Overthinking Out Loud

This lady has been reading my mail. HT: Linda Muse

I had a pretty typical Missionary Mom morning—typical for a first-year language student, that is. Since I'm in my 8 th year of service, it was pretty frustrating! You see, every morning I pray that our steps would be ordered by God , that he would order our day to save us time and cause us to be where He wants us at the right time. This morning Jeff had a meeting with the Big Important National Guy who's in town this week. I slept through our alarm and in our haste to get Jeff out the door to meet Big Important National Guy, I missed my prayers. Jeff took Parker to school and then drove the car to his meeting. We agreed that he would call me if I needed to pick Parker up from school at noon. I realized about 11:00 that I would have to get Parker, as Big Important National Guy and the networking opps that would surround his visit would certainly last most of the day. That's also when I realized that Jeff had both strollers in the car with him. At about that same time a sti...

As many of you know by now, my husband Jeff became Strategy Coordinator for our city of Porto Alegre in February of this year. He has designated September the Month of Prayer for the Gaúcho People. He has produced a series of video shorts, available on DVD for use by churches, Sunday School classes, and small groups during this month. We are asking churches, small groups, and Sunday School classes to dedicate some time either on the Sunday mornings or Wednesday nights during September for a prayer focus for our people. There are 5 short (3-4 minute) DVD clips. We're also making available bookmarks featuring both the city and our team. If you’d like to request these resources (completely free of charge), just email me here with “Video request” in the subject line. Include your mailing address and the number of bookmarks needed and our United States Support Team (USST), that is, Jeff's mom, will send them out to you ASAP. Please prayerfully consider stepping up and coordinating...

Exhausted! That's where I've been these past few months. Our February - June was absolutely gut-wrenchingly hectic. You know, the kind where you spend weeks without a break from the adrenaline of GO-GO-GO. It was largely our own faults--certainly noone else's. Praise God it's behind us and I think we learned a few things about how to not get ourselves in those fixes again. Then, we took a much-needed vacation in the states with our families. It was a great time and I really learned alot and made some decisions that I'm sure I'll be blogging about soon. Now we're back, refreshed, and ready to go at it again! More on that later. . .

I got an email today from a very sincere, well-intentioned volunteer currently on a 2-week mission trip. Apparently, he had been told not to freely distribute Bibles as he ministered in a Muslim-run refugee camp. Deciding that those long-term servants who live and serve and know the area were trying to prevent him from sharing the Gospel, he did it anyway and now the presence of all the missionaries in the area is in danger of being suspended. This guy is so sold-out for Christ. He’s so very sincere. He is so very godly. However, in this instance, he was so very wrong. We have never had a volunteer team’s visit go awry, but the missions journals and discussion groups of missionaries are full, FULL, FULL! of horror stories of well-intentioned volunteers who refused to listen to the resident missionary and ended up destroying much, if not all, of a career’s worth of work in just a week or two. “OH NO!”, you say. “I’m about to go on a volunteer mission trip and I have very sincere intenti...

One of my prayers every morning for myself, my family and friends is that our steps would be ordered by God (from Psalm 37:23), so I frequently find that I have gone to the store that has the cut of meat I need on supersale or that I run into someone I need to speak to. Occasionally, I see a series of events come together and I know that my steps are ordered and my prayer is answered. It’s beginning to happen more and more often, which shouldn’t surprise me, but does. This is the account of one such series. 1st event: Several months ago, our friends the Ellises purchased a piano for their son, Andrew, who at age 16, had been playing on a digital piano and was at the point where he needed a real piano to progress in his study. I had been contemplating putting Blake in Suzuki piano lessons and, when Diane Ellis offered to loan me their digital piano I took that as confirmation that we should. We moved the digital piano to our apartment and Blake began piano lessons in January. I someho...

I got an email yesterday. A potential future missionary wife asked, "What is your life like?" Ever tried to answer that question in a couple of paragraphs? It's hard. Took me a whole day just to realize how simple the answer is: "My life is a lot like that of a housewife in the states." Just like any mom to a preschooler, it can be mind-numbingly repetitive. I'm currently watching Barney plays Radio City Music Hall for the 1,000,000th time in 6 years. Then again, a numb mind can be a good thing sometimes. My life's a little isolated. With laundry to do and kids asleep at 8:30 p.m. (Praise God!), I don't get out much at night. Then again, Jeff's office is here at home so, while he's out during second shift doing church planting activities, he's here during the day. That's really nice and good for the kids, too. Probably the language barrier makes me a little more isolated than I would be in the states, also. I have chosen to make cook...

I got a new toy for my birthday! No, it’s not a Treo or an Ipod, like some other bloggers I know . Remember, it’s summer here. I got an ice cream maker attachment for my KitchenAid mixer! I love using my KitchenAid mixer anyway. It makes me feel like a “real missionary” from the days when every missionary wife had one to grind the family’s peanut butter and make the Sunday morning sausage. It kneads four pizzas worth of dough every Friday afternoon. But this ice cream maker attachment puts it over the top! It’s a bowl with really thick sides and a gel inside. It’s REALLY HEAVY (read, “hard to transport internationally). It lives in the freezer and I can have homemade ice cream in about 4 hours with about 45 minutes worth of work with no ice/rock salt mess. Most of the work is chopping delectable ingredients to put in the ice cream and most of the time is chilling the ingredients and curing the ice cream afterwards. The best thing is that apparently Ben and Jerry had this ice crea...

Somewhere along the way I lost my blog audience. Southern Baptists in the US who pray for missionaries and fellow missionaries around the world have gone elsewhere. In the meantime, my readership has tripled. Why? Because this Daniel fasting is hot stuff. People from all over the western hemisphere are starting their new year with a Daniel fast and need recipes now! Individuals, churches, TV preachers, everyone seems to be into fasting right now. This spiritual discipline that was lost for many years is now being found by the church today. Kool. I did have a few scattered thoughts from all I've heard and read and experienced lately. I heard a TV preacher yesterday give a very elegant (simple and usable) definition of the Daniel Fast: "No meat, No sweets, No grains." I liked it for it's ease of use. I heard of another public figure who fasts one day of each week, one week of each month, and one month of each year. Interesting, especially if you can look at it in a ...

This is my family! From the left, my brother-in-law James, my parents Buddy and Jeanie, Jeff holding Parker, me, Blake, and my in-laws Jim and Jean. We hope you all had a very merry Christmas! Jeff, Blake, Parker and I head back to Brazil on Friday!

Several months ago, God impressed upon me the notion to be very careful how I acted towards others. The Bible says in Galatians 6:7 that whatever we sow (plant), that is what we'll reap (harvest). He impressed upon me the need to pray every day to only sow desireable things in others' lives. I've seen these past months many folks who have harvested undesirable outcomes--sometimes immediately, sometimes years later. Some of these have been very mature believers. Almost all of these people have been totally unaware of what they were planting when they acted the way they did. Some have ripped people off. Then gotten ripped off. Some have tried to silence another's ministry. Their ministry has been silenced. Some missionaries have tried to get others sent home. They are home now. Some missionaries tried to force families to live in unsuitable housing conditions. They then were moved into unsuitable housing conditions. NONE of these people realize how they planted the seed o...

I covet your prayers as I board a plane tomorrow with my two young sons to head "Over the amazon and across the Carribean to Grandmother's house we go . . ." Jeff will follow us on the 20th, but I'll be on my own to get us there on Wednesday. While I'm more worried about in-flight temper tantrums or diaper shortages than hijackings, I have been thinking alot about them lately. My husband had one in his ministry this past week. It's the second one he's faced on the mission field. He handled it so well, with such grace and a Godly attitude. I was so proud of him. While almost inevitable at times, ministry hijackings can be extremely disheartening. The first ministry hijacking I ever saw happened to my mom. My mom had served a small women's prayer group for about 15 years. Every week, without fail, she unlocked the doors of the meeting room, set up the chairs, waited for the other ladies to arrive, and led the meeting. One week, a lady visited. That lady ...

Well, I'm into the last week of my " Daniel Diet ". Sunday, all bets are off. I already have the ingredients set to make that celebratory Chocolate Mousse. You're probably wondering how Thanksgiving went. I don't know exactly how to evaluate or explain, but I'll do my best. It was harder to do this while we were traveling than I thought. We drove about 9 hours to Florianopolis, an island city where all the IMB missionaries from the south of Brazil spend Thanksgiving weekend. Getting there was easy, we made one stop at a truckstop with a buffet with lots of veggies. The Thanksgiving meal was easy (I don't care for turkey and there was nothing chocolate, which helped tremendously). I tried doing what I had suggested doing in my original WWDE post, which is praying as I decide what to eat and not eat and choose accordingly. That worked AMAZINGLY well, as long as I did it. I did this for a couple of days. Then, I started to look for "patterns" and ma...

Some children in Rio created a toy favela (slum) in a vacant lot in their neighborhood. Here is a very interesting article with photos. Apparently, the main benefit to the kids (now older teens) is the opportunity to learn video shooting and production skills from the documentary folks who have come to cover their art. They have begun producing animated videos for Brazil's Nickelodeon channel. Here is a sample of one of their episodes which, at less than 1 minute, is presumably MUCH shorter than the Nickelodeon show.

Or, When a "Foody" Fasts I've been on a fast lately. Jeff went to the states on November 2 for 2 weeks and I couldn't help noticing that that was exactly 40 days from when I leave for the states on December 12. Combine that with my recent interest in fasting and a great little book I read on the subject and I'm off on a 40-day adventure. Today was day 20. I actually started a few days before Jeff left. This was really good because I really needed the moral support those first few days. The plan was the following: 3 days water only. 2 days juice/water. 2 weeks of water, vegetables, whole rice, melba toast. Then I added tea, bread, and some oils (like in peanut butter). The water and veggies only deal is what some call a "Daniel fast," based on Daniel's fasts in the Biblical book of the same name. He and his friends, afraid of eating non-Kosher food in Babylon, restricted their diet to vegetables and water. Later in the book, he went on a three-week fa...

This from our fellow IMB missionaries here in town: Dear prayer warriors, Because of an unfortunate auto accident here in Brazil on Friday, we need to ask for your urgent prayers for a complicated situation. Whether this should be viewed as an attack by the evil one or just unfortunate circumstances of life, we know that God can work on behalf of our and your prayers to resolve this. After having spent three days driving to arrive in Campinas, São Paulo, during which Mark had two very encouraging meetings with Brazilian leaders who are excited about being a part of Project Sedi, Mark was in the process of preparing the studio for doing the beginning taping of the project. He realized that he was dangerously tired, so he asked the pastor who was working with him if he would be willing to drive the car. An unlicensed and undocumented motorcylist ran into the side of the car, and was taken to the hospital with a scraped leg. In Brazil, because the motorcyclist was injured, he becomes...

Shortly after his release from prison and the release of his autobiography, I had the chance to sit down with Jim Bakker at a convention in Los Angeles. I was working for a radio station at the time and convinced the news crew to let me do the interview. I wanted to give Bakker the opportunity to tell his side of the story. I told him how I’d seen his ministry change, from a simple, sincere morning interview program to a media extravaganza complete with Christian shopping malls and time-share condominiums. I opened with the obvious question: “WHAT HAPPENED?!!” He told me that the ministry outgrew his capacity to keep up with it. That, by the end, they were having to raise 1 million dollars a week* just to keep it going. The pressure was tremendous. The focus shifted from the people being reached to the money needed to reach them. I’ve seen ministers rationalize that type of thinking. “We stress X% growth and we count numbers because each number is a soul.” My husband, Jeff , has been w...

Jeff is in the states for two weeks taking a doctoral seminar. I'm here in Porto Alegre with the kids. We've had a really good time so far--and we've past the half way point. Jeff returns on Wednesday. While Jeff has been out, I've been spending lots of time with George . I don't know how many of you have a George Foreman grill, but they can be extremely useful. Especially when you're alone with small children and don't want to cook. George makes grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, hot dogs, hamburgers, toast, steaks. The only drawback is he's a bear to clean. Newer Georges have removable plates that go in the dishwasher -- so don't let this turn you off if you don't own one already. Jeff hates mushroooms, so I've taking the opportunity to eat Portobello mushrooms for supper almost every night. Simple recipe, just spray the mushroom (both sides) with Pam (or brush on oil) and then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Grill. They're great on thi...

A month ago, I posted asking for some ideas of what to get my husband for his birthday. I got some great ideas. He ended up getting an Ipod. He's loving it. I bought it on Ebay and a team brought it in for us. He's got LOTS of really old Petra on it and some man reading various books of the Bible. Honestly, it kind of creeped me out to hear some strange man's voice reading scripture coming out of my computer, but he reads along in his Bible and really enjoys it. I also learned how NOT to buy something on Ebay. See, I actually bought a used Ipod! How embarrassing! But, the memory was twice the size of the one I thought I was getting, so it worked out well. Anyway, now it's come around to my birthday. Jeff is leaving for the states in a week and will get back right before my birthday. The problem is that I don't have the benefit of the US advertising industry to tell me what I want. WHERE ARE COMMERCIALS WHEN YOU REALLY NEED THEM???!!