No subliminal messages here/Photo Essay Part 2

The last few days have been quite incredible. "Incredible" could be an overstatement, to which I say please provide a word that encompasses "humbling," "overwhelming," shocking," "emotional," and "blessed" all into one. You have until the end of this post to come up with an alternative.

Ever since I created the Facebook group late Sunday night I have been blown away (add that term to the above list, thanks) by the support I have received from my friends. The most shocking part of that process has been seeing where this support is coming from. I have received around 10 contributions as a direct result of the group, and most of those are from people I have not talked to in the last 6 months, some in the last year, and others in over 2 years. This is where "overwhelming" comes in. One of my biggest fears at the beginning of this process was that the people whom I asked to support me would not believe in this work as strongly as I do. Not only have I been proven dead wrong, but I believe God has used this to show me that not only do I have support, but I have support from people who are not even a part of my day to day life. Insert "blessed" and "humbled" and "emotional" here.

Now on to more introductions. These are my two teammates, Jeff and Ragan, and our tour guide extraordinairre, Sergio/Bob/Bobby. Sergio/Bob/Bobby is one person, the Brazilian-looking one in the middle. He was given his English names by the LST team of older ladies who came the summer before us. They had difficulty pronouncing his name, so they took matters into their own hands and named him Bob. Bob, a quadri-lingual university student who also teaches English on the side, embraced his new name to the point that even the other Brazilians from the church often call him Bobby. Bobby worked at a hotel, so he was immersed in the business of tourism and took it upon himself to jam-pack our days off (2 days per week) with "touristy" activities to do around Natal. In this particular picture we had just finished doing a little snorkeling. Bobby is one of the kindest, most generous people I know. He takes the call of servanthood seriously and delights in serving others. He always seemed to show up at the church building just as we were getting ready to break for lunch or dinner, ready to accompany us to the grocery store, local buffet, or just keep us company. He spent significant amounts of his free time helping us with anything and everything, and any time we commented that he didn't need to feel obligated to do so, he would stop us mid-sentence and say "it's my privilege to be with my brothers and sisters in Christ. There is nothing I would rather be doing right now." Most of my memories with Bobby involve laughing, laughing, and more laughing.


This is another of my most precious readers, Roberto. In the last post I said that when I think of Natal, Michelle and Patricia are the first two faces I see, but I would also add Roberto to that image. When I first met him, I could tell that he was very shy, very nervous, but very sweet. He usually showed up to every reading session early but sweating. I finally found out the last week we were in Natal that he was sweating because he would run to the church building from the bus stop, afraid he would be late. Roberto and I had amazing conversations about faith and what it means to follow God. He would come to the sessions uber-prepared, having read the lesson ahead of time and also having read the same passage from Luke in Portuguese to verify his comprehension of the English. He was so excited when he began doing this, telling me he had never read his own Bible so much. His hunger was very evident and I pray that it has continued. I can't wait to pick up with him where we left off!

I just realized that perhaps I should define some of LST lingo I have been using. If you know it all already, this post is over, so you can go ahead and comment, contribute, and move on to your next blog. :) Stay tuned for more introductions...

Definitions:
Reader(s): the locals in the community (not from the church) who respond to the advertisement for Let's Start Talking to practice their conversational English for free
Reading session: a 45 minute session in which the reader and worker (me) read one lesson from the Luke workbook together. Depending on what the reader chooses and what the worker's schedule allows, some readers come for a reading session every day, some come only once per week.
Luke workbook: the reading material LST provides, a simple English translation of the book of Luke bound into a workbook format. Each reader receives a workbook to keep for him/herself. Each "lesson" is a passage from Luke with a given message, or "seed thought." Each lesson also contains highlighted English vocabulary words and comprehension questions about the passage.