Baby Shower

Last Saturday we planned a baby shower for Luciana. We called up some of our friends (which is not really that many people) and invited them over to our new apartment in honor of little baby Sarah. It really was not much of a grand undertaking to plan, but we had a few games, a bunch of food and drinks, and people came bearing gifts for the baby.

Initially we were a little worried about the event. You see, people here in the Northeast can be pretty flaky. Time means nothing to them and making/keeping commitments can be difficult. So we just were not sure if anyone would show up! In fact, Lu told everyone the shower started at 3:30, just so people might make it by 4, the time she wanted to actually start.

Our original plan was to speak personally to every one of our invited guests beforehand to invite them and find out if they could come. But even if we could not talk to everyone to confirm, we sent emails to everyone that was invited. We wanted to find out who was going to come and we needed to make sure that everyone had directions to our new apartment. But although we asked for an RSVP of sorts, almost nobody responded. Lu even sent out second emails to certain people and never heard a word. Welcome to Paraíba (our state)!

Well, as things often go here, an hour after the set starting time there was 1 person here. We started to worry that people would not show up. But fortunately, most people finally started to trickle in between 4:30-5:00. I think we started all the activities at about 5:30, 2 hours later than planned, but it all went really well. Everyone was really lighthearted and we had a great time playing some baby shower games. Then Lu opened up all the presents and everyone ate well while enjoying the conversation. We even had some happy prize winners of our games!

I think one of the coolest things about the night was getting people from different groups together. We had people from our church, people from our Bible Studies and people who are not even Christian all hanging out together enjoying the evening. Most of all, I think Lu felt loved, which is so important for a pregnant lady living a couple thousand miles away from home. So overall our first baby shower was a totally success and now all we have left is to eagerly look forward to the arrival of Sarah in January!

Our New Apartment

Before we returned from the states to João Pessoa, Lu and I had already decided that one thing we needed to do as soon as we got back was to find a new apartment. Our living situation was not ideal for us and thus, clearly not ideal for our soon to be arriving baby. You see, we lived in a two bedroom apartment that was very reasonably priced, but when you pay less for rent, it is usually the case that you have to make-up for it in some other way. We had several ways that we "paid" for our rent!

For example, although our rent was cheap, we lived next to a small farm. This farm had banana, avocado, mango and palm trees with coconuts. They also had ducks, geese, fish, capivara and of course, chickens! Everything up until the chickens was fine. But the chickens made life miserable. I had always thought that living next to chickens would be sort of quant; you could wake up early to the sound of the rooster crowing, just like back in the good old days. But in reality, that is not how things work. The roosters (and there was at least 3 of them) woke up every night at about 1 am. Then they would begin to crow. They would continue to crow all night until the early afternoon when they slept until after midnight again. At times they wandered throughout this little farm in search of food and ended up directly below our bedroom window, crowing like their lives depended upon it. To say the least, it made it difficult to sleep.

Other ways that we "paid" extra to live in our building was by living in a really poorly ventilated apartment (that is the last thing you want when the humidity is anywhere near 90%!), living above the angriest most selfish old man I have ever met, having dogs in the building that like to bark at all hours of the morning and night, having unfriendly and inconsiderate neighbors, and finally, by having windows that leaked water into the walls of our rooms when it rained. Clearly it was not the ideal situation.

So, the week that we got back to JP we began our search for a new place to live. Our plan was to move to a neighborhood called Intermares. Intermares is a beach neighborhood, has nice buildings, and is technically just outside the city limits of JP. That means that although it is near the ocean, the prices are substantially lower than the beach neighborhoods within the city. And because JP is still a relatively small city, outside the city limits means 15 minutes drive time to heart of the city. But, the most important part about Intermares is that it has lots of wind! Wind is one of the most important commodities in a tropical climate like here because without it, you suffer through more than half the year. Even during winter, if the wind is not blowing, you feel the heat. So our goal was to find a 2-3 bedroom apartment, in Intermares, with a veranda that faces the ocean so we could get the most wind possible.

As our search began, things looked a bit bleak. The two bedroom apartments in our price range that met our criteria were pretty ghetto. A few of them we walked into, looked at each other, and then quickly left knowing it was too run down. Now I don't want to give you the idea that I am snob. I am not. I did grow up in Orange County and I have lived in nice places. But I am not a person that has to always have the best. The thing is, all human beings make decisions on where they live based upon their personal value system. For example, some people will pay extra to live in a safer neighborhood because they value safety for their kids. Others will spend more to have their house designed because they value having a floor plan the way they want it to be. If you were to ask any of my old roommates, they would tell you that my value system is based upon money, specifically, saving the most money. Let me put it in a simpler way, I'm cheap. But as a missionary living on a missionary budget, I think this is important. I am not a missionary who needs to live in the best neighborhood of the city and drive a really expensive car because I cannot live at a lower level than they did in the states. And believe me, there are many missionaries like this out there! I am a pretty simple guy on a pretty simple budget. So I believe that my apartment should be in line with that.

Well, after several days of looking we only found one apartment that really worked. It had two bedrooms and two bathrooms, along with a veranda that faced east. It was a little older, and sort of close to the highway, but it had wind and that was what we valued most! So we called the owner, told them we wanted to rent it and asked to move in as soon as possible. The owner agreed and it was all set by Saturday night. We were excited to be moving to a new place even though the apartment was not that nice. We just wanted to be far from chickens, lame neighbors (and their pets) and the heat.

Mondays are our days off since we work much of the weekend doing church stuff. So when the phone woke us up at 8 am, I was less than excited. Then to add to the problem, the call was from the owner of the apartment; they changed their minds. They did not want to rent it to us anymore. I guess their nephew was going to live there for the summer. Man! Back to square one.

I got up and drove to a newsstand to find an old copy of the Sunday paper to get the classifieds. When I got back Lu and I went through searching for places that met our criteria and we began to call. We set up several visits to see the apartments and spent the entire day driving around from apartment to apartment. Finally, the last one we saw was this guy that had been so weird on the phone. We were not sure if he had a problem or if he was just another super unfriendly person from JP who had no business sense. We met him anyways, and he showed us the place. The apartment was in our price range, had 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a veranda facing east, was recently renovated (in some areas of the apartment) and painted, had build-in closets (which sounds funny to say but in Brazil you usually get nothing but four walls and a window per room) and most importantly, had a ton of wind! I actually asked him the price again because I thought the newspaper must have printed it incorrectly; there was no way this place was the same price or cheaper than the other apartments we saw and yet, was bigger and better in almost all ways. But it was! It was incredible.

When we got home we talked about it and quickly decided to call the guy to tell him we wanted it. We began packing that night and by Wednesday we were all moved in and spent our first night in our new apartment. What a difference it makes to have a place that suits you! Our neighbors are quiet, there are no chickens next door, our apartment is noticeably cooler, we have an extra bedroom and bathroom and the place is way nicer. We had to pay a little extra to move here, but to pay just over $100 US extra per month to have a better quality of life is well worth it. Plus when baby Sarah arrives in January, I think she will be much happier and cooler in our new apartment!

Vacation Time

On September 14th, the very day after our church's one year anniversary, Lu and I, along with Julian, John and Sam (the three guys who stayed with us the week of our church's anniversary) loaded all our things into a taxi and headed down to Recife. Recife is the closest big city to JP (about 2 hours driving) and has an International Airport. The guys were going to stay in Recife for a few weeks to hang out with the Calvary Chapel there and then to do some work with YWAM. Lu and I, however, were headed for a vacation!

It had been over a year and half since we had moved to JP and we never had the chance to have a real vacation. We did get a few days at the beach here or there, but nothing for more than 2-3 days at a time. But this felt like it was a good time for a vacation and a chance for us to go back to the states to buy some important things for our baby who will arrive in January.

After a long flight back, we arrived in Los Angeles tired and a bit confused. On the way to my parents' house I began tripping out on the freeway how everyone seemed content to stay in their own lane and did not even swerve back and forth, crossing over the line into other lanes like in JP. Cars seemed to keep a reasonable distance from the car in front of them, not staying a foot behind them flashing their lights for the person to get out of their way. Exits on the freeway were all clearly marked and had freeway overpasses to allow a car to go right or left after they left the highway. There were no lights, speed bumps or areas for U-turns on the highway. Everything seemed so organized and clean! How could it be?

Obviously, we experienced a little culture shock. It's strange how you can become so accustomed to the culture you are living in that when you return to your own culture, you began to experience shock because of the differences. I was in shock, but only for a short time. I quickly began to enjoy the organization and social etiquette that people showed one another in normal day-to-day life. I think it had been months since I had anyone say to me, "Hi, how are you? Do you need any help with anything?" It felt nice to be treated like a human being again.

While back, Lu and I were busy! We spent time with my family in Southern California, traveled to Las Vegas to visit my sister and brother-in-law, went to San Luis Obispo to see friends and my home church, went to Oklahoma to see my first ever Sooner Football game at Memorial Stadium in Norman, OK., and got to take Lu to her first baseball game ever! It was a blast!

We really had three main goals for our trip: buy some things we need for our baby, spend quality time with friends and family, and have fun relaxing. Thankfully we were able to accomplish all three. We had a fantastic trip and it gave us the chance to get refreshed for our time back here in JP. I think getting away from your immediate surroundings helps give you a greater perspective on life and the things you are trying to accomplish. We feel like we are more prepared to take on the challenges here after a little vacation time.

Before we left

It has been quite some time since I last wrote something on our blog because we have been super busy. Over the next few weeks I am going to try to catch everyone up on what has happened over the last 2 months through a series of entries. So here goes the first "flashback" entry to take us back about 2 months ago.

In the beginning of September, a group of guys who studied at the Bible College in Brazil, came to visit us. These three young men each spent a semester or two down at Calvary Chapel Bible College in Campo Mourão, and subsequently wanted to see more of Brazil. So they saved up some money, planned out their trip and came down for over 2 months. One of the first stops for these young explorers was João Pessoa! These guys came and stayed with us the week before we left for our trip to the US and we had a TON of fun showing them around. These three are all really fun guys to begin with and then taking them to the best places in JP just made things even better. I even had the chance to take them to Picãozinho, the reef that sits about 2 km off the shore of our local beaches, to do some snorkeling, which I had wanted to do since we moved here!

Also, on the Sunday that they were here, September 13th, we celebrated the one year anniversary of our church here in Joao Pessoa. The time really flew by as this anniversary came upon us so quickly. But it gave us a great reason to celebrate together. One of the guys visiting, Sam, played worship along side me on his Djembe (Drum), Luciana planned a little party for after the service, people brought some food and everyone (minus only 1) who attends our church showed up on the same Sunday! It was amazing! We had a great service talking about the grace of God through Galatians chapter 5, which is one of the most important chapters for practical Christian living in the entire Bible. We saw how He is actually the one who helps us to follow Him, through the Holy Spirit. Moreover, I think we had a great party which really had a unifying effect on the people from our church. It is really important to have positive things like this to celebrate together!

What it's like living in João Pessoa

I have to admit, I really have very little idea of what people think about us living here in João Pessoa. I have never conducted a survey or even casually asked around to get people's opinions about the subject. I do know however, that most of the Americans that I talk to about Brazil think it is this tropical paradise and that we are living this beautiful life soaking up the rays at the beach. Of course, this couldn't be farther from the truth.

In preparing to write this, I felt a strange sense of fear because I know that people have all sorts of opinions of what missionaries are supposed to be like or how they should think. They can never be negative because they are serving the Lord. I know that I could upset readers and possibly even lose supporters of our ministry because of what would be perceived as complaining. But I want to write about what life is really like here and the things we really experience on a daily or weekly basis. So here we go.

The Northeast of Brazil is known for being the most conservative area in the country. Its strong catholic roots continually influence most parts of the culture as life has changed slowly over the years compared to rest of the country, and especially the rest of the world. It feels a little like going back in time a few years as a laissez-faire attitude swirls throughout the culture ranging from people not waiting in lines to most buildings looking a bit rundown.

People here view life completely different than I do, and different from how most of Western society views it. They have different dreams, goals, values, political views, religious views, music, philosophies, food, customs and routines. In many ways, the Northeast of Brazil is opposite of the US (I have actually made a list of ways it is opposite from the US and will post it here, hopefully someday soon).

In being so different from anything I have ever experienced in my life, many challenges have arisen in beginning our ministry here. First of all, Northeasterners in general don't have the same view of Gringos as people in the south of Brazil. In the south, people tend to be much more open-minded to foreign cultures, and tend to have a real love for foreigners, especially Americans. What happened was that many European immigrants moved to the south of Brazil in the early to mid 1900's. The culture obviously felt the effects of all these converging people groups and it created (in my opinion) this really cool, open-minded culture; it seemed to get the great relational values of Brazil mixed with the strong work ethic and structure of Europe. Here in the Northeast, however, they didn't experience the same immigration. Foreigners are usually seen as outsiders, and even seem to be viewed with a bit of suspicion and distain. Often times when I walk down the street people will stop and stare at me like I'm some sort of freak (I can admit I am a little weird, but the staring definitely goes overboard!). People constantly assume that we are some sort of cult because I came from the US and I look like I could be a Mormon (they always ask me if I'm Mormon, I guess because I am white? I don’t wear black pants, a white button-up shirt, or a tie.). A friend of one of the guys in our church even asked him why Brazil needed a Gringo to come down to start another church in their country.

So the stereotypical Latin American warmth is not flowing to say the least. We are not invited to people's houses for meals or invited to go out. In fact, people here in JP tend to be rather unfriendly and extremely closed. Outside of our church I have two guys that I am building friendships with and both are super cool guys...both are from Sao Paulo! It makes for an overall difficult place to move to when you do not have a preexisting group of friends to get oriented through.

Another major issue in living here is the structure of the culture. Many things simply don't work the way we are used to. For example, it took us 3 months to get a phone set up in our apartment and a week to get a bank account set up for Luciana, a Brazilian citizen! I met a guy who works in some administrative position at the bank who told me that the workers will often send people home saying that the system is down when they don’t want to help them. I asked him, "You mean, they will say the system is down when it really is not, just to not help someone?" He responded, "Of course!"

Customer service is not one of their cultural values, so people tend to not go out of their way to help someone when they don't have to. I have honestly walked into many stores and greeted the workers only to receive a strange look back, as if to say, "Why are you here?" They claim to be a capitalistic economy, but they don't understand perhaps the most fundamental principle of capitalism, that the customer is the most important commodity. It seems that many people work because they have to in order to survive, not because they love what they do and want to work. Therefore, it is extremely rare to hear a 'Hi,' 'How are you?', 'Can I help you?', 'please,' 'thank you,' 'your welcome,' 'excuse me,' or any other polite etiquette in a work place.

In another sense, the lack of structure in society leads to confusion on the roads. Driving seems to lack serious structure as things like stop signs mean nothing and aggressive driving rules the highways. Parked cars line the sides of major streets where no parking signs are posted on every light post. People stop their cars right in traffic to let people out or pick people up, even when there are parking lots or areas to pullover. The hardest part is that the police do absolutely nothing in concern to all this. In fact, the police seem to do very little anywhere which has dramatic effects on the society as a whole. People know they won't get tickets for speeding, running red lights or illegally parking, so they just go ahead and do whatever they want. It blocks up traffic, causes accidents and puts innocent people at risk. Two American girls were here visiting and we drove them to get sometime to eat. They said that they were terrified when they rode in cars here in João Pessoa.

Also criminals know that the police won't make much of an effort to find them if they mug someone on the street or steal from a store. With little fear of consequences, criminals control the country with fear. Even if they do get caught many stories have occurred where the victim decides not to press charges because the criminal threatens to come back and do something to them once they get out of jail, which will most likely happen within a few days or weeks. One shop owner had a guy rob his store at gun point. The criminal told the shop owner that if he did anything he would comeback someday to kill him and his whole family. After he left, the shop owner called the police and gave them a description of the guy. So the police caught the actual guy (which was a shock to me) and brought him to the shop to have the shop owner identify the robber. The police asked, "Is this the guy?" The shop owner out of fear responded, "No." The police had to let the criminal go. Imagine the fear that people live with when criminal activity rises to such incredible levels!

Finally, probably the most difficult part of our job here is that people don't seem to have the sense of commitment that we are used to. Like I said before, the laissez-faire attitude of the society works it way into most every facet of life. We learned very quickly that when someone says, “I’ll call you,” that you better not hold your breath waiting. My next door neighbor did this to me almost every time I saw him for close to six months. Not once did he ever call me! The ministry is about people and building relationships with them. It makes it very hard to build relationships when people constantly flake out on meeting together.

Moreover, with our work here in the ministry we often ask people we meet what they think of Jesus. The vast majority are completely apathetic about the topic, even though they say they believe in Him. But this is really hard to get used to after spending my entire life in the United States and Europe, where the subject is so polarized. People are usually for or against Jesus. Some people get so upset when they talk about Jesus or the Bible that they cannot even think rationally anymore! But here, almost everyone “believes,” but they just don't care; it doesn't seem to change the way they live their lives. There are a fair number of evangelical Christians who truly follow Jesus and the Bible with all their hearts, but they tend to be the minority of people we meet.

In the church this lack of commitment becomes all too apparent as well. People don't even have a commitment just to attend church every Sunday. I have written before about how when I became a Christian I was at church at minimum twice a week. My Youth Pastor once said to me, “Don’t you have a home?” because I was always there hanging out. But here it is different; people come about twice a month, and usually arrive late. If the problem were that we were asking too much of them, by having services during the week, on Saturday and twice on Sunday, I could understand them getting tired or burnt out. But we only have one service a week, on Sunday evenings for an hour and a half. It seems if we were to ask people to serve in some way at the church on top of coming every week, it might blow people’s minds away.

An obvious problem arises that you cannot build a strong church alone, without faithful, committed members to help. But since some people arrive up to 40 minutes late for an hour and half service, it seems their commitment is severely lacking. Plus it is sometimes the people who think they are the strongest in their faith that have the greatest problems in this area.

Overall we are slowly adjusting to the cultural differences and dealing with some of the issues we have faced by communicating with people individually about these problems. We are trying to encourage and exhort people to be more responsible and committed in concern to our church. But the culture is a powerful influence. Every one of us has become who we are after being shaped by the culture around us. These people here are no different; it’s just that their culture is different. So we, as missionaries, are trying to adjust to a drastically different culture in order to carry out the work God has given us to do. Please pray for us to have wisdom and strength to continue serving the Lord and continue to teach people the Word of God, even in the face of a difficult culture.

Calvary Chapel in Brazil is slowly spreading in the south of the country with at least 8 churches and a few other church plants that are just starting up. But up here in the Northeast there are just two, us and another church two hours south in Recife. The church in Recife has had some small problems over the years and were actually going for a while with no pastor at all. Finally, Wellington, a guy from Calvary Chapel Sao Vicente, in Sao Paulo, moved up to help serve at the church and ended up taking over as pastor the last few years. His leadership was able to bring more stability to the church and more kids to their outreaches as they have a soccer camp every weekend with around 100 kids from the surrounding neighborhoods.

This past week, Wellington was back home in Sao Vicente to celebrate the anniversary of his home church. After the service, people went out to eat and celebrate the things that the Lord had done over the years. But after it had gotten late, Wellington decided to catch a taxi home because it was raining so hard that night. On the way home, the taxi lost control, hit a light post and the post fell on top of the car, killing Wellington instantly.

We heard the news here the next morning and were shocked, the say the least. The Lord took our friend and co-worker in the gospel to go home with Him; we will miss him a ton! But it made us think about how fragile life is and how quickly things can change.

Many of you read the story of the kid who robbed the bus we were on here in JP. I told about how torn I was, wanting to step up and do something to stop this kid. But I ended up not doing anything. Well, about a month ago, I went down to the street fair to get something to eat with one of the guys in our church. While we were talking the same kid who robbed the bus walked up to our table asking for money! I saw him and was in shock! I told my friend later, "That was the kid who robbed the bus we were on!" The kid just walked away, seemingly having no clue who I was.

But imagine if I had done something on the bus that day. How easy would it have been for that kid to remember the face of the gringo who attacked him? He would have never forgotten my face and could have attacked me unsuspectingly there at the fair. Who knows, he could have stabbed me or shot me to get revenge. I mean, if he was less than 18 nothing would happen to him by the law, and even if he were 18, he would probably go to jail for 7 years and be out in 3 for good behavior. He would have had nothing to lose by killing me!

Our lives are so short and we really have so little control over the things that happen to us. With that in mind, it makes me want to live even more for Jesus, because the things we do for the Lord are the only things that will last after this world ends. Wellington left his work here, but he by no means leaves ashamed of the life he chose. He left his friends and family to move to a new city, to help a struggling church and to teach people about Jesus. Although he is now gone, everything he did was for the Lord and he has nothing to regret about his life!

So what about you? Are you wasting your time here on earth? Give your life over to Jesus and spend your time serving Him. Everything else will be forgotten shortly.

We will never forget Wellington's sense of humor, like in this picture when he tried to pose as a cowboy!

Rollin' Along

For the past two months we have not really had much news to share about things in Joao Pessoa. As pastoral/church ministry goes, there are slow seasons where not much new happens and you simply need to persevere, teaching the Bible and building relationships with people. That is basically what we have been doing.

During this time, we did finish up our Bible Study at the State University here because they have the month of July off for vacation. We went through and completed the book of 1 Peter in our study there with a pretty good group of students that came. We plan on going back (I think in August) when the new semester begins. In the meantime, our Study at the Federal University is rolling along with a great group of all guys! I thought it was sort of strange because we always had more girls than guys coming, but now the tables have turned and we have had all guys until this last week (which just happens to be the day I brought our camera and took some pictures!) But I love working with, teaching and hanging out with younger men, so it is a fun experience for me for sure.

Our church is rolling along as well. We have had a few visitors the past several weeks, which is always nice to see! But we are still struggling with consistency from the core members of our church. People here in the Northeast of Brazil view church differently and don't seem to make a serious commitment to go every week and serve. Even the seemingly more mature believers only make it 3 out of every 4 weeks. It is a tough situation because I don't want to say something to force them to come; it needs to be from their hearts that they want to come. But at some point I am sure I will need to talk about consistency with people who think that are mature in their faith.

I have to admit that personally I don't understand this mindset, because once I became a Christian, I wanted to be at church. I would be there at least twice a week and never missed services. There were times when my youth pastor had to tell me to go home because I would be there all the time. But the culture and the people here are WAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY different!!! It seems that if they have the smallest thing on their schedule, they don't come. Some of the students don't make it to church when they have too much work or a project to finish. But I always had the mindset of, "Well, I have church in the morning, so I can work on my project afterward." It was like church or Bible Study was set on my schedule and I planned around these things. Here it seems to be the opposite. I guess I am still learning the culture here.

So, please keep us in your prayers, especially for more consistency from our core group in our church. We have some great people coming, we just need a little help getting them all on board and unified!