Email Pains and Preaching Gains

Yeah, that’s right. I’m now a preaching man. But first things first, I wanted to let everyone know that I’ve been having some email issues here. I didn’t realize it until last night as I was talking to my mother that nobody has been receiving emails from my Yahoo account. Really sorry about that, I HAVE been sending them. I fixed the problem now, so I’m resending everything that I already sent from the past six weeks. Should have it all done within a day or two.

Okay, now about my “preaching engagement”, first I’ll tell you how it came about, then I’ll tell you how it went. So this guy who works as a guard here at my building wanted me to come visit his church. Everyone here is very relational, so I wasn’t too surprised, and I told him of course I’d like to go visit his church. So a day or two later he comes to me and asks if I can go next weekend. “Yeah, not a problem,” I reply. So then he tells me, “Great, I told them you’d come – oh, and you can teach about whatever you want.”

So I didn’t feel real comfortable with that at first. I told him so, and he responded with “Don’t worry about it, you don’t need to speak well, God will help us understand.” Well how can you say no to that? I felt sheepish that I had even fussed about it…

And it went really well. It’s amazing how God can work. Last week as I was figuring out what to say and what words I’d need to say it, everything began to click with this language. There was a marked difference in a few days time in my ability to understand others and hold a prolonged conversation. I’m sure people don’t really enjoy listening to me talk, but that’s not the point. The point is that they can understand what I’m saying, and vice versa. I can work on my accent later.

So I went to this small church for my first ever Portuguese preaching excursion, and it was perfect. They were all so excited that I was there that it wouldn’t have mattered if they could understand me or not – there was so much nodding, clapping, and amen-ing that they practically preached to themselves :-)

It was an awesome day, and one for which I’m incredibly thankful. Oh, and the best part is this: after I finished, the church was small enough that they began discussing what I had been talking about. They actually HAD understood my message, and they were talking about how it applied to them. How cool is that? How awesome is God? And that’s my preaching tale – thanks for the prayers, they worked.

I’m including a few random photos here, some faces of Mozambique. These are the people that I’m here for, and whom I’ve come to respect and appreciate in a way that I can’t describe just yet. This last one is for all you in the lone star state, thought you’d like to know that you’re represented over here-