ie:missional teaching. glocalizing. living. serving. repenting. incarnating. loving. repeating.

April 27, 2008

Saving Money Through Lifestyle Changes

Filed under: Budgeting,Economy,Family,Finances,Life,News — Tags: , , , , , — Marty Duren @ 9:46 pm

There are lots of ways to save money with minimal effort. This post deals with lifestyle changes that, added together, can cut living costs substantially.

1. Learn to live with heat. During spring time, allow the house to get as hot as you can stand it before turning on the AC, then keep the temp around 77-78. You will acclimate to the temp as it will still feel cool after a hot ride in the car or working in the yard. If you have a two story house, keep the upper story cooler by a degree or two. You’ll be surprised at how this will keep the lower story cool as well.

2. Walk when you can. You may live so far out that you have to go hunting toward town and, if so, then this may not be practical. We live about a mile from a Kroger grocery store and, on occasion, I will walk to the store with a backpack and buy the few things needed. In addition to saving gas, the exercise does not hurt. One day last week my “spare donut tire” went flat at the Kroger. Once home in the afternoon (after getting a lift) I walked to Kroger, removed the tire, carried it to the repair shop about .25 miles away, back to the car and then drove home.

We have a mall near our house that has several out-parcels with various stores. When comparison shopping, I will often park equidistant from Best Buy, Circuit City and H. H. Gregg then walk to all of them. Throw in Target and I’ve saved a lot of starting and stopping as well as cranking and shutting off the engine. (Shopping online cuts down even on the cost of driving to the mall, but one must plan far enough ahead to consider the shipping time. That’s a tough one on me.)

3. Reclaim your water. When you warm up your shower, you lose anywhere from 1/2 to 1 gallon of water-multiply that by everyone in the house and number of daily showers and it adds up to a lot over time. That water can be used on house plants, yard plants or even to refill the toilet tank after a flush (once you work on your speed). A plastic bucket in the shower is a very easy way to accomplish this.

For less than $50 you can purchase a 50 gallon plastic drum and convert it to a rain catcher (attached to a gutter downspout) complete with mounted spigot. It would only be good for outside watering, but it would save you some money on municipal water.

Also, as mentioned in the previous comments thread, skip a shower on your day off…unless you already smell like the goat man.

4. Buy clothes on clearance. Some clothes just never go out of style and those clothes can be gotten for a song at the end of winter and summer. Thursday I got a sweater for $4.00 and a long sleeved, solid color shirt for $3.40 at Kohl’s. Don’t buy faddish clothes on clearance-it’s too late by then.

Some very good deals can also be found on every day wear. I like colored tee’s that can be worn alone or under another shirt. Picked up two Jerzees at Target for $4.99 each. If they fade too badly, they become working around the house shirts that I can keep (literally) for years. I still have a shirt from high school (Riverdale, GA, class of ’81) that I wear to change the oil in the cars, etc. If you have to wear Polo to cut grass, you have some serious issues ;^)

5. Buy clothes that last. No, this is not contradictory to #4. For me, this depends on what I’m buying. Hiking-wear is inherently expensive, so I’m willing to fork over the extra. There is an art to packing a backpack and every ounce counts. Forty-five bucks for quick dry nylon pants is far superior to packing jeans that hold every drop of water for hours. (Although, I did pick up a couple of Columbia nylon shirts for $9.99 each at Target. Similar shirts would have been $14.99-19.99 at REI.)

Shoes are another place that I don’t cut too many costs, though I still look for savings. As one gets older, the feet need special attention so the shoes that I wear a lot I’m willing to spend $90 or $100 to get. For me, those are going to be Montrail, Timberland, The North Face, etc, not patent leather that I will only wear a couple of hours a week. On those I will spend just enough to get by, provided they have good arch support.

6. Don’t allow your kids to become “brand conscious.” You’ll go broke trying to help you kids keep up with Aeropostale, Abercrombie and Fitch, American Eagle, Hollister’s or whatever else is the rage. Many teens could set their own style if they would follow Napoleon Dynamite to the local thrift store where they could find cool shirts for $2.00 that would run $32.00 for similar ones at the mall.

Shop for kids under middle school at Wal-Mart, Target, Kohl’s, TJ Maxx, etc. Kids don’t stay the same size long enough to justify spending $25.00 or more for a pair of tennis shoes or $40 for some silly sailor outfit.

The same can be true for adults. I am hard pressed to spend $40-50 on Levi’s or Lee jeans when I can get Wrangler or Urban Pipeline for $12-15. They all last the same length of time.

7. Combine errand trips. Taking ten trips to go ten places is just bad stewardship. Keep a list on the refrigerator or the kitchen chalk board for a few days and run errands on one trip rather than five.

8. Call home before coming home. Cell phones are a God send for communicating with home base. Call home when leaving the office to see if anything (milk, bread, last minute dinner ingredient) can be picked up while driving by the story anyway.

9. Work from home or a coffee shop a couple of days a week. During this time of skyrocketing gas prices, churches should understand that the pastor can get as much done at home and should bless him by allowing him to save the money. Concentrate as much office work as you can around two or three day during the week and work from home (prepare sermons, write, make phone calls) the other day or two. Cell phones and the prevalence of the internet at coffee shops and restaurants should make us more mobile, not less. Besides this, working from home means you don’t have to wash, dry and iron another set of clothes.

10. In the summer, avoid using the stove. Grill out or eat sandwiches. The stove not only takes a truck load of power to run, it heats up the house requiring more power to cool it. Buy a griddle for breakfast foods or grilled sandwiches.

After using the stove in the winter leave the door open for a few minutes to allow the remaining heat to warm the kitchen. (If you have small kids or clumsy family members, this may not be practical.)

11. Cut down on household waste (limits trips to the dump or recycling center). Fruit peels, coffee filters and grounds, egg shells and more can be used for compost. A large, thick “bean bag” from Starbucks can be used to store them under the sink until taken to the compost pile or bin. Many Starbucks stores also have used grounds available for customers to use at home in gardening. Those grounds are usually in the silver bags referenced above. (If you do not garden, you probably have a neighbor that would love to have it.) Find out if your local government allows trash burning and create a small fire ring in your back yard, thus saving gas or cost of a trash hauling company. Our county does not allow trash burning, but has set up numerous recycle centers around the county so that conscientious residents can recycle a LOT of household trash and dispose of the rest.

12. Change the filter on your AC/Heat unit according to the schedule. It both keeps the air clean and allow the system to run more efficiently.

13. Gradually change over to fluorescent lighting. Incandescent light bulbs use more energy, don’t last as long and bring more heat into the room. If you use lots of lamps, you’ll have to make sure that the shade attaches in such a way to allow for a non-round bulb. Some of the florescent bulbs, such as n:vision available at Home Depot, are now as small as regular bulbs. That particular brand is warranted to last nine years.

14. Turn the heat down at night. That’s why God created blankets and Grandma makes quilts. Flannel pjs for the kids are fine. Why run the heat at 72 degrees when no one is awake to enjoy it? Turn the thermostat down to 65 or lower and cover up! (Turn it down during the day, too. A shirt and sweater will keep most people warm in a 68 degree house. Besides, it’s good stewardship.)

15. Invest in a freezer. A solid upright freezer can be gotten from moving sales, estate sales or your local appliance company. Make sure it is not too old or the efficiency will simply not allow it to pay for itself. In my next post, I’ll talk about why it is so important.

16. Buy groceries once a month. Get into this habit as quickly as it is possible, perhaps when your tax return or tax rebate arrives. You will not believe how much money you will save with just this one move. (More on this one in the next post).

17. Trade the gas hog for economy. Prices are not coming down so now is the time to trade the Suburban, Expedition or Mammoth Car for a 4 cylinder or hybrid. I’m so thankful for my 30 mpg around town Accord, but we’re really debating what to do about our 18 mpg truck. If it can reasonably be worked out, it’ll be gone.

Coming next: Saving Money Through Winning the Grocery Game

April 9, 2008

Hagee’s Folly

Filed under: Bible,Life,News,Politics — Marty Duren @ 5:05 am

Christian Post recently carried an article featuring Evangelist/Pastor John Hagee’s attempt to help solidify Israel’s control over a united Jerusalem with a financial gift of $6M to various Israeli national causes. Hagee, a well known Christian Zionist made the following comment at a speech:

Turning part or all of Jerusalem over to the Palestinians would be tantamount to turning it over to the Taliban.

Indeed.

He shared the stage with Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Israel’s hard-line opposition Likud Party and a former Prime Minister of the Middle Eastern nation. Christian Zionism according to Hagee is

the belief that every Jewish person has the right of return to Israel, and the right to live in peace and security within the recognized borders.

Apparently there is no concern that the Palestinians enjoy the same.

While I appreciate Hagee’s attempt to support any country’s infrastructure and education issues, I fear that this issue is much more complex than he, in his apparent attempt to hasten the return of Christ, is willing to admit. A few thoughts:

1. This issue of Palestinian homeland, almost always tied to Hamas and the Islamic Jihad predates either of them while giving place to the rise of one Yasser Arafat, . The realities surrounding this, stemming from the parceling of the land in 1948, are astounding. If I may digress…

Following World War 2, United Nations recognized that the fallout from the Holocaust could be addressed by the establishment of a “Jewish homeland.” Many Jews did not want to go back to a Europe that had either turned a blind eye to the genocide of their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters or, like America, turned a deaf ear to their cries. The establishment of this homeland had been talked of for years preceding. From Wikipedia:

Whilst the possibility of a Jewish homeland in Palestine had been a goal of Zionist organizations since the late 19th century, it was not until 1917 and the Balfour declaration that the idea gained the official backing of a major power. The declaration stated that the British government supported the creation of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. In 1936 the Peel Commission suggested partitioning Mandate Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, though it was rejected as unworkable by the government and was at least partially to blame for the 1936-39 Arab revolt.

It seems lost on modern Christian Zionists, bent on helping God fulfill the promises of the Abrahamic Covenant, that there are people in Palestine who are not Muslim, certainly not Hamas, but are of all things Christians! So supporting Israel’s actions of destroying West Bank settlements so that they may have all of Jerusalem can certainly have the effect of displacing our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ; and this occurring at the hands of those who know not Jesus. Even a casual perusal of a book such as Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour would reveal a much different beginning to the current State of Israel than many modern Christian Zionists are willing to admit or, possibly, even face. (This book was called, by a former UPI correspondent in Israel, “An accurate, moving account worthy of careful attention.”)

Imagine being in your home on the land that has belonged to your family for generations, cultivating olives, playing in the vineyards then hearing a rumor that Palestine has been parceled up to form a new homeland for Jewish people from all over the world. So? Maybe that means the opportunity for new friends. Then imagine that a few weeks later, heavily armed soldiers show up at your door demanding that your entire family leave and giving you a short time in which to do so. You would be paid nothing for your home, your land, your crops. Upon their return you would face the possibility of violence or even death if you did not comply. Imagine taking what belongings you could load up and heading out like a band of gypsies to camps in Jordan (whose government did not want you either). In the case of Chacour’s family, the military duped an entire village into leaving for their “own protection” and then occupied their homes forbidding them return.

Historian Christopher Sykes noted that

Zionism…found itself closely bound to imperialism…[It] depended for its foundation and early growth on the success of British imperialism.

2. The aggression and violence in the newly demarcated Israel was not carried only out by Palestinians dissidents, but by some of the future leaders of the tiny ancient/new nation: Menachem Begin (whose stated goal was to “purify” the land of the Palestinian people) and Moshe Dayan for example. Concern over this behavior was raised by Harry S. Truman even before May 1948. In an August letter of the previous year, he wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt

I fear very much that the Jews are like all underdogs. When they get on top they are just as intolerant and as cruel as the people were to them when they were underneath.

About Dayan’s political philosophy it was written:

[Israel should] threaten the Arabs and constantly escalate the level of violence so as to demonstrate her superiority and create the conditions for territorial expansion.

This Zionist version of Manifest Destiny could have been phrased thusly: “God has given us the land and woe to any who stand in our way.” Almost incomprehensibly the very people who had faced genocide five years earlier now seemed poised to foist it upon the native inhabitants of Palestine. Chacour notes how unfairly the Palestinians, in the struggle to retain their own homes and lands, were characterized in the world’s press:

Palestinians, who in any other country being overtaken by a foreign force would have been called freedom fighters, were “terrorists” and “guerillas.” Hence, the widely used term, “Palestinian terrorist” was ingrained in the Western mind.

There can be little doubt that the same duplicity still exists today.

Also seemingly unknown to Hagee is just how unjust the original partitioning seems to have been. According to one source:

In 1947, the United Nations partitioned Historic Palestine, giving 55% to the Jewish population and 45% to the Palestinian population. The indigenous Palestinians rejected the division of the land on which they had lived and farmed for centuries. At the time of partition, the Jewish population owned less than 6% of Palestine.

(Check out this enlargeable map of the 1947 partition plan. It’s quite different to what is in the back of your Bible.)

3. The biblical fulfilling of the Abrahamic Covenant’s “land grant” is accurate, I believe, but is there any clear biblical teaching that it will be fulfilled in our lifetime? It seems that Christian Zionism is so linked to a “pre-mill, pre-trib” eschatology that it leaves no possibility that this current Jewish occupation of “the land” is not necessarily the permanent possession of it. I’ve never seen any scripture that precludes at least a potential situation in which the Jews could be again dispersed and regathered at some future point. (I don’t believe that to be the case, but I just can’t rule it out biblically.)

It’s also worth mulling over that one can do an interesting comparison to America’s history. The colonies declared independence from England. We were determined to have our own country. The response of England was to send the Army and Navy that they might set straight those who were rebelling against the crown. In response to this aggression, we fought the Revolutionary War. The heroes of that time are called “The Founding Fathers.” In the Palestinian-Israeli conflict comparison, we equate with the Palestinians, yet, as Chacour noted, we called their fight “terrorism.”

It is clear, to me anyway, that God worked in some pretty miraculous ways in Israel’s early modern days to allow her to remain in existence (the Six Day War, for example), but the fact remains that the modern Jewish state is a nation of people walking in spiritual darkness. Paul makes it clear that a veil remains over the eyes of those of Jesus’ physical kin who do not believe in Him (2 Corinthians 3), while the god of this world strives to keep them blinded so that the light of the gospel will not enlighten them (2 Corinthians 4). Simply because God has a future plan for Israel does not give them a free pass on each and every decision that their politicians make in this day and age. In fact, there are many times when I watch the news and wonder if their leaders have ever read the Old Testament prophets at all. Where is the justice and mercy that God sought throughout the days leading up to the deportation of both Israel and Judah? It seems that they have again become focused on the land of the promise rather than the God of the promise.

I’m concerned that John Hagee has done the same thing.

(HT: Kevin Bussey)

Additional quotes from How Israel Was Won, by Baylis Thomas and A History of the Middle East, by Peter Mansfield.

March 31, 2008

Richard Mark Lee shoots and scores.

Filed under: Church,Culture,Gospel,Missional,News — Marty Duren @ 3:03 pm

My friend Richard Mark Lee at First Baptist Sugar Hill, GA, (“The Family Church”) lit it up yesterday with a message seeking forgiveness from those in society for the church’s judgmental attitude. It was called, “We’re Sorry, Really.”

You can read about it here, from Joe Westbury of the Christian Index, or listen here.

Great job, Richard!

March 7, 2008

California Court Dumps on Homeschoolers

Filed under: Culture,News — Marty Duren @ 4:23 pm

A California District Court handed down a ruling this week declaring home schooling in the state to be unconstitutional. From the article:

“California courts have held that … parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children,” Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling issued on Feb. 28. “Parents have a legal duty to see to their children’s schooling under the provisions of these laws.”[…]

The ruling was applauded by a director for the state’s largest teachers union.

“We’re happy,” said Lloyd Porter, who is on the California Teachers Association board of directors. “We always think students should be taught by credentialed teachers, no matter what the setting.”

Of course, Lloyd.

Our three children have never been in a public school for classroom instruction. When our oldest was about nine, she was invited to be the guest of a neighbor child by doing the reading time for his class. The teacher was shocked at how well she did. Of course, she’d been reading the newspaper since she was 5.

Our middle child, Timothy, recently opted to try for the GED. On his evaluation test he scored as a high school graduate in each section. When we sat down with the instructor for the explanation, he began with the reading scores first saying, “I always start with the reading scores first. Unfortunately, we still have people go through high school who are functionally illiterate.” Astoundingly, functional illiteracy does not seem to be a problem with home schooled students.

Our youngest probably reads 300 books a year (no exaggeration), most of which have to do with some aspect of world and US history. She usually greets each new section of history with, “Oh yeah, I read about that in ______________.”

Like most kids, each of them have areas in which they have excelled and each of them have had areas where they have struggled. They weren’t (and aren’t) perfect as students, nor are we as teachers.

Though many homeschoolers can be virulent and even insolent about their position, most that I have encountered came to the decision after lots of thought and prayer. Most do not claim Deuteronomy 6 as their basis, but simply what is best for the family in a given situation or distinct period of time. Our original decision was made because we had two options for our kindergartener: drive 40 miles cumulative daily taking her ourselves or put her on a K-5 through 12th grade bus at 7:15 am and let her be dropped off at 5:00 pm. Neither situation was right for us, so we opted to homeschool.

Most homeschoolers do not get a tax break for purchasing their own textbooks, workbooks, study guides, tests, beakers, bunson burners, modeling clay and the rest. At the same time, most pay property taxes to furnish everyone else’s child with all the same equipment. We pay for the public system and yet receive no compensation for our homeschool expenses. It is an inequity that most willingly accept for the option of making sure their kids are not overwhelmed by a 180-day a year education that ignores or mocks the existence of the biblical God.

Another statement from the judge is equally as troublesome. Citing a 1961 case, Judge Proskey wrote:

“A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.”

Uhm…educating children is not on the menu? The educational system in the United States of America, circa 2008, has absolutely nothing to do with “protecting the public welfare.” It has to do with getting the almighty tax dollars allocated to the various states and school districts via the No Child Left Behind legislation. The 1961 ruling could surely have been updated to reflect the new reality that “The primary purpose of the educational system is to brainwash school children in bad philosophy, materialism and subservience to the state and nation as a means of prolonging the public fealty.”

The U. S. government educational experiment has been (with some exceptions) a dismal failure and (as my Momma used to say), “Anyone with one eye and half-sense can see that.” I hope that California parents are successful in getting this ruling overturned either through lawsuit or legislation. I also hope that the U.S. supremes, if given the opportunity, leave it as an issue for the states to decide rather than pulling another Roe v Wade.

Ah, California. The state likely to let a parent kill a child, but will not let them educate it once it is born.

February 26, 2008

Stetzer Speaks Today

Filed under: Books,Communication,Misc,Missional,News — Marty Duren @ 9:03 am

One eighth of the GBC Evangelism Conference is today at Midway-Macedonia Church in Villa Rica. LifeWay research guru Ed Stetzer co-author of Breaking the Missional Code and the soon to be released Compelled by Love (co-authored with Philip Nation) will be speaking this afternoon.

Check the GBC site for times.

January 31, 2008

My Thoughts on the Wade Burleson/IMB BOT Fiasco

Filed under: Humor,News — Marty Duren @ 12:02 pm

I don’t have any.

November 19, 2007

Kudos

Filed under: Culture,Mission,Missional,News — Marty Duren @ 11:12 am

If you haven’t read Art Rogers’ post today entitled, Maybe this will help…, I would encourage you to do so. Good job, Art.

November 3, 2007

Water, water nowhere and fewer drops to drink…

Filed under: Georgia,God,News,Prayer — Marty Duren @ 1:22 pm

In case you don’t live in the southeast and, therefore, may not have heard, it hasn’t rained much here in a while. At a time of year when Atlanta would have normally received 50 inches of rain, we are some 26 inches shy of average. In fact, almost all of north Georgia, over 50% of Alabama, about 50% of Tennessee and parts of North Carolina are in the midst of an “exceptional drought,” the most dire category in the annals of weather prognosticators, meteorologists and other record keeping peoples. With a warm, dry winter predicted for the upcoming season, things are not looking any wetter…or better.

If it were a lack of rain alone, then it might not be a story. But, Atlanta is the largest metropolitan area in the US being served by a watershed area as small as the Chattahoochee River Basin. Combine that with the lack of planning by state and local municipalities who have issued building permits like there is no tomorrow and we have a situation in which the primary energy and drinking water source for the city of Atlanta, Lake Sidney Lanier, has dropped to near (if not to) an all time low and continues to drop at an alarming rate. Entire marinas are nothing but mud, surrounded by boats having no chance of floating.

As if this weren’t enough, the Corps of Engineers which is in charge of releasing water through Buford Dam is charged by the EPA with releasing about 3,000,000 gallons of water each day more than is necessary to support the continued life of freshwater mussels in the Appalachicola River. (See info about the Apalachicola, Flint, Chattahoochee basins.) Add to that the ongoing GA-ALA water dispute and you have the makings of a real crisis, which is what we are facing.

Enter the leadership of Georgia churches. During our periodic drought times, which have been increasing both in length and in frequency, area pastors always call for prayer that God might intervene and send rain to our parched earth, both providing replenishment for our drinking, car washing and bathing supplies and to help our already federally subsidized peanut farmers. This year our Governor, Sonny Perdue, himself a believer joined in the call. News reports mentioned 300 people gathered to pray on the Barrow County Courthouse steps, which was followed by a steady drizzle and then two days of precipitation. The leaders of the Georgia Baptist Convention have joined in citing a tie between repentance and physical blessing as observed in 2 Chronicles 7:14.

In times such as this, my question has always been, “Should we pray for rain? We pray and pray and pray for God to intervene in people’s lives, to bring revival to ‘the land’ and cause spiritual awakening, what if the drought is His way of getting the attention of people who should acknowledge their dependence on Him. Are we praying against the very method that God is using to answer our first prayer?”  I don’t know, so I join in prayer with everyone else.

This is what I’d like to see: during one week of November, the Muslims implore Allah for seven days of rain. During a second week, the Hindus talk to Krishna about the crisis, during a third week the Jews pray and during the final week, Christians pray and the God who answers by a seven day period of steady rain is the true God. We could even allow the atheists to assign the weeks to ensure no cheating or advantage.

Yeah, I know, but at least my idea is biblical (1 Kings 18).

October 11, 2007

So, Which One Do You Read?

Filed under: Humor,News — Marty Duren @ 8:22 am

I received this from a friend:

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country, but don’t really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country if they could find the time and if they didn’t have to leave Southern California to do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country, and did a far superior job of it, thank you very much.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren’t too sure who’s running the country and don’t really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who’s running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball scores.

10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure there is a country or that anyone is running it; but if someone is, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped, minority, feminist, atheists, provided of course, that they are not Republicans.

11. The St. Petersburg Times is read by people who have recently caught a fish and need something in which to wrap it.

July 27, 2007

Brazil, Part 2

Filed under: Culture,Mission,News — Marty Duren @ 9:15 am

Safely home, thank you, Lord.

A couple of corrections from the previous post which, obviously, was written in haste: The TAM flight that crashed last Tuesday killing all aboard and some on the ground had landed at a domestic airport in Sao Paulo. My flight, Delta 105, landed at the international airport a few miles away. Indeed, our connecting flight to Campo Grande was on a Fokker 100 both ways, not an Airbus as I originally thought. The Minister of Defense (whose responsibility it is to oversee commercial aviation) was sacked in the middle of the week for failure to address the inherent dangers in having a full airport in the middle of a residential area as Congonhas is. I hope that those issues will be addressed quickly for the sake of all air travelers in Brazil.

Our return was a tension of late flights and a missed connection. Following the fatal accident, the domestic airport was closed during rains, while flights were being canceled and diverted and a few instances of pilot refusal to land at the domestic airport while rain was falling. Add to the mix that there are no strong competing airlines for domestic Brazilian air traffic and you get delay, delays and more delays. We were not even close to making our 10:55 pm flight to Atlanta on Tuesday night; we had to stay an entire day. Our return flight was completely uneventful, however, and we were happy to hit the ground at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport at 8:10 or so yesterday morning.

My purpose for this trip was to assist a friend of mine, Todd Wright, who was doing a leadership conference at the FBC in Campo Grande, which is about an hour and 40 minutes northwest of Sao Paulo (by air; we don’t want to talk about the bus trip that others had to take), as well as for me to learn more about the cell groups that are a vital part of the church’s ministry. Todd and I were hosted wonderfully (pampered would be a more accurate term) in the home of youthful and energetic Senior Pastor, Gilson Breder, his beautiful wife, Vasti, and his gifted 23 year old son, Yuri. They live on the 15th floor of a downtown condo providing an astounding view of the city, especially at night.

It did not take me long to find out two things about Brazilians: they have great personalities with humor that is much like ours and that they like to eat meat-heavy meals late at night. We never even made an effort to eat the evening meal before 10:00 pm and usually it was around 11:00 pm. We left one restaurant at 11:45 and passed several open air eateries that were still packed with customers. And speaking of meat…

If you are a carnivore, you probably ought to try Brazil at least once. On multiple visits to a style of restaurant that we affectionately called a “bar-b-que” it went something like this: Warm greeting, seating at an appropriate table, order a drink (always, always, Guarana Antartica–anything else would be a sin), a plate(s) of steamed rice, a plate(s) of yucca, a plate(s) of fried bananas and then the meat. Long skewers of prime rib, filet mignon, pork ribs, sausage, chicken, other pork, cupine (sp? anyway the Brahma bull hump) and a few more. Servers just return to the table over and over until you finally put up the stop sign. It was about the equivalent of $12 plus drink. All the meat is cooked over open flame, salted pretty heavily, but, oh, so good.

I was quite surprised upon arrival to find that the Pan American Games were taking place in Rio de Janeiro at the same time. Americans, by and large, don’t even know what those are, much less pay attention to who is participating (it’s like the Olympics of the Americas, instead of the entire world). While Brazilians were watching in restaurants and bars, ESPN.com did not even have a link to the results or the medal count which America is leading with Brazil a strong, but distant, second.

Soccer, or futbol as it is known in the rest of the world, is the national sport. Most men play 2-3 nights a week at indoor or outdoor fields, though the average person has no access to the large world cup size fields and is not really prepared to play on fields that size. The indoor game is like arena footall–fast and exciting. I was drafted to play goalie for 4 or 5 games lasting ten minutes each. I was shown for what I am: an old, slow, white guy who had never played soccer before. Or, at least, not since elementary school. It would not have been so bad if the same 13 year old had not scored on me 5 times, turning around each time to mutter, “Sorry.”   We played so long that we were late to the evening session of the conference; Pastor Gilson just laughed and nobody else seemed to notice.

Next Up: The spiritual side of Campo Grande

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