Sunday Funday September 6
Well, it’s official: the Fergie family is headed back to the states October 31st. We will be in Indianapolis, settling in a bit, as Caid and Rachel both finish teaching the fall semester online. We will spend most of December in Connecticut, with Caid’s family.
Most of the details are still to come, but we are so grateful for God’s leading, and the support of our incredible communities here in Brazil and the USA! This is much more of a transfer of place, rather than leaving: we will still be working with World Renewal Brazil—just from stateside. How incredible that we have such a great group of people around us that truly want God’s best for our lives, as we grow and change and follow His leading!
We will keep you updated as we can—but please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or want to know more! Next week we should have a plethera of new videos from our trips to Boa Esperanca and the beach, as we start to get caught up:).
Prayers and Praises
We started a new way of doing classes at the International school—and week 1 went well! We are very grateful.
As I mentioned before, it is a lot of grieving as it looks like our Living Stones kids will not have any school this whole year. This is a staggering loss. Not only that, but anything we could do is crippled as children under 10 are not allowed in churches at anytime. Please pray for our creativity and grace to find small ways to make a difference in their little lives this year.
Interweb Reads
So part 1 was really great—but part 2 really showed me some important stuff—mostly, that people are people. The statistic of white women getting pregnant out of wedlock (around 30 percent) verses black women (70 percent) has always bothered me. In my practical way of trying to solve everything, I’ve (horribly) asked myself “Are black women just more promiscuous than white women?”
But, as this video shows, it isn’t that some cultures are more promiscuous than others (or insert whatever statistic), but there are other factors playing into this—humans are promiscuous, and at about the same level across the board—if you take into account for other things. White women in poverty are about the same level as black women for children out of wedlock, and considering black women are 2.3 times more likely than white women to be in poverty: that puts them just about equal. Promiscuity isn’t a race problem, it is a poverty problem, as women feel more trapped and helpless, they are much less likely to make wise choices for their future. This is true for EVERYONE, not just black or white people.
I know this might be obvious, and I feel stupid to even say I ever wondered otherwise, but THIS IS A BIG DEAL. And we think little things like this All. The. Time. We need to weed out these lies one by one, and then change the responses that used to be based off of the information we’ve changed in our heads. This is the “work” people are talking about in becoming anti-racist:).
2. Christians, Gun Rights, and the American Social Contract: this says so much more than I could, and so much better than I could! (The Dispatch)
3. My re-entry Good List: any and all transitions are hard, and me trying to emotionally get ready for leaving Brazil after 17 years of serving and loving here is really hard. This was an encouragement (REL2 in China)
4. Imposter Syndrome and the Cross-Cultural Worker: “In Inside Higher Ed, Irina Popescu writes about a drawing exercise that she gives to her college students on the first day of class. She asks them to draw a picture of their “imposter monster,” the ugly creature that tells them they don’t belong in college, that “lies in judgment,” reminding them that they’re not enough. When she first tried this, she was surprised at how seriously the students took the exercise, creating “careful representations of very real, frightening monsters.”" (A Life Overseas)
5. Why we must Confront to Connect: “It wasn’t until later, after I had hung up, that I realized just how wrong I had been. I was the older one, which meant I should have been more mature. I never should have allowed three years to go by without addressing it. For a thousand days, I allowed something to go unsettled and unhealed in both of us because of an offense to my pride.” (Ann Voskamp)