Denise and Wouter leed the service!

Missions: "A combination of words and deeds"
When people think about missionary's they many times think about
a person that walkes around with a bible underneath his arm who
preaches the gospel everywhere he goes. In the Netherlands this
idear has improved a lot allready but here in Brazil this traditional
image of missionary's is still realy actual. Therefor as a missionary in
Brazil you wont be able to escape to the fact that once in a while you
will have to preach in front of a church.

Nerves
I believe that preaching honestly isn't one on my strengths.
I may have many intresting things to share with others but I am not
that good in bringing it when i am in front of a large group of people
especialy not when my nerves run around my in head with 180km
per hour. I can get so frustrated that i can be so nervous when i
know this is totaly not nessesary but there is no way that you can
stop it. The last time i felt like this was during my exams for my
drivers license which i totaly blew becouse of my nerves who made
me look like i was in a car for the first time of my life. So that also
didn't give me a lot of hope...

The big day
Last week on sunday was the great day... The first baptist church in
Bonsucsesso a small church with more or less 200 members had
invited me to bring a message on their missions service. And there
you stand in front of the church and everybody is looking at you with
great expectations. I had instead of a sermon prepared a more
simpel message I had prepared a testamony about my life. That way
i could just tell storys that i have lived. I am more acustomed to tell
story's only then for a smaller croud. The evening before i had
practised my testamony with Denise but we found out that it would
take me 1 hour and 50 minutes to tell all the things i wanted. While i
had only 45 minutes... Heeeelp meeeeee!

A funny way of looking at life
I was especialy afraid of being a boring preacher. My Portugues
already isn't the most intresting to hear together with the fact that my
voice is kind of boring and i always try to explain everything way to
detailed. But luckely i also have a funny way of looking at life and my
little jokes that i had mixed trhough the message came to be a great
succes! I dont know if everybody understood my message but at least
they enjoyed listening to my testamoy and left the church entertained.
Denise sings a song to close the service
As a finnishing touch i had asked Denise to sing a beautiful song.
I knew that would be a huge succes because she realy has an
amazing voice. And well, the people even got emontional! I dont
know if that was becouse of the combination of my message and
the text of the song or if it was just becouse Denise singing that
beautiful... But lets keep on thinking that it was the great combi-
nation that Denise and i make.

At least the people were touched and at the end we got many
compliments wich gave me a little more hope that maybe if i practise
more and learn to control my nerves better that i could even do a
little good in preaching. At least the pastor of the church wanted to
here me speek more times.

More Often
Well i dont know for how long i am going to be able to escape from
preaching this time! But on the other hand i can make a little extra
income if i would preach more often... Ofcourse you all will here
about it!