You can´t float around authority in a canoe

Greetings again friends. I have sneaked away to Pastor Pasquel´s house to update you.

The team is doing very well. I will let them relate their own stories when they can, but I will give you a few morsels here.

Matt is sick, most likely something that he ate combined with some dehydration. He has been off his feet today except for when he is sitting on a toilet. Not a fun day for him. It is nice that we have a doctor on the team looking after him. Right now he is asleep beside me at Pastor Pasquels. We will wake him up to go to the church meetings tonight and see how he is doing then.

We all appreciated our accommodations. Elyce and Alissa are at a ladies house that goes to the Vineyard along with several of the team members from Chile. The three guys are at one of the guys homes that goes here to the church. Linda, Stacyann and I are at a hostel run by some European Mennonites. The rest of the Chilean team is with us along with the doctor and another adult male. Somebody joked that all the Old Men were staying at the hostel. Somebody is on KP duty tonight.

Last night Isaiah played guitar with the worship band. This morning we had some workshops. I lead one on evangelism and Linda led the second one on Inner Healing (dealing with the Father Heart of God). It was followed by a great time of ministry. Andrew was the doctor´s aide today at the medical clinic and Stacyann got to do house visitations for people in the church that are currently sick.

While the rest of the team went to lunch those of us from Boise went to the Brazilian consulate to get our Visa´s for Monday´s trip to the waterfalls. When we tried to get these visa´s from the states we ran into red tape. We could get the Brazilian visas at any consulate if we were in person for $50. If we wanted to mail them in we had to use our regional consulate only. For Boise that means sending them to Los Angeles. Unfortunately for us, the consulate in LA doesn´t accept mailed visa requests. So...we were told we should just apply for them here at the Brazilian consulate in Paraguay. That was the plan, but at the counter today they demanded $133 each for the Visas. Well, I didn´t come with that kind of cash, nor was it in my budget, nor was it worth a day trip to the falls.

The Chileans and Paraguayans all felt bad for us because they don´t need a visa to travel to the countries in S.America. Patricia, our team leader, and Pastor Pasquel devised a plan to get us there anyway. We will now be going with the whole team to the place where Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil connect. From the Argentinian side we will take a ferry ($20 each way) with a tour guide ($10 each) to the Argentinian side of the falls. The rest of our outreach team will continue on the bus, through the edge of Brazil and meet up with us at the waterfall. So it has worked out great that we still get to visit the waterfalls, we still are at budget, and we didn´t have to be illegal to do it.

(Unfortunately for my sake, that last line became a good teaching point. At first when the Chilean´s suggested we get in canoes to get around the Brazilian border, I was all for it having being a little frustrated at the run around from the Brazilian government. Linda quickly got my attention (a jab, a look and a hissing sound) and politely reminded me that we wouldn´t be doing anything illegal with the SCCD students. ¨We´ll smuggle Bibles¨ I suggested, which the students found to be hilarious but didn´t move Linda. ¨Pastor Tri smuggled Bibles¨ I continued, with less and less conviction in my voice. She was right of course, this is a day off for sight seeing, we are not heading behind the iron curtain. The civil disobedience will have to wait for another day. In truth Linda showed great courage, she helped me save face (and possibly my job) and helped get the conversation back to a point where we could find a legal means of arriving at the falls. I made a funny comment to the students about knowing who really is running the team and Elyce responded that it just showed I could take wise council and not get stuck in being right or having to have my way because I am the leader. It proves that being in authority means being under authority. Once again, I am so thankful for the staff that these SCCD students have been so privilege to learn under.)

When I left the other students they were learning a skit that they will be doing tomorrow during an outreach. Tonight we will divide into men and women´s group for teachings held at the Vineyard.

That is all for now. I would really appreciate your prayers for Matt. I know he will survive, but he just isn´t enjoying today all that much.

Love from us all,

Chad