One Long Night

It has been one crazy weekend here in Brazil. I got the opportunity to stay the weekend with Pastor Edson and his family. Pastor Edson is the pastor of the church that I spent all week with during the evangelism week. It has been an exciting weekend. To start off with, no one in their household speaks a lick of English, which made things difficult, but good for me. I learned a whole lot of Portuguese this weekend. Saturday night, Karine and I went walking around town looking to buy some icecream. On the way we stopped by the ladies house that cooked for us all week during the evangelism week. Mateus, her grandson was there. He is the little boy that is in my facebook profile picture. They decided to go with us. We found icecream and it was so good. On the way back home we saw some kids playing basketball in the park. I didn´t have to pull out the dictionary to tell Karine what I wanted to do. She just started laughing and said go! So I did. This was the first time that I have seen anyone playing basketball since I have gotten to Brasil. I was excited. I just took off my flipflops and played. Let me back up really fast for a moment. Earlier in the night, we were at the grocery store and my head was getting really tired from trying to speak Portuguese. I told Karine, "This is going to be one long night." It took me about 5 minutes to get that point across to her, but she eventually got it. I had no clue how true that statement was going to turn out to be. Back to the basketball. I was playing and going for a loose ball, when my foot collided with someone elses foot that was wearing shoes. So my foot lost and lost big time. I hopped for a second in pain and then quickly returned to the game that hasn´t stopped. A couple of steps later I look down to see my foot bleeding prefusely. Blood wasn´t what bothered me. I can play with blood, no problem. It was the fact that my toe, when I touched it, felt like it was just hanging and not connected to anything. Your toe isn´t supposed to feel like that. So i wiped away the blood a little to have a better look. It wasn´t pretty. At that point I sat down and began to worry a little. Karine held up her hands in question form. I simply pointed to the bone that was sticking out of my foot. I didn´t have to pull out a dictionary to tell her what that was either. Long story short, I ended up at the hospital from 10 at night till 4 in the morning. A lot of non fun stuff went on while I was there. Things like setting my bone back into place and then stitching my foot up. Not fun at all. It was very very painful. But I am good now. It hurts a little, but nothing that a little time and prayers can´t fix.

My plans are still to go to the village today, even though I can´t walk. I told Pastor Waldir, while I was in the hospital, that this doesn´t change anything. If this is an attack by satan, then I won´t let him win by me changing what I have come here to do. My job is to share God´s love with everyone. Last time I checked, that really only needed a tongue to speak, and lips to smile. Not a good foot. God was very much glorified through this very long night. In a way it reminds me of the story where Jacob fights with God. At the end of the fight, Jacob is crippled, but he learned to lean and trust on God all the more. I feel that because of all of this, I am learning to lean on God all the more. With my body and my finances. I am thankful for everything that has happened to me this weekend. Sometimes rough and bad things happen to good people. I´m not saying I am good. I am just using the quote. People wonder why things like this happen to people who do God´s work. My do missionaries die young and tragically, leaving families behind. Why God, why? The only answer people have ever come up with is this, "Sometimes bad things happen to good people." Then that brings me to my next question. What is your definition of good. Yesterday I was reading in Mark and Mark 10:18 says, "No one is good-except God alone." It was a very humbling passage of scripture. I started thinking about this and then came to a very thankful and loving conclusion about that why question that I asked. Often times we take for granted the good things in our lives and often write them off as things that are normal. Things that are supposed to happen to us, or things that are owed to us. The Bible says that there are none good. If that´s the case then bad stuff never happen to good people, because there are no good people. Only good things to bad people. Everything good in our lives is a gift from God. A gift that we most definitely don´t deserve. We deserve the pits of hell, but because of God´s amazing grace, he has saved me allowing me to spend eternity with Him. THAT IS ENOUGH! If Christ doesn´t ever do one more merciful thing for me again in my life. If He doesn´t do one more so called good thing, then that is ok. Because Christ has already done enough. He has saved me. Be thankful for the good things. Ask God why are you doing this when He does something good for you, not when something bad happens to you. I have never gotten an answer when I asked God why when something bad happens to me. That is because there is no answer. But, I bet if you ask God why He is doing something when He is doing something good to you, you will get an answer. You will get a John 3:16 answer. An answer where God explains His perfect love to you. Be thankful for the good things in your life and don´t question the not so good things. Because the not so good things are what we deserve. Please pray for me and what good things God is doing here. God bless! (Deus te abençoe)!