You can observe a lot by watching

We are so thankful to have the church remodeling and painting done. There was no way we could have done it alone and there were many folks who chipped in. But the one man that headed it all up and kept things going was my right-hand man Reginaldo. It was interesting working together with him and watching how he accomplished things. He always has a smile or a joke as he talks with people, and almost always gets a great discount on materials. He was willing to go to extremes to get things done and get them done right. His wife Ester was there at his side many times when others didn’t show up to help. We are grateful to them for the outstanding job that was done. Friday evening we took them out to dinner as a small way of saying thanks. They were appreciative, but said that what was accomplished was done for God’s glory.
During the day on Friday Sue and I walked downtown, shopped for some chocolate Easter eggs for our kids and a pair of ladies shoes. We must have hit every shoe store there was (at least it seemed that way to me) but ended up buying the shoes back at the first store we were in. After about the third store, I found myself wanting to sit on a bench and people watch. At least our mission was accomplished, we had lunch and walked home.
Thursday evening a leadership meeting was held at church. We are thankful to have a great group of Brazilians working alongside who have very good constructive ideas. We are working on getting better communication between ministry areas and more accountability. This is a big step in taking “ownership” of the ministry – taking it out of the missionaries’ hands and getting it into the hands of church leadership.
Monday we had a mission field council meeting at our place. Field council is made up of all the ABWE missionaries in this area. It was great to have our colleagues Tim and Andrea Blazer back with us again. They had arrived the previous Saturday. Tim is doing much better health-wise than when we had seen him in December. He still has a lot of restrictions during this recovery time, but they are happy to be home again.
During that meeting we talked about what a great time we had at the ABWE All-Brazil conference in the end of January. This is the group shot of all ABWE Brazilian missionaries at that conference. Sue and I in the front row. (In case you didn't know - with most of the pictures in our blogs, if you click on them the are enlarged.)At yesterday’s field council meeting Sue was chosen to organize our regional planning conference which will take place at the end of the year. So she’s watching out for a good place to hold that around here. For the last regional conference, she found this great resort on an island. Maybe we could go back there again. Meanwhile there’s lots of work to get done around here.