M is for Mommy

It was Spring of 1989, Charlotte, NC. The business establishment doesn't really matter as I'm sure it's long gone by now. We had traveled to see They Might Be Giants play a show that evening. Now, at that time, to my 21-year-old eyes, those guys looked SO OLD. I remember wondering where my college radio crowd would be in 20 years. How would we age? Would we ever really grow up? Would we make suburbanite families? Would our kids have damaged hearing because we dragged them all over the southeast to see our favorite bands play? Would we ever have real jobs? What would it all look like? Fast forward to Spring of 2008. I have my answers, at least a lot of them. Those of us who aren't Baptist missionaries, or Episcopalian priests, or high-powered D.C. bigwigs, or the Hasbro VP in charge of all the Star Wars toys, or Hootie, are doing this . Cool. Maybe you can't go back to Constantinople. . . . . . but Istanbul's pretty cool, too.

Eric and Ramona Reese are IMB missionaries serving in Rio de Janeiro. They have a beautiful rapport with Brazilians. They love Brazilians, the Brazilians know it and love them back. One thing I didn't realize about the Reese's ministry is the dangers they face in the slums of Rio. The IMB recently featured their ministry in this video short that is part of their Commission Stories series. HT: Pascal and Amy Stowell

Recently, we had the opportunity through our mission to request some college students to come and work here in Metro PoA for a semester. In an admirable attempt to make us fuddy-duddy missys seem more hip, hop, and happening to the "Millenial Generation," we got the following primer on how to word our job requests: What are they [today's students] looking for? • For ministry that will help people both spiritually and physically. They really want to see people helped in both ways. • For an opportunity to minister as they see Christ ministering in the N.T. • For the opportunity to build relationships with both the people they will work among and with the missionaries they will work along side of. • For a request that sounds less like a project and more like an experience. • For ministry reflecting a real cause and a real need - not statistics but a need. • For specific types of ministry. They respond to ministry with orphans, a chance to help hurting people or projects that...

Here is an update to yesterday's prayer request. Jeff wrote it early this morning before leaving to be with the team. Thank you so much for your prayers. We’ll write with more details later, but suffice it to say that your prayers are already making a major difference. The team did manage to get to the city where they were working yesterday without major difficulty, and even though we were down two translators, everything ended up meshing together in the end. The team led about 29 Bible studies yesterday, and many indicated a desire to follow Christ, including the president of the neighborhood association, who was like ripe fruit falling off into our hands – it was a wonderful thing to see. The kickoff service for the new church plant was a success, with a number of visitors present to sing and hear a story from the Bible. In short, God turned many of the difficulties on their heads and brought blessings. However, we still need your prayers – there is a lot of week left. We appea...

Greetings from Porto Alegre. We would like for you to pray for the work of our volunteer teams from Oviedo, Florida and Belgrade, Montana, who are currently here working with us. They arrived on Saturday, and will be with us throughout the week working to evangelize alongside a number of our national church planters. We are only one and a half days into the trip and we are already experiencing major resistance from the forces of evil. Translators are getting sick, Jeff is suddenly sick and has barely slept, there are several other major problems going on, and to top it all off, and we just got notice that the main interstate highway which is the only route to the neighborhood in Novo Hamburgo where we will be working to start a church from scratch today is blocked both ways because of an accident. This is interesting, as the last time this same group from Florida came to work in the city of Novo Hamburgo, the exact same road was blocked both ways on the very morning that the team was...

I just love ITunes. Especially free Itunes. Anyway, I was searching tonight to see if VeggieTales had a podcast and found this . Phil Vischer speaks to Seattle Pacific University students on what happens when God give you a dream, fulfills it, and the dream dies. 21 minutes, given sometime in late 2004 or early 2005. It actually makes me a little nervous, since we're coming in the middle of the story of Joseph in Parker's nightly Bible reading (he had the dreams last night, and was sold into slavery tonight) and then I end up listening to this. I think I'll go check to make sure the children are still breathing. . .