Well..if you did not know I was out of the country for A WHOLE MONTH! It was really awesome!I was in Brazil and I got to work a this camp called World of Life there in Porte Algre! It was awesome, I got to met people I will be friends with until the day I die!(Which is always a good thing)
So for awhile i bet my stories are going to have something to do with Brazil or people from Brazil, thats kind of where my mind and thoughts are at this point.
We did door to door ministry while we were in Brazil and that is something that I never saw myself doing! People who did that were crazy and imposing and the people doing it would not come in my house! Well While we were out ever single house we walked up to let us in and wanted to talk to us. (and not just because we were Americans a group of Brazilian students go travel to this same town and get the same reaction). This was the first shocker, they knew why we were there and they knew what we wanted to talk about and they always let us in.
We were sent out with partners and a translator,which was scary just by itself...I didn't know what to expect or what I was going to say. We went to maybe 5 or 6 houses and talked to people and they were all amazing periods of time. Just things I never thought to see, hear and people I never thought I was going talk to...I never thought I was going to see Brazil!
There was this one house in particular that we went to and there were two women standing outside and they were talking, with 3 little ones running around playing. Our Translator asked the ladies if we could enter their gate and come talk and they said yes. One lady was the next door neighbor and she left when we got there and the other lady lead us into the house. We get in and she asked us to sit down and we started talking to her about Jesus. We asked her if she was saved and she said yes..she even went and got her certificate that said she was baptized to prove to us that she wasn't lying. We let her know that we believed her and we were glad that she had found salvation and she was a believer and so on.
Then she went on to say that she didn't ever want to go back to church again..as she said this my translators face began to look very confused because the things she told us about her faith did not match with the idea of never going to church again. She continued her story: She went to a church that was in the town she used to live in and he grandson(one of the little ones that was running around when we got to the house earlier) and the pastor kicked her out because he was distracting to the service and made her stand outside.
She was so hurt and embarrassed that she did not want to go to the church again. So since she has stopped going to the church (since the beginning of the year) There have been some serious rains. These rains have been flooding the area and ruining the crop (tomatoes) which is the only source of income for most of the residents around. As she told us what happen at church she concluded that the rains and ruining of the crop where all her fault. God was punishing her and her family because she had not been going to church (not to mention her son who worked with the tomatoes had a son and was not married and the women lived with them). This story really hit me in the heart. My family has gone through so many church hurts, but we always had each other and my parents (because of the way they were raised) always keep going and looking for church homes. But to be in a community where you have nothing and churches are supposed to be coming and bringing you hope, but really only bringing you down, thats just unbelievable!
She spent her days in that house blaming herself for the rain coming down every night and for not going to church even though the church did not welcome her. This upset me, how can the church come into a community where they need them the most and forget how they should treat people.
This is a recurring theme in my blog I think....CHRISTIANS ARE YOU REALLY TREATING PEOPLE WITH LOVE? Are you really going and doing the job that God tells us too...or making people's heart hard to the message of God because we come in the name of Jesus and treat them wrong??
Good news is we prayed for her and we got to apologize for the way that preacher treated her. We invited her and her grandson to church for a kids service and they came...WHICH WAS AWESOME! God really worked in her heart and H taught me a really good lesson, that I will never forget.
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