We’re back!!!

We’ve actually been back for almost 2 weeks, but I’m finally taking a moment to sit down and get back at this blog thing.

Anyway, I would like to use this first blog post since our trip back to the States to say…

THANK YOU SAYLORVILLE BAPTIST CHURCH!!!

For those of you who don’t know, we have THE BEST sending church on planet earth.

Let me just share a few reasons they are amazing.

1. They flew us back to Iowa in July for a funeral.

2. They flew us back in September for their missions conference.

3. They blessed 12 separate missionary families in incredible ways while we were there.

4. They gave Lucas 2 opportunities to preach.

5. They let Teresa sing on the worship team.

6. They loved on our boys.

7. They loved on us.

8. They have the most amazing church staff in the universe.

9. They welcomed us back like we were family who had just been gone a while.

10. They reminded us why we love and miss them so much.

So, SBC, thank you so much for all you do for us.

The conference was an absolute blessing. The missionary christmas was crazy over-the-top.  The opportunity for us to spend time with the other missionaries was so encouraging. And the chance to just “be” was just what we needed.

We really mean it when we say that we love our SBC family.

We really mean it when we say we love the staff there.

We really mean it when we call you family.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We look forward to hugging you all again in 2 years.

This trip has been planned for quite a while and at one time seemed so far away.

For those of you who are wondering about the purpose of this trip, its part work, part play.

Our home church, Saylorville Baptist Church, invited us to participate in their Missions Conference, “The Big Picture”. They have graciously helped fly our family home and are giving us an opportunity to serve with them. We are so excited to minister with our Saylorville family.

Needless to say, the rest of our time will be filled with lots of family time.

If you are able, if you have the desire, we would love to see some of you as well. So, consider yourselves invited to the Saylorville Baptist Church “The Big Picture” Missions conference. Please check out www.saylorvillebaptist.com for info on the events.

Anyway…

I can’t believe this trip has arrived! Do you know how much stuff I have to do???

Seriously though, we are looking forward to getting back to Iowa for a little bit.

Lucas and I were just there for a sad, spur of the moment, quick trip. But for the boys…

Its been 2 years since they have seen their  their aunts and uncles, their cousins, their friends…

Its been 2 years since they’ve been to Grandmas’ and Grandpas’ houses…

Its been 2 years since they’ve eaten a corn dog…

Its been 2 years since they’ve played on a playground with no fear of a splinter in the be-hind…

Its been 2 years since they went to english speaking children’s church…

Its been 2 years since they had a Happy Meal that didn’t break our budget…

Its been 2 years since this…

I must say I’m pretty excited to see these 2 reunited. There’s just something about the way these 2 have stayed best friends this whole time. There’s just something about those Rankin women

At the same time, I still have some sadness in my heart that I won’t be reunited with her mom this trip. I have to wait until the trip up into the clouds for that reunion.

I’m guessing for that trip I won’t be afraid to fly…

Brazil is the land of futebol.

Futebol is in brazilian blood. Serious.

A few months ago we had a sports day. The only teams lined up to play soccer that day were men’s teams.  We decided at the last minute to put together two women’s teams and play a game.

It was a blast.

And I learned that these women want a chance to play too!

From that day on, God laid a desire on my heart to start a women’s soccer ministry.

Finally, last month, it happened.

The first few weeks there were about 8 of us, mostly teens from our church. No visitors whatsoever.

Last week, we had FIVE NEW WOMEN!!!

The women with the ball is one of the women who visited. She practices the religion of batuki. Batuki is an african religion that worships spirits and does sacrifices and such.

Not only did she come to soccer, but she came to our church the following Sunday…

and she brought her neighbor with her!!

I am so excited to see how God is going to use this ministry. It is definitely a fun way to reach people.

Not to mention its a chance to get back to my childhood roots.

Thanks Dad for being my soccer coach all those years growing up.  I won’t be going professional anytime soon, but its definitely making this ministry a lot less painful!

I think it stems from a video game or something.

Nice, I know.

They even told me about a snail that they read about that becomes a zombie.

I was about ready to get rid of all video games.

Then they showed me the website about it. Go ahead, google it. Its for real.

Anyway, I think sometimes in our daily grind of life we can become like zombies.

At least, I can.

Since we have gotten back from our crazy trip to Iowa, things haven’t really stopped around here. We started our homeschool year, our normal ministries continued, and I started 3 new ministries.

I was going through my day to day motions without really thinking about them.

I was starting to become a daily grind zombie.

God woke me up from my zombi-ness this week.

He reminded me why we do the things we do daily. He reminded me of the joy of ministry.

How?

1. I had the opportunity to share the gospel with a woman this week through a Bible study we have been doing since we got back. God is opening her eyes and it is A-MA-ZING to watch.

2. I had the opportunity to share a Bible with a woman who practices the african religion of batuki and listened to her read scripture out loud with a group of ladies. A-MA-ZING.

3. Lucas and I had the opportunity to walk through the process of restoration with a family in their home, listen as they humbled themselves, confess their sin, ask for forgiveness, and ask to return to church. A-MA-ZING.

These things happened in a period of 72 hours.

God used these events to de-zombi-ize me.

When we become daily grind zombies, He doesn’t want us to stay that way.

He is so good like that.

Don’t be a zombie.

Hi. My name is Teresa. And I am the…

Worst.

Blogger.

Ever.

Seriously.

But (always have to have a “but”, right?), I am stating for the world to see, ok not the world, more like the few who read this blog,things are going to change.

You see,there was this girl I knew. She was an amazing blogger.

She really had a way with words on paper and on keyboard.

Reading her blog was always such a blessing to me. I was challenged, I was encouraged, I laughed, I cried, and I felt connected to her.

She left us last month.

But I will see her again someday.

I miss her.

A lot.

She told me a more than a few times that I needed to blog more.

Know-it-all.

I miss her.

So, in honor of my dear friend Becca, I am going to try harder at this blog.

I don’t totally know how heaven works, so I don’t know if she knows I’m writing this.

But I can assure you, if she can read this…

she’s laughing quietly.

I miss her.

21 months to be exact.

That ends this week.

This…is a yard.

We are so, so, so, so, so excited to have a place for the kids (and dogs) to run off all that energy!!

But that’s not the only blessing from this answer to prayer.

We are only 4 minutes by car to the Rincão.  People from the Rincão regularly walk to this area of town. Every single bus that goes through town passes through this neighborhood.  We are super, crazy accessible.

It will be such a blessing to be able to open our home again.  Its been open since we’ve been living here, its just that no one wants to take the 2 buses required to get here.

So, if you’re ever passing through downtown Gravataí…

feel free to stop by.

-Lucas has been preaching about once a month at our church. In his mentoring of our pastor, Geferson, he is spending some time helping him develop his preaching.  Part of that has been them preaching through a different book of the Bible each month with Lucas doing one of the messages.  It has been really encouraging to see Geferson’s expository preaching style develop and improve each week! This coming Sunday Lucas will be preaching on Titus chapter 1.  It is a great exercise for our continued portuguese development…and he’s getting better everytime!!

-Teresa began teaching an 8 week series on the Titus 2 woman at the weekly ladies Bible study.  After observing these ladies in Bible study for several weeks, God laid it on her heart to offer teaching this series, and so far it has been well received.  Several of the women who attend do not yet know Jesus as their personal savior so the gospel is being strongly offered each week.  Preparing a study weekly for the next two months will prove to be a challenge, but Teresa is really looking forward to the opportunity and the potential ways God can use this study!

-A new visitation program is in full swing!  Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday night, Lucas takes a different man from our church and is going into homes of neighbors, family members, and people who have visited our church at one time or another to build relationships and share Christ.  It has been exciting to see how receptive people are in the Rincão and how God is also getting these men excited to share Christ!! Teresa is going out on Sunday afternoons with a woman from our church to visit her neighbors as well.  God is putting a passion in the people’s hearts of our church to win the Rincão for Christ!!  Please pray for us as we go out to share Christ and encourage our church people to share as well.

-On March 19, Teresa will be the speaker our church’s evangelistic ladies tea event at the Rincão community preschool.  She will be sharing her testimony along with God’s calling to be a missionary and the drastic change He made in her heart.  They are hoping to sell at least 50 invitations to the event!  Please pray for clear portuguese and that God will use this event to impact the women of this community!!

-On the homefront, we have begun the househunt again.  The energetic Bair boys are bouncing off the walls without a yard, and the addition of 2 large puppies has not helped.  So, we have started looking for a new place to rent with a yard.  It seems a little overwhelming since we just moved into this house, but we expect the process to be a little slow and these boys really need some space to run…outside!!  Please pray that God will lead us to the right home and that we can stay in it for a while!

That’s the latest on the Brazil Bairs.  Thank so much for your continued prayers. We rely on them and are certainly seeing answers to them!!!

I love knowing that so many of you are praying for me and concerned for me.

Thanks so much.

Anyway, I haven’t really wanted to answer.

I know, super nice, huh?

Here you are praying for me, and here I am avoiding you.

Its not you, its me.

I mean that.

No, we’re not breaking up.

Anyway, here’s why.

My last doctor visit, about a month ago, was to a thyroid specialist.

She looked through all my results of all my tests and all the wonderful notes all the doctors have written.  She confirmed that, without a doubt, I do not have a thyroid problem.  Praise the Lord, but we weren’t really too surprised.

She proceeded to tell me that I’m crazy.

Ok, she didn’t, but that’s what I was feeling.

You see, I had an “attack” in the mall food court that felt like I was going to die.  Over the course of the next 2 weeks, we called the doctor several times and went to the ER 3 times.  We thought my life was at risk.

I thought I was dying.

She told me I had anxiety.

Yes, anxiety.

Here’s what she thinks…

For who knows how long, I have had pangastritis, inflamation of the stomach wall.  Pangy(as I will call her) was sound asleep.

Then, October 13th, 2009, we moved to Brazil.  6 days later we became full time language students.  The week before we graduated we moved to a new city.  For 3 weeks we did not have a kitchen.  Within those 3 weeks 4 of us got H1N1.  One of us cracked his head open.  Then our adopted family member moved away.  In the midst of all of that I became a homeschooling mom.

I surprisingly remained quite calm throughout most of it.  God was very gracious.

My stomach seemed to feel a little differently.

She believes that the stress of all that happened over those 13 months “awakened” sleeping Pangy from her deep sleep so abruptly that she was kind of grumpy, henceforth bringing on such severe acid reflux that it caused inflamation in my throat giving the sensation of anaphalactic shock.

Are you following me?

She thinks I was stressed out.

I went to the ER three times because I was stressed out.

Ok, ok, I’m being dramatic. I do, in fact, have a condition that actually made the throat sensations real. But, to sit there and have her tell me its all stressed related?

Doesn’t she know I’m a missionary?!?!?!

We aren’t supposed to have issues like that.

“Hello, pride?  Its me, Teresa.”

I think we all know I have issues.

And that I’m not the only missionary to have issues.

And that all of you reading this have issues.

No offense

Anyway, I guess at first I was a little embarrassed to post on here what the final “diagnosis” was.

Then I had a realization.

I

am

normal.

I have a feeling all of you get stressed out. You may not all rush to the ER, but you have probably felt the same inner panic at some point that I felt for those several weeks.

And you know what?

I’m thankful it happened.

God got my attention!

He used those first 2 weeks to really draw me to Himself.  I was in the Word and praying more during those 2 weeks more than I had been in while.  My walk with Him has been more consistent than it has been in a long time.  He revealed to me that I still have some areas in my life to work through when it comes to fear and death.  He showed me that I have a few control issues.

He reminded me how totally awesome my husband is, how much he loves me, and all he will do to keep me safe.

Love you Lucas Bair!

And now?

My diet is pretty much normal, except I’m still avoiding fishy stuff.  We still plan to pursue a little more testing to get a more solid answer about that potential allergy, but other than that, the testing is done.  My stomach med for pangy runs out tomorrow, so we’ll see how I’m feeling over the next few days. I may be searching out a stomach doctor to pursue another med.

I am full of thankfulness for the medical results and spiritual results.  God is so much better than I deserve.

Thank you so much for all of your prayers.  I suppose many of you will start praying for my sanity after reading this.

Really, I didn’t even know I was stressed out

It is also very expensive.

Back in October, we had been doing some research on their website about prices, and low and behold, for a limited time, if you had 6 kids sign up it was only R$30 a kid!!

Not quite.

The registration fee was only  R$30, the rest of the fee was R$200.

That amount is not really doable for the families of our church.

Unfortunately, we didn’t figure this out until we had a list of kids who were planning on going to camp…for the first time ever.

Grrrr.

We couldn’t just leave them with nothing, so in a month’s time, we planned a 2 day retreat out at Geferson’s dad’s farm!

We had about 12 kids from our church(their friends included) and 8 from a sister church, Comunidade Cristã Sitio Gaúcho, to join us for the 2 days. We started out at a public pool that had a couple of water slides, then moved on to the farm.

There were some challenges throughout day #1.  These 2 groups of kids wanted to stay 2 separate groups of kids, as in, they didn’t really want anything to do with each other.  We even had a couple of fights during a soccer game.

At lunch time we had them pair up with someone from the other church and told them they had till that night to get to know their partner for a “how well do you know your partner” game.

The looks on their faces were priceless.

“What? You mean I have to act like I want to know something about this person? Are you serious?”

But, we started to see them talking a little more to each other throughout the rest of the day.

That night we played the game. They were asked a question about their partner, if they didn’t know the answer, they got a pie thrown in their face.

There were a lot of pies thrown. (And yes, I was forced to throw a pie in Lucas’s face. Forced.)

I left that night before the message and campfire time to take the boys home to sleep. That’s right, I sacrificed myself so the boys could sleep in their own beds instead of with all the spiders and mosquitos and all the other creepy crawly things out there.

I did it for the boys.

I’ll confess my sin of lying later.

Anyway, when I came back the next morning, something had changed.

The feeling in the air was different.

The looks on their faces were different.

They were smiling.

At each other.

They were interacting.

With each other.

We no longer had 2 groups from 2 different churches with a long and complicated history, but one united group of kids who understood and loved each other from all sorts of different walks of life and backgrounds.

It was a night and day difference.

The 2 boys who had fought the day before in a soccer game were totally hanging out together.

Groups of girls from both churches were sitting around sharing about their lives.

They were having fun…together.

They were sharing about what God was doing in their lives…with each other.

By the end of the retreat they were collecting emails and cell phone numbers from each other. They even started planning a grill out together!

The next day, all 8 kids from the Sitio Gaúcho church took a bus over to the Rincão to celebrate one of the Rincão teen’s birthday.

Amazing.

God used this retreat in many ways in these teens lives.

But, the most obvious one to me, was how He showed them that they could help each other. They realized that they understand each other, and that the church baggage from the past is not theirs to carry.

How many of us need to learn from them?

That is, unless I was the one getting on the plane.

But that’s a different post for a different day.

Today was dreaded airport day.

Going to the airport has become a regular part of our lives, we visit it at least once a month.

We go to receive people

We go to send people off

Two weeks ago we visited our lovely Salgado Filho airport to receive Grandma and Grandpa Loder, my parents.

Aren’t they cute?

We had a great time throughout the 2 weeks. We went to the beach, the mountains, area cities and markets, had game nights, and cooked up a storm (oh, and my Mom did my laundry). It was such a blessing to have them here.

Today we returned to the airport for the send-off.

The goodbyes are never fun.

The goodbyes are really hard on the boys, especially Nathaniel.

This time, however, there was a little less heaviness in the goodbye.

It was a see you in 8 months send-off.

We decided to tell the boys we are heading back to the States in the fall for a missions conference at our awesome home church(and when I say awesome, I mean the awesomist in the whole world), Saylorville Baptist.

My heart was so blessed to see the anticipation and hope of a closer reunion on their faces instead of the heartache!!

The actual goodbyes still weren’t easy. We’d be fooling ourselves if we ever think they will be.

I’m just thankful today that we could give our boys something to look forward to in the midst of the goodbye…

And something for Grandma and Grandpa to look forward to…

And for Lucas and I to look forward to…

Thank you Saylorville Church family for inviting us to share our lives with you in October.

God used it to make my boys smile today.

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