The Twenty Buck Challenge

December 4, 2006

Raining like crazy and 88 degrees on December 4! Must be Sorocaba, São Paulo, Brazil. The rain is coming down so hard I can bearly hear myself think. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

It is hard to believe that five years ago yesterday we had our first Sunday morning service at Hope Baptist Church; with a grand total of nobody (but the seven members of our team) there. Talk about a downer. That was a difficult pill for me to swallow and had me questioning my call as a missionary.

Yesterday in the celebration of that humble beginning we had 55 present and were encouraged with several people who have been demonstrating faithfulness over the past few weeks. I know that faithfulness is a quality that takes a long time to demonstrate, but we are encouraged nonetheless. We also had three teens celebrating their graduation from junior and high school.

Speaking of graduation, we were able to be present at Juliana’s graduation from Bible College. The 22 grads represented the largest graduating class in the colleges twenty-six years. We are so proud of Ju. Her almost insurmountable difficulties made this an even sweeter moment. We rejoiced in God’s goodness and help that brought her to this point in her life.

We gave her a ride back to Sorocaba on Saturday. It was heart breaking to realize that we were going to drop her off at “home”, where no one would be waiting to hear how her trip went, let alone ask how graduation went, or tell her how proud they were of her accomplishments. But God knows. Pray for her.

Alessandra was at youth group on Saturday! That was a blessing. She had been missing since our return and was in the world. Pray for her as she tries to make a comeback.