By Lorenz Holland-Moritz
[Note: For more about guest blogger Lorenz, see the note at Dresden Update 1. This entry references his work with the budding Lutheran church in Portugal, where he went to help them live-stream and “facebook” their services. – T. Kuster]
I’d quickly like to share my joy and thankfulness over our journey to Portugal.
Pastor Villares
We had a great week in Porto with guided excursions, good port wine and food, much time with Artur Villares and his family and congregation, short daily rehearsals and a lot of opportunities to gather around God’s word. I could also train my photography and video production skills a bit, although I’m (as usual) a bit disappointed in the overall result of our live stream. But that’s all we could do in the small amount of time and with the budget given. However, I have got a lot of resonance and reinforcement by viewers to continue our work. If you wish you may view it here.
We were quite surprised to see the Lutheran Church of Portugal not only slowly growing, they have even set up their own seminary in Porto by now! Students are yet to come but we can just learn from their attitude and confidence that God will lead their efforts to a good end in order to maintain the work of the Church. Artur also plans on reaching out by producing small educational videos on Lutheran Christianity. My Portuguese is very bad – that is to say, I can’t understand a single phrase. But I’m looking forward to see what he will come up with and I’ll try to help him out with some technical support from a distance.