Trouble in Football Paradise

Someone else is having shirt issues, but the color this time is yellow, not pink. Read about the Irish.

One Big Golfing Weekend

What a weekend!!!!!!!!

Played in the Young Life tourney Friday. Really nice tournament. Jud is getting this deal figured out. Our team ended up in tied for fourth place. Not bad, but no cigar. I got into a one hole shootout after the tourney and won $250. The funny thing is that I got there late and had to borrow a club and ball from one of the other participants to play. God's grace on the simple-minded.

Saturday we had the Grace Church Men's Golf Tee. My team came in 3rd and got gift certificates to Olive Garden. The wind was horiffic. But it made for good stories, which is a lot of what the fellowship of golf is.

Sunday Arkansas's most famous player got in a playoff with Vijay. Good theatre, but bad for John. Read here.

Next Friday I'm meeting my cousin at Hot Springs Country Club. It's one of the oldest courses around. Al Capone played there. I'm already looking forward to it.

FORE!!!!

Anybody ever heard of MediaTicketInstaller.ocx?

It's adware. I've have in on our desktop computer for sometime. It's one of those things that the Spyware programs won't detect, yet when I run Norton's AntiVirus, it picks it out everytime. That's good. What's bad is that it won't delete it or quarantine it. So, I know I've got adware on my computer, slowing it down, doing who knows what, and I can't get it off.

I've tried. I done the regedit thing....then you ctrl-f on mediaticket...and all the time I'm scare half to death that I'll erase my whole operating system. When I start doing stuff like that, I'm in the "I know just enough to be dangerous" mode.

Well today, my life is sweet again. (At least for the moment.) And made so by someone I never thought cared. Microsoft! I mean, I've switched from Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox and from Outlook to Mozilla Thunderbird because of the number of spyware and virus stuff written especially to undermine the Microsoft platforms. Today I downloaded Windows Antispyware (Beta) and it not only found MediaTicketInstaller.ocx, but it deleted it too. It found 4 other pieces of spyware that my 3 other anti-spyware/adware programs didn't find and deleted 3 of them and guarantined the other one.

I feel like a free man.

The Good Pastor English Chillin' by the Waterfall

What do you think he's dreaming of? Jacob's Ladder? Sermon illustrations? 'Bama winning another SEC champion? Elway coming out of retirement?

I can't wait to see the comments on this!!

Street Evangelization

Down in the Market area, we set up shop to do a little street evangelization. We sang and gave tracks out. We had one guy, a shoeshine man, accept Christ. Daniel, our interpreter, whipped out the Evangecube on him. Poor guy, he never saw it coming. To quote my friend, Grant English, "Daniel with an Evangecube is like a Jedi Knight with a laser saber". The guy accepted Christ right there on the street. Cool.

My Favorite Place for a McDuplo

Calling the Hogs

Even Brazilians do it. Image that!

Actually this is Clay teaching the students what ever red-blooded Arkansasan does. You can take the boy out of the country...but you can't the hog out of the boy. Or something like that!

Hillside Near The WOL Camp

Looks this could be in NW AR. Except those funky looking pine trees and the occasional palm tree, looks very similar.

Brazilian Easter Bunny

The first weekend in Brazil we went to Gramado. Lovely little town that reminded me of Eureka Springs. That weekend, along with it being Easter, the town was having a Choco-fest. Every confectioner was giving away free samples of chocolate. Another example of the sacrifice that we had to endure for the sake of the mission! I found 2 things the Brazilians do very well. Coffee and chocolate. They even do the Easter bunny thing.

A Great Place to Chill

This was taken at the WOL camp in Porto Allegre. The waterfall....what a great place to chill.

Naomi

Naomi is the lady in the flowery blouse. She cuts hair for a living, hence the glamour shot behind us. We had the chance to visit with her and take her some food. She lived in a very poor part of Porto Allegre. I think we got mixed signals with her. I thought that she was not saved. After we returned from visiting her, her son, a member of the church that sponsored the home visits, said that she was. The reason he wanted us to go to her house was to encourage her to come to church more often.

But when we began to talk to her about life with Christ, she didn't respond. As a matter of fact, she changed the subject. Which isn't a hard thing to do when you're having to use a translater to communicate.

After we got back, I showed to picture above to one of the church members. We were curious about the man in the picture. He was there thoughout the visit, but didn't engage much. What we found out is that Naomi was separated from her husband....maybe divorced. The man that is in the picture is probably a boyfriend. It appears as though there may be a sin issue that may be keeping Naomi from being active in church and active in what little faith she may have.

Please pray for her. And for him, we still don't know his name. The people at the church didn't know him.

On a side note, Naomi had a lot of pain in her neck from standing and cutting hair on hard floor. Before we left the church to go to her house, one of our students came up to me with a R$50 real note. It's about $20 bucks American. A lot of money for these folks. The student felt that God wanted her to have the money. We relayed that to Naomi; that God used this student to convey His love for her, and that He wanted to use this student to help with her medical needs. She had a hard time getting the medical attention or medicine needed to relieve the pain in her neck. Without a doubt, this is what touched her the most. She saw God using some Americans that she'll never see again to help her. To care for her. It was very touching as we watching the tears come to her eyes.

God does care. That was very evident .

Tiago

This is a guy that I roomed with us in Brazil. His full name is Tiago Saft Fuelber. A great guy that loves heavy metal music and Jesus. I got an email from him yesterday. He has been praying for me daily since we left Brazil. How cool is that?

Tiago's dad uses drugs and has had a hard time getting off of them. His mother is a Christian. Sounds like she's holding the family together right now with her pray life. Please remember Tiago and his family in your prayers. His dad's name is Marco.

Joao Carlos

Meeting Joao Carlos may have been the most spiritually enriching part of the Brazil trip for me. We brought him food. He opened his cupboard and had none. Nada. He said that he had not been working and wasn't sure how he would get food.

He spoke of his separation from his wife and how the pain of that had left him confused, and unable to make good decisions. Weird, she lived in the back of the house, he lived in the front part of the house. Then he allowed our rich, well fed students from west Little Rock to testify to the troubles in their lives. Although he couldn't relate to their rich, abundant lifestyle, he did relate to their personal pain and and their confusion that resulted from those struggles. (I am so proud of the way our students stepped up and presented Joao Carlos with their testimonies.)

Afterwich he did recognize Jesus as his Savior and that he had a need for Him. Then we laid hands on him and prayed for him. We told him that we would continue to pray for him.

Joao Carlos did not make a decision that night. What did happen is this. Uda, our guide, said that we paved the way for him to began personally start disciplining Joao Carlos. How cool is that!

If you want to pray for Joao Carlos as well, here's what to pray for.

That he comes to receive Jesus as Lord and Savior.

That Uda is allowed to disciple him and grow him out in Christ.

That Joao Carlos is able to find a job and be able to support himself.

That he and his wife are able to reconcile and start a new life together in Christ. She's already a believer.

Man, this is the life.

My new Brazilian friends

These are the 2 guys I spend some time with last weekend at the English Camp in Porto Allegre, Brazil. The guy on the left is Fabio and the other guy is Nelsin. Two super guys that came to camp looking to get a better handle on their English. I hope they did. Jesus got in the middle of this thing and really pulled our heartstrings together. They ended up wanting to know more about what our small group discipleship looks like. I ended up having my heart broken for these 2 Brazilians. Before I got home, Fabio had already emailed me. This is gonna be good.