Given that we’ve been absent from Bethany since 2001, many people may need an introduction to our family. In June of that year my wife, Debbie, our two kids—daughter, Austin, who had just graduated from Garfield High, and son, Drex, who had just finished kindergarten—and I moved to the northern Portuguese city of Braga so that I could supervise construction for the Habitat for Humanity International affiliate there.

It was to be a one year experiment. To make a six-year story short:

• the experiment was a success
• we continue to be involved with Habitat, though only as volunteers
• we now operate a little tent-making business in Lisbon called VisitingPortugal.com which allows time for ministry involvement like ServeTheCity.pt.
• Austin married a Portuguese teacher and pastor named Vitor, and they had a baby girl named Débora in July.
• Drex speaks Portuguese like a native, surfs, and romps with his Portuguese Water Dog, Kalley, named after the Scottish missionary through whose preaching my Portuguese ancestors were born again.

One of the ways God has sustained us during our sojourn has been through Bethany’s love, care and support, for which we are very grateful. The Kurt and Delene Deforest-Dale family has been our liaison and their home group has adopted us and prayed for us tirelessly. We’ve needed it. We’ve faced predictable challenges associated with any journey outside one’s comfort/culture/language zone, and unpredictable challenges like our children’s struggles with autoimmune system disorders.

Our most fervent prayers these days are for:

• the health of our kids
• the establishing of home churches in our neighborhood (right in the center of historic Lisbon)
• the continued development of Serve the City as a means of bringing together believers and the unbelieving community.

We hope some day soon to see a steady stream of short and long term missionaries from Bethany and other North American Christian communities serving Europe through Serve the City.

We try to keep up with Bethany life through the Briefs and the website. I’m especially looking forward to the upcoming sermon series on the spiritual disciplines. I read Richard Foster’s book, Celebration of Discipline, as a new Christian while an undergraduate at the UW and was thrilled to have his advice as I plunged into the life of faith.

One spiritual discipline I don’t think Foster discusses but that has been of tremendous benefit to me is journaling. I have a journal that began as a simple loose-leaf binder with 365 pages, one for every day of the year. I make entries for each day beneath entries for the same date in previous years. Journaling this way enables me to keep track of God’s loving care over time.

The key to the system is grace: if I don’t make an entry for a week or a month or six months it matters little. I just open up to today’s date and away I go. The journal now fills three large binders. I keep one for Drex, too. Sometimes he contributes, more often he just likes to hear what he was doing four or five years ago. He always likes to relive his life’s triumphs year after year.

A spiritual discipline I want to practice more is praying in tongues. Jackie Pullinger, missionary in Hong Kong, says God began to move miraculously in her ministry when she disciplined herself to pray regularly in tongues. (Pullinger has also had a profound influence on Iris Ministries, the ministry of Rolland and Heidi Baker in Mozambique, where God has done mega miracles. Mike Christensen and I visited one of Iris Ministries’ orphanages when we were in Mozambique with Habitat for Humanity last summer.) Praying in tongues reminds me of the sacrament of communion: It only makes sense in light of what God says about it. Our job is to yield to Divine logic.