Saturday, January 06, 2007

Ok, packing up is not fun to do...

I'm putting this picture up just for Iris' benefit, since I know she'll absolutely love it hehehehehhee.

I just started packing up my stuff to get ready to go home. This will be my last post unless they have wireless at one of the airports prior to JFK, and once I'm at JFK I'll be making phone calls rather than posting.

We're pulling out of the hotel at 5PM local, 2PM EST, and we're heading to the local Rio airport flying TAM to Sao Paolo, where we'll catch our connecting flight back to JFK on another 777. We've confirmed that both flights exist this time, so no surprises at the airport. Looks like it will be another Airbus and 777 combo flight. Not a bad deal so long as I don't get the idiot treatment again...I'm just happy to be heading home. As much as I now love Brazil - it's just an amazingly beautiful country - I love my homeland and all my family and friends back at home more.

Brazil has been amazing. One of the locals described it to me as a land created by God to be one of the most beautiful places in the world, filled with some of his most corrupt creations and people. She's not far off from what I've seen on either point. I will miss this place and these caring, amazing, deep, thoughtful, and all around wonderful people.

One more picture before I sign off and finish packing. Jesus was big and I don't think my previous picture quite captured that fact.

We saw Jesus

Well, we went to see Jesus. It was cloudy, but the clouds were high up today so Corcovado was not covered by clouds. So here he is in all his giantness.

Dawn in Rio, Saturday Jan. 6th, 2007

Top o' the mornin' to ya!

It's a little after dawn here in Rio. I just wanted to share these pics with you that I just got from our balcony. Also, today is our last day here in Brazil and I will be trying to catch the local sights before departing for the airport at 5PM. I doubt it's going to happen though. I got some of the prices for the Christ the Redeemer statue visits - the cabbies here want $150 Real for a trip up to the statue. That's about $75 US. I'm thinking that for that amount of money I can look at it from here just fine. As much as I'd like to go, I don't like getting ripped off either.

Maybe Sugarloaf is cheaper - I might go there. Either way I wouldn't mind having some cool scenic pictures for you when I get home tomorrow around noon. I'm thinking that our flight lands around 12 in JFK and I should be getting back to the Worship Center at about 3PM or so.

I will probably make one more post before we fly away, so stay tuned in!

Friday, January 05, 2007

Sound problems

I wanted to post to answer some comments made in regards to previous posts.

Sound here has been a real problem. The concept of good sound still has yet to reach Brazil, it seems, since they are still using concepts like side-fill monitors rather than floor monitors. This causes all kinds of problems with intelligibility on stage. One which has caused me to oversing and strain my voice. The problem comes from not being able to hear well, which is certainly not a mark against our soundman, Neil - he has done simply amazing things with limited means on this trip.

He studied at Full Sail in Orlando, Florida where I at one point also wanted to study. Doug's son Tim also studied there as well. Neil is freaking awesome. I have been thanking God everyday that he was along on this trip. Besides the ministry aspect, I think God may have sent him to keep me at peace.

All that being said, God revealed to me that with my "breakthrough", I was just a little overzealous. I jumped in with both feet, spiritually and physically. I felt like He was telling me that while I should be that aggressive with my spirit, my body is not able to keep up. So I need to remain free in my heart, but be careful with my body. Heh. Who'd have thunk?!?

Lastly, God helped me out a bit. I forgot to mention in my earlier post that upon arriving at our little beach pow-wow, that I could hardly sing a note. About half way through that worship session I sang a harmony just out of habit, and much to my surprise I had the clearest voice that I've had in years. It was awesome! Last time I had something work instantly like that was my hearing in my left ear - God is the coolest.

It's Friday at the Sheraton

Hey everyone,

We got back from the island this morning, and took a 3 hour bus ride from the port to Rio, more specifically the Sheraton. Now, while I'm one to never turn down a nice hotel I was more than a little peeved that I'm having to pay for this right now. They charge for their so-called 'high-speed' internet connection. It's pathetically slow, and for $20US per 24-hour period I'm rather disgusted.

Otherwise, the hotel is great. The view from our room is insane. Let's just say that, as you can see, the view is really nice.

We did have some sun on the island, and I'm paying for that too but not with money. We went to the beach and I got a little too much. Ouch!

We did have a good time swimming in some of the lagoons and taking some photo ops with the starfish. Don't worry sea-creature lovers - we didn't just drop them randomly, we carefully placed them back on the bottom (about 15 feet down) before leaving. Starfish have a hard time flipping over, and we didn't want them to be easy turtle bait.

The island experience was awesome. About 120 square miles of tropical paradise to explore in a day. Yeah, we were a little short changed on exploration time, but what time we did have was awesome. The beach was beautiful (I have pictures). We found some dead stingrays - one of the guys managed to free the 8" long barb from it's tail. We figured it would be better to do that rather than have someone potentially get hurt by it.

The end of our second night we put together a concert right on the beach in the town square. Approximately 600-700 people were around us most of the time, sometimes I would guess hitting 1,000 just milling about. It was a great response, but the setup was hell.

We had just 1 40-amp circuit to work off of, which had to be held in just a certain way to allow the power to flow continuously - our sound guy has pictures, but maybe you can imagine bare wire put directly into a loose breaker hanging in the open on the side of a light post. Yeah, that's right. Don't forget the rain... Also, the sound system we had from the local church ran only on the Brazilian round 2-post plugs. Oooh boy this is where it get's good. We built a couple hand wired connectors to connect them to our American power strips - thankfully we didn't have to use these because we sent someone back to our hotel and the hooked us up with some adapters and extension cords, but it was looking pretty rough for a while.

It was a mess of wires, cables, electricity, and some good old crazy willingness to do something absolutely retarded to make it work. However, we (with God's help) pulled it out and made it happen. Overall, the island was an awesome experience and I can't wait to show everybody the pictures.

Well, it's time to go get dinner and my paid internet connection is soon to expire (only bought 3 hours), so I'll sign off for now. Hopefully I'll get one more post in tomorrow. I'm going to try and hit Sugarloaf and the Christ the Redeemer statue, but we'll see how it goes...

Love ya! Bye.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Hey, hey, hey...

It's now Wednesday, about 3:00AM local. We'll be leaving for Ilha Grande in a few hours as the bus is leaving the hotel at 7. Heh. I've yet to see us leave sooner than an hour after we said we were going to, but that's part of the missionary life I guess.

We ministered at a United Methodist church here in Volta Redonda, and received a history and economics lesson from the pastor's daughter, Ariella, who along with her brother who we'll call "John" cause it's easier attends Christ for the Nations school in Dallas, Texas.

Their ministry here in Volta Redonda is really awesome. As a church, they already have 4 satellite churches in the area, and are working on constructing a building which will house not only a Bible college but a trade school as well for locals so they can get better jobs. The one thing this church is hurting for is a bus, which would help in rainy weather when local residents cannot get to the church due to flooding, etc... Understand that not a single person in the church owns a car besides the pastor and a few of the elders. Also, know that the church's annual budget is about 115K in US dollars, but they recently started that new building which cost them 125K for the initial phase. That's right, they spent more than their budget on the building, but it's all paid for and their budget was also met - this is done by people who make about $600 US/mo per household.

Worship tonight was hard for me as I was very distracted. I am tired. I am beyond tired to the point of exhaustion, my voice is giving out after some very "lively" worship services, and I miss my wife. I couldn't get in the zone, and I was ready to ask Henry for a plane ticket.

Tomorrow brings rest with the travel, and we don't have a service in the evening on the island so it's a relatively uneventful schedule. We'll see - so far uneventful has meant less music and more ministry...

Please be praying for the next few days. I'm not the only one getting worn down. Our rest has been disrupted, and we are not sleeping well even given time to do so.

God Bless - the island may not have internet access, but we'll see. I've said I wouldn't before and been wrong - thankfully I got to hear Iris' voice tonight thanks to a Vonage USB VOIP phone. It was a local call. Gotta love computers!

Wheee - it's January 2nd! YAYYYEEEE!

Sorry, I'm a little loopy. Tired really - I slept but my roomie Neil didn't because of my insane snoring. I'm a little stuffy (left my Nyquil at home, doh!), and that didn't help.

I see that it's about 30F in Willow Street. HAHA. I couldn't help it.

We're taking it easy today since we're all a little tired after pounding it out like we have been for the last few days. Some of our people are out doing a radio interview that I'm listening to on my Zune right now - I'm starting to be able to understand and communicate with the locals a little bit, so the radio interview is rather funny. I'm pretty sure our translator just said that it's hard to translate for our group leader sometimes.

Last night I forgot to add that one of the locals, my guess was the town drunk, was expressing his love for one of our singers. He was drawing hearts in the air and dancing around in front of her on the ground in front of the stage. One of the church guys chased him off, but it was really funny - we all got a good laugh out of it.

We're doing a concert a local church tonight, and then early tomorrow morning we're heading out to sea. We'll be on Ilha Grande in the afternoon, doing several concerts while we are there.

See ya tonight!

Jan 1, '07 journal entry

Journaling this one since the new hotel doesn’t have network connections. Found out the hotel has wireless – *edit* walked right past 2 WAP’s last night in my tired stupor and didn’t notice them. They’re bright blue! *edit*

Today was interesting. We were told to be ready by 9:30AM to depart for Volta Redonda. Our bus apparently showed up at 7, but left again, and came back again at 10:30. Argh. It was alright though, the bus was awesome and very comfortable and we still had plenty of time to get to the small town we were headed to before Volta.

If you’ve ever been to Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, you’ll know the kind of view and heights I’m talking about – if not, go there and find out. Either way, just picture looking out over an incredible vista mixed with fog and clouds, rivers and waterfalls, from thousands of feet above the valley floor. That’s where we were today, in a small town that had it’s own hydroelectric plant.

I got some pictures of this beautiful mission-style church, which overlooked the central courtyard of the town. Our stage was set up just below the steps of the church overlooking the courtyard. Really just a pretty setting for a worship concert. One of the local churches was providing sound (Oh Lord help us – but they were clueless!) which was nice, with some interesting complications. Besides the sound issues we had only one problem – it was raining cats and dogs.

We prayed against the rain for about 30 minutes, and we also felt that there was a strong presence in the courtyard working against us and our purpose there which we also prayed against. Feeling that we had achieved what we wanted, we went and got something to eat at a local family’s home. They provided some awesome food – the local cuisine is not as bad as I’d feared with exception that it’s rather bland. Fortunately the family had some hot pepper oil which several of us used rather liberally on our food. It was very much like chili made with sausage, habichuelas rojos, chicken, and chunks of beef served over rice. Good, but still bland until we added the oil. MmmmmMmmmm good.

By the time we got back to the stage, the rain was pretty well stopped – certainly not the downpour we had earlier in the day. By the time we started to play it had slowed to a near non-existent drizzle.

God showed up…again. *grin* We held an altar call towards the end of the concert and quite a few people came forward. We hadn’t done one before, but since this was in a public area and there were people watching from nearby windows and doorways I guess God wanted to call up those who were on the verge. Awesome night once again.

Now we’re at our latest hotel, and if you’ve ever seen Steven King’s, “The Shining”, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s a little spooky. Long white hallways with windows at the end. Really reminiscent of the Stanley Hotel. We pulled in here just before midnight and I took a shower and now I’m prepping for bed.

Anyway, I’ll post this as soon as I can, but I wanted to get it all down while it was fresh.