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The time between Christmas and New Year’s Day is weird! Just a week ago Sunday we had over a 100 in church to see our Cantata 2010 . This past Sunday we had 19. What was that all about? Was your church service sparsely populated too? We attributed the lack to the Holidays. Tomorrow we will be taking a group of 21 Juniors and Teens on a hike . Our Omega group from Bible Club earned this hike by doing their best in their Bible memory work. We’re going to a farm about an hour away where we’ll spend the day. We discovered this farm via our Cantata. One of the ladies who was watching at the supermarket was really thrilled with our kids. We made a visit on her and she and her husband offered the use of their farm for a day. So, we’ll be spending Wednesday with this family and an American guest who is staying with them. This will give us a great opportunity to share Christ with them. Friday night we will be going to Calvary Baptist Church to pray in the New Year. We will also be baptizi

We want to wish one and all a very Merry Christmas. May the Lord continue to bless you as He is blessing us. This is the group that we had at the house for our Christmas Eve Service. Afterwards we went to Alcir and Damares for a lovely meal, singing and fellowship. We had such a wonderful evening sharing the Christ of Christmas!

After the neat experience of presenting our cantata at Wal-Mart I wondered how preforming at our own church would be. Let me say that it was a lovely presentation. We had over 100 total with visitors, choir, orchestra and actors. It was our largest group ever! As I write this update it looks like it is going to rain buckets. Just after Sunday school this morning we went out as a church and handed out invitations for the afternoon presentation. We’d done this several times during the week but each time had ended with drenching rain. For our cantata, however, the weather was lovely, sunny and not too hot. There were various visitors that told me they had come because of an invitation that was handed to them either this morning or earlier in the week. Seeds planted do bring fruit. I talked to one of the visitors who was overwhelmed with how well the kids did. She really was touched with the message of Christmas. Several of your have shared with me how you prayed for our Cantata. It is

  So, we get to Wal*Mart and ask where we are suppose to set up to do our Cantata and we get blank stares. What? We don’t know anything about a presentation for today. “Well, I talked to Rita about a month ago and she said, ‘Saturday, December 18 will be great!’" “Rita is not working today.” More blank stares. “We need to call the manager.” After nearly an hour we were allowed to sing. Praise the Lord we had you praying. Thanks, Tom, John, Jake and Justin! We needed your intersession. At Walmart here in Sorocaba there is a man that travels throughout the store describing different products that are on sale. Usually I pay little attention to him because his always talking so fast and describing stuff that I’m not interested in. Today, however, he came over and introduced our church to the entire store. He then proceeded to ask Alexandre about the true meaning of Christmas. He said, “You as a pastor, have you noticed that we are forgetting the True meaning of Christmas?” Wha

  If you read this Saturday morning please remember to pray for us. We will be presenting our Christmas Cantata at Wal-Mart here in Sorocaba at 2:30pm (11:30 Eastern Time). It is a great opportunity. I called to confirm our visit just about two hours ago and was told that the lady who had OK’d our visit wasn’t working today and there was nothing on the calendar showing our arrival! About an hour later and another call and we were back on the docket.

We presented our Cantata four times today. It was a scorcher again and I know that you in the far north are envious. But we actually prayed for cloud cover. The day was virtually cloudless when we began to pray and it took only four hours for the Lord to totally cover the sky with lovely clouds and finally a good hard rain! We presented at an orphanage and the little ones loved it. Both ours and the orphanage’s. The orphanage is next door to the Police Headquarters for our city. Just as the Angel’s arrived in our play the SWAT helicopter arrived and hovered about 100 feet from us. It wasn’t angel’s wings that we heard flutter but the sound was impressive. Our kids had saved their nickels, dimes and quarters to buy presents for these orphans who are less privileged then they are. It was neat to see our kids giving the little ones their gifts. In fact several hearts were touched. I realized just how much when Dawn said, “How many do you think that we could adopt?” And she wasn’t kiddi

Saturday we took the choir, Orchestra and actors to the Sao Vincente rest home for our first presentation. We visited São Vincente last year and we saw some of the same friends this year. Taís had asked me earlier in the year, “Pastor, do you think that Maria is still there?” Just after the presentation we were making some visits and low and behold, seated at the very same table was Maria. The funny thing about this meeting was that Taís had forgotten what Maria looked like. I had to point her out. And though you might not be able to tell it in this photo, Maria really liked our visit. Graziele came over to be a part of our chat and said, “Maria, if you died today do you know if you’d go to  heaven?” Don’t you just love the simplicity that children bring to a conversation? I do. With that comment and just before we left I was able to share the Gospel with Maria Maria. No, I wasn’t stuttering. that is her real name. She, or her mother were SO Catholic that she named her baby, Maria M

A week ago Tuesday Alexandre and I traveled to Curitiba about six hour south of Sorocaba. We went by bus which is a leisurely way to travel. When I drive I have to keep my eyes glued to the road. When I go by bus the trip seems so much shorter and I can enjoy the scenery along the way. The reason for our trip was to enlist another missionary for the field. This time the missionary was Alexandre. MBBF, the Brazilian version of Baptist Mid-Missions and a rather new mission with just ten years under its belt, was having its quarterly meeting in which the board of directors would be approving four new missionaries. Alexandre was one of the candidates. The trip was good for us in more than one way. We were able to talk ministry both going and coming and Alexandre passed the board examination. He is now an official member of Missão Batista Brasileira Fundmenalista (Brazilian Fundamental Baptist Mission). He will be able to use Mission contacts to be able to seek help for our land purcha