Bits February

We are back! And we love it. We love our house. We love our friends. And we love the ministry to which God has called us. Our trip back here went well. All of our luggage arrived and it was neat to see Evelyn push Anna Claire in the stroller through the airport when Sarah and I both had to push luggage carts. Not sure what we would have done without her help. We have been able to catch up with most of our friends and start organizing for the year. At our first service back, a teenager, Pedro, gave his life to Christ! We are following up with discipleship and visits. 

Chico, David, Pedro

big US/Brasil cake they had made for our return

We have continued through the Story of Hope on Sunday nights. Alison has been leading mainly football players through it. Last night we had a good group with a couple visitors. For our midweek time we are going to launch an 8-10 week study for couples on marriage and raising children. Please pray for the right couples to come to this group. We have a decent list and just need to get them coming. 

I have enjoyed being the head coach of the football team. We are planning to do a seminar on conflict soon for them. I have been giving little talks during practice and trust the Lord will use this position to open up more opportunities. We have our first game this month and then will have almost one game per month for this year. Pray I can leverage this position to help our witness within the community.  

The girls are doing well getting readjusted. Evelyn is studying at the Brazilian school in the afternoon this semester. She didn’t really lose much Portuguese from our US trip, but Anna Claire seems like she is starting from scratch. Just in Portuguese though, cause her English is non-stop. Sarah is back at it with hospitality. She also is doing English conversation with the owners of the language school here and had a deep conversation this last time. 

It has been neat seeing construction being done on the church property. They will soon start the foundation for the building, but in order for the building to be finished later this year we will need more funds. I have an opportunity that I will be sharing in a week or two that I hope some will be interested in!

I also booked my tickets for Rio de Janeiro in August. I will be going to be a translator/participant for an evangelistical group for the Olympics. It should be fun! I think there are actually still vacancies for the trip if you are interested in going. We also have recruited a couple more for our football camp in June. I am looking forward to what God will do there during the week!

One highlight of the furlough was to do another prayer night in January. I put together a video to promote prayer nights and since March is ABWE's prayer month I thought I would post it here: 

Thanks for your prayers and support! 

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah and our involved school girl who loves participating in studies, and our little play girl who loves dressing up in princess dresses and running around in “her big blue house.”

Bits January

“9 days til we leave!” Evelyn keeps telling her grandmother. 

“Evelyn!” her mother Sarah yells. “Stop reminding her of that!”. We have had a good few months with family and friends here in the states, but we are excited about returning to Brazil. We have already planned on doing our furlough schedule similarly in the future in that we come back to the US every year and a half to two years. 

This month we have made a lot of progress with the Servant Leader’s work. In early January I was able to meet in person with most of the partners in this endeavor. One, Pastor Dave Graef, is now the pastor of our sending church. Cam Woolford, who partnered with Pastor Graef as ABWE missionaries in latin america, is also stateside and was able to meet with us when we were in Grand Rapids. This month a platform site called disciple systems is starting to be piloted and will enable online organized mentorship to take place (ideally by in person mentorship). I wrote about Servant Leaders in a separate post here if you would like more information. But the main goal in it is for Pastors to mentor/train their church leaders with the Servant Leaders resources. If you are a Pastor or church leader, consider looking into it for your church! Right now we are working in English, Spanish and Portuguese. If you would like a sneak peak of some of the material; I did a quick run through on our Constructive Conflict class. It is only 32 minutes long and can be seen with this link.

Speaking of Michigan; we were there for a couple weeks and since then have had a few opportunities to speak as well. Yellow River Baptist in Atlanta had us Sunday night the 17th and if you would like to see the video of it, it is available on youtube. They said that my video from 2013 at their church had received quite a bit of volume. I admitted the reason for the hits; that night Evelyn sang in portuguese as a 4 year old. Obviously the hits were you all watching her (and I know that Evelyn watched it herself dozens of times)! 

Upon returning to Brazil we will be met at the airport by our teammates and look forward to catching up with them. We will be planning more on what the next few months will look like. But as of right now, it is looking busy! Since we have left Arcoverde building has started on the property. We will be looking to keep up with the idea of training area Christians through CeTAK as well as reaching out to the unchurched through our Bible studies. 

Also since we left I was asked to be head coach of the football team. This year we have games for the state league and so that will keep us busy. We are also planning a clinic for football teams from Northeast Brazil in early June. I am sill amazed at how God is widening our sphere of influence in Brazil through American football….What??? Crazy. Anyway; what is also crazy is the Servant Leader’s program that will also hopefully keep us busy as Pastors catch the vision for this means of developing national leadership within the church. In every part of Brazil we have lived there has been struggle in developing leaders within the church. Pray this can be part of the solution!

It was great seeing so many of you! Your prayers and God’s sustaining work in us are the only reasons we can be on the field and we are grateful for both!

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah and my Zingo queens (Zingo is a game with objects on it on a tic-tac-toe style board and you match objects to fill your card. Both girls play at least 10 times a day). 

What today's politics shows us

Brazil has a pretty corrupt government and in recent years the people have recognized why and posted why. The government is corrupt because the people are corrupt. The government is a reflection of the people and we are a people that has been dumbed down.

How long will it take us in the US to see why we are where we are at politically? It amazes me that in an age of so much information we can be so misinformed. There are so many great sites, videos, articles out there that can help us find growth in areas of weakness. Yet our priority is displayed when our feeds are filled with memes and murders. Our preoccupation with the news, politics and sports keeps us from books with oceans of knowledge. I can't help but wonder what would happen if we started sharing TED talks and lecture links that could contribute positively to our daily interaction. If our conversation turned to encouragement and help rather than the easy to have Debby Downer newscast we frequently find ourselves covering.

Today I listened to part 1 of 30 Biblical counseling sessions that are free on youtube. Biblicaltraining.org has free classes for new Christians all the way to Pastors. TED talks are usually really good and done by experts in their field. Then youtube can allow you to learn all kinds of different trades/abilities. Don't slump to using technology just for your entertainment, use it for your growth. And if you need to pay for information in order to take it seriously, let me know and I can get you on something.

I have seen the future!

I have seen the future and I am excited! I have not spoken too often about Servant Leaders, the mentorship in church training project that has been consuming more and more of my time. Part of the reason has been that we have not really launched anything yet. Up until the last month or so my main preoccupation with the project has been translating and gathering resources. As I have received more information about this project I have realized how big this could actually become. I have become more and more involved with the English side of it as well. 

The goal of Servant Leaders is to equip leaders within the church to fulfill their capacity for ministry. There are many resources for Pastors out there, but these resources are for all members to learn and for more qualified members to become leaders in the church. The idea is for the Pastor to mentor the leaders of his church through the Servant Leader material. In order to do this, a platform website is being custom designed by a computer software programmer for this specific purpose. This month I was able to get a sneak peak into the platform and its capabilities in its early development. 

Recently I heard from an American Pastor that there were not much resources aimed at the lay leaders in the church and I am hoping that Servant Leaders can fulfill that need. The missionaries who started Servant Leaders were in Costa Rica and Ecuador. They are now US based, but make frequent trips back and are able to mentor Pastors through the Servant Leaders program. One thing that excites me about this is being able to be involved in mentorship of leaders from all over the world from wherever I am at (pray our internet in Brazil improves). I have already contacted the missionaries in the Amazon about being involved there still as I do miss them. Then I can be involved with friends in the US as well!

We are still filling in so much information on the website and platform that it is not ready for full use, but we are starting to play around with it more. This is where you come in, if you want. The resources are divided up into different categories like courses (that we would teach through module), seminars (that take 1-2 hours and can be done on a weeknight) and other resources. I am wanting to experiment with a seminar called Constructive Conflict. I taught it in Portuguese in Brazil and am wanting to see if there is anyone that would like to go through the seminar with me online. We want to play around with the different capabilities that we have. I am guessing the time commitment would be close to one hour, two hours max and your money will be paid back if you don’t learn anything (actually it is all free to you). If you are interested, please contact me through the comments section here, or my email carrel@gmail.com or through facebook messages with your name and email address and I will send you info about the seminar Constructive Conflict and how to go through it. Thanks!

Bits December

Merry Christmas (a little late) and Happy New Year! (a little early). We have had a great Christmas season in the states. It was wonderful being around Sarah’s family, getting lots of cousin time for the girls and relaxing with the whole family. Now we are headed up to Michigan for a couple weeks to spend time with my family. Also, Sunday (the 3rd) we will be speaking at Heritage Baptist church, our sending church. We look forward to seeing our church family! 

This past month we were also able to speak a couple times in some small groups; both in the Chattanooga area. We always enjoy sharing about Brazil whether it be one-on-one in a small group or to a large group. We have answered some great questions about living and working on the mission field. 

In January we will be speaking at Yellow River Baptist in Atlanta area and then possibly a couple churches in the Chattanooga area. I am also planning a prayer night with some of the Pastors from Brainerd Baptist Church for January 15th from 9PM to 1AM at the BX in Chattanooga. It is open for anyone and I would love to see various churches from the area represented. We will be praying for our community, churches and outreach. These prayer nights have always been really good for me spiritually. Come check it out!

Our building has started in Arcoverde on the church property! They have started on the outside property wall and will then move on to the foundation of the building next; but we still need lots of funds! Please consider a special gift to this project! If you each give 100,000 dollars, we will be able to build 500 churches; but we don’t even need that much. Our total we need for this phase is just 120,000 and we already have at least a fourth of that. Give what you can whether it be $10 or $10,000, everything will help. I checked the exchange rate the other day and it had jumped over 4, which means your money doubles what it could normally buy! What a great opportunity!

We are excited about how God is going to use American football in Brazil and our influence seems to be expanding. From May 31st to June 6 there will be a mission trip to Recife to run a clinic for several teams in Northeast Brazil. There are still spots to help out with this clinic. If you have experience with playing or coaching football and are interested in this trip or know someone who might be, please let me know. Also, if you are going to be close to me in the next couple months, I would love to make some videos that show drills or explain certain concepts in football. These would probably go around to all Brazil and we could use that influence to spread the gospel. I still think it is crazy how God is using football in a soccer country for people to hear about His Story.

You all’s love and support is humbling to us. We probably had one of our best years ever (without me verifying the actual numbers) as far as giving to ABWE to support us on the field. We love being on the field and know that you all’s partnership has enabled that. Thank you!

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah, my sweet lovely Evelyn who worked hard this year to get an American girl doll and was so grateful when she received it, and our Anna Claire who understood Christmas a little more this year and so was able to really enjoy it. 

It's a baby!!!

Parents hopefully don't mind as I stare when newborn babies are nearby. There is something so beautiful about new life. I remember when my first baby Evelyn Grace was born and I held her close to me. I remember my tears as her little hand held my finger while she received her first shots and I told her that the pain was actually for her own well-being. Walking down the halls with her I showed her to whoever would see her because I was so proud! A new baby is beautiful to behold.

God chose to send a baby as His love gift. He sent His Son as a beautiful baby; as a new life for us and that is what Christmas is all about. But with Jesus it is so much more than the new life as a baby. The gift God gave to us as represented by Christmas is not just about the new life of a new baby, it is about life for all! Jesus came as a baby so that we could have eternal life with Him forever.

Romans explains it using a comparison with Adam. The first man Adam came, sinned and brought death on all of us. That is, separation from a perfect, holy God. But Jesus came and just as Adam through sinning brought death, Jesus, through faith, brings life!

As much as we look forward to family, fun, presents, food and a day off on Christmas day, may we look forward to the new life that God has for us through His Son Jesus Christ. There will be no January after this gift of life; we will continue in joy in Him forever. There will be no more separation from this beautiful new life; it will go on forever.

Jesus and Power Distance

A few weeks ago I heard a lecture on Power Distance. No, the term Power Distance does not refer to home run hitting. The given definition goes like this:

• “Power distance is a term that describes how people belonging to a specific culture view power relationships - superior-subordinate relationships - between people including the degree that people not in power accept that power is spread unequally.” - Hofstede
• Power distance refers to the extent to which less powerful members of organizations and institutions (including the family) accept and expect unequal power distributions. This dimension is measured not only from the perspective of the leaders, who hold power, but from the followers. In regard to power distribution, Hofstede notes, "all societies are unequal, but some are more unequal than others."

I was intrigued by the lecture because I had never heard of it, yet it explained so much about government rule and how it affected the church. The USA has low power distance because supposively we elect our leaders, so essentially we elect what we want in government and that happens. (Again, this is in general; I have watched the news lately...) Countries with kings or dictators would have a high power distance because they say it and that settles it; the people have little control. 

High Power Distance     Low Power Distance

So Americans generally view organizations with a low power distance mentality and generally disagree with high power distance society's. Think of the family. I am serious when I say if I am the head of the family, my wife Sarah is the neck that pretty much controls the head. Women have fought for equality in society to the point where having a female president is a very real possibility. 

Churches also deal with Power Distance. I grew up in a more High Power Distance type church where the Pastor had a lot of control even though there was a board as well (deacons). Recently I have seen many churches go to more of an elder led Low Power Distance type governance. 

So when you study the family or government or church; what is the right way to go? The lecturer (whom I am not able to name due to security issues) talked about his experience in both settings, both in country and out of country where he served in a high power distance society where Americans were going in and creating unsuccessful church governing systems. 

He discussed how the Bible addresses both sides of the issue. Moses learned from Jethro to have people help lead, but that still didn't turn out too well. The New Testament encourages church members to submit to those who rule over them. (Hebrews 13:17) The Bible also emphasizes the Kingdom of God; meaning a land with a King who rules...

But it doesn't end there. Jesus says, "you call me teacher and Lord" and then says that He came to serve. So yes, Jesus is Lord! Jesus is King! But He says to use that power to get down and lift people up.

Personally I learned a lot from this lesson. I don't need to be afraid to lead and make decisions cause people look for that from leadership. But when I am making the decisions I need to serve people because that is Jesus' example. He uses His power to lift others up. I also need to submit to the leaders in my life. God has put them there and I need to follow their lead. (Of course, we need to be careful who we are following).