A Place to Open Your Wings

It's been 24 hours in Brasil for Josh and I, and we are already hitting the ground running. The missionaries we are working with, Mark and Ali Kaiser, head up a lot of different ministries at the Igreja de Cristo here in Itu. They primarily work with the youth, but also do a homeless ministry and frequently visit an orphanage.
The most incredible thing we've seen so far is how the Kaisers use they're home for the "equipping of the saints" (Eph 4:11-12). I am proud of them for not clinging to the cultural norms of raising your private nuclear family in your hone and, while others may visit frequently, all of ministry is done elsewhere. Obviously, in our house back on Cockerell, that principle just doesn't work. When they explain to people how their community works in Portuguese, they use a phrase that connotes something like "intentional frat house." That way, people start to understand that their house is special and that there is a variety of people living in and visiting it.
Still, they face a lot of odd looks and questions. "You've been married for six years, why don't you have kids?" Not to mention the question that most missionaries have to face: "So your job is just to hang out with people? Someone pays you to do that?" Living in close community with others is just as much a social oddity here in Brasil as it is in Texas, if not more so. The way Ali put it was that at least in the US, they can just call it nonconformity, but here they don't even have a word for it.
The one thing that has captured what Mark and Ali do with their home is best summed up in a sharpie-on-butcher paper artpiece (an under-appreciated form of art, in my opinion) that hangs in their living room and says, "In this house, you're invited to open your wings."