Meeting with Friends

Have you ever been meaning to do something, I mean something fun and something good for you, but you just get too busy and it doesn’t happen?  It seems life gets in the way of living.

Since coming to Rio, we keep meaning to get together with other pastors to just kick back and talk and debrief. Although there are formal pastor’s meetings (and the wives are sometimes included), they don’t fit the bill. First of all, they are large groups and the meetings are formal.

So we see our pastor friends and we always say: “Let’s get together some time”. And we both mean it because we need and want that contact. It just doesn’t happen, however. Either our schedules don’t match up, or we just forget about it, or we are all busy.

Last week, however, one of our colleagues invited us over to his house for lunch, together with several other pastors and their wives. Ostensibly, it was to celebrate his birthday, but it was also close to João’s birthday as well.  There was birthday cake and all.

The lunch was lovely, but even better was the sense of community. Jokes only we understand. Singing all hymns and choruses. Sharing common problems that come with the pastorate. Just chewing the fat!

What was just to be a luncheon, turned out to be almost a whole day affair. 

So a big thanks to Laurindo e Loyde, who invited us (photo to the right) for time away that we badly needed with our peers. There has been a date set for another get together of this type in June. Here’s hoping it happens and we can actually attend. Here’s hoping I will take a little more initiative and invite other pastor’s over to our home. We need that. They need that. We all get by with a little help from our friends, right?