Our weekend was VERY different here at Faith Baptist Church in Sorocaba. Saturday was the long awaited banquet for our Faithful Teens group. Dawn began her kitchen work early with Joelma and Cristina helping out. The teens came in their "Sunday" best and the evening was lovely and a lot of fun. The most faithful of the Faithful Teens was Amanda who memorized 100 verses did a lot of tract handing out and shared the Gospel with many. She was nearly perfect in attendance at church activities. For all of her hard work she won an all expenses paid trip to Hopi-Hari, an amusement park near São Paulo. She will be taking her sister Tais who also memorized 100 verses and invited a lot of kids to Bible Club.
In second place, earning a half expenses paid trip was Amanda and Tais’ sister Graziele. She too worked very hard, memorizing the 100 verses and handing our many tracts and inviting multitudes to Bible Club. The trip to Hopi-Hari will be a lot of fun and the girls deserve their special day.
In third place was my “adopted” son Alison. He did a great job and worked very hard too. He gets to go on the trip to Hopi-Hari but has to pay his own way. Who knows, maybe his “dad” will pitch in a few bucks to help out.
On Sunday, Alexandre, Junior, Amanda and Graziele made the long trek into São Paulo to present our ministry to a sister church. They went by bus and had to leave at 5:30 AM to be there for Sunday School at 9:00. They didn’t return until after 11:00 PM.
Because Alexandre has the keys and alarm code to the school we use and because he is the only one authorized to open that building we, as a church, met on the playground. We had 39 present to sing hymns, give testimony and I taught from Acts 1. It was a lovely sunny day and a blessing to be with church family.
In the evening we met at Marcia’s house (Amanda, Grazi and Tais’ mom) for our service. We had a trio of instruments, Cello (me), Violin (Dani) and Flute (Leticia) and sang some favorite hymns from memory . Samuel preached from 1 Cor. 15.57.
Most of our kids come from broken homes. Just Saturday Lucas was sharing about how his family had had a terrible fight on Friday afternoon. Fighting, jealousy and greed are not uncommon attributes of “normal family” life in the hood. As I shared from Acts chapter one the family theme came to mind. How did the “dueling” disciples ever manage to work together after Jesus was taken from them? Of course the answer was the power of the Holy Spirit.
Our kids, teens and adults will need that same power in their future families in order to realize the peace, love and purpose that only God can bring to relationships. Pray with us as we work toward instilling this principle in the lives of our family of believers. Dawn is even now meeting with one of the moms. Thank you for helping us in our ministry!
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