December 2002

Dear Friends,

I got a Christmas present early this year. It was not the kind of present that I can wear, or spend, or eat, or listen to. It wasn't even meant particularly as a present for me. It was just the kind of present that warms my heart. It happened like this:

I was doing my job at the seminary last Wednesday night. The seminary is on the Rua de Genebra (That's Geneva Street!) in the heart of São Paulo, Brazil, a city bigger than New York, confronted with at least as many problems. The seminary moved to this location about two years ago, and is still getting used to its new neighborhood close to the central city square where the street people hang out.

Doing my job, in this case, meant teaching the second-year students and giving them a rather dry class about the pastoral epistles: authorship, church order and all that. Two women, advanced students at the seminary who took this class two or three years ago, stood at the open classroom door and let it be known they would like to interrupt my class in order to make an announcement. This is customary in our seminary, and I invited them in.

They had come from the Student Association (which is called the Directório Acadêmico in Brazil) to announce a program called "Natal na Sé." Natal means Christmas. Sé refers to the Praça da Sé, which is the central city square, the enormous square in front of the Catholic cathedral. If you know São Paulo, you know that square and the area around it are full of street people. The program is to bring Christmas to the street people in the form of a Christmas dinner, on December 23.

The women who are leading this have decided they are going to offer the best. The tables will have tablecloths, and the men from the seminary will be wearing suits and ties. How the women are going to achieve this last part I don't know, but knowing these particular women I won't bet against them. After the women left the classroom, the men questioned the suit and tie part, and I said I thought the women's idea was worth a try. I will be there in suit and tie, of course, if the women tell me I am invited. But this is a student venture and I am a professor.

So this Christmas season is starting very well indeed. The seminary is starting to reach out to the city's central square. The poor are being remembered, and as there was "no room at the inn" for Mary and Joseph, there is "no room" in our cities for many, many others.

May I urge you to put Christ in your Christmas, and your poorest neighbor right along with Him.

Arch Woodruff
Mission Co-Worker, Brazil

The 2002 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 31