He who serves

This beautiful table was our refreshment table for the deacon’s Christmas party last Friday night. Unfortunately we had a deluge and most of the deacons didn’t make it. We expected 80, but only had about 30 or so. It was a nice program and I thoroughly enjoyed the food for a change, as there were fruits, nuts, and cheeses instead of cakes, cookies, and cokes. I think we Baptists are going to kill ourselves eating junk food at our gatherings. It could get to be downright disgusting and sometimes I even avoid social gatherings for that very reason. This is the time of year of overeating and too many parties, so it’s nice when you can eat and not feel half-sick afterwards! I especially enjoyed the roasted chestnuts. Oh how I love those!

Today we had a lovely morning service full of Christmas music. Our evening services promises to be wonderful as well,  although someone did throw a monkey wrench into the works. The championship soccer game is being played here in Rio (for the Brazilian championship) at Maracanã, the stadium near our church. To give you an idea, there will be about 100,000 people at the game. This is probably bigger than the Superbowl in terms of popular support. Traffic was insane at noon, and the game isn’t til 5PM. You can already hear the crowds, and the game is still a half an hour off from starting. Lots of streets are closed and busses aren’t running, so we know a lot of people won’t make it out tonight. Our location doesn’t always help us in situations like this. And we had no way of knowing before this week that the game would be this Sunday. To explain that, I would have to try to understand the whole championship system here and that’s way over my head. Despite the Christmas program crisis, we are all excited about the game, since “our” team, Flamengo, will win the championship if they win the game. Even Mia put on her soccer jersey to watch the match. hahahaha! Isn’t life interesting here?