Today, September 7, is Brazil's Independence Day, so I thought I would acknowledge that in a blog. We don't have big plans to celebrate today. There probably won't be any fireworks tonight, but people do have the day off and probably did most of their partying last night so they could sleep it off today. There might be a parade downtown, but I honestly don't know if there is or not.
The thing is, Brazilians aren't overly patriotic, unless it's the World Cup. Then they will put up flags and wear their green and yellow. I don't know of anything that unites Brazil as a whole like the World Cup. The country comes to a stand still when their team (beloved, if winning) is playing. When a goal is made, you can stand outside and hear the entire city celebrate with firecrackers and honking horns.
When Brazil sadly lost this year in the quarter finals, the flags quickly came down and the yellow team shirts were put away. Our big consolation at losing so soon in the World Cup was that at least Argentina lost too!
We love Brazil. After all, both David and I were born and reared here, and now we have a daughter who was born here as well. It's a part of who we are and now we even own a little piece of it. :) God has placed us here, and our plans are to spend our lives here laboring to teach and spread the true gospel among a people who are so misled and deceived by false doctrine and religion.
We are fighting for Brazilians in a spiritual sense. Sometimes our efforts seem so frail and meager in comparison to how huge the need is, but slowly we are seeing the difference that the gospel is making here in our neighborhood as a person here and a person there are being affected by it. Our service this past Sunday night was so encouraging in that we had our biggest group up to this point. A young mother who came last week for the first time came back with her husband and their two children this week. Another young mother who took her daughter to our VBS a couple months ago came for the first time with her daughter and her niece. She has been doing a Bible study with James and Christen and has shown an understanding of the gospel.
So today we celebrate, or at least acknowledge, Brazil's Independence Day, the day it declared freedom from Portugal. But we are far more excited to be involved in the process of freeing Brazilian people from the captivity of Satan.
2 comments:
Happy Independence Day!
We are praying as well that through the preaching of the Gospel many would come to repentance and faith in the Savior.
Amen! Brazil's a wonderful country and it's an honor, with you, to be part of God's plan in bringing many Brazilians to Him.
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