Brushing up on my Spangluguese

Today's accomplishment: eight Brazilian Alliance missionary pastors and their families (18 people in all) have plane tickets to come to the Dominican at the end of the month. Who am I kidding? That's this week's accomplishment. 

Helping plan a monthlong orientation for them has been one of my many irons in the fire thus far into 2021. The eight guys are either recent seminary graduates or current pastors with a call from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Brazil (IELB) to serve as foreign missionaries. They'll spend four weeks here, in language classes (English, French, or Spanish) in the mornings and missiology and culture sessions in the afternoons. Four will go on to serve in LAC (in the DR, Guatemala, Panama, and Uruguay), and the rest in Africa. The whole shebang is happening in Santiago because LAC has a long and successful track record of sending Alliance missionaries, whereas it's somewhat of a new foray for Africa. 

This is a Big Deal. Every time I explain it, the gravity of what's actually happening sinks in a bit more. The LCMS gets to teach a sister church body that it planted beginning way back in 1900 how to send its own missionaries just as I'm sent by the LCMS. A daughter church is on the brink of becoming a sending church. It's momentous, really. 

As such, we'll be joined by two other Regional Directors plus executive leaders from both the LCMS and IELB, including both church body presidents. As is often the case, I've been called upon to collaborate on logistics. The Master Workbook (current # of sheets: 15) may have been by baby from the get-go, but lots of people have been putting in lots of hours, because there are lots of logistics. 

The planning circle has been meeting regularly with the missionaries and their spouses (pictured below)...in what I've coined Spangluguese. Portuguese is similar enough to Spanish that I can pick up maybe 1/3 when spoken - more if I'm reading written material or listening to an interpretation of something previously stated in a English or Spanish. Some of the guys get by in one or the other, but mostly we rely on a IELB exec/ who speaks all three languages in question. He said one time that our meetings are "Pentecostal!" My Portuguese vocabulary consists of three words: Obrigado ("Thank you"), which sounds Japanese to me (anyone?) and De nada ("You're welcome"), which is the same as Spanish. Gonna have to work on that...

I'll own the fact that even with so much collective brainpower going into this, something's going to fall through the cracks or pop up unexpectedly. Pray, though, that all of the details come together so that these men can learn and grow in Christ and as members of the missionary family while on the ground and leave equipped for fruitful, enduring service. God's hand is already evident in the fact that they are coming in less than two weeks (!!!) at all. I thought there was no way, yet I'm messaging back and forth with one of the planning committee members about international medical insurance coverage as I write this. It's happening, ready or not!

Until next time, blessings!