Jesus is my Goalie

No commentary, just a really cool photo.

"The Walled Garden"

No this is not a post about the infamous Walled Garden of AOL, rather, I found this picture online and found it both fascinating and heartbreaking. A brief description, what you are looking at is Sao Paulo, with around 20 million people, it is the largest city in Brazil, South America, and I think, the Southern Hemisphere.
On one side of the photo, you have the manicured lawns, gorgeous pools, and breathtaking architecture of the extremely expensive high rise condos. On the other side, the trash filled dirt streets of the “favelas” or slum towns of Brazil.
Looking at this photo, I can’t help but wonder what the people on the right side of the photo think every time they look out of the balcony? Have they ever witnessed some being robbed or killed? Do they long to help their fellow countrymen? Have they grown numb to the images and sounds that must rise up from the shacks below?
What about the people who literary live below those ivory towers. Do they look up and long for a better life? Do they dream of better days? A day where they no longer need fear for their safety and that of their children? Are they resentful and bitter?
This picture sort of reminds me of the parable of the banquet in Luke 14. Not that heaven is like a high rise condo, but that the doors for the greatest party ever have been thrown open to the cripples, poor, and homeless. In other words, to people like you and me.

Long time no post

Been a while since I last blogged, but that does not mean we have not been busy. I usual, language studies have dominated my life. My Portuguese is certainly coming along, but not with out a struggle. These past few weeks, I seem to have climbed over one of the obstacles in my path: confidence. Feeling nervous and timid when speaking is only natural, but too much and it can keep you from conversing as much as you should. Lately, I have had a lot more confidence in my ability to converse with Brazilians and feel that I have advanced more in these past few weeks than in the several months before.


Another item:

We had our first monthly World Missions Prayer Breakfast this past Saturday and 30 people came. Most were between 10 and 25. Café Missões (or panquecas e missões, we're still deciding on the name) is a monthly gathering where we pray for World Missions. Anyone who has studies the history of missions knows that no new missions movement begun apart from prayer. From Luke 10:2 where Jesus instructs his followers to pray for more workers in the harvest field, to the "Cambridge 7" a group of college students whose prayers and passion for missions led to one of the largest missions mobilizations in American history, Prayer is the foundation for a strong missions movement.


We gathered together, ate pancakes and had fun talking. Later, we broke into three groups. I prepared material for the groups to pray over. We prayed for the continent of Africa, the country of Lebanon and a missionary from the church's denomination working in Thailand. It was the kind of group I enjoy working with ; informal, lively and full of potential. We look forward to hosting these every month and our pray is that these meetings would be a catalyst for a growing passion for the world in our church here in Bragança as well as Brazil as a whole.

Blessings
Jason

2006 World Cup Prayer Guide

With the massive worldwide popularity of the World Cup, I thought that it would be a good idea to create a Prayer Guide for the 32 participating nations. As Christians’, prayer is perhaps the most crucial thing that we can do to impact our world for the Gospel.
My challenge is that each of you would take the time to pray for the 32 countries participating. A few general ideas of things that you can pray for:

• Pray for the missionaries serving in these nations. In many of the countries, missionaries face various hardships and obstacles.


• Pray that more nations would take up the call to missions.


• Pray for the churches of the nations, that they would be strong and unified.


• And above all, pray that Jesus would be glorified in our lives, our churches and our ministries.

This may sound like a silly idea to some of you, but I assure you that the World Cup does have an impact on the World. During the 1994 World Cup, 4 Brazilians become Christians. This year, warring faction in the Ivory Coast have declared a "cease-fire" while their country plays in the Cup. You just don´t know what impact the power of prayer could have!

There are two translations, one in English and the other Portuguese. You can download either the PDF or MSWord file.
Click here to get your copy.

It Has Begun!

So the World Cup began today. To which 90% of America responded with: "the World What?" The World Cup may not be a big deal in North America, but for the rest of the planet...this is a HUGE event.
For Brazil, the defending champions and Cup favorites, there is a unimaginable amount of energy flowing through the country. Everything is decorated in "Verde e Amarelo" (Green & Yellow), Brazils colors. And when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING. Yesterday, I was driving out of downtown on my way to pick up Gabi at school when I saw a poodle with his face dyed green and his body dyed yellow.
So far only two games have been played, Germany v Costa Rica and Ecuador v Poland. Germany, the host country, looks very, very good and will certainly challenge Brazil if they meet in the finals. The final score was Germany 4, Costa Rica 2. I am not sure if the fact that Costa Rica was able to score two points is a good thing or the fact that Germany was able to score 4 points so easily is cause to be fearful.
Anyway it plays, these next several weeks will be filled with excitement, nervousness, and hopefully....much celebration.

My Boys!

Not much else to say. The video speaks for itself. These guys got skills.

What Do You Offer People If You Are A Church That Does Not Teach The Gospel...Why Free iPods of course!

So an unitarian, universal, all-faith, inter-space, catch all, no holds barred 'church' is offering to give away free ipod shuffles. They are trying to fill their shrinking pews by holding a raffle for free iPod shuffles.

"What we really want to do is we want people to know that we want them to come, we want them to possibly shuffle in and soar out," the Rev. Julianne Lewis said. Lewis said whether someone wins the Shuffle or not, she hopes the church's message sticks with people and they continue to come back after the promotion ends

I can't say that I am surprised that a church would go this far to attract people to their services. To be honest, when I first read headline, "Church gives away iPods to draw new members," I was a little worried that the church would be and evangelical mega churches church. That is not to I have any problems with the large churches, but we all know churches who have pulled "stunts" in order to fill the pews.

This all brings up an interesting question as to how far should a church go to attract people? Are videos, high tech sanctuaries, any different than free ipods? And how Machiavellian can church be? If the truth is being taught, then does it matter what sort of devices are used? If for instance that the church giving away ipods was a highly evangelistic bible driven church, would it be any different? Would we accept this as an interesting way of drawing in people or find it purely lazy an ineffective form of evangelism?

Tell me what you think, write your thoughts below in the comment section.

The busiest restaurant in town is....a hot dog stand?

So I discovered tonight that the busiest restaurant in Bragança Paulista on Saturday night is hot dog stand over by the lake. Before I tell you how long the wait is, let describe my experince.

I was driving around looking forsome thing to eat tonight and drove by "cochorro quente" stand by Lago Tabõa. I have been meaning to try one of the Brazilian hot dogs for some time, so I thought tonight would be perfect. I parked nearby and walked over to the cart. The, cart is of course, at a popular hang out, so there was about 25-30 milling around about. I figured some of them were just hanging and other were waiting for food. But since there was not many people standing in front of the cart (in what I assumed was the line) so I figured I would only have to wait about 10-15 minutes.

So I took this time to watch and see how Brazilians eat their hotdogs. You might think Americans like to eat their hotdogs with lots of toppings (relish, mustard, onions etc...,) but are dogs are practically naked compared to the "typical" Brazilian dog. For starters, there is th bun and the dog...so far normal, but then they but mashed potatoes on. No joke, what follows is even weirder, corn kernels and green peas...cold corn and peas. Next they had five kinds of sauce to the dog: ketchup, mustard, mayo, and two other that I never figured out what they were. Lastly (yes there is more) they cover the dog with a sort of salsa mixuture and shoe string potatoes. These dogs are monsters!

so none of these things I would ever choose to put on my hotdog, but being that I was in a hurry and extremely hungry, plus the fact that it did not look like they were taking the requests, I decided I would try the dog as they served it, cold peas and all.

So after waiting about 15 minutes, and friend of mine from church showed up. He does not speak any English, se we just exchanged the basic "hello's" and "how are your's." After we had said hello, he went over to the side of the hotdog cart and got a piece of paper. It was then that I realized that all these people milling around, all 30 of them, were not just hanging out, but waiting for their number to come up. So I grabbed two tickets, 71 & 72, one for each dog, and continued to wait.

In the meantime, my friend decided to leave and I went back to watching the guy make hotdogs. I had not heard him call any numbers yet, so I was beginning to wonder how far down the line I really was. I estimated by the amount of people who had come and gone since I got a ticket, there was likely 15 people in front of me. Boy was i wrong.

When the guy finally started calling numbers that I could hear, my first thought was, "no that can't be right? Maybe I did not understand what he said” So I waited a few more minutes for him to call more numbers. It was then that I realized I as in trouble. My numbers were 71 & 72 and he was on 12...TWELVE! I was stunned, speechless...60 people in front of me. So I started to count and only got to 22. I waited a bit more to see if large sets numbers went unanswered, but they got all the way to 21 and not a single number was skipped. I managed to ask the guy how long my wait might be, he responded 40 minutes. So with the 35+ minutes i had already waited, we were looking at over an hour wait...for a hotdog! A hotdog with peas on it!

It was then that I gave up and went to McDonald's. When I was walking away, I saw people arrive that I saw leaving when i first showed up. It was then that i realosed that people who come, get a ticket, and then leave for a little while. That must have been what my church friend had done.

So if you ever find yourself in Bragança Paulista on Saturday night and start craving a hot dog with corn and mashed potatoes, make sure you bring a friend and have plenty of time to wait.

New photos on our Flickr site.

I have added some new photos to our Flickr website. Hope you enjoy them! I know babies grow fast, so I will try and add new photos at least once a week.

Something Magical

Most of you probably are not aware of this, but in less than 45 days, there is going to be a event of such magnitude that literally the majority of the world will be captivated. An of course, the event I am referring to is the 2006 World Cup Futból (soccer to you Americans) Championship which will be held in Germany. (Over 1.3 Billion people watched the 98 World Cup Final in France)

Brazil: A Soccer Nation
Most of you may know that Brazil is considered the greatest futból country of all time, having won World Cup title and astonishing 5 times! For Brazil, the World Cup is a nation wide holiday. When Brazil plays a match, business close, children are released from school, and everyone, I mean EVERYONE, gathers around a TV or a radio with rapt attention.

Brazil is the odds on favorite this year and many people are already anticipating a 6th World Cup win. But a loss this year would not be the first time Brazil was expected to win but did not. In France 98, Brazil was defeated by the host country 3-0. So confident were Brazilians that they would win that they had already begun to print AND sell merchandise with an extra "star" indicating World Cup victories. (in fact on my first trip to Brazil, I purchased a bandana with one of these extra stars.)

The Fateful Final
But the most infamous loss in Brazil's history happened on their own turf in 1950. That year, Brazil played host to the World Cup. In preparation for the grand event, Brazil built the largest stadium in the world, The Maracanã. So large was The Maracanã that it held a a full 43,000 more spectators than the next largest stadium. This was to be Brazil's crowning moment. Her introduction to the rest of the world that Brazil was here and ready to make her place among the world's leading nations.

Alas, Brazil was defeated by the tiny nation of Uruguay in the final minutes of the match. Many people equate the 1950 World Cup final loss as having nation wide significance much like Hiroshima had to Japan and the JFK assassination to the US. The grainy black and white film footage of the final Uruguay goal is even called Brazil's Zapruder film.

Brazilmax.com has a fascinating article about the significance and the impact Brazil loss in 1950 had on the country. One paragraph in particular struck me as profound:

Second place in a World Cup was Brazil’s best ever result yet it felt like failure. The country never countenanced anything but victory. Loss was unthinkable. “I was motionless, sitting on a concrete step, watching the sun shine obliquely on the pitch, hearing the silence of the crowd, a silence not even broken by the sobs, in brutal gasps, of the collective orphaning,” grieved the novelist Carlos Heitor Cony. “Survivors of that cruel afternoon believed they would never again be able to be happy...what happened on July 16, 1950 deserves a collective monument, like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. These are the things that build nations, a people drenched in their own pain.”

Jump on over to the site and give it a read. It will certainly help you understan some of the history behind this wonderful country. And of course VAI BRASIL!!! O CAMPEÃO DO MUNDO!!!

Some other Brazil Futból Links:

Futbol the Brazilian way of Life.

Official FIFA World Cup site.

Commings Communiqué (a fellow Brazilian Missionaries website, he has a great video clip about the players in the 1950 final.)

Great article on writing Thank You Notes

How To How to Write a Thank-You Note
by Leslie Harpold

Let's be honest folks, letter writing is a lost art. Most of do not even spell check our e-mails before we send them, let alone spend much thought into how we say what we say. We've developed abbreviations for about everything. A long e-mail for most of us is one that consists of at least one complete sentence. And I don’t mean an e-mail that has several thoughts joined together by my favorite punctuation…the all famous triple period…! (It’s as if inserting the triple period allows us to break all rules of punctuation.)

If you are in the ministry, especially if you raise your own support, then you know how often we find our selves needing to write thank you notes. We tend to put them of until we have several stacked up. We all know how hard it can be it can be to write a proper thank you note, let alone get them sent out in timely fashion. I myself and very guilty of beginning the majority of my thank you notes with, “I am sorry this is so late but__”

We all wish that thank you notes were easier to write. After all, most of us do not lack for words to speak, it’s the getting them onto paper part that we struggle with. I am not looking for a one size fits all template or a cut and paste approach to writing a thank you note, rather most I seek to find the best words that accurately and honestly express my genuine gratitude for someone’s generosity.

That is why I found Leslie Harpold’s article, on TheMorningNews.org website, so beneficial. She divides a thank you note up into 6 separate parts. She clearly states what should to be included and what should not in each of those section. If you are like me, just getting started can be a struggle and often once we get started, we struggle with saying more than just, “hey, thanks for the cool gloves.” If you follow the six points on Harpold’s article, more than likely you will never lack for not only enough things to say, but the “what” will be both thoughtful and honest.

Good Luck and don't forget to send me a thank you note!

Jason

Voce Fala Portuguese

So I started my language school last Monday. To put it bluntly, all I can really say is "como"? Ok, it was not that bad. The thing is that all three of teachers (one for each class...i.e. Monday, Wednesday, Friday) speak English, yet refuse to during our time together. I know all of you are saying, "well good for them." And I agree...it just does not make it very easy.

Learning is language is certainly a humbling experience. Everyone says you must become like a child again, learning from the very beginning. This fact could not have been proven better than by last Wednesday's homework....the alphabet. What made it even more humbling was the fact that Gabriela (my four year old daughter) had the same assignment! In fact, she regularly corrects my Portuguese.

Of course as the classes progressed, it became easier and easier to both understand and to communicate. At this rate, I should be fluent in Portuguese in about two weeks. Ok, so it will likely take longer than that. But I am learning and I am having a lot of fun. One of my teachers goes to my church. So we spend our time together reading and translating bible passages, articles on missions, and hopefully soon, going over the coming Sunday's worship songs.

Alive and Well

Just wanted to drop you a quick note to say we are alive and well. Sorry for the lack of posts, our internet activity has been limited to cyber cafe's and friend's houses. We are in Bragança Paulista, the city where we will live and minister. We have a car and a house but all of our belongings are still docked at the Port of Santos.
With that said, we are still sleeping at a motel while we wait for our belongings. I will try and get an e-mail newsletter sent out in the next few days. Until then, here is a link to some pictures of our new (empty) home.

God Bless
Jason

oop's.....

Here is something funny for you...turns out Liliam and I are living in sin! Yep that's right...the country of Brazil does not recognize our marriage. Even though we where married here. Seems that most Latin countries require a civil ceremony and leave the religious ceremony optional, or at the very least, you have to fill out certain forms and get them notarized. Since we lived in the US, we where supposed to go to Houston to have our marriage validated. But we never knew that, so Brazil looks at us as two single people who have had two children together. So we have two options....wait till we are back in the US and go to Houston...or go downtown to the court house and get married...again....and in case you are keeping score...that would make it THREE weddings for the Gardner's! Of course, Liliam wants to get married….again….seems two weddings were not enough for her. I wonder if I can get more presents out of this?!?

Fortunately, this does not complicate any visa issues for me. In Brazil, it is much easier to get permanent residency on the basis of being the father of a Brazilian child that it is to be the spouse of a Brazilian. (Brazil is famous for its immigration laws with regards to children....man criminals on the run from their government will flee to Brazil knowing that if they father a child, then Brazil will not extradite them. Ronald Biggs, the famous British Train Robber, is a perfect case in point. He lived in Rio for decades, known to everyone. He even had tourist into his home for a fee. But because he had a child with a Brazilian, the government, Brazil would not extradite him.)

A trip to Wal-Mart & Sam's Club

walmart4flickr1
Originally uploaded by Mobilizing Brazil.

I took a bunch of photos today of our trip to the Wal-Mart and Sam's Club of Goiania. It felt like I walked from Brazil right back to the United States. The store layouts were very similar to the US stores, but most the products where Brazilian. The Sam's Club did have a small section of US products like bbq sauce, Heinz ketchup, French's mustard, and even tortillas! Most of the products where reasonably priced...except for the tortillas...those where $12 for 20!
By far the coolest things was the flat escalator for shopping carts. The carts all have some kind of magnetic or gravitational lock that prevents the rolling down hill. I had fun!

Futbol Update

I did not have my camera with me when I scored my goal this past Saturday...but I found a picture that looks exactly like what I did.

When in Rome...

So I had the opportunity to play some Futbol (soccer) with a group of guys from my brother in law's church. It was a lot of fun. Of course I was the worst player out there by far. Even my wife's two 12 year old cousins who played barefoot where sailing past me. I did manage to score a goal. I was pretty proud of myself. I would have had two, but my brother in law totally fouled me!

Bem-vindo A Brasil!

Well, we've made it to Brasil I guess know that I "local," I better get used to spelling Brasil with an "s." Our trip was pretty much uneventful. No lost bags, missed connections and I haven't been deported yet; so you could say we are off to a good start.

Currently we are Goiania, Liliam's home town. We will be here for a few weeks while we begin getting our documents and such in order. After that, we will travel to the city of Braganca Paulista. Braganca will be our home and base of operations for at least the next two + years.

Over the next few days I will try and post some pictures of our travels. (hey, why wait till furlough to bore you with our missionary slide show!) We continue to pray for all of you and are so grateful to all you folks have done and are doing to make our dream of Mobilizing the Brazilian Church for Missions are reality.

In His Service,
Jason

We're Off!

Just a quick post to say that we are getting ready to head for the Airport. To give you a rundown of our travel itinerary, our flight from Tulsa leaves at 3:00. We then fly to Dallas/Ft. Worth. At 5:30 our flight departs for Sao Paulo Brazil. We will arrive in Brazil 7:00 am local time or 3:00 am Tulsa time. Unfortunately, we have a long layover till our flight to Goiania so we will likely grab a cheap hotel room to rest up
All in total, it should take us around 24 hours to get to Liliam's home town. But for all of you that will come to visit us (hint hint) never fear, you can knock of the last leg of the trip because our home base will be very close to the Sao Paulo airport.
This next month will mainly be set up time. We will be setting up a bank account, looking for a place to live, getting drivers license, and all other pertinent documents. Hopefully by the second or third week of February, our shipping container will have arrived and we will be settled.
After that, it is off to language school for me and Liliam will continue to focus on carry that baby of ours and putting finishing touches on our new home.

We love and will miss you all!
Jason & Liliam