M is for Mommy

This is my family! From the left, my brother-in-law James, my parents Buddy and Jeanie, Jeff holding Parker, me, Blake, and my in-laws Jim and Jean. We hope you all had a very merry Christmas! Jeff, Blake, Parker and I head back to Brazil on Friday!

Several months ago, God impressed upon me the notion to be very careful how I acted towards others. The Bible says in Galatians 6:7 that whatever we sow (plant), that is what we'll reap (harvest). He impressed upon me the need to pray every day to only sow desireable things in others' lives. I've seen these past months many folks who have harvested undesirable outcomes--sometimes immediately, sometimes years later. Some of these have been very mature believers. Almost all of these people have been totally unaware of what they were planting when they acted the way they did. Some have ripped people off. Then gotten ripped off. Some have tried to silence another's ministry. Their ministry has been silenced. Some missionaries have tried to get others sent home. They are home now. Some missionaries tried to force families to live in unsuitable housing conditions. They then were moved into unsuitable housing conditions. NONE of these people realize how they planted the seed o...

I covet your prayers as I board a plane tomorrow with my two young sons to head "Over the amazon and across the Carribean to Grandmother's house we go . . ." Jeff will follow us on the 20th, but I'll be on my own to get us there on Wednesday. While I'm more worried about in-flight temper tantrums or diaper shortages than hijackings, I have been thinking alot about them lately. My husband had one in his ministry this past week. It's the second one he's faced on the mission field. He handled it so well, with such grace and a Godly attitude. I was so proud of him. While almost inevitable at times, ministry hijackings can be extremely disheartening. The first ministry hijacking I ever saw happened to my mom. My mom had served a small women's prayer group for about 15 years. Every week, without fail, she unlocked the doors of the meeting room, set up the chairs, waited for the other ladies to arrive, and led the meeting. One week, a lady visited. That lady ...

Well, I'm into the last week of my " Daniel Diet ". Sunday, all bets are off. I already have the ingredients set to make that celebratory Chocolate Mousse. You're probably wondering how Thanksgiving went. I don't know exactly how to evaluate or explain, but I'll do my best. It was harder to do this while we were traveling than I thought. We drove about 9 hours to Florianopolis, an island city where all the IMB missionaries from the south of Brazil spend Thanksgiving weekend. Getting there was easy, we made one stop at a truckstop with a buffet with lots of veggies. The Thanksgiving meal was easy (I don't care for turkey and there was nothing chocolate, which helped tremendously). I tried doing what I had suggested doing in my original WWDE post, which is praying as I decide what to eat and not eat and choose accordingly. That worked AMAZINGLY well, as long as I did it. I did this for a couple of days. Then, I started to look for "patterns" and ma...

Some children in Rio created a toy favela (slum) in a vacant lot in their neighborhood. Here is a very interesting article with photos. Apparently, the main benefit to the kids (now older teens) is the opportunity to learn video shooting and production skills from the documentary folks who have come to cover their art. They have begun producing animated videos for Brazil's Nickelodeon channel. Here is a sample of one of their episodes which, at less than 1 minute, is presumably MUCH shorter than the Nickelodeon show.

Or, When a "Foody" Fasts I've been on a fast lately. Jeff went to the states on November 2 for 2 weeks and I couldn't help noticing that that was exactly 40 days from when I leave for the states on December 12. Combine that with my recent interest in fasting and a great little book I read on the subject and I'm off on a 40-day adventure. Today was day 20. I actually started a few days before Jeff left. This was really good because I really needed the moral support those first few days. The plan was the following: 3 days water only. 2 days juice/water. 2 weeks of water, vegetables, whole rice, melba toast. Then I added tea, bread, and some oils (like in peanut butter). The water and veggies only deal is what some call a "Daniel fast," based on Daniel's fasts in the Biblical book of the same name. He and his friends, afraid of eating non-Kosher food in Babylon, restricted their diet to vegetables and water. Later in the book, he went on a three-week fa...

This from our fellow IMB missionaries here in town: Dear prayer warriors, Because of an unfortunate auto accident here in Brazil on Friday, we need to ask for your urgent prayers for a complicated situation. Whether this should be viewed as an attack by the evil one or just unfortunate circumstances of life, we know that God can work on behalf of our and your prayers to resolve this. After having spent three days driving to arrive in Campinas, São Paulo, during which Mark had two very encouraging meetings with Brazilian leaders who are excited about being a part of Project Sedi, Mark was in the process of preparing the studio for doing the beginning taping of the project. He realized that he was dangerously tired, so he asked the pastor who was working with him if he would be willing to drive the car. An unlicensed and undocumented motorcylist ran into the side of the car, and was taken to the hospital with a scraped leg. In Brazil, because the motorcyclist was injured, he becomes...

Shortly after his release from prison and the release of his autobiography, I had the chance to sit down with Jim Bakker at a convention in Los Angeles. I was working for a radio station at the time and convinced the news crew to let me do the interview. I wanted to give Bakker the opportunity to tell his side of the story. I told him how I’d seen his ministry change, from a simple, sincere morning interview program to a media extravaganza complete with Christian shopping malls and time-share condominiums. I opened with the obvious question: “WHAT HAPPENED?!!” He told me that the ministry outgrew his capacity to keep up with it. That, by the end, they were having to raise 1 million dollars a week* just to keep it going. The pressure was tremendous. The focus shifted from the people being reached to the money needed to reach them. I’ve seen ministers rationalize that type of thinking. “We stress X% growth and we count numbers because each number is a soul.” My husband, Jeff , has been w...

Jeff is in the states for two weeks taking a doctoral seminar. I'm here in Porto Alegre with the kids. We've had a really good time so far--and we've past the half way point. Jeff returns on Wednesday. While Jeff has been out, I've been spending lots of time with George . I don't know how many of you have a George Foreman grill, but they can be extremely useful. Especially when you're alone with small children and don't want to cook. George makes grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, hot dogs, hamburgers, toast, steaks. The only drawback is he's a bear to clean. Newer Georges have removable plates that go in the dishwasher -- so don't let this turn you off if you don't own one already. Jeff hates mushroooms, so I've taking the opportunity to eat Portobello mushrooms for supper almost every night. Simple recipe, just spray the mushroom (both sides) with Pam (or brush on oil) and then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Grill. They're great on thi...

A month ago, I posted asking for some ideas of what to get my husband for his birthday. I got some great ideas. He ended up getting an Ipod. He's loving it. I bought it on Ebay and a team brought it in for us. He's got LOTS of really old Petra on it and some man reading various books of the Bible. Honestly, it kind of creeped me out to hear some strange man's voice reading scripture coming out of my computer, but he reads along in his Bible and really enjoys it. I also learned how NOT to buy something on Ebay. See, I actually bought a used Ipod! How embarrassing! But, the memory was twice the size of the one I thought I was getting, so it worked out well. Anyway, now it's come around to my birthday. Jeff is leaving for the states in a week and will get back right before my birthday. The problem is that I don't have the benefit of the US advertising industry to tell me what I want. WHERE ARE COMMERCIALS WHEN YOU REALLY NEED THEM???!!

One of the most interesting things about administrating a website, or a blog, is being able to see who visits your page. When I post regularly, I get anywhere from 15-25 hits a day, a pretty pitiful amount, but they come from all over the world. I don't know how they find me or why, but folks from, literally, all over the world visit. Some folks I do know how they find me--those who have arrived through an internet search for some topic I cover. When we first got Parker's diagnosis , my doctor told me to google the words to find more about the condition. Apparently, may other people do this, because a lot of folks have landed here through typing "hydrocephalus" or "ACC" into the search engines. I don't have anyway to find those people, all I can do is pray for them. On the lighter side, many folks find me by doing food searches. I don't know the Canadian who's looking for a " cheddar cheese store in porto alegre ." If I did, I'd tel...

Ralph Moore , the original Hope Chapel guy, has seen tons of churches planted. He says in his book, Starting a New Church , "A new church can be a magnet that attracts disgruntled Christians who have a history of conflict in other churches. My observations over the years tell me that more new churches fold from an inability to confront disruptive people than from any other cause." (p. 37) MORE THAN ANY OTHER CAUSE OF CHURCHES FOLDING--wow that's serious. So, how do we train our people to deal with conflict? How do we train them to confront the disruptive among us? My husband is thinking of developing a curriculum for training church planters. Has anyone run across a source for a class on this topic? Also, an admonition to those of you training church planting teams--don't leave this important instruction out of your "curriculum"--however formal or informal it may be.

Well, I've made the plunge! Thursday I became not only a soccer mom to Blake , but a Suzuki mom to Parker . No, I didn't buy a very expensive 4-wheel-drive station wagon. No, I didn't buy him a tiny little motorcycle. What is a Suzuki mom ? The Suzuki method of music education is a method geared toward the very young. From the reading I've done, you're apparently supposed to begin at about 4 months gestation. The method adopts the principles used in language-learning to the learning of music. It uses LOTS of repetition and LOTS of listening. Basically, the child learns to play by ear. Parker and I are terribly excited. My Little Twinkler and I go every Thursday morning for a group music class, where 8-10 2-4-year-olds sing scales and songs, dance, and bang away on children's instruments. Parker loves it. On Thursday nights, we'll go to concerts and see older children play "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" OVER AND OVER AND OVER. . . At home between ...

Paul and Lori Vernon are a couple of Four Square Gospel missionaries working with the Ankh tribe in Thailand. This story from them made me laugh so hard I cried.

Tomorrow is pizza night. The come around quickly nowadays. See, we decided to make Fridays pizza/movie night here in the fam. Since many missionary kids have a problem developing a concept of time, I thought it would help Blake to get the concept of a weeks and months down. [A week is the amount of time between pizza nights; four pizza nights is one month, etx.]. After almost a year of pizza nights, I've got it pretty much down to a science. But it still takes all Friday afternoon. Two dough recipes and three pizzas-pepperoni, Canadian bacon/pineapple, and banana. The boys (all three of them) absolutely love it. My favorite dough recipe is Basil Parmesan . I like it not only because it is beautiful and good tasting (in that order), but it's very easy to handle. I also get a big ego rise out of using my own fresh basil and grating parmesan cheese. It also fits perfectly on a rectangle pizza stone. I put pepperoni on it. In addition to this, I use Jay's Signature Pizza Crust ...

"To be a missioner is to go where you are needed, but not wanted, and stay until you are wanted, but no longer needed."* Yep- that's pretty much where we're at right now. This quote, from a Catholic missionary to Hawaii, appeared in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin upon the closing down of a beloved mission in Honolulu in 1997. I do not remember the man's name or the details, but the quote has stayed with me ever since.

Here is a version of Taco Salad that my family loves. It's a little on the sweet side. Throw one large chunk of onion, one garlic clove, 2/3 cup of oil, 2/3 cup of ketchup, 1/2 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup of vinegar, into a blender. Blend well. Congratulations! You've got Catalina salad dressing the missionary way! Now, Brown: 1 1/2 pound ground beef. Drain and rinse. Add: ¼ cup water, 1 small onion, finely chopped, 2-4 Tbsp. Chili powder (How much depends on how long you've been on the field and, therefore how old your chili powder is), and the blender mixture to the ground beef. Mix well and simmer on low heat for 20 minutes. Layer on a plate: Doritos, Lettuce, Chopped tomatoes, Grated cheddar cheese (or the substitution available in your country).

You may have noticed, we took a break for the month of July. Actually, we took a "pretend vacation." Since we've been on the field a year, we decided it was a good time to refresh and regroup. It was great. We cut out a lot of our superfluous activity. Blake was out of school, so I didn't volunteer at school. Our weekly team prayer meetings were cancelled. Bible studies and house church worship continued as usual, except for our annual mission meeting in São Paulo. We slept later, I cooked less, I let the house get dirtier, we read more. We didn't blog hardly at all, or spend much time on the computer. It has been very refreshing and now we're ready to go at it another year. Jeff has returned to blogging. You'll be interested to see his updates. Blake has also posted some, as has Parker .

I took The Sesame Street Personality Quiz and this is what it told me: You Are Bert Extremely serious and a little eccentric, people find you loveable - even if you don't love them! You are usually feeling: Logical - you rarely let your emotions rule you You are famous for: Being smart, a total neat freak, and maybe just a little evil How you life your life: With passion, even if your odd passions (like bottle caps and pigeons) are baffling to others So, who are you? HT: Dorcas Hawker

The Bible says, “Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45). Well, right now, my heart is overflowing “I AM SICK TO DEATH OF BEING VOMITTED UPON!! I’M SICK OF WIPING VOMIT OFF OF THE FLOOR/WALLS/TOILET/OTHER BATHROOM FIXTURES*! I AM SICK OF THE SMELL OF LAVANDER-SCENTED PINESOL!! ” You see, we have a small family. A compact family. I have my two small children who are always well-groomed and frequently we dress alike as a family. We don’t confuse our children’s names. We don’t even have a dog (too much spittle), we have a cat (a ragdoll, named Montana’s Café com Leite na Praia). That’s who we are. We know those families with 4+ children who always have someone ill, who at any given moment have someone bleeding, who are known by name in the emergency room. But we are not them. We know those families who when you talk with them you have to guess to which child they are referring because they generically insert names because they never can remember the specific name ...

Fasting can add another dimension to our spiritual lives. We can be more aware of God’s presence with us, we can have more insights into His workings, we can have more power in our prayer lives. I don’t know how it works, but here are a few tips that I have if you’re interesting in adding this discipline to your prayer life. Fasting is mentioned in scripture, but we aren’t told a lot about how to fast. Most of our modern day teaching on fasting comes from Matthew 6:16-18 when Jesus said, “Moreover when you fast, don't be like the hypocrites, with sad faces. For they disfigure their faces, that they may be seen by men to be fasting. Most certainly I tell you, they have received their reward. But you, when you fast, anoint your head, and wash your face; so that you are not seen by men to be fasting, but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.” We can see two things from this: 1. Jesus expected that we would fast (His use of the word when...

Discretion in Prayer As you begin to pray under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, God will begin to show you how to pray and things to pray about. When people realize you are an intercessor (someone who prays for other people), they’ll begin to share their prayer requests with you. These things you need to keep to yourself, for several reasons. First of all, you want to spend your energy praying, not talking with others. I think we’ve all been to “prayer” meetings when the entire time was taken sharing requests and no time was left in the end for the actual prayer. We can exhaust ourselves talking to others, and feel like we’ve accomplished something; but actually the only thing we’ve done is exhaust ourselves. Another reason is that, whether it is from God or another person, you’ve been entrusted with that information and you’ll want to show yourself worthy of that trust. I’ve found that the best way to keep a confidence is to never let others know there is a confidence being kept. If ...

Since I've found it so hard to think up topics to post on, I've decided to do a series on Everything I Know. We'll start with prayer and see where that takes us. The first thing I've learned about prayer is that you learn it "on the job." If you commit to being an intercessor (someone who prays for other people), God will show you how as you go along, especially if you ask Him. Remember when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray and He responded with an example of a prayer--the Lord's Prayer (See Matthew 6:9-14). One thing God will do is He'll impress upon you what He wants you to pray in a given situation. He leads us in prayer, just like He does in other areas of our lives. Ask Him, and then get really quiet. He'll show you what He wants prayed. For example, my mother prays a great deal for our ministry. We had a new convert recently and when my mom read about it on my husband's blog , she felt led to pray that this young beli...

We've been in Porto Alegre for 9 months today. As I look back on those months, I can see one certain lesson that God seems to be wanting me to get. It's been repeated over and over and over since we got here, not in scripture, but in my life. That lesson is "Hard things get easier with time and practice." Blake started 1st grade here this year. This was a surprise to us since we expected him to be in kindergarten. You would believe how difficult those first few weeks of first grade were! Take spelling, for instance. He got a 10 on his first spelling test. Every Monday, we had spelling homework to make a sentence with each word. It would take over an hour, I'd have to sit there and coach him in sentence ideas. The first month he cried every Monday. I didn't know if I could face 9 months of that. Now, he makes a perfect score on every test and is writing his sentences without our coaching. Blake is in physical therapy for his "toe-walking." Basically, ...

Overnight company? Morning breakfast meeting? This recipe has saved me many a time! Apple-Raisin French Toast Casserole

I'm about to get his with a tripple whopper, folks! June contains not only my 11th wedding anniversary, but Father's Day and Brazilian Valentine's Day. And so the big question for the day: WHAT IN THE WORLD WILL I GET MY HUSBAND ???!! A video game isn't romantic enough, a good Christian book isn't big enough, a sweater is just too practical, I don't have time to learn to knit a scarf. I need your ideas. There are about 350 of you people reading this--someone is bound to come up with something. Leave your ideas in the comments page. To do this click on the word "comments" below and type your comment in the text box that pops up. The easiest thing is then to check the "anonymous" button and hit the "publish" button. You can always sign your name in the bottom of the comment if you don't want it to really be anonymous. I thank you from the bottom of my heart! Cam

"I won't need to see him again." With that short statement, Parker 's neurologist released him. Those of you who have been our prayer partners know Parker's story. Twenty-three months ago, EXTREMELY pregnant and in the depth of Backwoods Brazil, I began to have problems and, after two trips to the emergency clinic, I hopped on a plane to the states. We had been planning to return home for Parker 's birth anyway, I just left a month earlier than expected. During my first ultrasound in the states, the sonographer was strangely quiet. There was too much empty space in the brain cavity. Something was missing. The readings indicated a missing corpus callosum, a bundle of nerve fibers that connects the two hemispheres. I called Jeff that evening. He and Blake had remained in Brazil to pack up and settle things at home and in the ministry. We prayed and cried together on the phone. It was terrifying. For two weeks, we struggled with computer equipment to try and g...

Following is a memoir from a retired missionary, Ann Wollerman, who served in Brazil for about 40 years. She is 91 at the time this tape was made. The tape was then transcibed and posted on the internet. I'm posting the entire transciption here because I found it so inspiring. It's long, but worth the read. As you read it, notice 1. Her astounding faith. 2. Her extreme determination. 3. The abundant grace of God made available to her as she lived in a really difficult place. You can go along way on the mission field with those three things. TESTIMONY OF ANN WOLLERMAN, MISSIONARY TO BRAZIL, DECEMBER 9, 2001 (ALMOST 91 YEARS OLD It is so good to be back with you again. The hugs and greetings! And I want to thank Pastor Dale and all of those who make the program for giving me this wonderful opportunity to once again share with you the great, miraculous things that God has done in my life. And I do it humbly giving all the glory and all the praise to Him. And I want to encourage yo...

Folks, I'm tellin' ya' --you haven't lived until you've explored the central shopping district of a major South American city! I went yesterday to Centro Porto Alegre. Every city in Brazil has a Centro. Centro is the oldest area of town. It's where the bus lines all end. It's where the working class does their shopping. It's also where the thieving class does their thieving. So whenever I go to Centro, I try to walk, look and act very thug-like. It's very difficult to drive to Centro and so you have to take the bus. It's a real adventure. It's cold here in Porto Alegre and, seeing that it's time to put the down comforter on the bed, I went to the "sewing notions" district of Centro to get some snaps to make the comforter cover. YES! -- an entire DISTRICT of sewing notions stores! About 4 blocks of beads, pins, needles, zippers, pin cushions, measuring tapes, and literally TONS of yarn! If you can imagine it, it's down there ...

This is a great, easy recipe to copy those wonderful spiced peaches you get in the states. Ingredients: 3 1/2 cups peach halves 3 (6-inch) sticks cinnamon 1 tsp. cloves 1 tbs. vinegar Instructions: Combine ingredients, heat to boiling. [I took the peach halves out of two cans and then poured in syrup to make 4 cups, plus a little more liquid.] Simmer 5 minutes, drain and chill.

[Continued from post below: . . .and my God shall meet all your [chocolate] needs . . .] At that point, I knew I could make it on that muddy little island on the Equator. God had met not only my needs, but my wants and, despite the pity-party I had thrown for myself, He had reached out to me in a way I could relate. We frequented that little chocolate shop for the few years that we lived there. I told the owner the story of how God had touched my heart by putting him there (I doubt that he, with his broken FrenchPortuguese understood such a flaky story told in my broken EnglishPortuguese). Two years later, while we were on our first furlough, our son Parker was born. Parker had a mild case of hydrocephallus that eventually required surgery and the mission doctors decided that we couldn't return to the Back Side of Nowhere. We were offered the chance to move to South Brazil. We weighed our options and felt God's leading to Rio Grande do Sul. God gave me so many signs from Him du...

It was early May 2002. We had been in Brazil for a year and a half and, after a heavenly year of language school, surrounded by fellow missionaries and wonderfully supportive Brazilians, we had been shipped off to the back side of nowhere. We had been there for about 7 months and I hit a crisis point. My dear mother-in-law sends me books and at this particular time I was reading what is referred to as a "culinary mystery"--a Miss-Marple-type mystery wherein the starring sleuth happens to be a chef who provides detailed descriptions of wonderful gastronomic creations. These should be read sparingly, because you always want to eat when you read them. Anyway, this particular sleuth was a chocolate confectioner. Day after day, I read descriptions of these amazing chocolate creations that, eventually, would aid in the capture of a murderer. A week or so into my reading, it became time to shop for Mother's Day presents. I had waited too long to send anything from Brazil and so ...

SPLASH!! I'm diving into the blogging world, just one small drop is the present flood of missionaries who are discovering the value of blogging. Let's jump in with some FAQs: Who am I? My name is Cam Dunson (the Mommy in the picture) and I am a missionary sent by the Southern Baptists in the US to Porto Alegre, in the far south of Brazil. My husband, Jeff, plants churches in the greater metro area of 4.5 million and I spend most of my time and energy running a household and caring for him and our two children, Blake (age 6) and Parker (age 1 1/2). If you're not familiar with the world of missions, you may find it easiest to think of me as an ex-pat soccer mom. Who are you? (To whom will this blog be of interest)? I suspect that this blog will be of most interest to my mother (and my dad if I include photos of the grandkids :) but, other than those two, I expect this to be of value to: --Our prayer partners, those folks who have committed to pray for our ministry. --Other m...