This week was all about saying goodbye to one of our team members Emily Rowell. She's 20 years old from Canada and spent last year in Bible college in England. She is a women of God with a heart of Gold, full of joy and grace and she has touched so many lives here in Brazil that will never be the same. I will miss her a lot these next few weeks but I now know that I have a Sister even in Canada!
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| Me and Emily at our Pais Graduation in Church |
This Tuesday in Maia neto we mixed it up and instead of telling a bible story we did an action story. I was the hero of the story and Jared the villain. He took Emily from me after beating me in a fight, so obviously I had to do a training montage! After this we had a second encounter where I was the victor saving Emily from his hands. Ramin then talked about how Jesus did just that with us, that he saved us from sin, sickness and the grave. We then invited the kids to come and receive Jesus as their hero. All of the kids came up and receive a little card that said "Jesus is my hero". Maybe some just came up because the cards had the avengers on them but even so there is massive seed in their hearts which the Spirit can minister to the rest of their lives. After that all of the kids gave cards to say goodbye to Emily and sang some songs for as well.
That afternoon we were pretty much free and then me and Emily went to hang out for her last Capoeira training.
Wednesday we had an early start at Ferriera. They were having a celebration for the Mums of the students so they asked me to come and sing for them. I sang "the power of your love" telling them that their love is what empowers their kids and shows lifts them on wings like eagles just like Jesus' love. We were just about to leave when Ramin got asked to breakdance. He showed off his stuff impressing the whole room and probably opening a whole lot more doors in the process. So we went back to the church for the rest of the morning for a little nap before going to Maia Neto for the afternoon. This week we only ended up having one class but we got to teach them on "judging" other people, telling them the need for loving people no matter what their situation, their clothes, type of music etc.
That night we came back for our cell group. This week Ramin and Jared couldn't be there as they were going to prepare for the mens weekend which was their weekend (I'll tell you more about it below) so it was a kind of felt like I was in charge for some reason but it was an awesome time of experiencing God. A whole bunch of new people came so we prayed for them all and then we got Emily in the middle and super blessed her with encouraging words and prayers for her future.
Thursday was a national holiday so we got to just spend the day doing anything Emily wanted. It was a very blessed day as a family (that's kind of what our team feels like these days). We had an awesome (real) breakfast, watched "Tangled", hung out a little and then went to Junior's house to hang out. Then back to mine for some just dance which was very funny.
Because me and the other guys on the team were going on a men's weekend this weekend we weren't able to say goodbye to Emily at the airport but thankfully friday morning I was able to hang out with her. We just went shopping for some stuff she needed to get and then hung out a bit. It's going to be really strange on the team without her but I know that God is going to use her so much in Canada just as just as he used her here (love you, if you're reading Em!)
Then the mens weekend. I had decided that I would go on this weekend a few weeks ago and if I'm honest I was very nervous, but something happened last weekend and I just decided to let God do and work in me whatever way he wanted this weekend AND HE DID. There is a rule about these weekends that you don't talk about what happens on them so it's completely new for people who go to the next ones. So I'm not going to tell too much as some Brazilians read this blog. But I will say this, the weekend is called "Face to Face with God" and that is exactly what it is. It was one of the craziest experiences of my life and I will never ever forget it!
I will tell you this though, I got to Baptise someone! One of the teens from church called Luan asked me to Baptise him. How incredible that God wanted to meet with me this weekend and that he wanted to put the cherry on the cake with that!
Luan's Baptism
Genesis 32:30 " So Jacob called the place Peniel,[g] saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”
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| The weekend was at a lake called "lagoa de bom fim" which means the lake of the good end or finish |
Thank you so much for reading this blog and keeping up with my time here in Brazil. Please pray for us as a team as we start doing the normal thing but without the normal team. And pray that God would be preparing my heart for going home as well as it is now 4 weeks to go.
Love you all
God bless
Mark
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