Tangible Love

This week God has really been challenging us to show love to others. Our neighbors, those we pass on the road. The greatest command is to the Love the Lord your God with ALL your Mind, Heart, Soul and Stregnth, the second greatest is to Love your Neighbor as Yourself. I have to admit I fail at both. I want to love God with my all but I fall so short. I am not sure if I think much about the second command.

This week I listened to the free audio book of the month at ChristianAudio.com, called Crazy Love. It was a very interesting and thought provoking book. Although I don't agree with everything taught, I was very challenged to show tangible love to those around me. My ultimate goal is to share the Gospel with them but I can love them as an evidence that this Gospel that I am sharing is REAL.

Christ said that whatever we have done to the least of these we have done it unto Him. If we look at the Gospels we see Christ Jesus consistently giving those those around Him, knowing they were "using" Him, that they wouldn't follow Him.
So, how can I put this in to practice? I feel like God has been giving me opportunities but I have to be trained to respond correctly. During my run on Tuesday morning, I passed by an older lady carrying her groceries home. I should have stopped and offered to carry them for her, but I didn't because I "HAD to finish my run," pretty sad. Yesterday I did better. James I went out to try and visit a couple of people, which didn't work out, and on the way home we saw 3 people working on a vacant house very close to ours. I went home, got some cookies and took them over to them. They are the relatives of the new owners which have 3 children. I made a new contact and showed the love of Christ. Simple... some may say stupid, but I have to start somewhere.

Dunas

We were blessed to have some friends come and visit us from Curitiba. We decided to get together to celebrate the 4th of July. One family came down on the 2nd and we were able to go visit some Dunes in Floripa. Here is a short video of our fun! Hope you enjoy!

Around the House

Here are just a few things that are going on around the Taylor house.

Daniel has started to fix his own hair. He finds it very interesting that gel will last ALL day. He has experimented with a couple of different styles but this is the most popular.

Hannah and Jer look so adorable and sweet in their footy pajamas. Hannah has about outgrown these so I thought I had better get the picture in quick.

We live in a damp climate without air conditioners or heaters. Therefore, we have put things out in the sun to dry them out. Today is the last sunny day we are going to have for a while so I pulled out all the kids bedding, rugs and stuffed animals and winter coats to sit in the sun. It is supposed to kill the mold and mildew. When I pulled off their comforters they were damp. We are currently using flannel sheets otherwise your bed feels wet when you get in at night.
As I stand on our patio looking at my stuff in the sun, most of my neighbors have their stuff hanging out their windows, sucking up the sun too!

Contacts

My mom recently reminded me that church planting is a marathon and not a sprint. Good advice. We just need to keep plugging along; judging faithfulness by effort and not results. It is easy to be discouraged when we don't "see" things happening but we KNOW our sovereign God is always at work and it is He who brings the harvest.

The biggest obstacle right now is getting those first few contacts. Once we have a few saved they will lead to multiple other contacts. Being new in the area causes us to start completely from scratch. My neighbor asked me yesterday how our Bible studies are going. I told her slow. She told me that her and her husband were talking about it and it will take time for people to trust us and allow us to teach them. Pray for contacts.

The past 2 days we have had 3 guys here working on our leaky roof. James has talked with them quite a bit and one of them seems interested in the Gospel and the possibility of doing a study. Friday James gave him a tract which he read and then had his wife read. Today he took home another tract and the information about the Bible study. Pray for Alfonso that he and his wife would do the study with James.

And Praise the Lord for this contact!!!

Corpus Cristi

Yesterday was a national holiday here called Corpus Cristi; meaning, the Body of Christ. It is a celebration of the body of Christ, "real and substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist." (Eucharist signifying the Lord's Supper, but they believe that the bread IS the body of Christ and the wine IS the blood. Not a representation.)

Since it was a holiday and the kids were off school, we went exploring and came upon this:

A group of people follow the priests, carrying the body of Christ, follow a path through part of the town. The path is made with colored dirt and depicts various christian symbols. This picture shows the path after they walked over it.

Here you can see Christ healing a man.

We were with some missionary friends and one of them mentioned that is was sad that so few weeks after the Celebration of the Resurrection of Christ, they were carrying his "dead" body down the street. Here is a short video of the end. Sorry the quality is not the best.

Our First Study...

Yesterday was our first Bible Study. All day long we were both praying and thinking about who would come..., would anyone come..., Lord, just one...

Well at 7:15 we got our 1.

Several days over the past week James, David, Sharon and I have gone out door to door inviting people to come. Saturday James and I ended up meeting and visiting with a single man who is a strong JW. We had a good talk with him and James was able to raise a few good questions.

Well, this was the one God allowed to come to our first study. James let him share a little more and then led him to really focus in on Salvation and how can we know that we will be with Christ at the end.

I was so proud of how James stayed away from the many subjects we differ on, and kept turning the focus back to salvation and Christ.

Tonight David and Sharon will offer their first study; pray that people will come.

Wednesday we are offering our second study and we are praying for 2 people to come. Does that seem to small? If you want to pray for more, I would welcome it!!

Potty Time!

It is potty training time here. Definitely not my favorite phase. I am so thankful for Daniel and Hannah's enthusiasm. They are always both willing to sit in the bathroom with Jer, waiting for him to go. Daniel will read to him and Hannah will bring various activities to the bathroom to occupy his time. I thought this picture was so cute. Hannah brought 2 little Chalk-boards to the bathroom for them to draw while waiting. I think the motivation for all the kids is the jelly bean reward when there is a success!