Bem-vindo ao Brasil

Hello everyone who decided to click on my blog link! Welcome to my blog!!  And more importantly, welcome to Araguaina, Tocantins, Brazil! I'm going to try (really hard) to do a post at least once a week about what I'm doing and how things are going here. So, I guess we should get started.
Today you get to read all about my experience yesterday 3/11 or 11/3 as it's written here with church.  Michol and I (Michol is my roommate and fellow Fulbright ETA. You"ll meet her in a later post) live close to the city center and square. It's been my experience that square in Ibero-American culture includes a big church/cathedral.  Araguaina is no exception.  My director, Valeria, told me that the church is Catholic and that mass starts at 7am.  I'll probably still visit, but I started asking around for other options.  Long story short I heard about this Baptist church.  When we found it, we found out it was a couple streets down on our block.

The door said Sunday services were at 8 am and 7 pm.  As it was about 5:30, I decided to go to evening service.  I'm really glad I did.  I was a bit nervous about going. On the walk, I just reminded myself that God wanted me to be here and that while I wanted them to like me, at the end of the day it wasn’t about me.  I didn’t see a sanctuary so I went to the daycare and the first person I spoke to was like an answered prayer.  Her name is Patricia.  An English student at my university she knew who I was.  She said she studied abroad in Denmark and understood how difficult it is to transition into another culture.  So she showed me around and I took my seat and waited for service to start.  Comfortably late.

I realized I was in Primeiro Igreja Batista (First Baptist Church).  It had a mix of lawn chairs and pews and a variety of ages of its members.  It kinda felt like New City in STL. I was greeted by the praise team which included a full band and teenage violin octet with conductor.  I thought he was the pastor until the sermon.   After they finished “Agnus Dei” I realized that I had actually heard them this morning from my apt.  Next was “Here I am to Worship.” Words and the entire service was power pointed on the wall.  There were prayer and scripture reading and a “Hug a neighbor segment.”   Then offering and more prayer and scripture reading. Then sermon.  Taken from o primeiro do primeiro de joao.  I went to Job, then John,  and when that didn’t sound like what he read 1 John 1. Success! Lol.

His sermon was about how the promise of eternal life isn’t a universal one, but that it takes you to develop a personal relationship with God because at the end of the day it’s your experience not any one else’s.  And without this personal relationship it’s impossible to know complete joy.  I’m excited for the day I fully understand Portuguese so I can fully understand the sermons.  Most of the service I was tapped on the shoulder by a very cute, yet not cute enough to not be downstairs in day care toddler.  I also enjoyed the singing conductor/deacon man? Still workin on that. 

About an hour and forty-five minutes, the church and service reminded me very much of my home church and I was glad for the familiarity.  I think I’ll visit the other two churches in the area a couple times to be sure, but I may have found my church home for the year.