a new church

 We decided to leave the nikkei church because we (my family) seemed to be wasting time there. I was there because I felt it was some kind of my obligation to the congregation to present a message more biblical. I was preaching once a month. As soon as I decided to leave the pulpit, I decided to leave the church too. We stayed there longer than other families and we saw the declining in number of people. In fact, there is just one family there, although there are more senior people that attend alone. With covid-19 and the closure of face to face activities, I was preaching online; however it seemed to me that I was, somehow, wasting my time preparing the sermons with no support of the new pastor (because the older pastor that I was used to got some kind of dementia). 

We decided to attend a Presbyterian church that began with koreans. We came to know them by a Taiwanese family that we knew in the nikkei church. It is widely known that Koreans and Japanese don't get along very well due to the second war, but my ancestors came to Brazil before second war (I have nothing with war related problems). Anyway, we are the only nikkei family there and we hope to be accepted by the congregation.

A very great difference from our nikkei church and this new church is in the sermon. We appreciate very much the word being preached. The pastor (a young fellow) got master degree in Canada and Phd in England, besides he is a professor in a seminary. It is very different to listen to a sermon from someone who knows to read the Bible from end to end in a harmonic way. He is wise in applying the Word in our day lives.

We pray to the Lord that He leads us (my family) to a church where we may grow in faith and love.

Celebration

 My dad bought a house in 1980 in order to save money (because our brazilian currency was very unstable). This house was invaded some years ago as I told in this blog by a lot of people (perhaps 20 guys) with the clear purpose of taking dad's house to them. The house is located in a dangerous place here in Sao Paulo city. It is an absurd but depending on how it is done, our municipal law would grant them the property. We ended up in the police station. I noticed that half of the police was corrupt (or complacent) and they seemed to be supporting the invaders. Anyway, we felt that we couldn't rely on the police force. After the police restored our property, some guys came back and retaliated by burning our car that was parked there.  We didn't call the police because we didn't trust them.

After 2 months, Bob (let us call him so), decided to rent this house from dad. I thought that even in case of him not paying anything, at least, he would prevent the house from being taken over. However Bob didn't move there, didn't pay anything and sub rented the property to others. This bad situation was going on for some years and we really didn't know what to do. Bob pretended to be a friend to dad. He had the audacity to say to my brother in law that his children abandoned him and that he treated dad as his own dad. Despite this ridiculous situation, dad trusted him (I think now that he was already in the beginning of his dementia, but dad has being a controlling person for all his life and he wouldn't listen to any of his children; so this ridiculous "rent deal" continued). 

However, dad was not receiving any money from this rent deal, so he went there some times charging some money from the sub tenants. In one occasion, he was injured. Not so severely to end up in a hospital, but enough to stop going there. In his dementia, he told us (children) that the house was sold.

I thought that the house was in fact stolen by Bob, although he seemed friendly. I thought that it would be very hard to sell the house and all confrontation (with Bob sub tenants) wouldn't pay. However, my family were still paying taxes. I was convinced that a good solution would be renounce the property and began to study how it could be done (because the prefecture still wants to collect taxes and the process is not so easy). As I was asking about how it could be done, a friend envisioned a solution: he would take the property, sell it and return some money to us. We agreed. Two weeks ago he managed to make it with the help of a real estate agent that knew how to deal with invaded houses. 

Yesterday, we commemorate that this house was sold with some wine and italian food.

Let us celebrate freedom, specially the freedom that the Lord has provided by our Lord Jesus.