The Decapolis Telling

Homophobia

2008-07-17T19:07:00.003+01:00

Most of my exercise these days comes from swimming. Compared with a lot of other modern recreational alternatives swimming is relatively safe, but it does have its hazards. On Monday I was midway through my workout when a handsome young man, muscled and tattooed, entered the lane I had been swimming in alone. Where I swim there is a wide variance among swimmers when it comes to their understanding of lap-swimming etiquette, so under circumstances like these there follows a period during which swimmers get acquainted, as it were, with one another's style, each hoping some accomodation can be reached to avoid fatal collisions. During this introductory period the swimmers are on heightened alert to the particular idiosyncracies of their new lane-mates. As it happened, when the hunk hopped in I was swimming backstroke. Readers acquainted with the backstroke will readily bring to mind that somewhat counterintuitive point in the underwater portion of the stroke where the motion is not entirely unlike the motion one performs when patting a kneaded lump of dough on a kitchen counter (see figure 2). As it happened, it was this particular point in my own underwater stroke that coincided with the very first time my new lane-mate and I passed going in oposite directions, with the unhappy result that I laid my hand squarely on his bum and pushed him gently past. It bears mentioning, I think, that, while awkward, this situation is slightly to be preferred to those occasions when the same thing happens with the ladies from the hydro-gymnastics classes. Nevertheless, I was mortified. I fully expected our strapping youth to bolt from my lane and seek refuge in another far away, despite their all being more occupied. After several laps it became apparent he would not. I began to relax, until I realized, to my consternation, that his decision to stay might have more serious implications. I finished my workout. Ordinarily, I would warmly bid my lane-mates good day on my way out, if they happened to be resting at the end of the pool, as the hunk was. Not this time. I set my face toward the locker room and strode manfully by.

Saturday was our Serve the City Quarterly Volunteer Day. A person really has to be nuts to want to organize one of these things. We slept very little in the days leading up to Saturday, staying up late answering emails from volunteers including two that signed up about eight hours before the event was scheduled to begin. At the end of the day I felt a familiar welling sensation as I assessed the work in my sleep-deprived stupor: like most volunteers, ours had arrived full of tremendous good will and very little experience, so that they succeeded in starting an array of projects and finishing very few. It looked to me like I was going to spend the next two weeks putting back together what they had taken apart. “This is insanity!” I said to God. “We really need to talk about this. You can't possibly Intend for us to continue to do this, can You?” I really love these heart to hearts with God. The way it works for me is that I bring things before Him and wait. Ordinarily I don't have to wait long. I ask and its as if He takes out a big flash light and illuminates what I might have seen all along if only I had had the eyes to see: Of course you'll keep doing this. This is what you do. It may change form a little, but Serve the City Quarterly Volunteer Day is just the evolution of those neighborhood work days you started organizing fifteen years ago in Seattle. Part of what made me see this was the recollection of the intense, intense pleasure I took in loving the children at Casa Sol, a home for children with AIDS, while we fixed up their house. It can be tricky, of course, finding the appropriate balance in showing affection to children who are not yours. On Saturday I felt like the Tiger Woods of Quarterly Volunteer Days. I picked those kids up and swung them up on my shoulders and hugged them and cupped their chins in my hand and ran my index finger along the contours of their faces and said to them in a hundred nonverbal ways, “YOU ARE GREAT! YOU ARE LOVED! BE WELL!” I enjoyed the volunteers almost as much. You put tools in the hands of people accustomed to pens and keyboards and watch the light of empowerment go on in their eyes. They'd forgotten their muscles are good for more than aerobics class; they're good for helping people. We've begun preparations for the next Serve the City events. If we spread it out maybe we can get a little more sleep in the days before work begins. Anyway, we've gotta do it.

A theme this week has been, “Thank God we function at all.” This is not an easy idea for Debbie to buy into, having as she does a high standard for her own productivity and a lot of funky infirmities preventing her from reaching it, but it helps that through her ministry to people suffering with Behçet's Disease she is acquainted with lots of people who were well along in years when they suddenly found their bodies betraying them. Being thankful for what she is able to do—which is a lot—may help distract her from what she can't do. Please pray she'll be well and praise God that Drex's health has been so good lately. Pray they're both strong and healthy for our upcoming trip to visit my parents in Michigan.

Thank you for your faithfulness. Godspeed.

Serve the City Quarterly Volunteer Day

2008-07-14T19:09:00.001+01:00

Greetings, Serve the City Volunteers,

One of my favorite moments in the Bible happens in Luke chapter 8 when a woman who touches Jesus is instantly healed. "I know that power has gone out from me," Jesus explained.

I know that power went out from you Saturday.

Before beginning work Saturday at Casa Sol we prayed for the health of all the children that live there. One thing that will definitely contribute to their well-being is just the sort of care and attention you showed them and the children of Aldeia SOS at our Quarterly Volunteer Day: improving their homes, smiling, loving them in hundreds of small ways. These things extend life and relieve suffering.

But it isn't just the people we serve who benefit. I worked with one volunteer who was new to Serve the City and had come, in part, to see if he has jeito for this sort of thing. He used a circular saw to trim a new door to fit at Casa Sol. Before cutting we explained an important Serve the City Rule: The first thousand times you do something new you're not allowed to criticize your work. You're practicing. Criticism is poison and self-criticism is lethal. The door fits perfectly. Everybody wins.

Thank you. Thank you for sharing yourself, your time, your energy and your talent with us when you might have been doing something for yourself.

Not everything went smoothly Saturday. We're still learning how best to serve. But many, many beautiful things happened. I know, because a lot of them happened to me.

We look forward to working with you again.

God bless you.

Jordan

Gerber Daisies

2008-07-06T18:36:00.008+01:00

Here's a health tip from Dr. J: If you're going to be well, you're going to have to do some things that give you joy. Joy helps maintain your body's chemical balance. Joy lowers your blood pressure. (If you already have low blood pressure you may want to stay away from joy.) For example, I've discovered that after cleaning and setting up an apartment for guests arriving to stay with VisitingPortugal.com, it's important for me to put a fresh flower--usually a big fat bright gerber daisy--in a bud vase someplace where you see it right when you walk in the door. The fresh flower acts as an antidote, counterattacking the poisons I've been releasing into my emotional system while crawling around cleaning the apartment: "What the hell am I doing here?!" I ask myself as I scrub toilets. The bright spot of life in the bud vase is divinely powerful, bringing me out of darkness into light. It gives me joy, redeems my work. I can hardly wait for the guests to arrive.

Last Sunday I went to church alone. Drex had spent the night at a friend's house and Debbie had a checkin. We've been frequenting a house church that meets out on the coast, about half an hour away, and was started by surfers from California. We started going because Drex vastly prefers the more informal atmosphere to our traditional Portuguese evangelical church, which he enjoys about as much as a blood draw. We also think it good practice for the house church we're starting here in our neighborhood. I've had very mixed feelings about going: one of my ambitions is to spend as little time as possible here with Americans. Americans are great, in America, but when you're in Portugal, I figure, you oughta spend time with Portuguese people, not least because you need to practice speaking Portuguese with them. On the other hand, one of our highest priorities is doing whatever we can to make Drex feel great about church. But as I drove west alone last Sunday morning I had to admit that the church has become a great blessing to me. The people there love us the way Christians are supposed to love each other. It was hard, but I had to admit it. After the "service," a word I use for lack of a better one, for the sun-soaked, lemon-tree-and-lavender-scented, guitar-and-bongo-scored, praise-and-worship-and-testimony-filled picnic on a stone terrace overlooking the rocky coast, two of the main guys came over and told me they wanted to lay hands on me and pray for me and my family but especially for Debbie and her health because they feel like we've been getting knocked around a little lately. People laying hands on me and praying always makes me sweat, but I had to admit I felt loved. A little Finnish dancer who's been studying in Lisbon a year said she had a vision, as we were praying, of me and my family nestled in the palm of God's hand. That was on the 29th. My journal is set up so I make entries beneath entries for the same date in previous years, so the following morning I read this entry from June 30, 2006: "Lisbon, Portugal. I'm feeling lonely, Father. We haven't any community here. No other believers, no friends, only acquaintances. Please build community here, Father, in Jesus' name." I had to admit I felt loved.

On June 20th we had our Annual Rua Joaquina Sardinhada, the Portuguese equivalent of a weenie roast, where we close off our little deadend street to cars, put up decorations, bring out tables, chairs, and barbeques and grill about 50 pounds (not an exaggeration) of sardines. Our neighbor, Tiago, great-nephew of Amália Rodrigues, the Portuguese Elvis Presley, goes out and rounds up his Fado (Portuguese blues) friends, who play their twelve-stringed guitars and sing until dawn. This year I was smarter than last year and dozed on the couch from about 4 until 5am, so as not to miss the end. Just as the sky began to lighten Tiago's 4-year-old son, Guilherme, prevailed upon a young hotshot guitarist to play. Guilherme sat next to him and strummed his own miniature guitar while the hotshot translated the sunrise into music. That was taken up in voice by a lovely young woman who sang notes expressing what words could not and made you wonder how you'd ever slept through something as thrilling as a sunrise. "The sun came up because we played," Guilherme explained to his mom. We pinched ourselves.

Please pray for Debbie's health. In lieu of a definite diagnosis, the pride of physicians she's seen has given her lots of drugs, which make it possible for her to move, most of the time, but can also make her days unpredictable.

Thank you for praying for us. God bless you this week.

Amusement

2008-03-04T00:20:00.004Z

You guys did a great job praying a couple of weeks ago when I sent out a prayer SOS: Debbie's Dad is doing much better. He's up and about and gaining strength. Debbie is doing better. She's experimenting with her drugs, looking for a balance between mobility and masking pain. She wants to get around but she wants to know when her body really wants her to quit.

Unfortunately, her list of infirmities grew today when the bathroom mirror came crashing down upon her. (I should have gotten rid of that thing a long time ago.) It could have been much worse, but it was bad enough. Because our car is at the mechanic we took a cab to the hospital, our hands clasped together like eloping lovers in order to stem the bleeding from filleted fingers. Cab drivers love this sort of thing and ours was no exception, racing through orange lights, giving us the thumbs up, playing his part beautifully. When there's blood Debbie always assumes the attitude of a curious biology student, poking and prodding. "If you'll cover that and apply pressure," I explained coolly, "the bleeding may stop and I may not throw up on you." This, too, is a familiar role. What I do in situations like these is fain queeziness in order to distract the patient from their own discomfort. Invariably, they find my discomfort amusing, (Debbie more so than most) laughter being the best medicine, as everyone knows. Call me Dr. J. In the end the fingers took ten stitches from Dr. Matthew from Boston, who chatted amicably while sewing things up--despite Debbie's ruining his outfit with blood--about the heady feeling of being a Red Sox fan in the 21st century.

Drex was doing much better: he hadn't missed school since the SOS and he is doing a great job of keeping preadolescent insanity in check. But today he had to leave school at lunchtime because of an assortment of discomforts. Both he and Debbie have gone to bed feeling pretty beat up.

I had really hoped to finally have the first meeting of our neighborhood house church here this week, but it looks like we'd better give Debbie a little more time to mend.

Would you please pray for her mending and get back to praying for Drex so he can get back to school.

Thanks and Godspeed.

Please Pray for Our Trip

2006-07-30T23:16:00.000+01:00

One of the challenges in raising children abroad is passing on one’s own cultural heritage. Drex isn’t going to get American History at school. What better way, therefore, to spend what is probably my last summer reading stories to my own children—after a rich twenty-four year career —than reading the Adventures of Tom Sawyer with Drex. Even as Drex has gained from Tom a broader sense of his own cultural identity he has found comfort in their sympathies: an abhorrence for the “restraint” of “whole clothes and cleanliness,” their distaste for Sunday School, “a place Tom hated with his whole heart,” and their affinity for fishing: “While Joe was slicing bacon for breakfast, Tom and Huck asked him to hold on a minute; they stepped to a promising nook in the river bank and threw in their lines; almost immediately they had reward. Joe had not had time to get impatient before they were back again with some handsome bass, a couple of sun-perch, and a small catfish—provision enough for quite a family.”

I would have said such exploits were for another time and place had I not seen a similar performance by Drex and his Uncle Butch last week in the Algarve. This was Butch’s first visit to Portugal and he wasted no time dispelling our myth of the elusive Portuguese fish. A storied fisherman, he reads water like ordinary people read maps. Where I see sun sparkling he sees structure: sand bars, shelves, pools. And he sees fish, powerless to resist his bait. He and Drex caught them “at will.” Almost as soon as they cast they’d begin backing up, reeling them onto the beach. “Thirty seconds without a fish! What’s going on?” Drex complained at one point. Thirty-one fish in all; all very tasty. Butch was pleased; Drex was beside himself.

Back here at home, one of the benefits of living in the center of a major European city is the summer street festivals, like Lisboamágica, Street Magic World Festival, today in its fifth and final day. At Drex’s insistence we’ve seen all fifteen magicians, some several times. Drex has been practicing tricks at home and has assumed a more theatrical bearing, generally. I have found the magician’s twenty-minute acts inspiring, too: what I need to do is develop a little repertoire of children’s stories I can relate and illustrate in Portuguese and English on the streets of Lisbon. I could make balloon animals—as many of the magicians did—until I’ve attracted enough children for stories. I could top them all off with a winsome version of the Greatest Story Ever Told.

The Habitat for Humanity Global Village trip I’m leading to Mozambique is just over two weeks away. You can meet the team and get a taste of what we’re in for at Bringing Together Worlds Apart. Please pray that God would fill the believers on our team with His Holy Spirit, that we might minister His love to everyone with whom we come in contact. Pray He would give us words and means to communicate the Gospel in ways people understand. Pray for safety and health. Pray Debbie and Drex are well while I’m away.

We appreciate your prayers more than we can express and more than you’d conclude based on how infrequently I’ve solicited them here lately. That is an omission for which I beg your pardon. The Lord bless you this week.

A Philosophical Question

2006-05-21T15:47:00.000+01:00

If a pipe bursts in the wall and there’s no one there to hear it, does it still turn the basement into a swimming pool? Yes. That’s why we’re thankful that when a pipe burst Tuesday at Casa Pátria, twenty minutes before honeymooners were due to arrive, Debbie was standing only a few feet away, heard it pop, and watched water begin to gush onto the floor. She turned off the water, diverted the honeymooners across the street to Casa Joaquina which was mercifully unoccupied and we spent the following forty-eight hours fixing plumbing, finishing just in time for the following guests. God doesn’t eliminate all the difficulties from the lives of His kids--what good would we be if He did?--but He’s a very present help in trouble and often handles us with kid gloves. Praise Him.

It’s a long way to Lisbon from Southern California so it’s no wonder Jerry was out of sorts when he arrived Thursday with his wife Susan for ten days at Casa Joaquina. But in his weakened state he didn’t know what to make of the Portuguese man gesticulating and remonstrating from the doorway until he recognized his computer in the man’s hand and the man himself as the taxi-driver who had dropped them off twenty minutes earlier. Jerry had left the computer in the back seat. The driver hadn’t noticed either until he picked up two young men who very quickly—inexplicably—asked him to stop and hopped out carrying a laptop they hadn’t had when they’d entered. “Wait a minute, that’s not yours!” he’d said, and wrested it away. Then he’d made his way back to Casa Joaquina—an heroic effort in its own right, given the labyrinth of one-way streets and unavailability of parking—in order to bestow upon Jerry the computer he had yet to miss. “Nem toda a gente é má,” (Not everyone is bad) the driver said in explanation of his benevolence. Not every Portuguese taxi driver is so gallant either, to be sure, as a number of our overcharged guests will attest, so it pays to make sure the meter is running, but kindnesses like these should not go unheralded.

Blessed week.

The Shaping of Things to Come

2006-05-14T23:16:00.000+01:00

Please don’t conclude from my long absence here that we no longer need your prayers. We need them at least as much as ever. Debbie and I continue to pray hard about the form our ministry here in Lisbon ought to take. Our passion for bringing the Good News of God’s love to this culture where it has been largely forgotten is being fueled by Australians Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch through their book The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church which is encouraging us to think creatively about introducing Jesus to people who don’t know Him. Praise God for His promise to direct us. Please ask Him to raise up people to partner with us in ministry.

Drex and I found out yesterday it takes just under two minutes to ride a mountain bike like a maniac from the Castle of St. George at the top of Lisbon through the Alfama, the precipitous, cobbled and crumbling old fisherman’s quarter, down to the Tagus River. UK biking icon Steve Peat won Lisboa Downtown (lisboadowntown.com—cute video! See if you can find Drex in the tree behind the throne.) for the fifth consecutive year, then, when given the last word by the master of ceremonies, said, in summing up the sentiments of his disaffected contemporaries, “Let’s get drunk!”

On a more wholesome note, Drex and I are reading Rascal, the eponymous tale of a pet racoon and his boy, set in early 20th century northern Illinois and Wisconsin. Author Sterling North so charmingly evokes the ethos of the place and time I keep expecting my grandfather to pedal around the bend with a string of catfish dangling from his handlebars.

Good books, warm spring days festooned with flowers, the companionship of the Holy Spirit; God communicates with us in lots of different ways. May He give us ears to hear and eyes to see this week.

Thank you for praying for us.

Open to Renegotiation

2006-02-26T21:52:00.000Z

Lisbon is not Braga. One way you can tell them apart is the different kinds of people here. One different kind of person is Seoirse Ó Deaghaidh (Pronounced “shorsh oh JA.”) That’s Ó Deaghaigh with an accent, “never, ever with an apostrophe.” Seoirse is Irish, though he’s not lived in Ireland for twenty years. He's one of our neighbors, but he might easily be mistaken for a leprechaun. His mischievous smile appears at doors and windows as if by magic when one is not expecting it, though one looks for it more and more. Sometimes he can be lured out of hiding with simple cell phone text messages: “Tea?”

Guess which door is Seoirse's

Having appeared, Seoirse keeps one company while one performs one’s menial tasks. He’s fascinated by practical matters. Occasionally, he provides an extra set of hands. Or he tells stories, or reads Sheamus Heaney, the Nobel Prize winning poet who used to date his sister:

A rowan like a lipsticked girl.
Between the by-road and the main road
Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
Stand off among the rushes.

There are the mud-flowers of dialect
And the immortelles of perfect pitch
And that moment when the bird sings very close
To the music of what happens.

Seoirse has lived all over Europe, so he has lots of stories to tell. But leprechauns must hide themselves because they cannot hide their feelings. They’re completely vulnerable when caught in the open. Seoirse alternates between weeping and laughter, chiding himself, when describing the Irish struggle for independence from Britain. He cried, too, when I laughed while talking with Drex on the phone. Laughter was forbidden in his father’s household. Owing in part to that prohibition, there’s tension between Seoirse and his Heavenly Father. As far as Seoirse is concerned, the two have not spoken for years, but he has alluded to being open to renegotiating that silence. Please pray he will.

2006-02-06T08:45:00.000Z

Please pray for Drex: He's had a fever for six days. He hasn't been in school since last Tuesday and he won't be going today. He's got a knarly cough. His class has a field trip coming up this week that they've all been looking forward to for a long time. Please ask God to make him well.

No Crystal Stair*

2006-01-15T23:43:00.000Z

Drex’s life is an interesting blend of abundance and deprivation: as an only child (for all practical purposes) with two parents working from home, he sees a lot of his folks. Often—probably more often than if he shared them with siblings—he gets their attention. He lives in a stimulating urban environment. His is a genuine international education. He has travelled extensively for a person his age. Yet he has been repeatedly deprived of close family relationships and friendships. There exists neither culture nor country where he is not a stranger, a foreigner. The largest open space that is part of his daily life is a narrow cobbled street. Sometimes I envy him, sometimes I’m afraid of being arrested for child abuse. We are completely dependent upon God to make it all OK, and to make us sensitive and responsive to Drex’s needs. Thanks for your ongoing prayers for our parenting.

With respect to that international urban education, results thus far are mostly encouraging. Fifth grade at Fernão Lopes in ’06 seems considerably more violent than I remember fifth grade at Wing Lake Elementary School in ‘72, but Drex, hardly the most aggressive kid crammed into the school’s tiny temporary quarters, seems to bear up with remarkable equanimity. While we walk home together he enthusiastically acts out from whom and under what circumstances he’s received the new marks on his face, sometimes handing me his back pack and insisting I stand still on the sidewalk to get the full effect. Thing is, students are more readily held back here, so it is common to meet children one, two and three years older than most of their classmates. The oldest student in Drex’s class is fourteen. So you’ve got a lot of young adolescents, for whom school has not been a crystal stair, with a lot of negative energy, looking out over the heads of their smaller colleagues like so many heads of wheat ready for harvest. I’ve trained Drex to end altercations by tackling low and driving with his legs but that’s a little nuclear for the school’s confined spaces and often not practical. So Drex ignores my advice and makes friends of his enemies instead. Where does he get that? Please pray for his protection and for his enemies.

He’s doing well enough in class. First semester grades are out and Drex’s GPA was 4.6 on a scale of 5, including the only 5 in his Portuguese Language class. Much of the credit goes to the head teacher, Professor Cláudio, who has transformed Drex’s attitude towards school. Debbie and I met and fell in love with Professor Cláudio last September. He is manly, gentle, radiant, encouraging and engaged with his students. He’s been teaching twenty-two years. Though Portuguese by birth, he grew up in Brazil, where he seems to have caught that country’s contagion for life. He believes the way out of Portugal’s present difficulties is paved with little acts of benevolence on the part of its citizens, especially its younger ones. Drex likes him as much as we do. May God bless him in his ministry.

Thanks for praying for us. May the Lord bless you this week as well.

* from

Mother to Son by Langston Hughes

Feeling God's Pleasure

2006-01-08T13:19:00.000Z

I drove from one end of Portugal to the other this week. On Monday I went south in the old Habitat for Humanity truck, Manuel, with a load of furniture for Casa Armona, the little beach cottage soon to join the VisitingPortugal.com line-up. We first became acquainted with southern Portugal, known as the Algarve, last summer when the country was in the throes of its worst drought in decades. As far as I knew, the Algarve was brown. Charming in a sun-baked Mediterranean way, but definitely umber. Imagine my surprise when just south of Lisbon verdant hills dappled with sheep, cows and horses and festooned with great lakes—some white, some gold—of tiny flowers (miniature daisies is what they look like up close) began rolling by the highway. Rather than looking like homeless people, destitute, bedraggled and misplaced, as they did last summer, the little whitewashed houses were the very picture of rural simplicity, sufficiency and grace. One wondered how there can be so much talk of economic crisis in the midst of such idyllic prosperity. I played fado—traditional mournful Portuguese music—on my harmonica as I drove along.

Having delivered my load of furniture I was free to take Manuel north to Braga at the end of the week, where I left him for good with Luis Ribeiro, the current Habitat construction supervisor and mastermind of our self-financing Habitat houses. Luis has worked out a system whereby we build a house using the labor and donations of ten Global Village work teams, each of which works for two weeks. It’s brilliant, and because lots of volunteers want to come to Portugal, we can fill our calendar with as many teams as we can handle. So you’d think we’d be putting up houses from the Minho to the Mediterranean, wouldn’t you? Well, not quite. We’re like a really cool kite that hasn’t quite caught the wind. In fact, at the moment we’re in danger of crashing. We’re looking at some creative ways to get turned around. Would you please ask God to keep us in the air?

It had been a long time since I had been in Braga and it was very nice to check in with old friends. I joined my little men’s group for their morning prayer hike, breakfasted at our old house with ex-Habitat construction assistant Alvaro Azevedo and his wife, who are caring for nine foster children there, and chatted with our diminutive eighty-two year old former neighbour Dona Rosa, who had heart surgery in the fall and cried when she spoke of how much she misses us (just as she used to cry when she spoke of how much she misses the Leaf family that lived next door to her before we did). I stopped by As Andorinhas, one of the neighborhoods where Vivarte used to operate, and had a beer with Senhor António, whose deformative joint disease you may have read about here before. His fingers, none of which approaches straight or anything less than twice normal size, were wrapped in plastic—something I’d not seen before—against the weeping of incisions made for their drainage. “You’re a hero,” I told him, awed by his suffering. “You just keep doing what you have to do,” he said, in his patient way, his eyelids and facial muscles drooping in response to pain medication. Please continue to pray for António, that God would heal him completely.

Looking back now upon my autumn trip to America I can see two or three themes that emerged. One was “feeling God’s pleasure.” It came up in conversations with several men. You may remember the expression from the 1981 Academy Award winning film, Chariots of Fire. The hero, Eric Liddell, uses it in response to his sister when she reminds him that God made him a missionary: “Yes,” he replies, “but He also made me fast, and when I run I feel His pleasure.” Feeling God’s pleasure keeps coming up because it is 1) so nice, and 2) a natural indicator of our gifts and what God would like us to do with them. “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart,” King David of Israel, who ought to know, wrote. Just as there is mutuality, a bonding and a shared pleasure, between parent and child when the child manifests his giftedness—in the arena, on the stage, in the classroom, in conversation—so our relationship with God should be characterized by mutual pleasure and delight. One might even say there is a fulfilment, a bringing about of fullness in relationship, when we exercise our gifts, fulfilling the purpose for which He made us. Think about making God feel fulfilled. Where do you feel His pleasure? In thinking about the question myself, I notice that one of the places I feel God’s pleasure is in trying to create a little window upon the world through writing. I’ve been busy about a lot of things lately and haven’t been writing much, so being at the computer this long, feeling God’s pleasure, has come as a pleasant little shock. Would you mind asking God to get me to listen to my own advice? Is there a way to organize your time so you might feel God’s pleasure more? I pray it would be so.

Thank you for praying for us. Blessed week.

Homecoming

2005-12-04T22:30:00.000Z

Among good campers there’s an unspoken agreement: we’ve traded the comforts of home for the excitement and adventure of the road. We don’t complain about the absence of the familiar comforts. We focus on the adventure. I think it’s a good trade. But it takes energy. One may not realize how much until one collapses into an armchair at home.

Our fifty-five month camping trip ended this week. Our furniture and belongings, which I shipped from Seattle while I was there in September, arrived in Lisbon after eighty days at sea. I sat in my favorite armchair—inherited from my grandmother; exactly like one that appears in Gone with the Wind—and read the newspaper, for the first time in well over four years. Debbie laid on the couch—actually an upholstered aircraft carrier—and delightedly wiggled her toes, unable to reach anywhere near the far end. Drex is beside himself, getting reacquainted with things of which he has only the vaguest memories. Austin and Vitor brought lasagne Friday evening so Austin could play with her dolls. When they left, Vitor dutifully if bemusedly bundled the little trunk with all the tiny doll things off to the car. I was shocked by how nice it is just to be among our things. I had not realized what good campers we were being.

As a strategic measure, we put together the living room so we’d have a place to which we may retreat, even though it’s almost impossible to move around the rest of the apartment for all the boxes. As I sat in my Rhet Butler chair and looked around I thought about the story it all tells: I remembered where we bought things and when, how young we used to be, people who gave us things, how long we’ve been married. It made me glad. And thankful.

Decorating for Christmas this year means not just putting out lights and goodies from Christmases past, but unpacking our lives and arranging them so there’s someplace to hang the decorations. Christmas is a time for homecoming. God started it, by sending us His Son, so we may all go home. Getting our furniture has been a powerful reminder of His faithfulness and of how sweet that homecoming will someday be.

We pray your Advent Season is blessed and that God reveals to you, too, the magnitude of His love and care for you.

"A Luz dos Justos Brilha Alegremente"

2005-11-13T19:09:00.000Z

“The light of the righteousness shines happily.” Proverbs 9:12

(Jesus is our righteousness.)

I am not a battery, that I might be recharged, as I have imagined. I have no capacity to store energy. I was mistaken because, like the filament in a light bulb, I may remain warm after the power of God has stopped flowing. That is, after I’ve stopped paying attention to God, after the switch has been shut off.

So what am I to do, if I have to be directly connected to the Source in order to do any good?

Pray continually.

Sounds daunting. But if it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives through me, as Paul contends, if I have the very mind of Christ, as Paul argues elsewhere, then it’s all prayer. It’s all prayer. Every thought, every worry, every idea, every complaint, every lust, every enmity, all of it. Everything that passes through my brain passes too through the mind of the Almighty, Who is always with me, Who’s Spirit is so closely allied with my own it is impossible to distinguish between the two. (I’m just repeating what Jesus said). That’s why Paul could talk about praying continually. It’s all prayer. That’s also why Christians must be so terrifyingly careful about what thoughts they admit into their heads. “I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned,” Jesus said (Matthew 12:36-37). That is, every word spoken before God. That is, everything.

So don’t let anyone convince you you’ve got to get up early or be on your knees or have your hands folded or your eyes closed to pray. It’s good to be on your knees for the same reason it’s good to sit up straight and pay attention in class. But if you have been born again, you’re praying now.

If you haven’t been born again, join a little group of people who are seeking after God. It hardly matters what tribe. You’ll find saints and heretics almost everywhere you go, but when people set out together to really find God, they find Him.

Each day a work of art

2005-11-13T07:45:00.000Z

Please pray for Zapman (secret identity: Drex). Though indefatigable in his crusade against crime here at home, he has not been as vigilant fighting uncertainty at school. He’s sometimes reluctant to ask questions. That’s normal enough, but well do I remember the dread attending classes where one has fallen behind. Contrast that with the pleasure of keeping up; humbly, diligently making sure you get explanations you understand. It can make all the difference, not just in school but in life. The temptation to pretend you understand can be intense and can lead to all sorts of misery. But asking questions is risky. Colleagues, classmates, Sometimes even teachers, don’t always respond well. To take the risk a person must have resources upon which they know they may draw. The love of God is such a resource. Please pray that Zapman would have a secure sense of it.

(Incidentally, Zapman comes by his heroism naturally. A young Lisbonita recently remarked, upon seeing Zapman’s mom, a.k.a., Zapma (secret identity: Debbie) carelessly toss aside a heavy burden, “She’s ripped!”)

Please pray for Crista da Onda, the ministry to at-risk youth with which we are involved here in Lisbon. The organization faces difficult issues, some of which are endemic to young non-profit organizations, others of which are particular to Crista da Onda. Please pray that God would be glorified and that Crista da Onda would flourish and bear much fruit.

Please pray Psalm 90:12 for me: “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may present to Thee a heart of wisdom.” I am still in the process of bringing some order to life in Lisbon. Of course, given the nature of life and our work in particular it will always involve a certain amount of disorder, but there are certain things a guy’s gotta get done. One of those is keeping in close communication with people who are praying for you. Life has not yet gotten so easy for me that I can forego the resources made available to me in response to other people’s prayers. What I need is unflinching confidence that God will make of each day a work of art—though its artistic quality may be abstruse—self-contained, yet fitting perfectly into the opulent design that becomes a week, a month, a year and a life. That’s the order I’m after.

Thank you for praying for us. The Lord bless you this week.

Introvert's Society

2005-08-28T08:32:00.000+01:00

Board meeting of the Introvert's Society at our home yesterday.
Very little was said.

Bringing Together Worlds Apart

2005-08-22T21:50:00.000+01:00

By any measure our week in the Algarve, Portugal’s Mediterranean sandbox, was a success. Everyone, including Debbie and Vitor, had a nice time. Drex snorkeled and bonded with Austin over Pokemon cards and shell collection. I swam in the sea each day. We got a dog, or, more precisely, got on the waiting list for a puppy from the next litter of a Portuguese Water Dog (motto: “The dog and the sea are one.” This is said to be the only breed of dog with webbed feet.) We bought a house.

The Portuguese Water Dog.
Drex was looking for a pet with whom he shares things in common.
Hairstyle, for example.
For more trip photos click http://www.flickr.com/photos/vitor-austin

Some people read books when they go on vacation. Some people play cards. Some people sleep. Debbie does all those things, but she also looks at real estate ads. Its her way of getting oriented. That’s nothing new. What was different on this trip was that she had Vitor to make her telephone calls. It is presumed that a Portuguese voice, as opposed to a foreign one, lowers the price of real estate here 5 - 10%. So along with family outings to the nature preserve and water park, there were family outings, led capably by Vitor, to look at houses. We hadn’t looked long before the wedding money in Vitor and Austin’s pocket began burning a hole. VisitingPortugal had been thinking about adding another property for some time in hopes of coming closer to providing a living for its proprietors. Offering our clients an alternative outside Lisbon was one strategy that had been discussed. Ilha da Armona, or Armona Island, where Casa Armona is situated, is three hours from Lisbon, a bit further than we might have expected, but the Algarve is arguably the most logical place for people to stay who are also spending time in Lisbon. Partnership with Austin and Vitor was also a huge part of the appeal. I don’t know what it is about my family and remote islands accessible only by ferry where motorized vehicles are not permitted—my parents live on Mackinac Island, Michigan—but apparently it’s contagious. Please pray that God would glorify Himself through VisitingPortugal and everything it touches.

For the August 2006 Habitat for Humanity Global Village trip I hope to lead to Mozambique we have tentatively chosen the theme, “Bringing Together Worlds Apart.” One of our goals is to raise money for at least four trip scholarships, two for young people from America and two for young people from Portugal. It is hoped that, from each of those pairs, one scholarship would go to a writer and the other to a visual artist. Their writing and art in response to the trip would be one benefit we offer our supporters. What usually happens with Global Village is that participants are older people with considerable disposable income. Nothing wrong with that. Homes get built for families in need and people are touched by the gospel of Jesus Christ. But a Global Village trip can be an especially powerful, formative experience for a young person, and if that young person happens to be an artist or a writer, skilled at conveying something of an experience to others, all of us might be richly blessed. Of course, for anything of value to come from all this God must bring it to fruition. Will you pray with me that He does so?

Thank you for your prayers. The Lord bless you this week.

We are not a beach

2005-08-08T12:21:00.000+01:00

If Drex’s transfer from school in Braga to school in Lisbon had gone smoothly, it just would not have seemed like Portugal to us. True to form, “Não é possível,” for Drex to go to his neighborhood school, even though we’ve jumped through all the right hoops. But we aren’t rookies at Portuguese bureaucracy any more, so we’ve dutifully, cheerfully, prayerfully run all over town trying to discover the place God has for Drex in the fall. We’ve ended up where we began, at the neighborhood school, where, ironically, we met the one administrator who has not been helpful, sympathetic and encouraging. She may not be happy when she finds Drex’s paperwork back in her inbox but, again ironically, she was the one who marked out for us the path that brought us back to her door. Officially it remains impossible for Drex to go there. The school is temporarily being housed in a converted bank while its regular building is remodeled and students are already “on top of one another.” Thankfully, all things are possible with God. Thank you for your ongoing prayers.

People who have been following our news from Portugal for a while will be acquainted with the story of our first visit to church in Braga, in the summer of 2000, while we were in town volunteering with Habitat for Humanity: We went to the church of then-president of Habitat, Silas Pego. His son, Jónatas, greeted us exuberantly at the door in perfect English, having grown up in Iowa. Jónatas is now Austin’s brother-in-law; Austin is the aunt of Silas’s grandchildren. But another striking thing happened that first Sunday in Braga, another little manifestation of God’s love and care for us. Visiting Jónatas and his wife, Carla, that weekend from Lisbon were their friends, Canadian Ron Fairbanks, his Portguese wife, Idália, and their four children, Hannah, Tamara, Jason and Joel. Tamara was the first person his age Drex had seen in over a month who spoke English. While their parents talked, the four-year-olds got acquainted, and as the conversation drew to a close, the tiny figures of Drex and Tamara, walking hand in hand, could be seen silhouetted against the light at the other end of a pedestrian underpass. It is one of my most precious images of that summer. The Fairbanks had never been to Braga before and have never returned. Now it appears as if the answer to your prayers that God would show us where we ought to go to church in Lisbon may be Tamara’s. Debbie and I met with the pastor, Paulo Cheveiro, last week and he said a lot of things that made us think we might get along nicely. The church strategy for growth is through small groups. Pastor Cheveiro does a daily radio show based upon sermons of old-time Southern pastor J. Vernon McGee, one of Debbie’s dad’s favorite radio pastors, of whom Debbie does a passable imitation. Tamara has grown into a lovely young lady with blue lagoon eyes. Neither she nor Drex has any recollection of their meeting in Braga. All of us will be starting fresh.

If you needed Debbie and you heard she was on vacation you would probably want to look in the more remote corners of the Iberian peninsula. Nontouristy places the guidebooks recommend for long walks or historic esoterica. If you saw crowds you would know you could look elsewhere. Beaches would be out; what’s a beach but sun that burns you, wind that makes you cold, water that makes you wet and the invasion of your personal spaces by sand and inappropriately dressed persons, neither of which will go away? Why would anyone go to a beach? Love. The Algarve, Portugal’s Mediterranean coast, is the one part of Portugal Drex has not visited. He loves the beach. He wants to go. Coincidentally, so do the other 9,999,999 inhabitants of Portugal, even though they were all there last summer. Each August Portugal takes a group photograph with everyone arrayed along that sandy strip. Lisbon is empty, except for a few Spaniards who are also forced from their homes by custom in August. So for the next seven days, by the grace of God, Debbie will be looking on the bright side: sleeping late, quality time with her loving family, no food preparation responsibilities. Austin and Vitor are coming along, though not without some trepidation. Just as Debbie came from a quiet, nonverbal family culture twenty-three years ago and married into the Kleber Family Circus, so Vitor has heretofore led a peaceful life. But we are not strangers to introversion. We can handle this. We know how to respect people’s personal space, even when it is more ample than average. We are not a beach. Please pray everyone has a nice time.

Thank you very much for loving us and praying for us. Boas ferias (Have a nice vacation). The Lord bless you this week.

Nut House

2005-07-17T00:54:00.000+01:00

On the 29^th of June I was close to despair. I had been running around Braga for weeks tying up loose ends and now I faced the thorough cleaning of our house, which during those same weeks had become one giant dust dragon. I was already sleep-deprived and it looked like miles to go before I would sleep again. Up walked Saulo, a friend. Saulo is an unlikely hero. His is a complicated life. He is a Christian, but he refers to most of what goes on in church as “merda,” which is an impolite reference to something you hope not to find on the bottom of your shoes. He and I had been getting together for lunch about once a week for candid, enthusiastic theological discussion. He asked if I’d like him to help clean. We started at 4:30 p.m. Just having him there gave me courage and strength. We attacked the job. At 7:30 I had to go to a meeting. Saulo went home to eat, unbelievably asking me to pick him up on my way back. We resumed work at 9:30, cleaned until 2:30 the following morning, then collapsed on camping mats in the garage. On the 30^th I was close to despair again. I limped into Lisbon about 11 p.m. with a truck nearly full with the last of our household belongings. When Debbie saw I had met our extremely colorful, extremely talkative new neighbor Fernando Girão (www.fernandogirao.com) in the corridor, she gave up on me and went to bed. When Fernando and I finished getting acquainted I sat down in the dark and wondered how I was going to get all our junk inside. Up walked Hilário. “If you give me a little money I’ll help you.” He did. He attacked the job. Just having him there gave me courage and strength, but Hilário still ran circles around me. He lives on the street, he explained. He’s a drug addict. “Jesus Christ wants to give you the power you need to overcome your addiction,” I explained. We prayed together. I haven’t seen him since, though I’ve been looking. Thank God He sent me Saulo and Hilário to deliver me from my despair and that He loves to use weak and broken people, like us, to show Himself strong.

Our new apartment is near the Lisbon city center on Rua do Telhal, so we call our home Telhal. Literally, a telhal is a factory that makes telhas, those picturesque Portuguese terra cotta roof tiles. But in popular parlance a telha is a craze or mania and so, by extension, a Telhal is a nut house. And yet, sanity is being restored. The river of our lives has begun to carve its watercourse in our new home and community. Backwaters remain, rooms where debris accumulates, boxes of unseasonable items that will be dealt with in time. But our priorities are intact: the day after I arrived I realized a twenty-three-year-old domestic dream: I bolted a basketball hoop ten feet up the thirty-five foot concrete sheer wall that forms our south border and casts an alleviating shadow over our ample terrace.

Drex prepares for the 2016 Portuguese Olympic basketball team.

The thumping of the ball on the tile, the frisking of the palms in the sea breeze and the circling of the swallows in the sun overhead give the place a festive holiday feel.

We’re still praying about where we’ll go to church. As an outreach of whatever church becomes ours I’d like to organize a place where people would be confronted from the moment they arrive by the intimacy we have in Christ Jesus. Intimacy—with God and with one another—is the best thing we’ve got going. People, who live in an increasingly superficial world, crave it. It’s what leads people to Christ. And yet most of our church services are extremely superficial. I don’t think it needs to be so. Imagine a group of maybe ten to forty people who divide their time together between 1) simple music worship, 2) prayer and 3) public reading and discussion of the Bible. Afterwards, they share a simple meal. Rather than expecting a small number of people to contribute all content, everyone would be expected to share from their experience and giftedness.[1] Rather than what we have come to think of as preaching, different people would take turns facilitating discussion of Biblical texts.[2] When the group grows to where genuine intimacy is unsustainable, they divide. This creates a constant need for leaders and a culture of gift and leadership development. When a person arrives they are confronted by a group of people who are genuinely interested in them and in their spiritual well-being. “Who are you?” “What are your gifts?” “How can we pray for you?” “How can we serve you?” “What responsibilities are you prepared to assume?” People cannot resist this sort of attention, when it is animated by the Spirit of the Living God. What I’m imagining owes much to the New Testament, much to home or cell groups like our Seattle Soup Group and much to Alcoholic’s Anonymous, just to name a few sources. Quakerism, to name another. It’s nothing new. The group is constantly refreshed because it is constantly partaking of the Holy Spirit manifested through not a few but many brothers and sisters. I’d particularly like to target our neighborhood’s numerous drug addicts. Obviously, God will decide whether any of this comes to fruition. Please pray that His will would be done.

Sam Azevedo is a nine-year-old from Oregon who has spent most of his life in Portugal. Drex is a nine-year-old from Washington who has spent most of his life in Portugal, too. Both their lives have been pretty tumultuous lately. They’ve been ministering to one another. Sam spent a couple of days at our house this week amidst our unpacking and the boys’ happy chatter was music to all present. Also this week, Debbie and Drex visited the school we hope he’ll attend in the fall. They were told there is no room. Now we’ll pray that God makes room and that He indicates to us what we can do to facilitate the making of that room without being too obnoxious. Won’t you pray along with us?

God bless you for praying for us this week. Thank you very much.

[1] “When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.” 1 Corinthians 14:26.

[2] “Let two or three prophets announce the Word of God and the others give their opinion about what has been said.” 1 Corinthians 14:29. Who is a prophet? One who speaks the Word of God. How is the Word of God spoken nowadays? Predominately , it is read.

Rio de Janeiro Comes to Lisbon

2005-06-14T19:24:00.000+01:00

Last Friday June 10th, Portugal Day, our family was here in Braga, but at Carcavelos, the Lisbon-area beach where Drex and I are learning to surf and where I had hoped to spend time every week escaping claustrophobia urbana, about 500 local at-risk youths like those we serve at Crista da Onda forsook their at-risk status, turned professional, and demonstrated exactly what they are at-risk for.

They conducted what is known on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro as an "arrastão," heretofore unknown in Portugal, which sounds like but is the opposite of being arrested. It means running amuck relieving bathers of anything one can lay one’s hands on and attacking anyone who offers resistance. As surprised police moved in to allay the chaos, the youths took their mayhem onto the trains and into surrounding neighborhoods. Four of them were taken into custody. Three bathers and two police officers were injured.

This may mean we need to rethink our claustrophobia urbana strategy. Please pray that Lisbon comes up with other creative ways to deal with its at-risk youth, in addition to Crista da Onda.

What's a couple to do?

2005-06-13T21:26:00.000+01:00

If you've been following the news from here for a while now, you may remember Alvaro Azevedo, former construction assistant at Habitat for Humanity. He and his wife, Conceição, care for seven foster children and pray for children of their own. Here they are with six of the seven:

L-R: Hugo, Esperança, Paulo, Bruno, Conceição,
Armanda, Alvaro and Gabriel, out in front of our
house, which may become their house soon.

Now there's a chance Alvaro and Ção may be able to adopt Armanda, who they have cared for the last two years. But if they do adopt her they must give up the other children, the state says. If they don't adopt her they may lose her and they don't want to risk that. They are asking God for a miracle. They want to adopt Armanda and continue to care for the other children as well. Would you kindly pray with them?

Holding On

2005-06-09T10:57:00.000+01:00

Sorry I haven’t been around lately. I miss meeting you here, but we’re in moving mode and it hasn’t left time to write. I feel as if we’re living in a centrifuge, spinning all over Portugal, flying around being separated into our component parts, trying desperately to maintain hold of our Center, who is the Lord Jesus Christ. “My soul clings to You, o God; Your right hand upholds me.” (Psalm 63:8).

Thank you for praying that Drex and I would get along without Debbie’s mitigating presence while she works in Lisbon on VisitingPortugal.com stuff. God has been giving me extra patience lately (a lovely feeling) and Drex and I have been having a nice time. But please don’t stop praying. As is required of nine-year-olds, Drex is manifesting his individuality and independence more and more and it will only be by God’s grace that we find that balance between latitude and limit ideally suited to him and to the new adventures each day brings. Because I felt it a cultural necessity for our children to be familiar with it, Debbie got me a copy of the original Rocky film for my birthday (which isn’t until September) and I accidentally opened it in her absence. Drex and I have watched it several times. (It is so quaint.) We’ve agreed to run together up the steps of the Philadelphia Institute of Art some day and bounce with our arms aloft. Drex bought a punching bag and has entered into training. Please pray his interest in boxing remains mild.

Please ask God to give us discernment about involvements in Lisbon. There are lots of things we might do. Obviously, VisitingPortugal will take up a portion of our time, but it is not clear how much. Nor do we know whether Crista da Onda (Crest of the Wave), the ministry to at-risk adolescents with which we are already involved, will get a little of our time or a lot. I hope to continue to be involved with Habitat for Humanity and dream of leading two Habitat Global Village teams per year to Portuguese-speaking countries like Angola, Mozambique and Brazil. I intend to write. There are lots of other possibilities, too. We expect God will clarify to what He would have us hold on and what He would have us let go.

Thanks very much for holding on to us and praying for us. Every spiritual blessing to you in Christ Jesus.

"Do you live here or don't you?"

2005-05-17T19:30:00.000+01:00

Well, a new chapter in our lives has begun. We’re innkeepers now. Only our inn is spread out over about twelve very undulating city blocks. There’s nowhere to park, so forget driving. Maybe we’ll get roller skates or skateboards. Then our neighbors would think us even stranger than they think us now, if that were possible. They do not understand at all what we are doing. Debbie tried explaining to two charming elderly sisters who live across the narrow street from Casas Travessa and Santana and it only frightened them. “So, do you live here or don’t you?” one asked. All they see is us walking around the neighborhood carrying all manner of household items and tools, coming and going from different buildings, picking up garbage and dog poop all over the place. I plan to get housepaint in various colors to match our neighbor’s houses so I can paint over the graffiti our guests must pass when they arrive. We’re wackos! We spent last weekend trundling about. Debbie’s been at this for weeks but it was my first taste of real action. All three places were full. There was a late Saturday checkin and an early Sunday checkout and a late Sunday checkin. Drex went to church with Austin and Vitor while Debbie and I worked. We love Sabbath-keeping, but we call this having our “ox in the ditch.”[1] Please pray we can keep our ox at liberty by scheduling checkins and checkouts on Saturdays.

One evening last week as I prepared dinner, Drex excavated in the back yard. He came across some worms. The discovery triggered a reaction in his brain and he asked if we could go fishing. He had not wanted to fish for almost a year, having lost patience with Portugal’s reticent trout. During this season of estrangement, when the boys at church have clamored for us to take them fishing as we have in the past, Drex has been unmoved. I didn’t want this smoldering reed of enthusiasm extinguished, but it was a school night, time for dinner, bath and bed. I knew the gear was a tangled mess. I asked Drex to give me a few minutes to think about it. During those few minutes, the Holy Spirit reminded me of the sort of childhood I’d like Drex to have; the things I’d like to come into his mind when he is old and looks back. I bundled up the tangled mess and off we went. We were on the Rio Cavado in eleven minutes. We fished about an hour, until dark. Drex, finally forsaking the instructions of his father which had availed him nothing, imitated the Portuguese who dangle their worms in the shallows for fingerlings and caught one. I didn't catch anything, but the winsome river and the clouds like great divine pastries baked by the setting sun to a brilliant orange pink beneath and set on a table of ice blue, made me wonder how I had stayed away so long. We fried Drex's fish for breakfast the following morning and he ate it in one bite, with exceeding relish. The next evening he caught three more. Maybe when we move to Lisbon and find all the good fishing spots around there we’ll include guided fishing trips on the list of VisitingPortugal.com amenities. Drex likes the idea of being a guide.

Please pray for thirteen-year-old Angelo. He used to be one of our most regular artists at Vivarte. He came almost every day to practice guitar, among other things. Lately he’s been in a slide, though, and we’ve seen less of him. His schoolwork has completely crashed. I think a big part of the problem may be his dad’s recent release from prison and subsequent reentrance into his life. His dad bought him new Nikes and a new cell phone, but they don’t seem to have given him either surer footing or improved communication. Angelo is off balance. His mom seems to be trying to control him, which only hardens his resolve to be free of her. Today he asked me if we could make a chair for his room. At Vivarte, we make a nice chair out of garbage. That is, from wood taken from pallets thrown out by the home and garden store. I jumped at the chance to make one with Angelo. When it comes to helping kids with their projects, I subscribe to a theory from Jeff VanVonderen’s book, Families Where Grace is in Place. He says the object of the game is to bring just enough of our own power to bear so the kids can succeed. I knew Angelo would need plenty of auxiliary power. He lasted about fifteen minutes before drifting away to a guitar. I figured if pressed he’d abandon the chair, so I finished cutting out the pieces myself. “Tomorrow we’ll put your chair together,” I said. Please ask God to put Angelo’s life together. His eleven-year-old sister, Cata, a joy who loves baseball, could use your prayers, too.

Thank you for praying with us and for us. In heaven you’ll see the effect of all this praying and it will be immeasurably beyond your imagining. Blessed week to you.

[1] Luke 14:5

Caught in a Vortex

2005-05-10T07:00:00.000+01:00

One of the questions I had when I came to Portugal was whether it would be possible to have fellowship with Catholics as we have had in the United States; to leave aside, for the most part, our doctrinal differences, talk candidly about spiritual matters, pray together and encourage one another’s faith. The answer is yes. The early-morning peripatetic men’s group I’ve asked you to pray for has been having a spectacular time doing those very things. Each morning we read and discuss a verse or two from the Bible printed in Portuguese and English. They help me with the Portuguese. I help them with the English. Our most enthusiastic member, Senhor Araujo, says his life has changed completely as result of our discussions and prayers. He says he sometimes prays spontaneously with his family at home now, much to their surprise. He may be in the process of being born again. Please pray it would be so. Please also pray for the continuation of the group after my departure for Lisbon at the end of June. Finally, pray I can get another similar group started in Lisbon. By walking together and staying away from church we not only get good exercise, we avoid a lot of unnecessary conflict.

It looks as if this house may be turned into a foster home for kids under the care of the Bomfim Foundation, the foundation affiliated with our church, the same foundation that operates Vivarte. Our landlords met here today with Anabela Pereira, the Executive Director of Bomfim and my co-Sunday school teacher, and Carla Pego, Austin’s sister-in-law and the person responsible for the operations of the foster homes. Everyone was very enthusiastic. The next step is to get the house approved by the authorities and make a few minor modifications. The foster home that may move here might be that of Alvaro Azevedo, former Habitat for Humanity construction assistant, and his wife, who care for seven foster children who often play in the street where they live now. What a blessing it would be for them to have this big back yard and the neighborhood soccer court a stone’s throw away.

Please pray for Drex. When one is accustomed to the clever, delicately balanced repartee of a household such as our own, having one parent 366 kilometers away can be disorienting. Translation: He's tired of his father harping at him all the time. "Are you having bad days, Dad? You seem angry," he said this evening. And I thought I was doing great today! I was Mr. Patient! I was feeling real spiritual. What must he have been thinking last week when I was dragging a little? Maybe Drex isn't the only one for whom you should be praying. Whether it is a manifestation of these stresses or deeper relational issues between him and his teacher, Drex is finding it difficult to face his professora day after day. He says she criticizes him. Here, Drex is caught in a vortex. At home, he receives the standard American lavish positive reinforcement treatment. About the harshest criticism he hears for anything other than deliberate disobedience is, “Good try!” But positive reinforcement has not yet arrived in Portugal. When a math problem is incorrect, it is “bad.” When a tree is not green, or a sun is not yellow, they are bad, too. What is a nine-year-old to think? One good thing that has already come of the conflict is that it has made Drex more a man of prayer. Please pray he would be increasingly so and that God would transform his relationship with his teacher.

God bless you and keep you and make His face to shine upon you this week. Thank you very much for your prayers.

A Duck

2005-04-27T20:31:00.000+01:00

A duck is just an idea

so powerful

it exerts a specific gravitational force,

bringing matter together

in a ducky way.

Same with that chair,

the world,

you.

If God stopped thinking of you

for a moment

you’d blow apart

into a bijillion pieces.

Roosters for Seagulls

2005-04-24T22:54:00.000+01:00

I’m writing from the living room corner of Casa Santana, one of the two new apartments now available at VisitingPortugal.com. Spread beneath the window before me is the Rossio, which is literally the “Boardwalk” of the Portuguese version of Monopoly you may play when you stay here. In the night distance the black Tagus flows between a string of lights on its far shore and the illuminated triumphal arch, the gateway to Lisbon, in the Praça do Comércio, on its near shore. If I want to know the time I turn and look out the window to my right at the clock atop the late 19th century Moorish inspired Rossio train station.

Moon set over the Rossio station.
Find the clock.

Debbie has done another spectacular job doing everything to get these places on the map. Her decorating is charming, her negotiating culturally-sensitive yet ever-so-slightly hard-nosed. Of all the days she’s spent shopping one stood out. As she recounted the way she felt born along and directed by the Holy Spirit that day she caught herself and issued the old disclaimer one hears applied to little choices everywhere: “As if God cares about my shopping.” “As if God cares about what tie/dress I wear,” is its simplest form, but the idea grows like a B movie monster, until you hear Christians saying things like “As if God cares about what house I buy,” or “which job I choose.” Let’s settle this thing once and for all right now. Bring to mind a friend who loves you and loves to be with you. Imagine their delight when you find something really cute for your house, or the pleasure they take when you look really great. And not just really great, but really great for the occasion at hand. Not just any tie will do. This friend knows who else will be at the meeting and doesn’t want you reminding him of the tie he threw up on at his senior prom or the way his old boss used to dress. This friend delights in you. “You are IT!” this friend says when you’ve made up your mind. God cares more. You are the apple of His eye.

They took some getting used to, but one thing I’ll miss when we leave Braga is the roosters. We probably have at least half a dozen roosters within shouting distance of our house, including three or four living next door in different directions. Depending on the time of year they pretty reliably begin announcing the day between 3 and 4 a.m. I wear earplugs to take the edge off but I have become genuinely fond of their cacophonous accompaniment to my dreams. It has come to represent northern Portugal for me, which is fitting, since one of their number from a nearby town called Barcelos, rose from the dead many years ago to prove the innocence of a falsely accused man and thereby became the symbol of the region for everyone else. I’ll be trading in the Barcelos roosters for Lisbon’s seagulls, which are symbolic of plenty themselves. Their ancestors tricked about the rigging of Vasco de Gama and Ferdinand Magellan. Friends of theirs frequent Seattle. The roosters are rural and agrarian and quaint. The gulls are of the wind and the open ocean and all the places around its perimeter. I will miss the roosters, but it’s a trade I’m happy to make.

Casa Santana and Casa Travessa are within 10 meters of one another. Casa Joaquina is 500 meters uphill to the north. Walking between them half a dozen times yesterday, your VisitingPortugal.com handyman began to feel a camaraderie with the other working people of the neighbourhood; hoteliers, restaurateurs, grocers. In the years to come I hope to get to know these people and share the love of God with them. We all need it. Pleas pray it would be so.

Living with Behçet’s disease is like living in Kansas. When clouds begin to gather on the horizon you can’t help wondering whether they’ll blow over and be nothing or boil up into a twister. Both Austin and Drex have little health clouds right now. Please ask God to make them completely well.

Thank you for praying for us. The Lord bless you this week.