A Coelho Sabbatical Update
Hi COTC!
We Coelhos are having a wonderful sabbatical. With the del Rios final Sunday before their move coming up I (Peter) wanted to record and share this short video. I'm grateful to God for the del Rios and these past six years in community with them! What a gift they have been to us. Alongside the video, we also wanted to write a quick update from our sabbatical. To keep this short I simply wanted to share three impressions from our time since we last were with y’all at the end of April.
God’s kindness. Our send-off from COTC was marked by many graces. Thank you for all the notes and cards you wrote, we have been heartily encouraged by them. Thanks as well to the staff for organizing our send that Sunday following Easter. Our sense of God’s grace and kindness has only increased in these months as we four have traveled and had experiences we scarcely could have imagined. At several points, Shannon and I have been overcome with a remarkable sense of gratitude to God for His lavish kindness. It has been good to be reminded of this aspect of His character.
The breadth of the church. A goal we had for this sabbatical was exposure for us and our kids to the global body of Christ. Thus far that goal has been realized beyond what we could have imagined! Over these past months, we’ve had the opportunity to worship in Christian communities in three different nations, alongside sisters and brothers in Christ from over 20 nations. We’ve sung the daily office in Latin, tried our best with familiar songs we sing at COTC in Italian, utilized Google Translate and benefited from patient translators to hear homilies, and joined in for charismatic and multilingual prayer nights. These experiences have been beautiful in and of themselves, and reflect the beauty of God’s work of drawing people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. As Lucy shared after one of these gatherings “It was like the Spirit of heaven in there!”
The rest of Jesus. In the lead-up to sabbatical, our family talked about distinguishing sabbatical time from vacation, true rest and restoration from leisure and entertainment. We have been privileged with amazing “vacation” experiences over these months. However, what has most nourished me thus far have been some of quieter moments, the moments alone with Jesus, in prayer, in Scripture, in silence. I have experienced afresh that there is healing and life that only Jesus can bring to the deep places of our souls. A repeated refrain for me has been that this time would be reviving and “soul-expanding” for us. Gentle and lowly Jesus, our Good Shepherd and the Bread of Life, has been ever so faithfully doing this work.
COTC, thank you for the gift of this time. Thank you for praying for us and continuing on in the good work of announcing, embodying, and demonstrating the Gospel of Jesus Christ together. We are grateful for you. We miss you. We look forward to being reunited with you in August!
In Christ,
Peter+ (on behalf of Shannon, Lucy, and Emmett)