Name: Jord
Date: Fri Jan 2 16:33:28 2004
For most of December our preparations at Casa Joaquina seemed to me like
an athletic event: lots of action, quick decisions made on the fly,
fatigue, running, pushing, encouraging one another. It was a lot of fun
and I concluded�partly to justify the fact that I did nothing else in
celebration of Christmas�that collaborating intensively this way was a
Christmas gift Debbie and I gave to one another. In recognition, Debbie
tied a red ribbon through two of the big, antique, telescoping, Casa
Joaquina front door keys and put them with the other gifts Christmas
morning. �Thank you, Sweetheart! It�s just what I wanted!� she gushed
gracefully. But when I had to return to work right after the presents
were opened I began to feel sorry for myself. I felt like we had played
enough extra innings. I wanted to go home to bed. Then at 10 p.m.
Friday the 26th, with 10 hours to go before our first guests were due and
8 hours of work left, I used the toilet as a ladder to caulk around the
new bath fan. But toilets only make good ladders when they�re bolted to
the floor, and this one had been moved from its place so that the dryer
could be installed. When it crashed to the floor, in order to describe
my feelings to Debbie, I borrowed language from my adolescence. I keep
hoping I will forget that language. Anyway, the home store was open �til
11, so we pieced together another toilet and got a few minutes of sleep
before the guests arrived. ##### There�s still plenty to do, but the
house turned out very nicely, thanks to Debbie. She did a spectacular
job coordinating a thousand things from window treatments to walking
tours to world wide web access. The guests seemed pleased. Now we will
see what being in business in Lisbon means for our lives in Braga. I
already feel disconnected. I missed time at Vivarte in December and only
got to church here once. My hope is that Casa Joaquina will subsidize
and leave time for us to be involved in other ministries. We trust God
will show us what is reasonable. ##### Our Seattle friend Kurt Dale
wrote a warm note in his family�s Christmas card to us, but something in
it brought to mind a vision�which I suspect will be for me the abiding
image of this Christmas�of Kurt standing on a beach, watching us sail
away in the summer of 2001. He stands there, holding his daughter Julia,
until the boat becomes a tiny spec in the distance, then disappears.
Still he stands, watching the spot on the horizon where he last saw us,
as if we might reappear. After a while, he sits down and he and Julia
play in the sand, every now and then looking back up to the spot, to see
if anything is there. They play a long time, while something pulls at
their hearts. Finally, they stand and stretch and notice the time, and
have to go. Sometimes they return to the spot but now, after two and a
half years, our faces do not come so easily to mind. It was a warm note
and I know Kurt loves me, but I have the feeling my face may not so
easily come to mind now. Thanks be to God our comfort, who gives us
friends in the first place from whom absence is an affliction. #####
Please forgive my absence from here. I�ve missed being in touch this
way. Blessed week to you.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Sun Jan 11 16:14:16 2004
As soon as the family from Indiana checked out of Casa Joaquina last week
I hurried back down to continue work on the new downstairs bathroom that
we had hoped to have ready for this group and that we really hope to have
ready for the guests coming in February. I�m digging a hole to put in a
pump for reasons that are of no general interest. My excavations slowed
and eventually came to a stop when I began to encounter what at first
appeared to be tree roots, but soon turned out to be the roots of no tree
I had ever seen before, a tree with spinal discs and ball-and-socket
joints. After realizing that I had more likely met an Owen than an oak,
and that what�s more I may have met Owen�s entire family, I thought
perhaps maybe, in a city that is thousands of years old, with lots of
people living and dying all the time, this sort of thing is normal. (It
isn�t normal in Seattle.) So we called a friend, the one we knew would
say, �Forget it. It�s no big deal. It happens all the time,� if anyone
would, and instead she said, �We�ll put the kids to bed and come right
over. You don�t want to face this alone.� So instead of the anticipated
hard labor, we spent a relaxing evening with friends and about twelve
police officers and police photographers. A couple of squad cars
squeezed into tiny �dead-end� Rua Joaquina so none of the neighbors could
get out. The last officers left a little after midnight after we had
made a date with an archeologist who wanted to attend the �remaining�
excavations. The following day I saw my neighbor, a very friendly man
who has gone out of his way to make us feel welcome, washing his car, and
I went out to apologize for the commotion and the traffic jam. �Sorry
about that,� I explained, �but I�m digging downstairs in order to put in
a pump and I found . . . � �. . . the bones,� he finished my sentence
for me. He explained that Rua Joaquina is behind a church and in the old
days, that�s where they put the cemetery. �We all know about the bones
but we don�t tell anyone when we dig �em up because everyone makes such a
fuss.� So it may not be normal in Lisbon, but it�s normal on Rua
Joaquina. We haven�t figured out yet how to make this a selling point on
the website. ##### Another nice thing about Lisbon for us is Sam
Vieira, son of Elizabeth and Armando Azevedo, who you may have read about
here on June 15 after we met them at a prayer summit, and brother of Luke
Vieira, who you may have read about here August 25. Sam is Drex�s age
and, as the son of an American mother and a Portuguese father, he is the
only third grader we know who shares Drex�s culture. Drex has not
described the sensation of being with a peer who moves comfortably back
and forth between Portuguese and English but he clearly enjoys it�he gets
almost as excited about being with Sam as he used to get about being with
his friends in Seattle. Please ask God to direct us as we make plans
affecting Drex�s emotional well-being. ##### Now I�d like to ask your
advice: We pray that Casa Joaquina will be a blessing to visitors. One
way it may be is through books. Imagine you�re in Europe on holiday for
a week or two. You�re not in Europe every day and you�ve been looking
forward to it and want to get as much out of it as you can, so your mind
may be open in a way it is not ordinarily. What book or books would you
like to happen upon to keep you company when you�re not sight-seeing?
What book might God use to speak to our visitors? Don�t just give us the
obvious titles to help us build our little library. We don�t want to
overwhelm people. C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton will have their places
on the shelves, but tell us too through what books God has spoken to you
softly, perhaps indirectly. Thanks for your help. ##### You are very
kind to pray with us and for us. May the Lord bless you this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Sun Jan 18 13:57:21 2004
Drex has decided to be an engineer when he grows up. He got an excellent
report card this week. Debbie had a conference with his teacher, who is
very pleased with his work. Thanks be to God. ##### I took the
Habitat truck for its annual inspection this week. We don�t expect to
pass these inspections the first time. We just go and get the list of
things they want us to fix and then take the list and the vehicle to
Senhor Ezekiel, our mechanic. As always, after Senhor Ezekiel had
finished, I returned to the inspector. Something incomprehensible in
Portuguese was still wrong with the left rear brake, but the inspector
said he would give me the prize, a paper window badge that wards off
police for twelve months, and told me I should take the truck back to the
mechanic and have him take care of the brake. �Suuure,� I said in my
most sincere Portuguese. As I punched out the badge and prepared to slip
it into its little clear plastic window sleeve, I thought to myself, �No
way I�m taking this truck back in. I couldn�t explain the problem if I
wanted to. I�ve got my badge; I�m golden for twelve months.� At that
instant the badge slipped from my hand and disappeared on its way towards
the asphalt of the wet, dimly lit parking lot. I couldn�t tell whether
it had fallen to the ground or inside the open door of the truck. After
searching earnestly for several minutes I prayed, �OK, Lord, I�ll take
the truck back in. May I please have my badge?� but even as I prayed it
I knew I was lying. After several more minutes of searching, that
included a lot of thinking about how I was going to explain the situation
to the inspector and quite a bit of crawling around on my belly beneath
the truck on the rain-soaked, cigarette-butt-littered pavement, I finally
prayed, �OK! OK! I�ll go. I mean it.� This time I meant it. I looked
in front of the tire in a place I had already looked eight times and
there was the badge, lying on the pavement. �Cute,� I prayed. I went
back inside and asked the inspector to write Senhor Ezekiel a note,
explaining the problem. I�m intending to drop the truck off with him
this week. ##### We should pray like children. Our Heavenly Father,
Who is always with us, has encouraged us to ask Him for what we want, in
order that He might pour out His blessings in response to our prayers.
Some of this is serious work. Some of it is play. My new goal is to
pray for everyone I see, to make my eyes agents of blessing (Matthew
6:22). In a crowd, I start with a general blessing, and then I go after
people individually. Sometimes it�s easy to see what to pray for.
Sometimes you have to leave it up to God. I pray for everything: weight
loss, hair restoration, salvation, marriages, healings. When I get to
heaven I want to find thousands of people I�ve never met who are there or
who were blessed in response to my prayers. Why not? Power should be
going out from us, just as it did from Jesus (Luke 8:46, John 14:12,
Galatians 2:20). ##### I was down in Lisbon again Friday and Saturday
to finish the excavations below Casa Joaquina in the company of two nice
archeologists, who attended because it is still illegal to throw out
human remains with the trash. It is their ethical responsibility to
oversee the disposal of people�s bones. That seems good. They guessed
the bones are from the 17th or 18th century. We found a couple of heads,
which was creepy. I kept a few pieces of broken pottery, which they
guessed to be from the same era, as souvenirs. Also at Casa Joaquina, a
single daffodil popped out of a pot on the terrace that we had put in
front of the dryer vent. It was a dirty trick to play on the daffodil,
who came up expecting to find March, but set against the gray cityscape,
the tiny spot of sun was like a song. I sent Debbie a phone text message
saying it felt like spring in Lisbon. She messaged back unamused from
Braga that she could see her breath indoors. It feels like the ground is
rumbling beneath us, moving us ineluctably towards Lisbon. ##### Thanks
be to God who has given us His Son and along with Him has graciously
given us all things (Romans 8:32). And thanks to you for asking Him to
keep it up. Blessed week to you.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Sun Jan 25 16:35:31 2004
We�ve heard from Austin that Susana, the eight year old in Lisbon who was
near death from Beh�et�s related meningitis a couple of months is
recovering at home, praise be to God. Thank you very much for praying
for her. Please keep it up. ##### It is not clear what we will do in
April, when my contract with Vivarte ends. Would you please ask God to
make His will clear to us? ##### As always, we are very thankful for your
prayers. May the Lord bless you in surprising ways this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Mon Feb 2 14:18:15 2004
All of the autonomy and significance of a sovereign nation, which in the
United States seem to derive their immensity and grandeur from the vast
landscape from which they emanates, here resides along a narrow strip of
rolling soil a little bigger than New Jersey. The trip from Braga
through Porto to Lisbon, which takes about four hours, is to the
Portuguese person what the trip from Los Angeles through Chicago to New
York and Washington, D.C. is to the American. Just as the American on
such a journey is moved by the beauty, complexity, simplicity, routine,
toil, dirt, centuries and other resources that go into the making of a
country by a people working out their salvation under the mighty hand of
God, so is the Portuguese person moved, only in a fraction of the time.
Contemplating this, I moved through the Portuguese countryside Saturday
morning on my way to work on Casa Joaquina by train, and the mist and
rain that obscured the view and moved all but the hardiest creatures
indoors seemed the perfect accompaniment to my thoughts: �Weather like
this and land like this, are not for sissies. A lot of real living has
been going on for a real long time on those hills and in those fields,
and in those stone houses, with their roofs that sag beneath the weight
of their heavy tiles and the combined histories of the generations who
have sheltered there.� Steel towers a hundred feet high carrying
electrical cables paralleled the tracks half a mile away, many crowned by
nests six feet in diameter. In some, the storks were at home: ��Fly
south for the winter,� he says. �It will be warm and sunny,� he says.
Why couldn�t we winter in the Algarve, like Dave and Anne Swallow?
That�s what I�d like to know.� ##### Don�t bother trying to visit
Debbie�s website, www.portugueseroots.com, today. It�s clogged with
traffic since the Portuguese read about it in the cover story of the
Sunday magazine insert in Expresso, the country�s most highly regarded
newspaper. That cover shows Debbie, Drex and me walking in front of
Braga�s main cathedral. The article, for which we and the story of
Debbie�s discovery of my Portuguese heritage are window dressing, is
about genealogical research. Several of Drex�s friends brought
copies to school for autographs but I should be able to get away with
relative anonymity, since the article identifies me as Jason (a not
uncommon mistake for Jordan) McDaniel (my mother�s maiden name). �No,
no, it just looked like me,� I�ll say. ##### Please pray with us this
week for the health, comfort and encouragement of our 80 year-old
neighbor, Francisco, who is in serious condition in the hospital, and for
Eliza, the wife of a different Francisco (one of our pastors), who is
close to death with cancer. We�re praying that she may be healed even
now. ##### Thank you for your prayers. The Lord bless you this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: The Webmistress
Date: Wed Feb 4 10:56:12
2004
EXPRESSO ARTICLE. OK, ok, ok. Here's a quick translation,
including photos. My favorite part is the subtle, not-so-kind comparison
they make between Seattle and Braga. (Seattle=high-tech; Braga=NOT)
Point your browser to http://www.PortugueseRoots.com/expresso2004jan.html
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Tue Feb 10 15:39:37 2004
Back and forth, back and forth from Lisbon I go, almost every weekend,
getting Casa Joaquina ready for guests due to arrive on the 16th. And
always, along with a backpack packed filled with clothes, work clothes,
and enough books to make the most of the 8 hours of train travel, I carry
a sack full of tools weighing 150 pounds, only to discover that the one
thing I really needed I left in Braga. I carry the same sack of tools
all over Braga these days, now that we have opened our second Vivarte
location, in another social housing neighborhood. I�m using the tools to
make games and puzzles of wood with the kids. Tramping about the old
city, the sack on my back, hand saws protruding, another bag of ordinary
work and school stuff slung over a shoulder and miscellaneous materials,
sporting equipment and supplies in either hand, I feel like some sort of
medieval tinker or vagabond. What sort of impression are people getting
of Americans? Speaking of Vivarte, we are having difficulty getting and
keeping teachers. With the new space, our need for teachers has doubled.
Please ask God to raise up Godly artists, men and women, who will come to
love and teach our kids. Also, please ask Him to give us wisdom and
grace as we discuss how best to maintain an atmosphere where artists can
teach and young people can learn. The young people we work with are not
accustomed to things like quiet, independent activity and respect for one
another�s work, and at times they do not seem anxious to learn.
Actually, that�s a misleadingly diplomatic understatement. The
neighborhood motto is, �Partem Tudo,� (Break Everything). And that is
generally what a lot of them try to do. This can be discouraging for
those of us who really love them and repulsive to those who would merely
like to teach them. Finally, with respect to Vivarte, please pray for
our first regular Christian youth gathering, scheduled for Saturday,
February 21. We plan to have plenty of music and singing, a little bit
of Biblical conversation, and time in small groups. We hope to leave our
denominational differences at the door and labor together�Protestants and
Catholics, Evangelicals and Pentecostals, Baptists and Methodists�in
support of the kids. This will require an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
##### Francisco, the neighbor we asked you to pray for last week, died
Saturday morning. I was praying that Francisco would get better. Going
to be with the Lord, though better by far (Philippians 1:23), is not what
I had in mind. People often ask, �What about when God doesn�t answer
prayers?� Jesus said, �I will do whatever you ask in My name, so that
the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask Me for anything in My
name, and I will do it,� (John 14:13-14). No sense arguing with Him, but
there certainly appear to be times when He does not make good on that
promise. What can we say? Well, it�s possible we have more to learn
about praying. Also, creating and operating the universe must be a
complicated job, and it may be that things are at work that we do not
completely understand. Finally, we cannot know how much worse things
might have been had we not prayed. All of which adds up to a need for
more and better praying. Please pray for Francisco�s widow, Rosa, who we
love, and who has been caring for him for many decades, and will need to
find other things to do. ##### Thank you for laboring with us in
prayer. The Lord bless you this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Mon Feb 16 16:11:45 2004
In America, the Jackson family alone makes more news in a day than all
the newsmakers in Portugal make in month. To give you a sense of how
starved the Portuguese people are for news, I�ll tell you that one of the
big three broadcasting companies called today, after having read the
article in the Expresso, asking if we will come to Porto for a television
or radio interview about our decision to immigrate from the United
States. We are praying about it. The thing that impressed me most about
the article in the Expresso was the fact that it was so clearly the work,
the art, of the writer, Cristina Carvalho. Cristina put together her
article, to serve her purposes�which is not to say her purposes were
ignoble, only that by consenting to take part we were agreeing to be
incorporated into her art. Even the part of the article that talked
about us was not about us; it was about what Cristina wanted to convey.
Part of us wants to say yes to the TV or radio interview just to be nice.
Part of us wants to say yes so that we can use it as an opportunity to
witness to God�s lovingkindness towards us. But part of us knows that
what ends up being part of the interview will not be under our control
and that those who do control it will have their own agenda. Part of us
remembers that most second graders speak Portuguese better than I do and
that part of us does not look forward to the ridicule that exposure will
provoke. The bright side, of course, is that I will not understand most
of the ridicule. The whole thing is completely trivial, so please do not
waste any time praying about it yourself after you finish this paragraph.
Your will be done, o God. ##### I began work on my first book over the
weekend. The book is called Little Lettuces, or Alfacinhos, as people
from Lisbon are called, which is an allusion to James Joyce�s collection
of short stories called Dubliners, which is the only thing he ever wrote
that I can understand. In Little Lettuces, as in Dubliners, we will get
to know the people of the city, but there the similarity ends. In Little
Lettuces, we will be getting acquainted with the people of Lisbon by way
of its statues and monuments. Lisbon is packed with statues. I�ll bet
there are fifty or more, spread out all over town. Who are these guys?
(And they are all guys). How did they get here? What�s the breakdown?
And aside from the achievements that got them bronzed, what sorts of
fellows were they, really? Did they have to sacrifice ordinary things
like wives and children in pursuit of acclaim? Were they nice guys or
just driven? And based on what we learn from questions like these, we�ll
look at the question, what does a guy have to do to live a life that
warrants a statue, and in particular, a statue in Lisbon? Does a
foreigner have a chance? At what point does a fellow need to put aside
ordinary pleasures and pasttimes if one is to become statuesque? I
envision a whole new field of study, complete with university degree
programs: Statuistics, the study of what it takes to become a statue. It
only makes sense: all the other degree programs are merely means towards
the end of Statuistics. If you do really well in poli sci, or physics or
computer science, maybe, someday, you end up a statue somewhere. Why not
just study to the test? Decide where you�d like to be a statue, study
what the precedents and requirements are, and get �em done. Why, a
fellow might retire, a statue, at forty, assuming he only wants to stand
in front of a library in a small town. As we walk around Lisbon, a thing
I love to do, we�ll also get to know some of the people who are living
and working at the feet of these famous guys and find out what they�re
thinking, of 21st century life in the corner of Europe, fame, and how
they�d like to be remembered, among other things. I�ll write the first
couple of chapters, about a couple of statues within a short walk of our
house, and you can send them to all your publishing friends so that they
can give me a nice contract and a little advance, and I can take time
from my many other lucrative ventures in order to write it. ##### In
Portugal, cleaning up after your dog is prohibited by law. It is
believed that canine feces ward off evil spirits, and not without reason:
only the most intrepid spirits will return after setting foot here. The
Portuguese used to pick up after their dogs, but then in the 8th century,
the Moors invaded and found nothing to distract them from the burgeoning
countryside, and so they stayed here happily for hundreds of years. Then
the tourists conquered the Moors, and the Portuguese, who had learned
much, realized that conventional warfare would not suffice. In the 20th
century, the invention of the waffle sole and wall to wall carpeting
greatly enhanced the effectiveness of the new strategy. Many victims
don�t notice they�re hit until they reach the back bedroom. At first,
the newcomer might be shocked by the prevalence on Portuguese sidewalks
of dog waste in all stages of decay. It appears to be always early
autumn in a forest of ca-ca trees. After the initial surprise, however,
most people come to appreciate the sagacity of the Portuguese plan,
scrape off their shoes, and take their business to Spain. ##### Praise
God from Whom all blessings flow! Thank you for praying with us and for
us. The Lord bless you this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Tue Feb 24 08:54:51 2004
Debbie generally does not care for poetry, but she likes this poem,
penned especially for her in the Casa Joaquina guestbook by bestselling
author Valerie Martin, (Italian Fever; Salvation: Scenes from the Life of
St. Francis), who, along with Margaret Atwood and their respective
husbands, checked out this Monday morning: �In all our travels/ we�ve
never seen a/ casa so comfy/ as Joaquina.� Debbie emailed her poem to
Francis Mayes (Under the Tuscan Sun) who had asked whether the house
would be quiet enough for her to write. Ms�s Martin and Mayes are
acquaintances, perhaps as a result of having both lived in and written
about Italy at length, and Ms. Martin�s testimony was sufficient to
persuade Ms. Mayes and her husband to make a reservation for March.
Praise God for bringing us renters!
--------------------------------------------------
Name: debk
Date: Wed Mar 3 17:23:58 2004
Have we mentioned that every penny of Austin's $10,000+ medical bills
(resulting from her Beh�et's flare in the USA last year) was waived?
Every doctor, lab, clinic and hospital agreed to completely forgive all
charges. Thank you, Lord.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Fri Mar 5 02:21:16 2004
In the summer of 2002, Stan Arrollado traveled from his home in
Huntington Beach, California, to Braga, Portugal, to be part of a Habitat
for Humanity Global Village team that was renovating the home of Dona
Joaquina and her family. Stan was an enormous asset to that team, full
of the Holy Spirit and willingness and cheer. By the time the trip ended,
he was also full of love for Sandra Costa, Habitat�s volunteer
coordinator. In the summer of 2003, Stan and Sandra were married, and
Stan left his life in Los Angeles and moved to Braga. As everyone knows,
couples in their first year of marriage face many challenges, largely
because they come from two very different family cultures. Words like
�love� mean one thing in your home, and may mean something very different
in the home across the street. It stands to reason, therefore, that Stan
and Sandra would be facing a particularly challenging time right now. It
has been so challenging that Stan has been staying at our house for some
time now, and the future of Stan and Sandra�s marriage is extremely
uncertain. This is an SOS, or perhaps I should say, SOM, prayer request.
Please, please pray that God will do everything necessary to save their
marriage.
�The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, that shines
brighter and brighter until the full day,� the Bible says, (Proverbs
4:18), and I feel as if the sun is coming up upon my life in Portugal
after a very long night. This is because I am really understanding what
people are saying and I am to the point where I can convey a lot of what
I�d like to say. This has meant that I have been having some rich
conversations, and I am very thankful. One of those conversations
occurred yesterday with Anabela Pereira, my boss, the executive director
of Funda��o Bomfim, the foundation that operates Vivarte. We talked
about our vision for Vivarte as a means of sharing the love of God and
the Gospel of Jesus Christ with children, teenagers, their families,
artists, teachers and volunteers from all over Europe and the world.
(We�ve had volunteers from England, Hungary, Poland, Greece, America, and
Japan). She said she�d like to renew my contract for one more year.
That means we can stay at least another year. Thanks be to God.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Sun Mar 7 15:37:37 2004
In the midst of running around Casa Joaquina yesterday morning getting it
ready to show to a potential renter I lost my patience and snapped at
Drex. It was just the sort of small, erosive incident that makes all the
difference in the world between growing up in a safe place where one can
flourish in the light of God�s love and growing up in constant fear that
one of the people you need desperately may at any moment bite off your
head. We like to refer to these things as �No big deal.� I felt lousy.
Driving home, I said to Drex, �Thank God He loves us and forgives us,
even though we sometimes behave badly and raise our voices at our sons.�
�There�s nothing like being forgiven,� Drex said. Amen. ##### A
frightening cultural thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago: It was
mid-afternoon, and I wanted some caffeine, which is not an unusual
sensation for me around two or three o�clock. But today something was
different . . . what was it? . . . Then, suddenly, to my surprise and
dismay, I realized that what I really wanted was not a tall steaming cup
of strong, black, aromatic, American-style coffee, with a few bubbles
from the pour arrayed in a crescent lingering at the edge and the ceiling
fan reflected in it�s glassy ebony surface, but a caffeine injection from
a tiny Portuguese toy cup that I would hold with three fingers and throw
back in three sips and thirty seconds. Next thing you know I�ll have
trouble conjugating English verbs. ##### Debbie has become virtually an
internet pastor to a church of Beh�et�s sufferers who congregate in an
online chat-room on Saturday evenings. Only problem is, most of them are
in the United States, anywhere from five to eight hours behind us, so it
is not unusual for their lively services to go until 5 a.m., our time.
Last night, another person arrived to lead the group around 1 a.m., but
Debbie stayed until nearly 5 anyway, just because they were all having so
much fun. A lot of these folks are in pain, isolated, and depressed,
having been told by everyone including their doctors for years that they
are hypochondriacs. Praise God that that Debbie can be an encouragement
and helpful source of information. ##### Thank you for walking with us
and praying with us. May the Lord bless you abundantly this week (John
10:10).
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Sun Mar 14 16:10:45 2004
The massacres coincided eerily here in Iberia Thursday, so that on Friday
the front of every newspaper was covered with blood from Madrid and the
back of every newspaper was covered with blood from the Passion of the
Christ, which opened in theatres just a few hours after the explosions.
Not only did the two events look very similar, it was interesting to
consider their connection, the attacks on Thursday having a hand in
necessitating the attack on Good Friday. One of my many reactions to the
movie, which I saw Friday night, was wondering for how much of the blood
shed in that Roman courtyard I have been responsible, which of those
little pieces of bone or shards of glass had my name on it? On the other
hand, is there any reason to hope that when I allow God to work through
me as an instrument of His love I might somehow diminish ever so slightly
the suffering that was necessary, enabling Jesus to say, �It is
finished,� (John 19:30), a fraction of a second earlier than He might
have otherwise? ##### Lots of good things are happening at Vivarte. It
is very common these days for our little space to be a hive of activity,
with children and teenagers busily working on a variety of projects with
the help of professors, creative assistants and volunteers. Some of the
kids literally sing praise songs as they work! Working alongside these
young people gives us lots of opportunities to affirm them, through our
words and actions, and to communicate to them that they are precious to
God and have been specially gifted by Him. The same holds true for our
professors and volunteers: through prayer and the leading of the Holy
Spirit we hope to create an atmosphere where all the people who work with
us will get a sense of God�s love for them. But Manuela Quintaneiro, the
psychologist who has overseen the project, is leaving at the end of this
month. Her replacement is being sought. I will be taking on more
management responsibility. Please pray for Manuela, that God will bless
her in the work she has ahead, and ask Him to raise up just the right
person to replace her. Also, pray that I will be able to communicate
lovingly and effectively with everyone involved. ##### Both Austin and
Drex have been taking a food supplement for some time now that seems to
be significantly diminishing their Beh�et�s symptoms. Thanks be to God!
##### You are more than champions for praying for us (Romans 8:37). May
the Lord lead you forth in triumph this week (2 Corinthians 2:14).
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Mon Mar 29 04:59:34 2004
The clothesline attached to the second floor of our house runs up and out
across the backyard to a 5 meter mast at the back of the garden.
Saturdays we wash the bed sheets, and if the sun is shining, I love to
hang them out to dry. As I attach the feet of the sheets to the line,
the top, the part you�ll pull up around your nose when you go to bed,
brushes through the tangle of intensely fragrant flowering jasmine that
climbs the stair rail to the second story door. Then the sheets take
off, gliding past the persimmon tree and out into the wind. Exhilarated,
they billow out like sails, going from white to gold in the sun and
casting crazy shadows on the lawn below. Later, lying down to sleep, it
is impossible to mistake them for sheets that have been through the
dryer. They remain exhilarated. The wind and the sun and the jasmine,
which they have absorbed, they return to you. They�re substantial and
cool and gentle, not hot and harassed and thin and worn and over dry like
sheets from the dryer. As if God Himself has made your bed (Psalm 127:2).
##### Some of the transitions our children make from one stage of
development to the next are greeted with unmitigated joy. Such a
transition is the transition out of diapers. Others are more ambiguous.
Yesterday Drex got tired of waiting for me to read to him, so he picked
up the book we were reading together, the Pearls of Lutra, by Brian
Jacques, and discovered that he could just as easily read it himself.
When he demonstrated his discovery, I was reminded of seeing young
children recite Martin Luther King�s �I have a dream� speech from memory:
such big words coming out of such a small person! It gives one hope.
But in the contorted positions I have assumed with my children for
purposes of reading together I have found some of the greatest joys of my
life! And now I am nearly finished. ##### Maybe I can find children
with whom to read in Angola. Plans are being laid at our church for a
program called CESTA, which means �basket,� in Portuguese, and stands for
Constru��o, Educa��o, Saude (Health), Testamunho (Christian witness), and
Agricultura. A guiding principle is that CESTA will not arrive recipe in
hand wanting to implement its own solutions to Angola�s problems, but
will work alongside local people long term, helping them implement their
own solutions. When I see the photographs of the conditions that exist I
want intensely to be part of the work. The other people involved would
like me to lead Constru��o, the construction team. The only reason I
imagine that anything good could come of that leadership is that all
things are possible with God (Mark 10:27). The array of obstacles to my
participation is vast, beginning with the $1500 cost of traveling there
this summer with the leaders of the other four areas in order to
formulate more specific plans, and including the fact that I do not
envision moving to Angola. Please ask God to direct us. ##### God
bless you for loving us and praying for us. May He fill your life to
overflowing with His Holy Spirit this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Sun Apr 4 16:09:39 2004
The Portuguese are very proud of their �Age of Discoveries,� that part of
the 15th and 16th centuries when Portuguese explorers were establishing
the original worldwide web. We are praying that the 21st century will go
down in history as the Portuguese �Age of Rediscovery� of the Good News
of Jesus Christ, the message that ennobles people of every tribe and
nation who put their trust in the Living God. Please pray with us and
pray that in the midst of the familiar music and rituals of Holy Week the
people of Portugal see and hear the new things that God is doing (Isaiah
42:9). ##### Thanks for praying for the �Amigos do Cristo� meetings
we�re having every other Sunday evening at Vivarte to encourage our new
believers�and anyone else who wants to come�in their Christian faith.
I�ve just returned from one and it was great. We had twelve kids ranging
in age from 9 to 16, singing and asking questions and raising difficult
issues and generally showing interest in the things of God. May He
continue to direct us as we try to cultivate these little seedlings
(Matthew 13:3-9, 18-23). ##### Debbie�s mom is with us, filling Drex�s
emotional tank to overflowing. It is a great blessing to have her.
##### Thank you very much for praying for us. Blessed Passover.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Sun Apr 18 12:01:34 2004
I took Drex and a friend of his to a dinosaur exhibit in Lisbon Friday.
I was impressed with how happy the carnivores look, on the one hand, and,
on the other hand, how melancholy seem the herbivores. This is because
the carnivores were actually the morning creatures of prehistory. They
rose early and hungry and set about devouring their neighbors, which
naturally evolved into a certain buoyancy of spirit, which is why they�re
always smiling. These dinosaurs evolved over millions of years into
chief executive officers and employees of the IRS. Meanwhile, for the
dinosaurs who slept late, after the disheartening discovering that
several of their number were missing, there was nothing left to eat but
plants, which further lowered their spirits and their metabolisms. These
dinosaurs were the ancestors of economists and all mutant forms. The
boys enjoyed the exhibit and emerged hungry, so I took them directly to
McDonald�s for some meat. ##### If you�re on the Beh�et�s team as we
are, two things you don�t want are neurological involvement and eye
involvement. It�s much nicer when your panoply of symptoms concentrates
itself closer to the ground, even if it does render you immobile. You�re
in the big leagues when it gets into your head. Reports of blindness
within forty-eight hours of the onset of eye irritation have a way of
making your meals seem a little bland. So it was with some alarm that we
found both Austin and Drex with irritated eyes this week, which
irritation continues. Austin saw an ophthalmologist who loaded her up
with drops and goops that seem to have helped a little. We�re still
hoping that Drex�s problem derives from the windy sand-strewn beach
across the street from the above-mentioned McDonald�s so we haven�t taken
him to the doctor yet, though if things don�t improve, it won�t be long
now. Please pray that our children retain clear vision at least six or
seven more decades, unless the Lord returns first, at which point their
clear vision is assured (1 Corinthians 13:12). ##### Please forgive me
for not showing up here last Sunday. I wanted to, but I was bustling
about much of the weekend preparing for volunteers who came to Braga from
London and Lisbon to work for Habitat for Humanity and Vivarte. One
thing I failed to do was adequately prepare the kids in the Vivarte
neighborhood for the arrival on their turf of the group of teenage
volunteers from Lisbon. Consequently, they responded as if they were
being invaded and resorted to the first defense that came to mind, which
was racism, because a significant proportion of the Lisbon contingent was
black. Nevertheless, God did a lot of good things and touched a lot of
hearts, as He always does when people give of themselves in service to
others. Please pray that the seeds of faith sown in the hearts of these
young people this week will flourish and bear much fruit. ##### Belief
is our work (John 6:29). Prayer is our medium (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
Christ is our life (Colossians 3:4). May the Lord Jesus Christ bless you
this week for your prayers for us.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Sun May 9 14:56:09 2004
I wonder which Person of the Trinity came up with flowers, back in the
early days of creation (Genesis 1:26, Proverbs 8:22-31). I think it must
have been the Son: �Dad, look what I made!� waving a peony. �Ugh, what
has He gotten into now?� The Father, having already existed from
everlasting to everlasting, was probably thinking of decorating His
creation in soft, restful shades of green, with the occasional burning
bush thrown in for contrast, but the Son has always had a flair for the
dramatic and the playful (Proverbs 8:30-31) and wanted something that
would get people�s attention. You know it wasn�t the Holy Spirit who
came up with flowers. If it hadn�t been for omnipresence, He probably
wouldn�t even have shown up for half the meetings. The guy is like the
wind. He never writes anything down. ##### Please pray for our
computer, M�rio, who has been very sick, to the point where we have been
without email access. Oh, the hardships of modern missionary life!!
Please pray too for Debbie, upon whom the entire burden of computer
problems falls in this household, and who has already put in countless
hours trying to nurse M�rio back to health. ##### At Vivarte, we�re
working on a project in door sculpture. Doors, as everyone knows, are
often used as a metaphor for opportunity. The young artists will shape
old doors, using a jigsaw and other tools, into forms related to their
hopes and dreams. In most cases the artists themselves will be an
integral part of their work: remember the amusement park murals with the
hole for your face that you stood behind to have your picture taken so it
looked like you were a giraffe or a dinosaur or riding on a dolphin? In
the same way, the door sculptures will have holes cut out for the
artist�s faces. For example, in Lisbon there�s a distinctive sculpture of
Fernando Pessoa, Portugal�s most distinctive writer, sitting at a caf�
table. One of my dreams is to be a writer. I�m planning to carve a beat-
up old door into a silhouette of that sculpture, with a hole cut out for
my face, so that my sculpture is only complete when I�m in it. Of course,
when the collection is touring the United States, after expositions in
Lisbon, Madrid and Paris, the artists will mostly need to be in school,
so that life-size photographs will have to substitute for their faces
most of the time. Please pray for door donations. ##### This week, keep
in mind how much your Heavenly Father loves you, how His big heart sings
when you turn your face towards His, how He loves to hold up your chin
and trace the contours of your face with His finger (Psalm 103:13-14,
Luke 15:20). There is healing in His touch.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Mon May 17 02:34:43 2004
Braga is in an uproar. All week the students at the University of Minho
at the bottom of the hill have been celebrating �Enterro da Gata,� or The
Burying of the Cat. No one has any idea what this means, other than that
it obviously refers to some ancient pagan academic ritual from time out
of mind having to do with the end classes and the beginning of
exams�which go on longer than the NBA playoffs�and it gives college
students an excuse to drink tremendous quantities of beer and dance in
the mud until dawn to the accompaniment of live rock �n roll music. Those
of us who are not college students generally spend Enterro da Gata
discussing how little sleep we got as a result of the noise. But that is
not all. Our little parish of Ten�es is celebrating a couple of Saints,
Eul�lia and Jos�. Parish celebrations always seem to include the same
combination of Portuguese folk music, announcements and homilies
crackling loudly from 9 a.m. to midnight over a public address system
that has been in continuous service since World War I, uniformed youth
parading through the streets pounding drums and fireworks of the sonic
boom variety at all hours. Being a stranger, not really knowing what�s
going on, one is reminded of Laura Ingalls Wilder: �That night the noise
in the Indian camps was worse than the night before. Again the war-cries
were more terrible than the most dreadful nightmare. . . The next night,
and the next night, and the next night, were worse and worse. . .
�(Little House on the Prairie, pg. 295-6). Thankfully, it appears very
unlikely the Portuguese will attack. ##### Austin was missing her mom
this week, so Debbie spent the weekend in Lisbon and Drex and Stan and I
were here, tracking dirt in the house and playing Risk, the game of World
conquest, which has become our game of choice since Drex received it for
Christmas. On Thursday, the pastor had a break between meetings around
dinner time and stopped by for pizza and a game. We annihilated him.
##### Thank you for praying for door donations (see last week�s update).
On Friday I was lead to a large church remodel project where I recovered
about 25 doors of all descriptions. They should be enough to get us
started with our Vivarte door sculpture project. ##### We had our
fortnightly �Amigos do Cristo� meeting at Vivarte this evening. It was
humiliating for me, primarily because of my language limitations. I was
due to lead tonight�s discussion, about John 13:34-35, but made a muddle
of it. A couple other leaders stepped right up, though, and facilitated a
lively conversation that at least half a dozen kids took part in, so that
things probably went pretty well for the Kingdom of God. Funny how my
priorities and God�s sometimes diverge. Please continue to pray that
these meetings serve as an encouragement to young people of all
denominations in their relationships with Jesus Christ. Pray, too, that
more young fellas would join us. So far, it�s been almost all girls.
##### Thank you for praying for us. The Lord bless you this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Sun May 23 15:59:25 2004
One thing northern Portugal has going for it is electrical storms.
Sweltering Spanish weather systems dance on our heads for a couple of
days, then cool Gaelic systems roll crashing down from the North Sea,
scattering the Spaniards like bowling pins. Watching and hearing these
cataclysms from below we huddle close together and hope our computer
screens don�t explode. ##### �What would you guys like me to include in
the Prayer and Praise Update?� I asked this evening at dinner. �People
could pray for me!� Drex put in, referring to his plan to give special
attention to his conduct at school. Debbie had a conference with his
teacher last week that was very positive in every way except with respect
to Drex�s tendency to socialize too much. He�s really going to try to do
better this week and Debbie�s going to check back with his teacher on
Friday. ##### I don�t know how people get along without God. Life looks
so overwhelming to me when I allow my attention to shift from Jesus to
the wind and waves about me (Matthew 14:30-31). Everything from plumbing
leaks to overdue correspondence to routine conversations in foreign
languages�not to mention my own real blundering�rise up and threaten to
overwhelm me, sucking me down, down, down. How good it is to have a
Deliverer (Psalm 56:13). ##### Thank you for praying for us and loving
us. The Lord bless you this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Mon May 31 01:59:04 2004
I�ve done a lot of gross things in my life�mostly connected with
plumbing�but today was the grossest. ##### I had a lot of hilarious new
material planned for you today but it�ll all have to wait until I can get
the pump that serves the new bathroom at Casa Joaquina back in its hole
and working again. Please pray that happens tomorrow, without much mess.
###### Thanks for praying for us. The Lord bless you this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Mon May 31 05:50:12 2004
Oh, and Drex's teacher said she could really tell he was trying to do
better this week. Thanks for praying. ##### P.S. Regarding the pump,
yesterday, I explained to Drex, "There are at least two good things
about this situation: 1) It happened while we were here, rather than
guests, and 2) It is very unlikely that the situation will get any
worse." Today, it got worse, but we're still very thankful for
#1.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Mon Jun 14 07:18:48 2004
Sunday. Portugal might have been the happiest place on earth today except
that despite years of preparation for yesterday�s contest between former
naval powers, Portugal and Greece, that opened Euro 2004, the European
soccer championship which will be held over the next three weeks in ten
brand new stadiums built here specifically for the occasion, Greece
failed to play its assigned role, which was to include an heroic
performance reminiscent of that nation�s storied antiquity in a
exhilerating struggle that would include a half-time reenactment of the
battle of Troy featuring Brad Pitt showing his breastplate and ending
with a narrow victory for the home team. Instead, they burst upon the
field as from a wooden horse and sent the locals to the exits with
nothing to discuss in the conjested traffic that awaited them except how
to redeploy the roughly 5% of the national workforce that has spent the
last four years building stadiums. Please pray for a successful
redeployment and for safety from terrorists and hooligans (the official
name for British soccer rowdies, who last night gas-bombed a bus of
folkloric dancers just a few blocks from Casa Joaquina) during the
championship. ##### Shortly after our family arrived in Portugal in the
summer of 2000, as I walked one morning in a hamlet not far from Lisbon,
feeling disoriented and far from home, I came upon an elderly woman
walking in the opposite direction. Owing to the narrowness of the
sidewalk, we had to adjust our courses slightly in order to avoid a
collision. Midway through the maneuver, when we were out of danger, we
looked at one another and she gave me a little smile that said, �There
now, we�ve done it. You�ll be O.K.� I drew great comfort from that smile.
The transfer of power was as tangible as the turning on of a light.
During His life on earth, Jesus knew when power had gone out from Him
(Mark 5:30). Often, we do, too. When you hug a friend in order to comfort
or encourage them, you know power has gone out from you. You feel it.
This sort of power transfer is a big part of the life of faith. What is
prayer but a transfer of the power of God from one person to another?
I�ve been focusing on receiving power from God, allowing Him to �smile�
upon me through His Holy Spirit and through all He�s made, and then
focusing on passing that power along to others through prayers of faith.
##### Please pray for Drex�s health, as he has had a rather typical
assortment of infirmities lately, including fevers, sore throats, and
itchy red spots all over his upper half. His spirits remain very buoyant,
thanks be to God, and he is really into the European Soccer Championship.
##### You are very gracious to pray for us. May God bless you for your
love and care.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Sun Jun 20 15:23:37 2004
Well, my career as a writer is officially under way. I�ve been unable to
arrange actual employment, so we�ve set me up in a room with a view, a
room of one�s own, where I will pray over the computer from 9 to noon
each day, asking God to make something come out of it that someone will
buy. I�ll scrounge work wherever I can find it, scanning the internet for
possible outlets for my unique slant on life, combining a lack of both
qualification and inhibition, hoping to add publication and a little
money to my incentives for becoming a writer. It�s difficult to imagine a
more ideal setting. I�m looking out from the second story of our house
north and a little west over our steep cobbled street towards the green
hills and white houses of northern Portugal. Later, the sun will set
behind the trees to my left and vermillionate the sky. When we were on
the west coast of Ireland in 1992 I saw a stone cottage with a thatched
roof looking out over the rugged cliffs and surf and imagined it would be
an ideal place to write. But it�s just as rocky here, red terra-cotta
tile is just as literary as thatch, a warm breeze rather than a frigid
north Atlantic wind is rustling the leaves of my dictionary, and I�m 25%
Portuguese, giving me a connection to this place that can only serve to
profundar�make deeper, more profound, more sophisticated�my writing.
Plus, with this great big window right in front of me I can just throw my
boogers directly out onto the front lawn. ##### One very good thing
that having two kids with Behcet�s Disease is teaching me is to be more
thankful for present and past blessings. We persons of northern European
extraction have such a powerful inclination towards thinking about the
future. It has been a big factor in our success. When it comes to our
relationship with God, though, this orientation towards the future can be
dysfunctional. If this were a marriage, where one partner had shown
himself faithful time after time, never failing to live up to his
promises and do what he said he was going to do, and yet his spouse still
worried that at any moment he might abandon her and leave her destitute,
we might say she was paranoid. We ought to be content. The future is as
certain as God can make it, given the fact that it�s the future, and
therefore full of surprises. But how often I�ve allowed thoughts of the
future to put out of mind what God has done for me and is doing for me
right now. What our children�s Behcet�s Disease has done is make the
future so completely uncertain that thinking a lot about it would drive
me insane. I have no choice but to focus hard on enjoying the present and
on God�s faithfulness to us in the past. Now, when Drex begs me to read
to him and snuggles into the space beneath my arm with his head on my
chest and wriggles with delight at the sensual feast of being loved and
close and enjoying good stories together, I lock on like nothing else
matters and praise God for His tender care. When I see Austin and we
exchange little Portuguese kisses and I give her a great big ocean of a
hug, pouring life and power into her, and then later the whole family
sits around the dinner table together and basks in one another�s
weirdnesses and the unliklihood that four such ridiculous people would be
able to get along at all, I allow the grace and goodness of God to
radiate about me like heat from an oven and I think if God were to
annihilate us all tomorrow I�d have nothing to complain about. #####
Please pray for the Californians staying at Casa Joaquina right now, that
they would have the time of their lives. They came to see soccer, the
European Championship, and the TV suddenly stopped working, (suspects
include the two two-year-olds who stayed at Casa Jo last week) so they�ve
had to watch games at a caf� until we can get a repairperson out. Worse,
their tickets to tomorrow�s game have gotten messed up in the mail.
Please pray they get them. While you�re praying for renters, would you
mind asking God to give us lots more? Thanks. ##### The Lord bless you
this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Tue Jun 22 02:40:38 2004
The Californians got their tickets yesterday afternoon in plenty of time
for last night's game, thanks be to God and thanks for praying.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Mon Jun 28 06:57:21 2004
Soccer is not nearly as popular in Europe as people suppose. Only about
20% of the population are fans. It�s just that soccer attracts the
largest people so that those fans make up 80% of the population�s total
mass, make 80% of the noise, and drink almost all the beer. For example,
on Wednesday evening�which happened to be the Festival of Saint John the
Baptist here in Braga, that gala you may remember reading about here
during which people go around hitting each other on the head with plastic
squeaky hammers�fans of the Dutch soccer team poured into the center of
town fresh from their team�s victory over Latvia in Braga�s new stadium
which was built specifically for them and the eleven Latvian fans who
were able to afford the trip. Most people who were there will tell you
that the central plaza was full of Dutch soccer fans. In a sense, this
was true. What many people failed to realize, however, was that there
were only five guys. It�s just that they were orange, very excited, and
the smallest among them�a young fellow named Weinig, which means �little�
in Dutch�was 6�9� and weighed 298 lbs. When the central plaza is
similarly full of Portuguese there are approximately 2400 people present.
Ordinarily, there is only one guy in Braga who weighs more than I do.
(Whenever we meet we exchange information about where we�ve found
clothes.) Wednesday was the first time since my arrival three years ago
that I have felt totally inconspicuous. ##### But things change when
your country�s team makes the semi-finals of the European championship,
as the Portuguese national team did Thursday by beating England in a
double-overtime-penalty-kick-sudden-death-by-cardiac-arrest victory in
Lisbon. Now, even the little people are involved. Lucas and Rebecca Pego,
5 and 3 years old, respectively, and friends of ours from church, were
painted red and green by their parents�who are ordinarily very
responsible persons�and driven around town dangling from the windows of
the family car after the victory around midnight. Undoubtedly, their
preschool classmates received similar treatment from their parents. Most
houses, including ours, and many cars and construction cranes, are
festooned with the Portuguese flag. Camera personnel on TV channels not
televising the games make funny faces on screen or talk to their kids at
home, knowing no one else is watching. Europe holds elections for a new
parliament to rule over a new, bigger European Union and less than half
the voters show up. Those problems aside, however, the championship seems
to have run fairly smoothly, thanks be to God. ##### Just to clarify my
work situation after last week�s exciting revelation regarding the
official opening of the writing phase of my career: I will continue to
work twenty hours a week at Vivarte, mostly from 2-6 in the afternoon.
That God has put me in a situation where I appear to have no other paying
alternative to writing�because of work visa limitations and bureaucratic
obstacles to residency�feels like a luxury and a blessing, but I would be
happy to do whatever work He�d like me to do to make up the shortfall in
our monthly budget. Please ask Him to tell me what that is, if it isn�t
writing. Keeping Vivarte within its allotted time will be possible in
part thanks to the recent arrival of two new colleagues, a Brazilian
psychologist named Cassiana, and her Portuguese assistant, Debora, who
will very capably assume many of the administrative tasks that I have
been doing with considerable difficulty, owing largely to time and
language limitations. Their presence will allow me to concentrate my
energy more on what I enjoy, which is the children. They will also
provide Vivarte children and their families with support on various other
levels. Please pray for Cassiana and Debora, and for the work of Vivarte,
that it prospers and blesses everyone involved. ##### Thank you very
much for your prayers. The Lord bless you this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Mon Jul 12 05:55:24 2004
Maybe it was the Portuguese loss to Greece in the final of the European
soccer championship last Sunday. Maybe it was missing my train back to
Braga from Lisbon Monday morning so that I arrived late for work and
missed a meeting. Maybe it was something I ate. Or maybe God allows me to
wander from Him at times, the way we used to let Austin wander from us,
when she was a toddler, down the corridors of the SeaTac airport while we
awaited arrivals, just to see how far she would go. (She�d go a long
way.) Whatever it was that put me off my game at the beginning of last
week and caused me to take my eyes off of Jesus, I sank lower and lower
as the week progressed, frustrated with work, with colleagues and with
the Portuguese language, until by Friday afternoon I was barely
functioning and just managed to drag my sorry self to Vivarte. My heart
had turned to wax. I trembled at the prospect of spending the afternoon
working with young people in Portuguese. I wanted to hide. It was as if
there were five thousand hungry men and their families to feed and I
spent the week becoming more and more obsessed with the fact that all I
bring to the table is five loaves of bread and two fish (John 6:9). The
embarrassing thing for me is how little it takes to overwhelm me. What I
face isn�t a tired, hungry crowd of five thousand for dinner, it�s more
like a half dozen kids who�d like juice. One of the things that depressed
me last week was reading about one of my friends and heroes, Bob
Muzikowski, who is feeding another couple thousand people every time you
turn around: Now, in addition to running his own insurance business, a
farm for recovering drug addicts, the largest little league baseball
program in Chicago (and writing a book about it--Safe at Home), and
raising a quiver-full of children, he and his wife Tina have founded
Chicago Hope Academy, which you should read about at
www.chicagohopeacademy.com if you have any interest in the future of
America�s educational system or its inner cities. �Porque � que n�o posso
fazer coisas dessas?� (�Why can�t I do cool stuff like that?�) I whined.
When I did get to Vivarte Friday, I took out the baseball equipment and
spent most of the afternoon pitching to kids of all ages who begged for a
chance to bat. At some point, the Holy Spirit descended upon me and
reminded me that though it is true that my contribution is indeed very,
very small, nevertheless, when it is humbly offered, with it Jesus can do
beautiful things. ##### Vivarte now operates in two different social
housing neighborhoods. One is called �As Andorinhas,� which means The
Swallows, and the other is called �As Parretas,� which apparently doesn�t
mean anything except �Much Better Behaved Children.� The difference is
tied to economics: the families in As Andorinhas are poorer. The
neighborhood motto in As Andorinhas is �Partem Tudo!� which means �Break
Everything!� They actually have baseball caps that say Partem Tudo. And
they really do seem to take tremendous pride in breaking things. You
cannot leave art work there unless you want it destroyed. It�s sickening.
(In an effort to give you a balanced account, however, I should say that
in contrast to what I would expect in similar neighborhoods in America,
people in As Andorinhas do not steal. We often find tools and equipment
broken, but we almost always find them.) Please pray for the breaking of
this prevailing spirit of destruction. We�re promoting a new neighborhood
motto: �Fazem Tudo!� Do Everything!
Drex does not care a lick about church. At our church, the Sunday School
for kids his age, where he might build friendships, happens an hour
before the service, and I�ve only managed to get him there once, owing to
certain family dynamics that mitigate against it, and he wasn�t
impressed. So he�s left with sitting through a long service and sermon,
which he also finds unimpressive. We�ve tried a few different strategies
for helping him engage, without much success. Would you please pray that
Drex would find something good to get excited about at church so that
church would be a blessing to him?
As always, we are extremely thankful for your prayers. The Lord bless you
this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Sun Jul 25 10:35:08 2004
Debbie and Drex spent the week in Lisbon. I took the train there and back
last weekend. I like the train. Travelling through Car Country is
essentially the same whether one is driving from Lisbon to Braga or from
Chicago to Detroit: pavement stretching as far as one can see,
interrupted by truck stops. The train is different. It�s like a holiday
at a theme park or museum. The exhibit goes right through people�s back
yards, so you see how they really live. You see them hanging their wash,
working their gardens, playing their games, loitering, right outside your
car. More intimate than that, you go through their garbage, because all
the dregs of society get dumped near the tracks. You want to really study
a culture, take the train. ##### Thirty-five California teenagers and
their leaders are in Lisbon doing Christian service work. One of the
leaders asked Austin what she likes about Portugal. Lots of things, she
said, but the thing she likes most is that God has made a place for her
here, a place to serve, a place to be involved, much more than He ever
did in the United States. Last weekend Austin tearfully told her church
that she will not be involved in teaching Sunday School beginning in
September, because she�ll be dividing her time between her church and
Vitor�s. Austin�s church has been such an enormous part and blessing of
her life in Portugal that it is very difficult to imagine her without
them. Please ask God to bless her decision to limit her time with them.
##### Remember planting those beans in elementary school and watching
them sprout? Fantastically they burst, sending down roots, sending up
stems and leaves? Remember the thrill of checking on your bean each day
to find that it had dramatically changed overnight? I realized a while
ago that I need that thrill, continually. I need to be planting seeds,
literally, all the time. It creates in me a sense of hope and expectation
and wonder. It gets me excited about beautiful things to come. Now I have
a couple of ziplock bags with wet paper towel and seeds inside that I
check on every day. I have little cups with tiny plants coming up. I
built a covered sun box where new plants grow until they�re ready to be
transplanted to their permanent homes. I carry around with me all the
time the excitement of knowing that when I check on them again, they will
be dramatically different. Then in that spirit of hope and excitement and
wonder and beauty, I pray, not for plants but for people. Those are
powerful prayers. ##### May the Lord answer all your prayers this week.
Thank you very much for the ones for us.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Sun Aug 8 18:56:07 2004
Members of our Braga church returned this week from Angola, where they
visited the cities of Luanda�the capital�and Huambo, in the center of the
country. They went to prepare the way for CESTA, our new missions program
(see March 29, above). Their descriptions are difficult to imagine:
mountains of garbage everywhere, children playing barefoot in raw sewage
running in the streets, theft so widespread one must take care not to
loose the glasses off one�s face. With no plumbing, the hospital in
Huambo smells like a sewer. There are no sheets. There�s blood all over
the place and three people in each bed, except in the maternity ward,
where there are six�three women and their babies. It�s tempting to be
overwhelmed, listening to their stories. Is it imaginable that God would
use us to meet some of the needs? I dropped out of the CESTA planning a
couple of months ago at least until I get my work situation in order, but
I would still very much like to be involved. Please ask God to bless
CESTA and to direct me. ##### I returned home yesterday evening from a
week at the Word of Life camp near Lisbon, where I accompanied fifteen
teenagers from As Andorinhas, one of the neighborhoods where Vivarte
operates. Word of Life uses all kinds of activities, from conventional
sports to crazy pool contests to a high ropes course, to get people�s
attention and share the Gospel. So the kids heard plenty about God. It
was a good opportunity, too, for me to build my relationships with them
in a setting very different from Vivarte. I am hopeful that some of the
spiritual seeds that were sown this week will bear fruit. Please pray
especially for fifteen-year-old Filipe, who seems to be on the verge of
accepting Jesus. Pray also that I can be of some help to the Word of Life
Camp in resolving their wastewater disposal problems. Ron Tracy, the
self-described �crazy plumber from Oklahoma� you may remember reading
about here in years past, who is also a sanitation guy, has recently
returned from work in Luanda, Angola, himself, and has agreed to come out
to Word of Life to take a look. ##### Austin and Vitor and a chaperone
have gone to Paris for a few days. Please pray they have a safe and
lovely time. Austin is planning to come to Braga next weekend to look
after her brother so that Debbie and I can celebrate our twenty-second
wedding anniversary at Casa Joaquina in Lisbon. There was a time in our
marriage when Debbie and I would get away for an �Annual Planning
Retreat,� which served as an important centerpiece to our year, but that
was before the century. We�re looking forward to the revival of the old
custom. Along with talking and praying about everything under the sun we
hope to spend lots of time in museums and other places Drex couldn�t care
less about. ##### Thank you for praying for us. The Lord bless you this
week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Wed Aug 18 08:37:20 2004
Please pray for Debbie and me as we wrap up our little planning retreat
here in Lisbon. What a blessing it has been to get away together to talk
and pray and praise the Lord for all He has done for us! ##### We spent
the day yesterday with Elizabeth and Armando Azevedo, who you may
remember reading about here before, talking and praying about Na Crista
da Onda, In the Crest of the Wave, their ministry to at-risk youth in
Lisbon, with which we are involved. Please pray for them and Na Crista da
Onda, that God will give them all they need and be glorified in their
work and in the lives of the young people they touch. I'm planning to
go surfing tomorrow morning with another member of the Crista da Onda
board of directors, a young guy named Zaca. It turns out Portugal is a
destination spot for European surfers. Just one more great reason for you
to visit. ##### Austin and Drex are due to arrive by train from Braga
this evening so that we can goof off a bit more here as a family. Drex
and I may sneak off to camp in Spain. ##### Thank you very much for your
prayers. The Lord bless you this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Tue Aug 31 10:09:08 2004
Back in the mid 80�s, when Austin was little, Wayne Watson sang a smarmy
song for dads called
"Somewhere in the World", about praying for his young son�s
future wife. I�ve always been a smarmy dad, so I sang along, tweaking the
lyrics to allow for the fact that I was praying for the protection and
spiritual prosperity of some little boy, rather than some little girl,
like Wayne. Turns out the kid I was praying for was a teenager at the
time, but God does not seem to have been thrown off by that. Last week
Vitor Mota, a 32 year-old Portuguese junior high science and math teacher
and Bible school exegetics professor asked for our blessing upon his
marriage to Austin, which we cheerfully gave. He had proposed to Austin a
week earlier overlooking Paris from the Eiffel tower.
Only one thing I had asked of the Lord
respecting a husband for Austin, if He were pleased to provide one, that
he would be a man after God�s own heart. Vitor is. He also appears to be
a match for Austin in a lot of other ways that make us all very excited
to see what God has in store for them. On the other hand, with their age
difference, their cultural differences and Austin�s Beh�et�s Disease,
Vitor and Austin are taking on a lot. Even as we ask God to make these
things of no account we delight that they make it unlikely that Vitor and
Austin will forget their desperate need for Him (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).
##### In light of the engagement, returning to America suddenly becomes
difficult to imagine. We�ve known from the beginning that our children
were becoming more and more Portuguese every day. I feel like one of the
potted plants adorning the rooftop terrace at Casa Joaquina in Lisbon.
I�m happy to be in Portugal, but it has always been easy to imagine
moving me back to America, where I might be just as fruitful. But the
children are wild things, uncontained, reckless, sending out roots
wherever they can get a hold and a drop of water to slake their thirst to
be connected. They�re digging in. And now Austin is being grafted into a
native Portuguese plant. Deep roots make richer, more varied fruit. A
potted plant enjoys the advantage of mobility, but he does well to not go
too far from the people who water him. ##### From what we can gather so
far, weddings are even more integral to family and community life in
Portugal, where things are still traditional in many ways, than they are
in America. From the initial planning until the last sardine is
swallowed, they serve as a focal point for people to affirm and reaffirm
their connections with one another. Austin and Debbie have connected, and
are off and running, making plans. They hope to spend the day on the
internet narrowing down possible venues so they can begin visiting later
this week. Neither Austin�s nor Vitor�s church is well suited for a
wedding, being of the store-front and rented-school varieties,
respectively, so they�re looking for neutral territory. Along with hoping
to gracefully attend to an array of intercultural imperatives, the goal
of the planning is to remain calm so that Austin does not get run down
and remains well. Please ask God to make it so. ##### Thank you for
loving us and for praying loving us, even as our family changes shape.
The Lord bless you this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Sun Sep 26 16:42:23 2004
I wonder if other people observe their own descent into senility as
clearly as I am seeing mine. I watch myself getting weirder, my behavior
becoming crazier and more exaggerated all the time. For example, earlier
this year Debbie and I were shopping for clothes when I saw an employee
fold a shirt. You know the way they do it, the shirt�s arms folded neatly
behind, collar front and center, chest out. Until that moment I had
always thought folding shirts that way was the exclusive purview of
clothing professionals, beyond the ken of ordinary shoppers like me. But
it struck me that like so many other things in life, with practice, I
could learn even this. Then the shelves bearing my shirts at home would
be like the store, with the shirts looking smart and crisp. Sure enough,
when I got home, I found I could make a passable job of it. At first I
did it because it made choosing a shirt seem just a little special,
almost as if I were choosing the shirts for the first time. But now I�ve
come to understand what the clothing stores must have understood all
along: shirt body language. When the shirts are arrayed on the shelf,
folded at attention, looking straight at you, rather than furtively out
of the corner of a collar button, they convey an earnestness and
frankness that are compelling. They are like eager young recruits poised
for action, anxious for you to give them a try. The good news in this, I
suppose, along with the possibility of my moonlighting in retail, is that
as I get older and my shirts more fully develop personalities of their
own, I won�t need to worry about being lonely. ##### Most mornings now,
as I begin my ascent of Bom Jesus, the monument with 1000 steps in the
shadow of which we live, Ant�nio, fifty-three, tall for a Portuguese man,
with a full round face, thick mustache and troubled expression that make
him look like a river boat captain run aground, emerges from his house
and merges his course with mine. We walk and talk, often about things
we�ve discussed before. Ant�nio repeats himself a lot. Two years ago he
fell four stories from a roof where he was working, suffering head and
other injuries. Now he punctuates television with climbing Bom
Jesus�often five times a day�at the top of which he and his wife were
married 29 years ago last month. He is always sad, he says, because he
cannot work and his wife has to clean houses to support them. Being with
Ant�nio, and with a couple of other men with whom I�ve been spending
time, reminds me of mending sails. The object of the Christian life, like
the object of sailing, is to be animated by the Pneuma, which is Greek
for both Holy Spirit and wind. The problem with many of us is that, for
all sorts of reasons, our sails are in tatters. They hardly catch the
wind at all. Mending them means patching them with the truth, that God
loves us and wants to fill our lives with blessings, though the blessings
may be very different than the ones we had anticipated. Please pray that
God would use me to help get Ant�nio, and Arlindo, and Paulo, back on
course. ##### Drex and I have been reading James Herriot. First we read
his collection of Cat Stories, mostly while camping in the backyard, with
Drex�s stray kitten Telha -- meaning �Roof Tile� in Portuguese, a name
she received because we found her on the roof -- frolicking in and out
and over the top of the tent. Drex�s enchantment with Telha had a lot to
do with his willingness to overlook James Herriot�s long colorful
descriptions of the English countryside. We recently finished All
Creatures Great and Small and now we�re on to All Things Bright and
Beautiful. Now it�s Drex�s love for animals in general that sustains him,
along with the cute anecdotes about James Herriot�s courtship and
marriage, which make Drex blush. Having never read the books when they
were published during my youth, I find the writing inspiring. I�d like to
write with some of the same humor and tenderness and grace. It�s also
encouraging that Dr. Herriot seems to have spent a lot of time lying in
the grass in the sun. ##### In keeping with the animal theme, Drex spent
his birthday money and some other savings on a fish tank, which he set to
percolating in his room this weekend. Now he must wait a while to allow
it to become soup before putting in fish. He says he has never been so
excited about anything in his life. He hasn�t begun school yet because
like a lot of school districts in Portugal, his neglected to make
arrangements for teachers this fall. One of the strongest and in some
ways most charming elements of the Portuguese character is the conviction
that things will work themselves out. It makes the Portuguese very
pleasant company, but it doesn�t make for a lot of planning ahead.
Sometimes it seems to the foreigner that when the Portuguese say, �things
always work themselves out� what they mean is �we�re not dead yet,� but
then the foreigner probably still has a lot to learn about relaxing. Pray
that we all learn from our experience. ##### Thank you for praying for
us. Please forgive me for being away so long, especially without a good
excuse. The Lord bless you this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Sun Oct 3 15:41:08 2004
The Portuguese public schools are still in disarray. Please pray they�re
able to pull things together this week. Monday and Tuesday are holidays,
celebrating the deposition of Portugal�s last king, Manuel II, who fled
to England in 1910. The current Education Minister, Maria do Carma
Seabra, may also need to flee. We had thought Drex�s situation was
secure, since the teacher that has taught his class the last three years
and was due to move up and teach them again this year has tenure, but
she�s been assigned to another school. This appears to have to been a
mistake and lawyers are hopeful they can have her reassigned to her
former class by Christmas. ##### Thank you for praying about Drex getting
interested and connected at church. I have begun helping with his Sunday
school class, and he and I plan the games together. Today he said
regarding Sunday school, �Actually, it was fun.� Afterwards, rather than
sitting with Debbie and me during the service, he sat with a couple of
friends from the class. After the service, those friends spent the
afternoon at our house. May the Lord continue to draw Drex into the Body
of Christ, the church. ##### The Seattle Soup Group that gathered at our
home each Sunday afternoon for several years during the 90�s may finally
have had Portuguese offspring. The Braga Burger Bunch met here Friday
evening for the first time, a group consisting of five Americans from
three families, a Brazilian, and three Angolans. We�ve got our eye on a
family of four Romanians, but we�ll need to get more chairs and switch to
paper plates if they agree to come. We�ve just never found a better way
to love and care for people than having them into our home. I�m hoping to
keep doing it the first Friday of every month until I die. Please pray
people are blessed. ##### Thank you for praying for us. The Lord bless
you this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Sun Oct 10 14:55:11 2004
Austin and Vitor borrowed a drill this week to hang pictures in Vitor�s
apartment. (Walls are concrete here, so you often need a drill if you
want a hole.) Giving them my extra reminded me of the tools I�ve
received, especially early in my marriage, from my grandfather, father,
father-in-law and brother-in-law. Along with making me realize I can now
justify the purchase of almost any new tool as long as I give the old one
to Vitor, it made me feel part of a richly symbolic timeless male dance,
the circle of power tools, one generation bequeathing upon the next the
capacity to make a serious mess. ##### Debbie spent the week in Lisbon,
first with her former Seattle colleague and dear friend Julie Chelin and
Julie�s husband Pat, who made Portugal the last stop on their European
tour, then getting Casa Joaquina ready for renters who arrive tomorrow.
Pray she is not devastated when she returns from the mild southern
climate to the freezing torrential rain of Braga. ##### I don�t feel any
taller, but when I play goalie so Drex can practice soccer the ground
sure looks far away. In fact, the ants look like little people seen from
an airplane: I can make them out clearly, but I can�t get at them.
Bending down to block a low shot seems to take as much energy as it used
to take to run a mile, and then I still have to come back up. I used to
have to invent ways to burn extra energy. Nowadays, it�s often only my
sense of obligation coming from memories of countless hours my dad played
catch with me that enables me to drag my sorry behind out to the field
with Drex. Pray he ends up with the same treasure. ##### Thanks for
praying for us. The Lord bless you this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Mon Oct 18 02:23:18 2004
�Good morning, Heavenly Father. How are You?�
�I�m well. I�m always well. I never change. That�s why I like keeping you
guys around.�#####
October means chestnuts are roasting in Portugal. Dark leathery ageless
women bundled in layers of black wool sit fanning their embers on every
cobbled sidewalk. For a euro and a half they�ll roll a piece of newspaper
into a cone and drop in a d�zia, a dozen. We learned we can save our
money and pick ours off the cobbles under the tree up the hill and roast
them on the grill. While Debbie and Drex were engaged in the gathering
end of this enterprise this week, one of those ageless Portuguese woman
took pity on them and showed them how to knock �em out of the tree with
stones. By the time she finished her demonstration and dumped what she�d
collected into Drex�s arms, he had all they could carry. It reminded me
of the delicious strolls Austin and I used to take around our
neighborhood in Texas in 1986, chatting with neighbors and eating the
pecans that had fallen from the trees. ##### One happy consequence of
having lived three years in Portugal is that I have finally reached the
point where I can spell the word �bureaucracy� without looking it up.
##### I�ve decided to start a think tank. I�m hoping it will lend
credibility to my writing. Writing that comes from a think tank�s gotta
be good, don�t you think? I�ve always wanted to be part of a think tank.
Imagine, getting paid for swimming around thinking all day with a bunch
of smart guys, with tourists coming and watching you from those
underwater windows as if you were Willy the orca whale. It�d be great!
But I haven�t heard from any think tanks asking me to join and frankly,
I�m tired of waiting. I�m calling my think tank the Kleber Institute for
Theological Empiricism, or KITE. Our logo, of course, is a kite, colored
orange with white stripes, to look like Nemo, who we hope will come
speak�and swim, naturally�at our grand opening. Our motto is �It�s cute,
but will it fly.� My think tank isn�t going to be one of those snooty
exclusive ones, though. If you�d like to join, just send your address
along with your first monthly payment�all the details will be spelled out
clearly on the website�and we�ll send you the Nemo swimming trunks and
the pocket kite. Then, whenever you�re in town, just stop by for a
contemplative dip. #####
�Everyone lies.� It�s a lie with the appearance of truth Drex picked up
at school. He used it unsuccessfully this week as a defense in the case,
Drex v. Mom and Dad. Sometimes when confronted with
things he�s said he wishes so much he hadn�t that before he can wrap his
mind around the distinction between reality and wishful thinking his
mouth has denied the truth. Please pray that his mind would form the
distinction a little quicker and his mouth would form the denial a little
slower. He�s also been seated next to a problematic classmate at school.
Please pray for grace and nonviolence between them. ##### Thank you for
loving us and praying for us. The Lord bless you this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Sun Oct 24 23:51:16 2004
Drex was elected to his first public office this week, class delegate. At
the beginning of the day Monday he went from one classmate to another
requesting votes. Seven agreed. The position carries a variety of
responsibilities, the most pivotal being the recording of miscreant�s
names when the teacher is called from the room. In this class, which has
been together since the 1st grade, the Dames have been in power for a
long time, so that only Gents have been showing up on the black list.
Drex�s election represents a changing of the guard and a shift to the
left. Please pray that he discharges his duties with integrity and grace.
##### We had dinner Saturday evening at the home of Z� Manuel, one of the
classmates who had promised his vote to someone else. One of the
interesting elements of the evening was getting there, which wasn�t
simple. Drex and Debbie had been there once when they gave Z� a lift
home. One example of the gender confusion that characterizes our marriage
is that while I am a person of modest navigational ability, in twenty-two
years of marriage I have never known Debbie to be unable to find a place
she�s been once and she rarely has difficulty finding places she�s never
been, even if they�re on a new continent. In that respect last evening
wasn�t unusual. What was interesting was that Drex, who has inherited the
full measure of his mother�s tracking skill, was directing from the back
seat. It was like running with a couple of talking blood hounds: �I
remember that!� and �Remember you said this here,� and �Oh yeah, I feel
good about this!� They got more and more agitated as they narrowed in.
One sensed the importance of avoiding behavior that might cause one to be
mistaken for prey. The hunt was rewarded. Dinner was as delicious as any
I�ve found in a restaurant and Z�s little family as delightful as any
you�ll find anywhere. His five-year-old sister, Marta, has set her
stunning azure eyes and intense charm upon Drex. She, too, appears to be
a gal who gets what she�s after. Now, if her mom teaches her to cook . .
. ##### Drex is playing in the most non-competitive soccer league on
earth. Z� Manuel convinced him to play. For a modest registration fee,
the kids, aged 4-12, all get the same uniform and membership card. The
coaches divide up the field and the kids into several games and turn �em
loose. It�s just a little more organized than recess. It�s perfect for
Drex, who is of modest ability, and whose Suspected Beh�et�s�I don�t say
Official Beh�et�s because he hasn�t received a diagnosis�limits his
energy. Watching him play I reflect on the place of sports in life. My
own athletic career spanned twelve years or so, from the late 60�s to the
late 70�s, and boils down to half a dozen moments of triumph and about as
many moments of ignominy all floating in a bouillabaisse of belonging.
Both the triumphs and the ignominies remain as vivid memories, but it was
the belonging that mattered. I defined myself by it. In other words, I
turned it into an idol, and looked to it for life. It�s a mistake Drex
seems unlikely to duplicate. He�s likely to realize sooner than I did
that sports will not be his life. That�d be a blessing. ##### Thanks for
loving us and praying for us. The Lord bless you this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Mon Nov 1 00:37:05 2004
Please pray for a young guy named Gon�alvo, an architecture student in Lisbon.
A friend named Zaca (rhymes with SOCK-a) and I shared the gospel with Gon�alvo yesterday. He is
�searching� spiritually, in part because he is going through a difficult
time. I think he went with Zaca to church this morning. Please for
Gon�alvo�s salvation and that God would comfort him in his distress.
##### Walking early in Lisbon this time of year, soft pink light washes
the wet puddled cobbles, reflecting the blue and cream of the sky and
combining with the possibilities of morning to create a delicious effect,
like a sweet breakfast pastry. One must carry an umbrella against the
squalls, which come up quickly. I swing it experimentally, as if readying
in the on deck circle for the day to begin. Anything might happen. The
Red Sox might win the World Series. But America is clearly no longer the
World. Massachusetts could be on a hot streak. What might that mean to
the world? Pray for America. ##### Thank you for praying for us. The Lord
bless you this week.
--------------------------------------------------
Name: Jord
Date: Sun Nov 14 23:52:27 2004
Drying clothes in northern Portugal is like working for peace in Israel.
There�s a sense of hopelessness. A sense that time, the solution to so
many problems, is not likely to make things better, and may make them a
lot worse. Granted, having to dress in damp jeans is a mild form of
violence, but the air is nevertheless heavy with dread. This is true even
though we�ve been enjoying the Summer of Saint Martin, beautiful autumn
weather that�s supposed to come every year around November 11, the Day of
Saint Martin, as a blessing from God because around the middle of the 4th
century Martin gave half his cloak to a nearly naked beggar in a
thunderstorm. His companions laughed, but the rain stopped, and has been
stopping most early Novembers since. The Portuguese celebrate by roasting
chestnuts, tasting the year�s new wine and standing in the sun with their
legs spread out a bit so their jeans finish drying. ##### I�ve made a lot
of mistakes, but when it comes to selecting in-laws, I�ve always had the
Midas touch. The problem with many families is that they�re not operated
upon sound business principles. In building a family, as in building a
business, I recommend choosing in-laws that compensate for your
weaknesses. The first step, obviously, is choosing a spouse. I married
Debbie because whereas I could hardly spell differential, she did
differential equations for fun. Perfect fit. Here�s just a sampling of
the in-laws that came with her: a father-in-law who taught me plumbing,
wiring and theology; a mother-in-law who�s taught me a thousand things
and more about the Spirit of Christ than anyone; a brother-in-law who
taught me building, the relative value of actions versus words and
manfully tried to help me catch fish; a sister-in-law who can cook the
oven mitts off Betty Crocker. I�ll stop. I don�t want to boast. Choosing
in-laws like these just makes good business sense. Now I�ve done it
again: in selecting Vitor Mota as my son-in-law I�ve selected someone who
teaches things�physics, chemistry, hermeneutics, exegetics�I might not
recognize if they were floating in my soup. The only thing I know about
hermeneutics is it�s a good way to seal your preserves. He�s got a
library full of this stuff. When we had dinner at his apartment recently
he loaned me books by a couple of my favorite guys, John Stott and
Watchman Nee, in Portuguese. A nice beginning. Oh, and when I return the
books, I'll talk with him about scheduling my guitar lessons, which
is another thing. When Drex asks probing kid questions now, we no longer
say, �We�ll find out on the internet.� We say, �We�ll ask Vitor.� This
can only help business. ##### God�s response to the first prayer request
ever posted on this website was Alexandre: exactly Drex�s age, smiling
and hanging out his apartment window three and a half years ago when we
arrived to live next door. He was still smiling yesterday when he spent
the day at our house, but his mom explained that his father�s tractor
maintenance business has failed and the family is losing their apartment.
They�ll be moving soon. Would you please pray for Alexandre�s family,
which also includes two older brothers, that God would rescue them from
their financial crisis and use it to draw them to Himself? ##### Debbie
and I are planning to attend a couples retreat next weekend. Please pray
the retreat provides me with lots of witty, insightful, romantic
anecdotes to include in future Prayer and Praise Updates, and pray that
Austin and Drex have a nice time together here at our house. ##### Thank
you for praying for us. The Lord bless you this week.
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Name: Jord
Date: Mon Nov 22 04:57:39 2004
Thanks for praying for our marriage retreat this weekend. We enjoyed it.
As usual with these things, the best part was being together. When we
arrived at the retreat venue Friday evening we were surprised to find the
presenters would be speaking Spanish. I was surprised again to find they
were no more difficult to understand than some Brazilian and northern
Portuguese accents with which I contend regularly. I may even have been
better off than some of the Portuguese people present because making my
way in a linguistic mist is so much a part of my daily life. So, just
like that, I�m on my way to speaking Spanish. Interestingly, the
presenters did not understand Portuguese, perhaps because in Spain they
get so little practice with linguistic mist. Subtitles are illegal there.
All foreign media must be voiced-over in Spanish. So the Spanish do not
get exposed to the language jungle one finds in Portugal. When I tried to
have a conversation with one of the presenters about our family�s trip to
his city, Seville, I tried to use words he would recognize, but his eyes
glazed over, his flight response kicked in�I know exactly how he felt�and
he was gone. Just a few minutes later I had a conversation with a
Portuguese guy in which I know I expressed things poorly, but he never
flinched. The Portuguese are accustomed to hanging on to conversations by
a thread. They enjoy feeling superior in multilingualism to the Spanish,
who enjoy feeling superior to the Portuguese in everything else. This is
one reason the Portuguese are happy to have Jos� Manuel Dur�o Barroso,
the former prime minister, serving as president of the European
Commission, where he can be heard speaking fluently in any one of several
languages. ##### Would you please pray for my relationship with Drex? I�m
afraid it has taken on a negative tone. It seems like too high a
percentage of our time together is spent with me either hustling him off
to school or hustling him off to bed. I think it�s Gary Smalley who says
that a seven to one ratio between positive and negative comments in any
relationship makes a nice balance. I�m afraid my ratio with Drex is quite
a bit lower than that. ##### I�m planning to take a van load of Vivarte
teenagers to a Word of Life afternoon of activities next Saturday, the
27th. There will be food and fun and games and discussion of spiritual
things. Please ask God to open the kid�s ears and hearts to receive His
truth and ask Him to give me opportunities to encourage them in their
faith. ##### Because neither Debbie nor I is completely at home in the
kitchen, our Portuguese Thanksgivings have always involved eating out.
Because we spent our restaurant budget at the retreat this weekend we
will probably just buy an extra grilled chicken from the supermarket
Thursday so we can eat all we want. Maybe I�ll make the apple pie I�ve
been craving for about a year. Then we will thank God we have friends and
family like you, whom we love enough to really miss. Maybe we�ll play
Cluedo or Risco. But not for long. Friday�s a school day. ##### Blessed
Thanksgiving. Bon app�tit. Thanks for praying for us.
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Name: Jord
Date: Mon Nov 29 04:11:57 2004
Yesterday was a special Missions Day at church. People spoke about the
different ministries in which they are involved. I spoke about Vivarte.
This is what I said, translated from the Portuguese: ##### I have a
friend who grew up in an extremely dysfunctional family. His father was
an alcoholic, and the family had a lot of other problems to go along with
that one. Today this friend is a fruitful servant of the Lord. He says
the one thing that sustained him during his childhood and youth, the one
ray of light in an otherwise dark place, the one sanity in the midst of
insanity, was the music of Beethoven. It was the only thing that made him
feel connected to his world; the only thing that made him think that
maybe he had not been born on the wrong planet. ##### Art connects us. To
make art, to be creative, is to manifest the image of God in which we
were created. It is to imitate our Heavenly Father, the Creator of all
things. Imitating our Father is a potent way to connect with our Father.
At Vivarte we use the arts�music, dance, theatre, painting, sculpture,
photography�to connect with at-risk young people and hopefully, to
connect them with their Heavenly Father. ##### Vivarte is like a garden
planted in difficult soil. The difficult soil is two housing projects in
Braga, as Andorinhas and as Parretas, where many families and many young
people lead difficult lives, facing more than the usual array of
problems. Those of us who serve there are gardening assistants. Jesus is
the Master Gardener. Children are growing and bearing fruit. A five-year-
old named Carlos made this Dragon, with the help of his four-year-old
brother Miguel. Carlos, Miguel, and their three-year-old sister Caterina
all have different fathers. When we first met him Carlos was a violent
little boy. But he is a great artist. He becomes completely absorbed in
his art. He becomes quiet. When I hold him he likes to rub my beard, the
way I used to rub my father�s beard. Carlos is not as violent as he used
to be. ##### We gardening assistants at Vivarte move through the garden,
from one thing to another, encouraging, cultivating, praying. [Speaking
to the church, I did not take time to describe how encouraged I have been
that God is indeed working in the lives of kids through our little
ministrations. As I get older, I am more and more impressed with the way
God uses the smallest things�touches, smiles, words of encouragement�to
effect transformations in people�s lives. I know it has been tiny things
like these that have made for some of the most memorable moments in my
own life. These things are our stock and trade.] Sometimes the activities
of the garden and the difficulty of the soil threaten to overwhelm us. We
need your prayers to sustain us. Making art, as powerful as it is, will
not save nor transform anyone. The only way our work at Vivarte will have
a lasting effect, the only way we will succeed in connecting young people
with their Heavenly Father, is if God Himself touches their hearts. He
will do that if we all pray. ##### Thanks for praying for us. The Lord
bless you this week.
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Name: Jord
Date: Mon Nov 29 04:44:37 2004
A friend of mine, call him Fezziwig, wrote this week: �. . . my own
career . . . has been an increasingly hard-bitten, satisfaction-free, and
desperate one. I have had to move from being a man motivated by the joy
and satisfaction of [my craft] for its own sake to being a man
desperately trying to provide a decent living for his family on a single
income in a double income world without losing all sense of dignity and
respect in a risky and profoundly denigrated occupation . . . I hate my
job. I've come to hate every waking minute of every working day. My
work is an endless Nietzchean misery that I can see now has no ending. My
only satisfaction is seeing my family cared for.� Aside from the obvious
fact that my friend ought to be supplementing his income by writing, it
also seems clear he needs prayer. When I told him I�d printed off his
missive to carry as a reminder to pray until God transforms his working
life into a glorious outpouring of power and joy in the Holy Spirit or
until I die, he said I might go right ahead. Will you please give me a
hand? ##### There�s an eight-year-old boy named Hugo in Spain, just north
of us, a friend and neighbor of missionaries we know there, who may die
of leukemia at any moment. Nevertheless, would join us in praying for his
miraculous and complete recovery, in Jesus� name? ##### Forgive me for
piling on this week. Imagine how God feels. Thank you for praying.
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Name: Jord
Date: Sun Dec 12 06:32:48 2004
To celebrate Restoration Day�by which we mean restoration of independence
from Spain in 1640�on the 1st, Drex and I made the apple pie I�d been
craving and friends brought over lasagna and �My Big Fat Greek Wedding,�
a film they felt was required viewing in preparation for our own
international wedding. The pie was delicious and performed its symbolic
function beautifully, from the bringing together of generations in its
construction to the bringing to mind everything good about home in its
destruction at fork point. In the movie, Greek friends of the bride spit
on her to keep the devil away as her father escorts her down the aisle. I
only hope the Portuguese will mention it before the ceremony if they
intend anything of the kind. We had lunch Saturday at the home of Vitor�s
parents, in part to discuss the wedding, and they did not volunteer any
information about spitting. ##### Wednesday the 8th we were off work and
out of school again for �Imaculada Concei��o,� or Immaculate Conception.
�Conception on the 8th and delivery on the 25th, wow, that is
miraculous!� you may be thinking, but then you would be confusing
conceptions. It�s the immaculate conception of Mary, the mother of Jesus,
sixteen years or so prior to Jesus� birth and a matter of Catholic
tradition, we were celebrating. The Klebers were mostly celebrating the
arrival of Debbie�s parents, to officially open our Christmas Season.
Austin and her Gramma are spending this week making Austin�s wedding
dress, a project they have been discussing for nearly two decades. #####
Hugo, the eight-year-old Spanish boy with leukemia for whom we asked you
to pray, died last week. Please pray for his family, especially his
parents, who are Christians, that they would be comforted and that God
would use their faith in the midst of grief to touch other people�s
hearts. ##### Blessed week to you. Thank you for praying for us.
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Name: Jord
Date: Wed Dec 22 09:55:08 2004
Debbie�s sister Cindy arrived Sunday from the Bahamas, where she teaches,
completing our Christmas company. If she had swum, rather than following
her convoluted itinerary through half a dozen airports, she might have
arrived earlier. Each of our first three Christmases in Portugal, 2001-
2003, God generously provided someone from home to help us celebrate.
This year, with Debbie�s parents and her sister, we�re really in deep
cod. Please pray that our time together is a blessing to hearts who have
suffered much from one another�s absence. ##### Speaking of cod, most
Portuguese families have some soaking in water right now, re-hydrating,
in preparation for Friday�s traditional Christmas eve dinner. Dried,
salted cod was the beef jerky of the Portuguese explorers in the 15th and
16th centuries, and since then has held tremendous nostalgic appeal, the
way labor holds nostalgic appeal for mothers. Nowadays, with overfishing,
the price of bacalhau is such that by having chicken on Friday instead,
we will be able to spend the savings on a used Toyota. Please pray that
Jacque, our reluctant Peugeot, does not leave us stranded first. #####
Please don�t mistake our not eating cod Christmas Eve for failure to
appreciate Portuguese culture. After all, we became residents this week.
Thanks to three years of pitched bureaucratic battles fought by Debbie in
government offices across the land, we received the Christmas card we had
hoped for in the red and green national colors. The most immediate
effect of residency is that we are less likely to be deported. It will
probably have the longer term benefit of making our tax preparation
worthy of a Nobel prize. But residency wasn�t our only bureaucratic
triumph this week. It also appears as if we may have completed the
required number of wild goose chases to qualify for Portuguese driver�s
licenses. Glory be to God! ##### Don�t forget to pause this week in the
midst of your business to reflect upon this: �The Word became flesh and
dwelt among us and we beheld His glory . . . full of grace and truth,�
and this, �His joy was being among people.� Blessed Christmas.
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