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Our Music Conference was a blessing though poorly attended by our sister churches here in Sorocaba. I am learning that good things are worth doing but are not always well received. Over the two days around 45 participated. The majority of these came from Bible Baptist Church in Jundiaí. These brothers and sisters were a real encouragement to us.

We invited a music team from two churches in Curitiba. Pastor Ari, his wife Carol brought eleven other musicians to present and teach. We had classes in choir directing, voice, violin, cello, flute, children’s and adult choir.

Our people really enjoyed being with professional musicians. It was fun to see our kids playing as a part of an orchestra. It sounded great too!

Our little church is really struggling lately. Just last week Dawn and I met with one of our young moms. She wept as she related how that her husband had held a machete to her throat and threatened to cut her head off. Satan has attacked our youth with two of our most faithful being torn from our family. Maicon is still in jail and Amanda says that she is NEVER coming back to church. Even our team has been hit with marital problems so severe that a separation might be in its future (NOT Dawn and me).

Among these trials we have seen blessings. Cido and Zita recently came to the Savior as result of a Conference on Revelation. Cido is a leader in our neighborhood. His life has changed so much over the last few weeks that most of his friends have abandoned him. However, he has invited his newly found church family to have a special dinner with he and Zita at his house in just a few days to celebrate their 100th day of Salvation. We are so excited for this couple.

Cido has friends who do grading. Tuesday he and I will be getting estimates on just that. We hope to grade within days. Alexandre and I visited our architect last Friday to ask why our process was taking so long. We discovered part of the problem. He had lost our plans! We helped him find them and we should have what we need in had by Friday August 3.

We have a team meeting scheduled for Tuesday night and will be tackling some of our coming discipline issues. We are praying for the Holy Spirit’s wisdom and direction. We know that blessing is coming because of all of the bad things that seem to be happening.

Speaking of blessing. We start Bible Club this Saturday. Our Club theme this semester is Missions. We will work for points but will be doing a lot of mission work to get that credit. Should be fun.

Father’s Day is on the horizon in two weeks and each of our four Bible Club teams will be making a film to present to the dads. I have a good idea I just need to get in on “paper” (ie. Google Docs) so that we can make some dads happy. Really I want the dads to be challenged about their responsibility with both their kids and God. Pray that my idea will be a real awakening to these men.

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