Month: November 2012

  • Some of the reasons why I say thank you:). Here are the faces, for when you join me in prayer on Saturday morning, November 24, and anytime…

    I am reading a book “One Thousand Gifts.” There are beautiful ideas in it, but the central idea is gratitude, and writing down things you are grateful for. And the book is inspiring. But the two thoughts that are life-changing are these:

    Thankfulness creates abundance

    Thankfulness builds trust

    And these are the two things I need the most in my relationships (first with God, and then others) and my ministry. And today is the holiday to celebrate that. I pray you are blessed with true gratitude today and every day.

     

     

  • Some of the reasons why I say thank you:). Here are the faces, for when you join me in prayer on Saturday morning, November 24, and anytime…

    I am reading a book “One Thousand Gifts.” There are beautiful ideas in it, but the central idea is gratitude, and writing down things you are grateful for. And the book is inspiring. But the two thoughts that are life-changing are these:

    Thankfulness creates abundance

    Thankfulness builds trust

    And these are the two things I need the most in my relationships (first with God, and then others) and my ministry. And today is the holiday to celebrate that. I pray you are blessed with true gratitude today and every day.

     

     

  • Five Children Fed for $5

     

    Become involved with something real this Thanksgiving.

    1. Get inspired: watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv44_UYjDgc

    2. Join the Event: (officially on Facebook, but anywhere) Saturday morning, November 24th, for prayer and fasting (fasting optional) for Northeast Brazil and Living Stones

    3. Share: donate at http://www.wribrazil.com/5for5

    5. Spread the word: Tell others about Living Stones, or post the video on your Facebook wall

  • Connected

    It is just nice to know I am not alone. That connection you have when you know someone is on the same page as you are. Sometimes these encounters are few and far between. Especially when you live far away. These have been some of my happy thoughts, when I am having low days:

    1. www.aholyexperience.com
    2. www.kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com
    3. www.xanga.com/spokenfor
    4. www.xanga.com/greekphysique
    5. www.xanga.com/rwinzeler (haha)

    Especially those in ministry (and this can be any kind of ministry—“official” or not), your list of people to help and pray for grows so quickly—it is important to find and keep close those people who you can count on to encourage you. Who will be a strong voice you can trust in your weak moments. Where you don’t have to serve—but can be served. You need that too. Don’t forget.

  • Broken Success

    Everyone is hit with the reality of poverty differently. We can go along for so long without really realizing the implications of the statitstics we hear of 27,000 children dying every day from preventable causes. Of 1.6 billion people living off the buying power of a dollar a day—or less. But once you open your eyes, you can never truly close them again. You can refuse to do something—but there will always be a voice inside you somewhere that whispers “something isn’t right about this.”

    How do you find a new normal?

    Once you have experienced a different life

    And your perceived reality

    Can never return?

    The answer isn’t to give the Living Stones children a life that looks like ours in the United States. It isn’t to take them out of their communities. It isn’t even to take the out of their crumbling dirt houses…it is to love them, right where they are. To see God, in the middle of hunger. To laugh instead of cry, and to cry because there is a time for that too.

    And slowly, through personal relationship—because that is the only way real change happens—to break and be broken for God. That is it. Cross out my endless lists of dos and don’ts. Quit trying to figure out if I have all the numbers straight in my ledger…what am I doing? Loving. What is my goal? Love, and teach how to love.

    I read a book about street children. Sitting on the couch across from a man who was once a street child. The book said most all of the groups, religious or not, failed in their attempt to remove the children from the street. The children would come and go, but in the end, returned to the street. The book suggested that maybe their definition of success was off: maybe their goal shouldn’t be to remove the children from the street. The author wasn’t sure what was the answer, because about 90% of them died on the street…but he stirred up just enough dirt to be a good book.

    I know the answer: God. I am still working on what that looks like. What my definition of success is supposed to be.

    Because in the end, what I do doesn’t matter. Let me say it slow: what I do doesn’t matter. They are the only ones who can choose change for themselves. Who can choose to love. To make a difference in their own lives.

    I can give them a new home, good ideas, a perfect education, food for a lifetime…but only they can choose to accept it. To make a different life.

    The leaders from Massa Humana were a little discouraged last week. They are building a home for this woman, and she was having petty problems with someone else. Reminds me of that story where the king forgave a million dollars, and the forgiven couldn’t forgive $20. And it is hard. It makes you want to stop giving.

    I was stolen from. One of my boys, whom I love, planned to rob me, found the right opportunity, and then took my money and phone. Afterwards, he gave me a big hug and looked in my eyes and said it wasn’t him—he would never do something like that to me. It cut me up. I am still raw inside.

    I don’t want to buy another phone. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to see him again, but I am afraid he will never come again because he feels he is past forgiving. And I want to forgive him. I do forgive him, but it is a choice, and it is a hard one.

  • My Hips

     

    Where I live you say hello to everyone you pass. Everyone. This took me awhile to learn because half the time when I am walking I am day dreaming and don’t even notice when people pass by. Then they think that I am rude. But it has paid off and now I wave or “Oi” or  “Opah” or “Bom dia!” They wave back and think I am muito simpatico. I also recognize all the motoqueros (motorcycle taxi drivers) and have gotten plenty of free rides for my trouble. Being friendly is a good way of life.

    I’ve gotten to know many of the kombe drivers as well. I like sitting up front, but still pump the ‘brake’ when we get centimeters from the next car (the engine is in the back). The kombe drivers like brega or traditional music most of the time. Music is much more than rhyme and words here. They love American music, but it is all lumped into the “love song” category since they don’t understand the words, and the rhythms are similar. Music is all about rhythm.

    Brazilian rhythm meets white girl. I tell them my hips don’t work right. They laugh and try to teach me once again, to samba or forro. And soon they look at me and say “Ha-kel, your hips don’t work right.” But they have hope for me yet.

    The kombe driver is talking. I look and see I am the only other one in the kombe. I guess he is talking to me. Clueless to what he has been saying, I smile and nod. He continues. “Brazil may be one of the few places on earth where it is possible to socialize by saying nothing more than “ah,” “e?” or simply nodding one’s head every so often.” –Tobias Hecht

  • Drop of Oil

    I was invited to a birthday party on Sunday. A well-off lady knew a family in Cajueiro Claro with 4 boys who all had their birthday around October. So she decided to throw them an official Brazilian birthday party.

    Official birthday parties in Brazil include huge amounts of decoration, a cake half my size, four or five types of miniature food and drinks, and lembrancinhas for each person to take home. This one also included the Brazilian version of a piñata, which is a clay pot (slightly uncreative, if you ask me).

    It was interesting to go into the community on Sunday, their one day off. Everything that needs to get done gets done on this day, especially the socializing. Everyone was out and about; all were dressed in their nicest clothing. But I didn’t feel underdressed in my shorts and t-shirt.

    A group of adults were in front of Gustavo’s falling down house, a plastic table drooping under the weight of all of the different kind of alcoholic drinks. They waved, albeit, a little embarrassed. A couple of houses down, the youngest children ran to me enthusiastically, grabbing my knees and waiting for me to kiss them on the top of their heads before they would let go. Milena only lets go when I balance my bag on one arm and scoop her up.

    The older children come slower, and the mothers who know me wave shyly, but do not leave their seats. There are only enough seats for 20% of the guests, and they want to keep theirs. There are two grown men at the party: the man who is taking pictures, and Vitor’s dad. The father of the family celebrating their birthday is nowhere to be seen. I scrape my leg on the barbed wire that surrounds their house as I go to get a piece of cake.

    I watch the interactions, I see the children who are excluded from the party, watching from a couple of houses down. I listen to the women gossip and I am glad I do not recognize the names. I come and go as I want. I take pictures and hug and kiss and then I am off. Like Junior said, I am a drop of oil in the water, and I like it that way. Then I can’t hurt anyone when I leave. Is that what I am afraid of?

  • Santana

    I climbed up a washed out set of steps to see a small depressing house of one light bulb and broken down bricks, half the roof collapsed. Santana has lived here for 30 years. Dogs surrounded, barking me to leave and a wee little woman came out to greet me, the open scab on her forehead distracting every Portuguese word I knew out of my head.

    Santana was too embarrassed to let me come into her house. She and I both hemmed and hawwwed a bit, and then she apologized that she had no place for me to sit. She didn’t have any chairs. We did the interview standing up. She didn’t know when her son’s birthday was. No one does. Sometime in the summer, she said…July? And the day? Well, towards the front part. I wrote down July 11. From now on, it will be July 11. Who gave me this power?

    Last year, her older son dies of throat cancer. Her 12 year old son is in 1st grade and cannot read. She doesn’t notice much, because she has never been to school. She knows he is 12, but not what year he was born.

    She ‘married’ twice and both were died. Both were abusive alcoholics. The older son works as a motorcycle taxi driver, often shuttling me back and forth to the church when it is worth my time to pay. She cannot talk for long, they have no plumbing, and she needs to walk down the hill to the neighbor to get some water.

     

  • Trust is Worth the Price I pay to Keep

    I have 12 more minutes of internet if I am going to leave to catch the bus to walk to get to where my host mother is waiting for me at the time I told her. I could just call, but my cell phone was stolen. Stolen and lied to my face about. Then sold to someone else in front of other children who didn’t say anything. And the internet freezes up and I tell myself that minute doesn’t count so I get another one…

    Because I just don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think about stolen things and broken trust and how hard it is to fix when broken…and all the phone numbers that I’ve lost and how that number is written on 250 business cards. And what if someone calls who wants to donate a million dollars?

    “I just need something that is a little bigger than the world I am living in, or I will cry” Is how I feel. And internet is nice like that. It reminds me that I have one friend who has three darling boys. One friend who just had a baby girl. One friend traveling home after a long time gone. One friend to pray for. One friend to laugh with…of course, there is God. He is bigger than the world I live in and I don’t need a little light on my computer to tell me I am connected. Hum.

    It is so ugly when someone reprimands you for trusting: “You should have locked your purse up.” Looking at me like it was my fault my stuff was stolen. Those kinds of people need someone to blame to feel better. I understand being careful. I put my things in a back room and closed the door. Sometimes, if someone is determined to steal from you, it is just going to happen.

    Worse is the mother of the boy, who knows he did it, but instead lays blame on the church “My children are never going back to that place because all they do is falsely accuse my children of stealing.”

    I need to know that God can make something beautiful of this mess. That I am not losing my money and my phone, but am gaining whatever it is that God has planned for this situation. That is what faith looks like right now, and it is hard for me to see.

    I’ve been told to lock my purse up now. Behind every locked door is some kind of broken trust, and every time I turn to lock it, I am reminded of that. And honestly, I’d rather lose another cell phone than have to remember that. Trust is such a beautiful thing. Why then, when you are stolen from, does it make trust look so naïve and stupid?

  • Inventor of Dreams

    I am transported into a familiar world of longing, empty, hopeful writing. The idea fresh in my head that maybe I can capture just one bit of all the world floating around me and nail it to that piece of paper once again.

    It won’t last for long, but God bless it while it is here.

    Darn it, they’ve already thought of all the good ways/ideas/forms of writing! What is left for me? Last week I sat on the bed with the two sisters I am living with and we crocheted. They crocheted, and I did the single stitch that I know how to do. Scratch that—they taught me one more. And now, with my new knowledge, I feel the burn to create something new. I, Rachel Winzeler, am going to make the most beautiful crochet bracelet ever imagined. In the next hour.

    It didn’t happen. But it is that pull that I have in almost everything I do. To invent something new. Make my mark on the world. To do something truly beautiful. To inspire someone. My two stitch crochet and my writing just reveal this throbbing desire more than other areas. But it is there—always there.

    And someday, gosh darn it, I will succeed. In some laughable random way. But I will feel it and will glow about it anyways.