To my friend Sherri...

[Sister Alvear]

actually we are fixing to hit the road again...we are still down in this area headed to another city and late tonight we fly to sao paulo then back to northeast brazil...

[Sister Alvear]

[Sister Alvear]

Notice the chairs that say skol the bar loaned them to us! That is the name of a beer in Brazil...

[Rico]

Originally Posted by Sister Alvear

Actually the sound system was borrowed...In our world here they turn the sound up as loud as it will go for the neighbors to hear! A custom in Brazil and Paraguay...so much for the silence laws...

The church has neither a sound system, chairs or really anything...they borrow from the church in Brazil for their services...


and the bathroom is out behind the weeds...be careful for the anacondas and huge spiders...

The weeds?!?!?! No outhouse? Uh boy! Can you pm me what a small building like that costs to build? Thanks.

[Sherri]

Awwwwwwwww.........this just made me want to cry and shout at the same time. Thanks for sending these pictures. Wish I could be there in person!

[Sister Alvear]

and I wish you could have been with us too! I mentioned you to them and your help to help them...thanks once again. love you all.

[Sherri]

Originally Posted by Sister Alvear

and I wish you could have been with us too! I mentioned you to them and your help to help them...thanks once again. love you all.

By the way, the "beer" chairs were really funny. Hope it didn't bind anyone's spirit. You just take those worldly chairs and redeem them for Christ!

[Sister Alvear]

took them back to the bar after church...ha...

[Sister Alvear]

Tonight, I looked at old pieces of wood put on top of broken bricks for make shift benches…wires of about every color mended together to give us electricity and 15 old metal rusty chairs that they rented from a bar so we could have a chair…
I thought we are mended, patched, uneven… and most of the people wore flip flops…someone told me that lice was in abundance yet it was to this people and for this people we had come with the good news of salvation.
Long ago I quit trying to make my converts look like north American saints…I just wanted them to know of the one that makes a shack a home indwelt by the presence of the Lord himself.
They had no food to offer, no gas money but somehow we had made it thus far and what we would eat or how we would fill the gas tank seemed to dim as we saw them reaching for help. No bibles or songbooks very little knowledge of Jesus…I wept…
I did not chose to be born in a land where even the poorest have much more than these people.. I cannot help that thoughts cross my mind where will we stay, what will we eat and I think of all the wasted money on junk in my country by a people that claim they believe that the knowledge of jesus influences the destiny of a soul in the coming age…I found myself doubtful at times if most really believe that for the world sinks darker and darker in pagan worship…
I write here on this forum sometimes several times a week if I have internet where ever I am…Yes, I know I am not the general run of the mill missionary…I have been told that at least a thousand times…I don’t fit the pattern, don’t have the box like personality. I think for myself. I see things through colored glasses sometimes…green reminds me of the trees, the grass..blue the oceans and waterfalls….the gorgeous skies…
I see a preacher in a drunkard a missionary in a prostitute…I am always looking for the black sheep the one that does not seem to fit in…we get along well.
I am consumed with a passion…my heart burns like a flame…oh to be young again…I care not for fame, wealth…and that is probably the reason I have stayed on the mission field without promised support for 40 years…
I don’t need shoes that match…malls do not excite me…but when I know I will be taking a journey into the lives of lost men and women I can hardly sleep at night.
Each new adventure…each village that calls, something stirs in my soul that is unexplainable…I love being a missionary…I would not exchange my place with earth’s most prominent people…I am far to happy…

Only once in Scripture did Jesus give three parables in a row (Luke chapter 15). He did so to illustrate God's profound concern for the lost soul. I want His burden, His passion, His love to be my burden, love and passion.
I was thinking this morning if we could only see things through God’s eyes. He talked about lifting up our eyes and looking on the fields. His example…He became poor for our sakes…how many times we want to become rich and impressive in His name. How totally opposite is the human natural desire from the spiritual viewpoint. We want things, positions, authority, respect and power…yet He was concerned with none of these things…he talked to the woman at the well…a no, no for his day. He pardoned the woman taken in adultery, ate with the sinners and let a woman wash his feet. He took little children in his lap no Rabbi would have done that in His day…He told us the story of the good Samaritan…yet Samaritans were not considered good! He called a woman a daughter of Abraham in a day that women were considered nothing.
He did not seem interested in impressing the politicians and religious people of His day.
He stood by the offering and watched the big givers but only spoke with praise about a little woman that gave a couple pennies.
He borrowed a donkey, caught a ride in a boat, climbed the mountain to pray and fast. He rebuked only those that condemned…the law keeping Pharisees…
It was the Pharisees that stood on street corners in their long robes reciting the commandments strange He would call them whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.
The gifted writers of the law he called them a generation of vipers and asked them how can ye escape the damnation of hell?
They were only stage-players in the main religion of their day. They carried the law of god in their hands but used it for the wrong purpose.
His plainness bothered them they did not like a religion which insisted so much on humility, self-denial, contempt of the world, and spiritual worship. They liked the important feeling that they were the owners of God’s truth…and no one could know the way expect through them.
They loved the praises of men and the limelight of the pulpits…not the getting out where the sinners are.
They worshiped their traditions instead of opening their hearts for a move of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus came into this world to save sinners…but that message did not seem to bother them…they were so interested in perfection and law keeping that they forgot all about mercy and grace.

yes, I am sitting with them, it is cold...the bathroom is behind the bush in the darkness...I wonder if there are snakes or maybe those horrible fuzzy spiders...

What these poor forgotten people will ever know about our Jesus will depend on someone being faithful to give so that we can reach them...

Once again over the sands of time I hear a voice saying, Lovest thou me?

We must love Him more than these...I do not know what your these are...but I know your love for His lost world must compel you to give when flesh would rather have things...


Will these people ever have a bible, will their tiny church ever have chairs or benches, I really don’t know? What sayest thou?

[Sherri]

Sis. Jan--
Posts like this just tear me up inside. I feel so spoiled sometimes! We Americans tend to take for granted all of our blessings. God has been so good to us, but I believe He has blessed us so we can give, give, give. We will be held accountable for how much we did or didn't do for the ones who are not so blessed. I don't ever want to lose my passion for the hurting!