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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 still don’t have word on the “ FREE ” land deal. We have spoken again with the lady concerned and she seems willing to help us but we are waiting on a meeting with the proper government officials. We are asking continued prayer on this one. The old saying, “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is!” holds true in this deal. We do not want to accept something that will compromise our testimony or the Gospel and would appreciate your prayers. While Ann and Gabriel were here during their extended stay Ann discovered that she is with child! This is her and Jackson’s second and will probably be born in the United States. Thus making them a real Brasil vs. United States family. We don’t have any further details on the baby’s sex or due date but will keep you posted. World Cup – Most of the world is tuned in to the World Cup and excited about their country’s possibility of winning the golden challis. It is difficult being an American in Brasil. I want like crazy for the U.S....

Saturday was Green Day at Bible Club! My team worked really hard and because of their excellent effort we finally WON first place for the day. With that win came our first Gold Star! The only problem was that it was the last day of competition before the graduation ceremony to Delta Sector. That happens next Saturday. The kids memorized Ephesians 6.10-17 and all that can say it next week in front of everyone will be promoted to that new level of fun. Mother’s Day was special too. We had a great attendance for the second annual Dessert afternoon. There were sixteen mothers present and several family members. Dawn counted eighty-four total! The above pictures the kids giving their moms little presents that Joelma and Dawn had made for them The Lord is at work but the news is not all good. A mom raised her hand at the invitation on Sunday, two kids came to talk to me about accepting Christ on Saturday after club. Those are good signs. The bad news came when one of our faith...

Our Bible club has been exciting recently after nearly dying. We were down to around 25 kids when Alexandre came up with the idea of changing our theme. We went from “normal” club to Sector Alpha! Just like that. As I mentioned in a previous post we have a weekly Mission that we have to work on as a team. Last week’s task was to bring five kids with the same name to earn our 5000 points and complete the mission. Even though we fell one kid short we still had TWO Grazieles and TWO Jonatas. Three of the four were nearly yanked from their homes by our own Graziele (left). She is our little missionary and always ready to seek out that unknown kid. GREEN came close to winning our first Gold Star but the blue team took the day again. We had over 60 kids at club. The mission has already been given for this week and it included a bombshell for Sunday. All of the kids that came to club on Saturday had to return Sunday morning for Sunday School. EVERY ONE OF THEM or NO points were giv...

Have you ever been in such a sitution? This will date me but I remember my teacher walking into class to announce the president Kennedy had just been shot (I was very very young). I can still feel the tingle when I heard president George Bush (the first) draw his imaginary line in the desert sands. I remember hearing the news and then seeing the destruction on 9/11. In each of those I knew that I had witnessed something really important in our history. On Saturday, I think that I was a part of something really important in the history of Hope Baptist Church. Carlinhos had abruptly announced in Sunday school the week before that we were going to start a kid's club on Saturday (news to me)! The kids had responded postively. But kids have short memories (unless you've promised them a raise in their allowance or to pay for their college education). Anyway, the week went on and Saturday loomed. I wondered if we would have anyone come. I had mentioned it to several kids during the we...

When you are on a team of eight with no reserves in sight and two of your best players leave it is a rough blow. It could even be considered a killer blow. Last night Ed preached from Acts on the growth of the early church. He challenged our small congregation to the task of that type of Spirit lead growth. It was he and Jan's last service at Hope and their last as a part of the "team" which they have lead for nearly 20 years here in Sorocaba. Now the question comes, "What happens after the 'end of an era'?" Many times a team that loses a top quality player (or players) loses it's potential to win, or at least loses the winning edge. In other cases we've all seen teams that have grit their teeth, rolled up their collective sleeves, and worked even harder to win, and have succeeded at just that, winning! As I observed our service last night I watched with bittersweet emotions. Realizing that life is change. That is one part of life that makes it i...

Saturday we had the double blessing of having the quarterly youth rally (Hope, Calvary, New Life, and Bible Baptist of Jundiaí) at our church. We had 40 young people present for games, fellowship, and snacks. e also had missionary pastor Divino from Mozambique Africa with us for an evening mission challenge. With the addition of the adults for this special service we had over a hundred present to hear of the work in Africa. It was a challenge for our people who have never been exposed to a real live missionary (other than us Americans). Divino is a Brazilian who felt God's call and has really pioneered the field of Mosambique for our movement. There were several testimonies given in our Sunday morning worship time of the blessing received from that challenge.

Seminary and excitement are two words that don't seem to go together. Unless, that is, you are really excited about serving the Lord. Ronaldo has really been realizing God's call on his life lately. His salvation story is really incredible and I'll have to have him share it with you in a future update. God brought this man from the brink of destruction to Salvation as only He can and Ronaldo is seeking God's perfect direction and will for he and his family. He lacks two years of seminary training and would like to complete that at our seminary in Curitiba as soon as God opens that door. Currently the family is living on a shoestring ($384 per month!) so God's provision will definitely be needed. The other day he called me and said, "Pastor, I had the day off today and said to myself, 'I'm not going to just sit around and do nothing today. I'm going to hand out tracts in my neighborhood!'" So for the next few hours he did just that and had t...

For five months my Juniors have been saving their nickels, quarters, and dollars, to buy a special Bible for a missionary. It is the Child Evangelism Bible, recently translated into Portuguese, with tons of resources in it. It is an excellent tool that every missionary (or Sunday school teacher for that matter) should have. The cost? R$98.00! That is more than most of them have ever seen in their young lives. During the weeks of saving it has been fun to watch them counting the change, adding it up, and being anxious to give more. The day finally came, last Sunday, when we reached our grand total goal of R$101.50! So, I set a time for the class to go into town to pick up the special gift. There is a really nice little bookstore called Imago Dei (the Image of God) which has many good books and several that I would love to be able to purchase for our class library. We're praying to that end, that God would open someone's heart for a book purchase. Anyway, we went to the store an...

We recently had puppies! Five furry fluff balls were born just two weeks ago and they are growing in such a way that leads us to believe that Sheba crossed with a St. Bernard. We know that she didn’t because we have seen few St. Bernards since our arrival ten years ago. The puppies are, however, growing quickly. Of course one of their days equals one of our weeks, doesn’t it? Lately they are beginning to take steps. Looking like little old men and little old ladies they wobble, stagger, and drop their way from one side of their box to the other. Unlike little old people we know that their time of running and jumping is yet ahead. They are learning to walk one step at a time. This is similar to church growth. It happens gradually. Though I often want to see instant results it doesn’t happen that way. We take our first wobbly steps then fall flat on our face. We get up and try again only to take another nosedive. Praise the Lord our church has never really taken a stumble. We continue st...