Archive for Bill & Sue's Journal
 

Journal Entry: Tuesday, August 28, 2007

 

What’s going on here . . . another month is coming to an end. It’s cool and the wind is whistling in the windows of my office right now, like winter is trying to give one last weak blast. A band is practicing at one of the schools nearby, must be for Brazilian Independence Day coming up in another week.

 

July passed quickly. With time off from classes, Sue spent days working on scrapbooks for each of our kids. What a bunch of pictures to choose from and what a history our family has! Since she couldn’t use all of the pictures, she had me scan and burn all of them onto cds. It sounded easy at first, but scanning slides and pictures of more than twenty years for each kid and then dividing them by year and location and kid, and then labeling each shot took some time. It got done and I had fun doing it, even if it cut into my prep time for other things. And I’m sure they’ll like them. 

 

Numbers were lower for Sunday services with people traveling, but youth group, praise team, discipleships and prayer groups faithfully continued. The young people have again taken responsibility for the service in months that have five Sundays. After some rehearsals with some fooling around (naturally), they lead the service on the fifth Sunday in July, and did an outstanding, God-honoring job!  Afterward some said that they liked doing it so much, maybe they should do it every Sunday! Service, great, but rehearsals like that every week?! Hmmm!  

 

August started out with Bauru’s Birthday in the park which was an outstanding evangelistic outreach for our ABWE churches, and we were the only churches represented. After some initial confusion, God gave us an excellent location at a corner with plenty of shade between two of the staging areas where programs went on every hour. Throughout the day we had people from church circulating either as families or going out two by two around the park distributing tracts, sharing the Gospel and giving invitations to church. Folks came back excited with stories to share each time they got more tracts to hand out. Earlier in the morning, the corner served well for our young peoples’ drama, but as the day went on and watching crowds grew larger, they moved to a more open area across the path.

 

A week later we were on our way in to São Paulo to meet Aaron and Rachel at the airport for their visit. We had a great reunion and spent a couple days in the city visiting our old neighborhood and where Aaron went to school. After a couple cool rainy days at the beach, we headed back to Bauru. They enjoyed visiting the church and getting to know the church family. It was Father’s Day when they arrived so a special part of the service was presented by the kids and teens while slides of families were shown on the screen, including one of baby Aaron screaming on his dad’s lap. During their week here, Sue and I took time to just spend with them-– seeing the town, white water rafting, souvenir shopping and then the last a big Brazilian barbecue with a group of friends. It was a great time but of course too short a time together. They traveled down to Rio and then on to Iguaçu Falls in south Brazil before heading back to California. While they were here, Rachel taught me how to blog. If you don’t know what blogging is, go to http://spoelhof-brazilnuts.blogspot.com/ and then add it to your list of favorite sites so you can check in for updates and pictures.

 

With winter break over and schools back in session, church is full again. We’ve had several college students visiting these past couple weeks. Everyone is getting excited about family month coming up at church in September. Each Sunday we have a different theme with greeters, special music and presentations during the services done by different families.

 

ESL classes are back in session after a few weeks break. Sue wasn’t sure who would be coming back; however, all but two of her students are back and she has new ones to fill the vacant slots.

Our other kids are doing well. Natali is in the middle of moving to a new apartment this weekend. Mom and Dad are happy because it is in a more secure area and close to her hospital and classes at the university. Joel and Lynne celebrate their 4^th anniversary tomorrow, and are excited about the arrival of their son. I’m sure they are thankful for central air in their house from what we’ve heard about Michigan weather this summer.

 

I’m hungry, and it’s time to make my supper so this will do it for me today. Tchau!

 

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