I’ve mentioned our upcoming trip to Brazil a couple of times (here and here). Well, the time has come and we will be on our way in just a few days. We visited Brazil last fall, thinking it might be a last trip to see a place and a people so important to us. But now we are going again (one more time?). The occasion is the 30^th anniversary celebration for Igreja Presbiteriana no Jardim América, the congregation to which our lives have been so deeply bound for most of those thirty years. As I have said before, we were at IPJA for its 10^th anniversary and for its 20th anniversary. It seems right to be there for the 30^th.

The photo in the header is a view of the church’s community taken from the church and looking uphill towards Favela da Ventosa. I share the photo not to commend ourselves for helping poor or disadvantaged people, but as a reminder of a place dear to us and the home of friends who are a gift from God.

Officially, I have been invited to preach at IPJA on Sunday, May 10. It is a great honor. The text given for the day is 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 where Paul likens the church to the human body – many members, one body. I will add Romans 12:5, “So we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.” (Assim nós, que somos muitos, somos um só corpo em Cristo, mas individualmente somos membros uns dos outros.) We will look at several of the “one another” (uns aos outros) passages in the New Testament – (encourage one another, love one another, exhort one another, greet one another with a holy kiss [abraços!!], forgive one another, and more).

IPJA is not a perfect place. Its thirty years include conflict and sin, misunderstanding and confusion. IPJA is a church. But it also a place where we have seen and experienced encouragement, love, exhortation, warm embraces, and forgiveness.

I am not reluctant, then, to celebrate IPJA’s thirty years of being a “uns aos outros” church, and to encourage it to be all the more so as it moves into another decade, another season of living as the Body of Christ in the place where God has placed it.

In some ways this trip is an unexpected gift. Perhaps our last to Brazil – but that’s what I said in October. We may not make the 40^th anniversary celebration in 2036. For now, though, our great joy is to celebrate with friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, who have been for us gifts of “uns aos outros” for nearly 30 years.