Ever Considered Life Together?

Among many other things that went on this past week including cooking crepes for a French Dinner fundraiser, I finished reading "Life Together" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The book was extremely inspiring, practical, and very useful. Bonhoeffer illustrates 'life together' with brothers in the church. He elaborates and gives extreme detail on a day spent with brothers, a day spent alone, fruitful ministry, and community derived from living in communion with others relying on the Word for direction. I would definitely recommend this book. It is very well written, and it is only like 120 pages.

To elaborate, from the two weeks that I have spent in Itu, Brazil there have been many things that I have noticed. Among others, the first of these is that Brazilians walk a lot. Second, things take time here. And lastly, Brazilians accept and embrace life together.

I have walked more here than I ever have in my entire life. Period. Even more than aimlessly walking around Disney World with my family while my Dad power strides a good 30 yards in front of everyone leading the way. More than that. Every day I walk around the streets. There is soo much life on the streets of Itu, especially in the morning. I see a hundred new faces every day.

Every meeting, every event, every encounter with a Brazilian, every trip to the grocery store takes time here. There is an estimated time to start something, which Brazilians are usually withen the 30 minute range, but there is no limit on how long meetings, events, or church will go. It ends when it ends. And if you are a gringo who speaks less than elementary Porgutuese, you just gotta keep smiling, nodding, holding hands, suck it up and listen really hard for words you think you might know (at one meeting I went to, I held hands with Josh Love and another Brazilian in a circle for a good solid 20 minutes and understood maybe 20 words during those 20 minutes). Out of a good hour of sitting and listening to Portuguese, I might follow around half of it.

And lastly, I think one of the most beneficial things that I can take away from these few weeks in Itu is learning from the way Brazilans accept 'life together'. And we're not talking about 'life together' in Drew's sense where someone just bums at your house the whole summer. No. We are talking about LIVING life together. I have been to Mark & Ali's house a lot these past few weeks, and it is really amazing to see everything happen. Approxamently six people live there, everything is taken care of, they hold multiple events/ church activities at their house, and everyone (although sometimes exhausted) is in a very good mood and loving every second of it. I can't imagine if there were multiple houses like this one in Itu how much the community, church, and people in general would benefit using each others strengths and talents for the benefit of others. Maybe if there were just a few more people committed to living 'life together' could a full community transformation take place. The homeless would have a home, drug addicts would have a purpose, the poor would  have food, the tired would have rest, the helpless would have help, and on and on.

Here in Brazil, there is such a sense of efficiency. There is minimal distance between what people need, and what they want. It's one of the biggest things to get used to, but one of the most interesting things about the culture, language and people. Yes. I even think most of their language is very efficient.

Another Brazilian fact.

- Mostly everything here is small compared to the US. Drinking cups, streets, cars, kitchens, and yards are noticeably smaller. And sometimes toilet paper. -

Who would have known?