A New Ministry

After the last several posts packed with pictures, believe it or not - we forgot to take any pictures this week! Hopefully we'll remember our camera this coming week!

This week was the start of a new ministry I feel God has been putting on my heart for a long time. You may remember in June I was evaluating what would be my next endeavor to use English as a ministry and way to build relationships here in Brazil. Since coming back from our traveling, I have continued teaching at the children's program (where we're now all the way through the Old Testament in our reading through the children's Bible) and meeting with Angelina, a woman from the community. However, I was still wanting to do something more and decided to begin a ESL conversation group and Bible study in our home - which started this week.
I made lots of phone calls to people who might be interested or know someone who is, and yesterday at the first meeting 9 students showed up! I was happily surprised, as I had only imagined that 5 or so would actually come. Most of the students had never met each other before and range from 15-50 years old - though most are in the range of 18-23 years old. Everyone is in a different place spiritually. Some have been Christians for a while, others are new believers, and others may not yet be believers. It is a terrific opportunity, especially because part of the time together is a Bible study.
During the time together we did several activities to get their English "warmed up" and we watched a video clip which led into a good discussion. Then, we studied/discussed the very simple parable of the man who finds a pearl and sells everything to buy it. Although I was pretty nervous before the first "class", things really turned out well. There was lots of great discussion and a surprising amount of interest and participation in the Bible study section. I really feel this is something God led me to do and I can see already why!
I would really appreciate your prayer on Wednesdays as I continue to meet with these students! Please pray that I would be able to build solid relationships with them, minister to them spiritually, and teach to the best of my ability.
Speaking of prayer, we also had a big answer to prayer this week as we were able to find some temporary reliable transportation. If you were reading our blog in June you know about our continual car struggles. One of the issues we are facing is the extremely high cost of gas here - almost $6 a gallon! Also, our old car seems to always be having problems (and currently is again) and we haven't even started the process of selling/buying a new one. So, all that to say we bought a simple motorcycle just for getting around our town. I never imagined myself as a motorcycle kind of woman, but we're learning it's all about flexibility here! Motorcycles are also much more common here - maybe 25% of vehicles that you see in the city are motorcycles. Jeyson already had his license, so we're in business.
Speaking of Jeyson, a little update on him is that this week he has started preparing for his commercial pilot's test. This is the written test that comes before he can start hands on learning. He will continue his normal responsibilities or mechanics/flying for most of the day, and take some time each afternoon to study on his own. Like all aviation tests here, it's known to be very difficult, so we'd also appreciate your prayer for him as he prepares. He hasn't scheduled the date of the test yet, but it will possibly be in November.
Well that's about it for our picture-less blog update. Check back next week and we'll hopefully have pictures to make up for it!