Brasil 08 Part II

  The first village we stopped at is called Villa Mendoza.  It consists of about 10 wooden shack style houses that set on the beach.  Shortly after we arrived, the school teacher asked if some of us would come and teach a bit of English.  So several of my friends went and taught at the small school.

  A group of guys went spear fishing and caught a nice load of fish.  The ladies in the village cooked up the catch (after I helped clean one of the fish,) and we shared a lunch with the whole village.  That was a really cool encounter.

  That night we held a worship time, and afterward my friend Ben and I were praying with a young man, roughly our age.  We were praying in English and Ben mentioned to me that he felt lead to pray for this guy's head.  So, Ben did, and after prayer time and ministry was winding down, Ben asked a translator to ask the young man if his head was bothering him.  The young man responded, yes my head was hurting me- until that guy prayed for me.

  The next morning we headed to Maparacaia, which was nearly directly on the other shore of the Xingu.  That; however, was quite misleading, because it took us two hours to cross the river.  Like I said, the Xingu is very wide.

  Maparacaia is slightly larger than Villa Mendoza.  And the mission has only been in contact with this village for a short time.  In fact, our group was only the second team to have visited this village on a mission trip.  The first group was a team of Brazilians from the Vineyard church.

  Maparacaia is a beautiful location, it sets at the base of a large jungle hill, directly on the shore of the river.  As a matter of fact, we took a hike up into the jungle and across to the other side of the bay.  At the top of this hill, cut into a jungle clearing, is a regulation size futbol field.

 That night, on the beach,  I had the privilege to speak at a worship time.  It was mostly dark, with the exception of a few dimly lit light bulbs, powered by a  generator.  As a part of our worship times, some of the team members held children's class.  This night, over 30 kids would come and participate!  The talk that I gave was based around Galations 5:1, Christ came to give us freedom, and John 10:10 to have life to the FULL.  There was a real openness in our time of sharing.  Nearly everyone that came, wanted to receive prayer for freedom, and for the living water that Christ has to offer us.  

  Sharing thoughts about faith with people who are really new to the idea of Jesus, is stretching.  Not stretching in a bad way, but more of like a breath of fresh air.  Here in the States, the church is usually diving deep into the more "important" things of faith.  Whatever that means, but I ended up asking myself, why is it so hard to go back to the basics of what the Bible says and share it in a easy to understand manner?  These villagers had absolutely no understanding of the "church culture" with its own weird language, and I found that my language has become quite littered with that church language and the culture of the church. 

   For an example, I was talking with Clyde who is a missionary from the U.S., and he was telling me that this village had never heard of salvation.  In America, nearly everyone is familiar with that word-it is a churcy word but nearly everyone could give a definition.  So when Clyde first reached out to Maparacaia, he had to explain salvation through a story, so that he could communicate what he meant.  To me, I find that quite refreshing, and I hope you might ponder on this with me and find it a breath of fresh air as well.

-zh