, things readers submit, and possibly even some of the sermons that i've formulated that I would love to deliver sometime. I got the idea for this new direction from a semi-well known organization called Postsecret which some of you may have heard about. I would absolutely LOVE to get to the point where people could send me post cards with prayer concerns, questions about faith, and all kinds of stuff to post on here for me to write about. As of now I'll ask that if you have any suggestions, questions, and etc that you send them to LifeUnburdened@gmail.com (LiveUnburdened was taken...grrr...) or hit me up on Facebook cause that'll be a lot easier.

I'll be posting my first real post sometime in the next couple of days, and I hope someone that needs to, reads it and can be helped in some way. For now, trust in Christ and Live Unburdened.

Urucurituba

Pronounced EW-roo-koo-re-tuba (with latin rolled R's of course)  I'll call it U-town or some version of capital U for the rest of this post.

Anyway, It has been quite some time now since I've updated this thing, and I hope I still have some readers to write to! I've nearly finished editing my pictures from the U-town and Venezuela/Boa Vista trips so that explains partly why I've not posted something in a while.  The other part of me being MIA involves my computer catching some form of electronic Ebola and dying in a matter of hours on April 1st and I was still fixing it after we got back from our trips on the 13th.

So, back to Urucurituba; it's not only a word you won't hear every day but it's also a really cool town east of manaus on the Amazon River.  "Town" is probably an incorrect term from what we would think of a town in the states, but that's what the Brazilians call it so I'll stick with them.  Anyway the posibility for incorrectness in describing U-Town is because there is proabably a hundred thousand people that live in and around the community.  You wouldn't think so, by the looks of it, but the Big-U is busteling.  The most common form of transportation in U is by motorcycle or moto-taxi which consists of a motorcycle, the driver, and sometimes, white knuckled gringos :) .  For the record, the filmadores (Eric and myself) only got "white knuckled" with the hands that held on to our cameras that were rolling whilst we road on taxis.  

Anyway U-town is aproximately 3.5 hours by car and then 1.5 hours by fast boat from Manaus or 270 Km 1 way.  Once we got to U and met the pastor of the Church where we were going to be staying with I knew we were going to be in great hands.  They had hot lunch of rice and beans and other good stuff ready for us when we got there and they had hammock hooks in the

 school rooms of the church for us to hang up at for the night.  

We spent the first day talking with people that would come by the pastor's house, the second day out on a lake that is actually some of the backwaters of the amazon, and the third day was mostly used for rest by our team with portuguese being the predominant language for most of the time.

The nights were where we really got work done.  Once again our the main focus of our group is to tell the Bible orally using segments from the Bible as if they were "stories."  Most of the stories even have a hook at the end that keeps you wanting to hear more, and that hook caught several people's faith!  We also asked the people that we told the stories and who later learned them in small groups, to share the story with someone before they came back the next night.  God was working hard on that small town for the four days that we were there, because by sunday night our group of less than 20 turned into a packed house of about 50 or more.  

Also God showed up in a big way to me personally as well.  I've been focusing on Exodus 4:11-12 and God began a change in me that weekend.  Something clicked where I began to hear things better, remember words I have learned, and think in Portuguese which gave me so much increased understanding and more ability to communicate.  I can not describe it in anyway

 other than God tearing down walls that are in front of me to help me succede.  

He did so with 2 kids named Willy and Lenard.  They both were 8 years old and I quite possibly could have been the 1st american they'd ever seen in person, much less talked to or hung out with.  Eventually I got a chance to have them read to me, in portuguese, the stories that we were supposed to be learning to tell to people and they really liked that.  They also wanted to look at my Bible and the notes I have and wanted to know what the highlighted things were, so I got to minister to them in that way as well, by looking up the same verses in a portuguese Bible and showing them.  I explained to them in rough portuguese that God is very real and very cool and that He is ALIVE and uses His word to speak to us, just as we use the stories of the Bible to allow God to reach people that can't read.  I showed them Exodus 4:11-12 and told them that when I first read that, I felt like God was speaking only to me! They smiled really big when I said this and starting throwing really fast strings of portuguese at me wanting to know more! It was awesome!! Especially beacuse Willy is growing up in the Catholic church down the street and is currently going through Catechism (sort of) classes, and he said that he'd never heard of anything like how real God is at his church or in his classes.  He thought all you had to do to get to heaven was to be a good Catholic...  

That part of the trip really hit me hard, because there are soooo many people here all over South America that think the same thing.  I've never read the entire Bible cover to cover, but I'll say I've read probably 70% or more of the new testament and I've never seen anything in there dealing with eternal life coming from an active relationship with your priest.  It's not about us.  Nothing we can do, ever, is good enough for God.  Not a person on this Earth could do enough good to get himself to heaven, nor can any person on earth get you into heaven.  God is so immensely perfect in everyway that we can not fathom Him, His plans, or His concept of mercy.  All we can do is embrace Him as being good enough for us.  Enough preaching... back to U-town.

The morning after the night I ministered to Willy and Lenard we left to come back to Manaus and the long boat/taxi ride seemed much shorter because I had so much to think about.  My biggest praise from the trip is that God increased my knowledge and ability to use Portuguese 10 fold.  Anyway sorry this has been so long in getting out!  Hope everyone is doing well! A link to all of my U-town pictures is coming soon and so is some video from moto taxi, interior houses, and video + blog about the venezuela trip!! Stay Tuned!! 

Lemme tell ya how cool God is / Jiu Jitsu is a blessing

So today I woke up sometime around late morning like normal, if I don't have anything intensely pressing that needs doing early, and heated up a frozen pizza for my breakfast and eric's lunch (he'd been up for a while editing some video for the baptist convention on saturday night). I'd told him yesterday that I was going to try to help and stay out of the way as much as possible today so he could get stuff done without me holding him back any.

Post brunch I worked on a "under contruction" page for the portuguese version of our mission's website and later got out of the house with our missionary coordinator Aaron. Not a very busy day but rather typical for the most part. Let me clarify something tho real quick: it may not sound like that's very much for a "missionary" to do, but the way I see it if these websites and videos that we're doing are used by God for even so much as 1 person to come here to teach the Gospel to lost folks then I'm pretty sure we've got a job well done on our hands. Our job is to advertise that "the field is ready" so the sowers of seeds and the reapers of the harvest will know where to do their planting and such (read the story of Jesus and the woman at the well, the part just after the disciples get back to Jesus to know what i'm talking about)

All that aside, at some point in the day I remember praying and asking God to surprise me today. I'm pretty sure it was while i was asking the blessing for the brunch pizza. My collegiate minister Randy, got me into asking God to surprise me, and I can honestly say that every single day I have prayed that God has showed up and done exactly what I've asked. Lemme tell you about my surprise today.

The pre- 7 o'clock pm part of my day was none too exciting and almost a little lazy compared to all the stuff we've been doing lately, but Eric stayed home from jiu jitsu training tonight to try to work on the video for saturday some more, and I decided to go anyway. So, Aaron picked me up down the street from our house and I rode over there with him just in time to meet one of my normal mestre's (Master/Teacher) at the door. He informed me after a minute or two that I would be training sao zinho (pronounced "saow zeen-yuu" meaning alone or with no one else) and that he could call the owner of the gym he was going to work out at to see if I could come work out with him tonight. That sounded great cause I've lost about 20 lbs since i've been here in brazil (i'm down to about 165 lbs) and a lot of it has been upper body muscle, with a good bit of it being lost belly mass. I'll tell yall my secret later :D Anyway I was all set to do that and my mestre Gustavo went inside to call the guy and to change clothes . Well right when he got out another man came into the fenced porch/garage area that I was waiting in and Gustavo introduced me to him as "Mestre Tom" and as the former mestre of the famous Jiu Jitsu fighter Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza (a Jacare is like a mini alligator but extremely ferocious). Then they offered for me to train 1 on 1 with him, or I could go work out at the gym... It took about two seconds for me to decide what to do, and I definitely opted to train with a world famous Jiu Jitsu trainer.

So, we head upstairs to our training area which is a room with a metal roof and waist high walls that is padded all over the floor and covers the waist high walls as well. Above the walls are tarps on rollers like they have in classrooms that hold the projection screens except they are about 15 feet long a piece and there are 2 of them on each side of the room. Needless to say it's a sizeable training area and when we get there around 6:45 to 7 PM we normally catch the tail end of a brilliant sunset over the city of Manaus. It's awesome and pictures are coming soon.

We get set up, I borrow someone's Gi, or Kimono as they call them here, we stretch and then God showed up. I realize i'm being trained 1 on 1 by a WORLD FAMOUS COACH. I realize i've already said this and I don't mean to brag, but it hit me in all caps in my head just like that. God was surprising me with one of my most favorite activities. What a blessing. He ended up showing me how to pull arm locks and choke submissions I'd never even thought were possible, new guards like "aranha guarda or spider guard," and so much more for about 2 hours. Then it was time to spar.

This 41 year old beast of a man put a whooping on me like I have never received. It was like Joe Gibboni , Robo Cop, Arnold Guvenator, Michael Phelps, and "insert name" Gracie all rolled into one. The dude is a 6ft 3inch 230 + pounds of muscle, meat grinder bent on the destruction of Winston Christopher Edmonds. I have never been tapped so fast or so many times as I was tonight. I swear there was 5 minutes that went by that he tapped me out once every 6 seconds, and I defended and held off everything as hard as I could.

At one point he said something to me along the lines of "you are the first student I've had that can take a beating like this while smiling." And it was true too! I was grinning ear to ear the ENTIRE time because I was so blown away by the guy's skill both with a gi and later when we did no-gi sparring. It was like if you met DaVinci and instead of him painting you a picture, he painted your face, like they do at the fair, and it was a masterpiece.

God surprised me with so much today that i couldn't sleep until I had written about it. Oh and by the way, I still don't speak very much portuguese, but my entire training session (all 3 hours and 30 minutes of it) was ALL in portuguese and I spoke plenty enough to understand direction, ask questions, and even joke around some. It was like Pentecost meets the Royal Rumble!! Man o man what a good night! I even got to share a bit of what our ministry is doing and told him about my prayer for God to surprise me today, and that him (mestre tom) showing up to teach me was my gift from God. He liked that a lot. God is good yall, God is so amazingly good. ok maybe now i'll be able to go to sleep. G'nite!

Rain can't dampen The Holy Spirit

Right now in this part of Manaus it is absolutely pouring rain.  We're talking cats, dogs, and all of the critters of the Amazon, so since we're probably not going anywhere for a bit I'm taking the time to update my slightly neglected blog.  

I know somewhere there is an old addage that if you pray for rain you better prepare for "something," I think it may be prepare to bail water or prepare for dust, I dunno... Either way my prayers lately have been centrally focused on "doing" more and being more active in the ministry field, not only active with online ministry that I have been doing with some people other than just yall that read this blog.  I've been praying that God really start to open up doors now that I'm getting used to the culture and language a bit more, and since I was "praying for rain" this time I should have been "prepared to bail water!" 

God has absolutely "swamped" our little boat mission with opportunities and things to "go and do" in the community and with the people here.  Let me list some examples: Within the past 5 days Eric and I have met a group of 20 year old breakdancers, "breaky-boys" as they call them here in Brazil, who dance as the Holy Spirit moves them and want us to hang out with them, we've ridden hibeatas (think a 4 seater canoe with an outboard motor) and fished with Riberhinos (river people of the Amazon), we've begun Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school at a local gym and have made friends there, and we're having a LOT of stuff on our plates to do to where we're busy every day with something.  It has been GREAT to see God answering our prayers in such a real and personal way.  

Lately, God has also been giving me the words to speak and teaching me what to say like I wrote about in my last post, but not necessarily words to say to people to make them new believers, rather to chalenge those who already believe and have accepted Christ as their closest friend and personal savior.  I'm not going to get into it now, but I will give a glimpse into where my head is at. Click here -> Romans 10:14-15 and read that real quick.  That was a part of my Bible study the other morning and since then I have been given a sense of urgency to spread that message.

So to recap and your (that means you, reader) prayer assignment: Pray for the Breaky-Boys, opportunities to minister at Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, for more interactions with people to teach and fulfill our purpose as "Missionarios."  God is good! and I'm praising Him as the rain is now lifting, with blue sky just off in the distance... Gotta love Him! 

Boas Novas! (Good News!)

Hey all!

I'm gonna make this a pretty short update (relative term with my writing if you haven't been able to tell already).  Tonight we went to the night service at Igresia Batista Boas Novas (Good News Baptist Church)  and it was a really cool time both experience-wise and me growing closer to God in faith...-wise.  Haha 

First off these churches in Brazil are not lavishly decorated or outfitted with particularly comfortable pews, although these had a slight recline to them which was nice.  But the things they feel they NEED for worship are 1) an awesome blow you away sound system 2) a digital projector and screen for lyrics for the "worship" portion of service (ie: singing songs for those of you who are used to hearing it refered to it as something else).  The projector is nice, so atleast I can read how I'm praising God and try to comprehend between verses haha.  

Speaking of music... that's how I knew tonight was going to be a great night.  The moment we walked in to Boas Novas I could here a song that I thought I recognized and, me being the musically inclined person that I am, it was both soothing and exhilerating all at once!  They were singing "Open the eyes of my heart, Lord" which is a commonly heard praise and worship song in most of today's American Baptist churches.  It was GREAT!! Finally, something I could sing in Portuguese that I knew what my words meant as I was praising God, instead of just trusting that He wouldn't let me sing anything that wasn't honoring Him.  Don't get me wrong I like trusting God to do His thing, but I like to know what I'm saying to Him as I'm saying it... does that make sense?  

Anyway we followed up that song with a song that I think is called "Firm Foundation" that I've known since the summer of the year I became a Christian (I was 11, for the curious minds :)  ).

We also sang "At the Cross" (possibly right name for the song?) and Eric recognized the tune and I think I may have heard it but I'm not sure.  It was so great to see these people worshiping the same God we do, singing about Jesus, and just letting the Holy Spirit move them... and none of it was in English! Man, God is soooo BIG and awesome that He's touching lives here on another continent from where most of us experience Him. Think about that for awhile. 

Next came the sermon, which during the first part I decided I was going to just pray for this church, these people, our mission, and my family and friends.  Well God had bigger plans and He moved the Pasto (yes there is no "R" in the pronunciation) to introduce us as "Missionarios dos Estados Unidos" (Missionaries from the the United States).  He had us stand up where we were as he talked about us for a minute and then we sat back down and then got to meet the church during a "meet and greet" portion a few minutes later.  

So, once everything settled back down into the real sermon I decided just to read instead of praying so it wouldn't appear I was asleep and felt a tug to check out Exodus chapter 4 where Moses is hanging out with God via the burning bush.  It was perfect because eventually I found myself reading Exodus 4:11-12 over and over and over.  I had been thinking about how Moses had said that he wasn't a very good speaker and he wouldn't have the words to talk to the people, and God showed me why He had me think about this section tonight; I truely had my own burning bush moment... sans flames.  I want you to look it up and read it for yourself (RightClick this and open in new tab or window) but this is my version, how I felt God spoke to me:

"CHRIS!! Who gave you your mouth?! Who allows you to hear or could make you deaf?! 

Who gives you your sight or could blind you?! ME!! GOD!! (VERSE 12) I have already sent you to Brazil! You're there! I will help you speak and teach you what to say!!! (flip to Matthew 6:25-34 "Do Not Worry" haha)

I could practically feel God shaking me by the neck like they do in the cartoons when somebody is being rediculous.  The language barrier thing is still rough on me but it's been picking up a little recently.  On with the story: Our translator friends Sarah and Rosiene invite us to come eat Acai with them after church and it was great!  Eric and I both took full advantage of learning as much portuguese as possible from them and we had a great time of mixing and matching portuguese and English to make sentences.  So it was decidedly a great night.... and then...

When we got home to Aaron's house that we've been house sitting, our security guard friends were hanging out in front of our driveway.  I guess they were wondering where we were since we weren't playing Futeball (soccer) on the court tonight haha just kidding.  Anyway we said our "hey, how ya doing" 's  and "good night" and went inside.  I had remembered Bill (the other missionary friend) telling us that bringing security guards a coke or something was a great way to make friends and make sure they look out for you as well, so I decided since they were so close by I'd bring them a glass of water each and low and behold it happened; God showed up with what He had promised. Eric threw me a couple of last second pointers as I walked out the door about how to offer someone something (literally last second) and God directed the whole conversation ranging in content of everything from the weather, to where we are from, to whether or not we're pastors or what (Nao Pastos, nos estamos Missionarios: Not Pastors, we are Missionaries) and a couple of other things that I can't remember right now.  IT WAS AWESOME!  God totally had everything exactly how He wanted it and it was great! I had my own little Pentacost tonight right there on the sidewalk infront of the house!!! 

I feel like I've been quiet for the most part this past month cause I've not really been able to speak to anyone that doesn't speak English.  I took this time to listen (which I don't do enough of back home) and mentally take in the people around me, what was being said, culture, customs, places, and most of all with what God needed to say to me.  Now I feel like I've been given the formal go-ahead to talk with people and to really begin to move and do the great things that He's had in store for me.

Two last small praises and then I'm done; tonight we took communion and it was my first time in a long time.  I didn't do it right, if you look at how everyone around me did it, but I'm pretty sure I did it right with God.  

Also, I witnessed about 20+ people acknowledge that they have recently recieved Christ as their personal Lord and Savior.  God is so good and it is so great to see Him moving.  My prayer last night was from the song beg by Shane and Shane: "Lord, I beg for you to move. I beg for you to break through."

God said, "I can do that!" and BAM! Prayer Answered.

G'nite!

-Chris

A long, but awesome, day on the river, continued!

Hey again! you'll probably read this post before the one below it cause this one is at the top of the page, but If you've not read the one below I HIGHLY reccommend reading it first because it is way more inciteful than this post will be haha! Today, we went out for an adventure on the river and boy was it a great day!!  As soon as Eric edits and uploads the videos of us I'll make sure to link to it so you can check them out cause we had a blast!

Our day started around 8:30 and we were at the David (pronounced "dah VEED" cause it's in Latin America) Marina by 9am.  After loading up the stuff and Aaron's 2 older kids we set off for a day on the water.  We barely made it 2 miles away from our parking spot before we hit our first snag.  For whatever reason the motor began to make a noise like my lawn mower does when it's running out of gas and then it died.  So there we were 400+ yards off the shore line, which was trees on a 70 foot tall 60% grade hill with 2 plastic collapseable paddles, over half a tank of gas, camera equipment galore, 2 kids under the age of 5, Eric, Aaron, myself and some ominous clouds rolling in... I was sure we were gonna get wet one way or the other and kept the kids occupied while Aaron (our project director) and Eric took a look at the motor to see what was up.  After about 5 minutes of being adrift, some tinkering, and some laying-hands on the motor with solid prayer the thing started right up and only studder-stepped for a couple of seconds 1 time for the rest of the day! Way to go God!!

So we topped off the gas tank at a floating gas station and made our way east to the "Meeting 

of the Waters."  This is a pretty cool sight to see, lemme tell you!  These two rivers, the Rio Negro (Black River) and Solimose (pronounced "sol-E-moinz: I don't know the translation and neither did Aaron) "meet" just east of Manaus and where they join is actually where the "Amazon River" begins.  The cool thing is that the Rio Negro is black, and I mean BLACK water, and the Solimose is this tanish light muddy color and they run side by side not mixing for many many kilometers!  So naturally we had to jump out and swim in it right on the line! :D  

When we left the meeting of the waters we rode around for abit checking out some of the floating house communities near by and also happened upon some water buffalo! I'll put up a pic of them another time, because the next thing that happened was way cooler.  We were on our way to go get some food when we saw some hibaetas (small 3 person canoes with 5horse power motors on them) with some brazilian kids and their "pets." 

By pets I mean exotic animals that they'll bring right up to your boat to let you hold and play with for a tip of a couple Reais.  So we got to hold a couple 3 toed sloths, a cayman, and the amazon's most famous creature The Anaconda!!  I liked the sloth better cause I'd held snakes before, but never something as cool as a sloth, besides the tiger I got my picture taken with when I was 8, but that's a different story. 

 Anyway that was awesome and it made my day, but there was still more to come!

After swimming and videoing and taking pictures and playing with animals we worked up a good apetite and it was a good thing too, because we had one of the BEST meals we've had so far in Brazil! There was an awesome all you can eat buffet of fresh fried fish, peacock bass, some kind of tube fish and CLEAN, FRESH VEGETABLES!! right there on the backwaters, and apparently it's a pretty popular tourist stop.  There were atleast 4 big tour boats that came in while we were there for an hour. By the way we have not had very many good veggies since we've come to Brazil cause in this part of Brazil the ants are so bad they eat everything on the ground so it makes it hard to grow stuff.  If you couldn't tell by the exclamation points and all-caps I was excited haha.  

Anyway after eating we hit the raised trail that was set up behind the

 restaurant for some good rainforest exploration action and then set out on the boat again.  God made a perfect day for our excursion with a crystal blue sky overhead and big puffy clouds everywhere you looked.  We zipped around on the backwaters for a bit and stopped to get some film for some promotions for the project before taking a shortcut through a flooded area that during the dry season we wouldn't be able to take as we made our way back to Manaus.  

Today was a lot of fun and we got a lot done as far as pictures and video collection is concerned.  We've now got most of the media that we need for the website as far as video goes.  Still pictures are almost complete too except for some candids of people of the communities and possibly some missionaries talking to Riberinos (river people).  Anyway 2 posts in one day hopefully will hold yall over for atleast a couple of days while we're editing pictures and video and look for another one of these probably tuesday or wednesday.  I love yall and I'll talk to ya again soon!

PS: There are a whole bunch of people that visit this site and read

 my blog apparently (the count is on the + side of 220 DIFFERENT visitors but i'm only receiving emails from my parents and grandmother... I'd like to hear from any of yall about anything! I'm opening the comments section to any reader and, I've recently added RSS options to the right of the page to make it easier for people to get these posts on their "smart phones" while on the go as well.  Send me stuff! If you're praying for me I'd like to know it! and likewise if there's anything I can pray for you about please let me know! 

In Christ's love -Chris Edmonds

A long, but awesome, day on the river.

  Hi all!  First off, before I get to the good stuff from today, I want to talk about why my posts have been relatively few and far between in comparison to how many their could be.  

  If I would have kept one of these blogs last semester so I could compare what's going on in my life I feel like I would have written more in a week this past fall than I have since I've been in Brazil. Despite the fact that I was so busy last semester that I barely had time to breathe, much less keep a blog, I feel like God was leading me and speaking to me everywhere I went... The key difference between last semester's lifestyle and this semester's lifestyle (so far) is that fact that I was going places and doing things, as apposed to this semester where we have been behind our computers trying to get this website up and running asap.  So far this semester I feel like I haven't been "going and doing" in God's name as much as I have in the past, and yes I realize I've gone and am doing in a different country for those of you that like to point out the obvious.  But there's a difference between going and doing 1 HUGE thing vs going and doing anything as often as possible.  Someone recently said this phrase and I overheard it, 

"A brick doesn't need a steering wheel nor anyone to operate one, because it is a stationary thing."  

That really got me thinking, the reason that I'm finding it difficult to learn the language, study the Word, and get involved with people is because our situation has allowed (or in-part required) that we remain stationary, thus not having to have God steer us or have His presence on us in a magnitude that I've experienced in the past.  Basically we're not phisically moving very much, so it's hard to feel God rocking the boat.

All that being said, our two man team will be moving and requiring the freedom to move out from this place and into the masses that we were sent to reach.  We're going to start with the English language learning school in the area and go from there.  Major prayer is needed for our new short term goals.  We have some long-er term goals that don't include anything about the website, but I'll keep you in suspense until some of those begin to come to fruition.

I didn't expect this post to be so long, so I'm going to let it be it's own post and I'll write more about what we did today in a second post that will show up above this one.  Be thinking about the brick tomorrow: 

A stationary Christian will not need God for direction, because direction is only important to things that move.  The cool thing is, though, that if you are prayerful about your movement God will take over the controls and steer you wherever He needs you to go.  

Isn't God awesome?! I pray you readers don't become bricks in your faith and I'm praying tonight that God will throw this brick (me) and shatter something as only His awesomeness can.  God is a strong enough foundation for our faith; He doesn't need us to be bricks to hold the faith in place. As believers we are meant to move check out Luke chapter 10 and Matthew 28:16-20.  I love yall and enjoy the post that'll appear above with the pictures of the backwaters and more!! -later

Fun Nights and Wild Mornings

Hey everybody! We're having a great time down here in Brazil.  There's been lots going on and the website is coming along nicely, but anyway I wanted to share a couple of videos that we've taken just for fun.  The first half is us after playing soccer with the locals for the first time and the second one is us being attacked by a ferocious killer demon/dog.  Anyway I hope yall enjoy and I'll talk to yall soon!

*PS: still be praying for our missionary families here in Manaus especially and also for the families of all of us that are out here in the mission field.  It's tough on us and our parents both when we don't get to communicate easily. *

Camping and Revalations

So, we're back from the rainforest and playing in the Rio Negro, and it was a really good trip.  When we left I was feeling pretty tense and overall not happy with a lot of the way things were going.  Let me clarify, Eric and I both thought we were signing up for a program that was already started and we would be joining missionaries that were already active in introducing people to Christ here in the Amazon River Basin area, but instead we are the first ones here, other than the career missionaries who are already here.  Also, we knew our main job was going to be the development of a website to advertise the project to bring in more prospective missionaries, but we didn't realize that our missionaries didn't really have anything else planned for us other than that.  So we fill our time with wandering the city, practicing our portuguese, cooking, eating, and other random stuff. 

 Needless to say this much time in a big city like this had me a little up tight, because i'm not used to not having trees around, i'm not used to this much traffic, and on top of that i'm not used to NOT being able to communicate with the vast majority of people that are around me...

Begin rainforest excursion: Once we got out on the water and headed towards the camp it was like a 30 pound weight had been lifted off of my shoulders.  It was like I could actually hear God again, where in the city it felt like I had lost his presence and my purpose for being here other than the website.  I swear on the way to the camp I could hear a choir singing "Sanctuary" as I looked off the side of our small boat at the puffy clouds and crystal blue sky over head and their reflection on the blackness of the Rio Negro in the distance as they met on the horizon.  Yes the river is so big that in places you'll see the horizon before you can see land.

The camp area was nothing special, except it had it's own well, a kitchen with an outdoor dining area attached, male and female bathroom facilities complete with showers, and hammock hooks galore in the seperate male and female covered sleeping areas.  Needless to say we were far from roughing it.  Still, there is something about being in the woods, where there are trees and leaves and animal sounds that can make anyone feel renewed.  And of course there's nothing like drinking freshly sterilized Amazon River haha.

However even with being away from the smog and city I was still lacking the breath of fresh air that I needed from God to remind me of my purpose here in Brazil.  On the first day we were there God showed us that he is going to surely answer our team's prayers and bless the amazonian ministry by Him producing the absolutely most beautiful sunset that I have ever seen.  The colors from that sunset will be forever burned into my memory, as will my purpose that came through scripture the next day.

After breakfast the next morning the leaders of the Radical Amazonas project got together to practice Chronological Bible Storying with one another and I went to go read my Bible.  I read a couple of different things but mainly I found myself being drawn to the book of John.  I didn't know where in John so I just started reading at the begninning and eventually got to the story of Jesus and the lady at the well and towards the end of that story, when the disciples have rejoined Jesus, I read something that brought me nearly to tears because it applied so much to what I had been seeking.  Jesus said in John 4:34-38 basically that there are reapers of the harvest that didn't plant the seeds, there are sowers of seeds that did not till the soil.  My purpose here in Brazil is to help till the soil and make it appealing for the sowers of seeds, so that with God's help there will eventually be a good harvest that will bear much good fruit.  God has a purpose for every part of the Body of Christ.  Every... single... part.  I had forgotten that and I'm glad He came along at just the right time to show me exactly who I am and why I'm here.  

I'm praising God big time today, but I'm also asking that you readers at home begin to pray for my missionary family here as they have had an unexpected loss.  I won't go into detail but, I will ask that all of you be praying diligently that they might be comforted by the one they have been called to serve.  I will post video and pictures later but for now enjoy the sunset picture I posted at the top.

Website building and more

Sorry I haven't updated this in a couple of days!  We've been "busy" but not with much exciting stuff except for a couple of things which I'll tell you about now.  

First off we've mainly been working on trying to get this website together for the misionaries that we're staying with.  Eric's been using IWeb to get most of it together on the content pages and I've been working on the intro pages and the graphics for those.  So most of our time has been spent in our room just hanging out infront of our computers...

BUT! we've had some mini adventures too which have involved us walking a couple of miles to a walmart-like store called "Carre Four," a french owned walmart-like company that is all over Brazil, going to the downtown area known as "Centro" to buy some clothes that'll help us blend in more (although we're among the tallest people in the city so the clothes don't help), and eating at a great pizza place called Splash Pizza that was on the way to Carre Four.  

Now Centro is pretty cool and has just about anything you could want from electronics and bootleg DVDs to everyday clothes of all types.  It's not where you'd want to go to buy your "nice" clothes but you can get some pretty good stuff there.  

Splash Pizza was the only really notable thing that we've done.  Apparently it's not normally like the way it was when we went, but when we got there the place was empty and we were a little early for the dinner hour so they told us to have a seat (we think) and they'd get us something to drink.  We ended up getting some Guarana and waiting for a few more minutes and then they brought us a Pizza without us even ordering anything! The cool thing about this pizza was it was several different types of Pizza all served onto one tray and we could pick and choose what we wanted off of it! So they ended up comming around about 3 times and we both got a slice or 2 off of each and by that time were stuffed and they were still bringing us stuff and wanted to serve us a desert pizza but we started to get concerned about the price so we opted out.  Anyway that was that adventure in a nutshell.  I had some video for this post but I'll have to post it another time.