Monday, August 11, 2008

"I am Free"

We've found a church to attend here in Americana, or should I say, the church found us. :) The pastor actually showed up on our doorstep asking about English classes. After our first meeting and talking about English and ministry, we knew that it was just more then a chance meeting. God has something planned. Isn't God funny, how He brings people into our lives? I love that the pastor just showed up at our house!

Anyway, Renato and I are excited to see what God has planned for us with this church. The pastor has asked us to help organize the church and has asked Renato to help pastor the church. So we'll see what happens!

The worship is very upbeat, with lights, fog, and even dancers, which is great. (Camden LOVES the worship! He stands in the front of the aisle and claps and dances, it's so adorable!) I've enjoyed the worship, but it's hard for me to understand the words of the songs and they haven't been familiar to me at all.

Well, last night was such a blessing to me! (The main church services in Brazil are on Sunday nights...I think it may be that Brazilians like to stay up too late on Saturday nights to get up for church in the mornings, but that's just my opinion.) :) ANYWHOO, like I was saying, the worship was great last night! First they started out with a Matt Redman song, so it was so great to know the tune, and know what the translation of the words were.

THEN, I was completely blown away. The next song was "I am Free", by Jon Egan, or to those of you not from New Life Church, it was recorded by the Newsboys. (the words: I am free to run, I am free to dance, I am free to live for you, I am free!) So it was a song from MY church. I was so excited and felt so blessed by God to be able to sing that song, that was so familiar to me, even though I was in another country. It really felt like home. I even got tears in my eyes while we were singing, just because it touched my heart. The past few weeks, I've been struggling with homesickness quite a bit. So hearing a song from home was such a sweet, sweet sound to my ears. (And healing balm to my heart!)

4 comments:

Cheri said...

I just wanted to let you know that even if I don't comment very often, I'm still reading. I feel so blessed that I found you through Susan's blog!

Susan said...

Oh my! I just got chills when you mentioned that they played "I Am Free"! Wow!

Stacey said...

I am so glad that you guys have found a church or better yet that God led you to a church that you guys can connect to. That is awesome that God was able to touch in so many ways on Sunday night. :o)

Dan said...

Wow, I stumbled upon your blog and am in a VERY SIMILAR situation as you. I am married to a brazilian girl (for 5 years), and we are moving to Brazil in October. We are somewhat near your neck of the woods in Americana, we will be moving to Garca, SP. It is about an hour and a half from Bauru. We are being sent from our church here in Franklin, TN. Maybe we'll bump into each other! Reading your blog makes me ready to be there!