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We went to City Hall today and discovered that the lots can be used for a church building. We then talked to our lawyer and he made some crucial calls for us. He confirmed what the guy at City Hall had told us. We’re excited and trembling at the same time. I always sweat the details of a big ticket purchase. I think of all of the extra costs that will be involved like: taxes, electric, water and building upkeep. Each will require money that we don’t have. We had a business meeting just yesterday after church. If you would have seen it you might have compared it to one of the old Little Rascals movies. You know the ones where the club is meeting in their old broken-down hide-out and the kids are calling all of the shots. It was something like that. Alexandre was directing the meeting but it was the kids who were voting for and against each item on the agenda. I went back to that scene on the hills of Judah when David met Goliath. I wonder what that looked like? Did it seem silly to t...

Sunday evening just after the service ended and we were leaving the building, I asked Dawn for the van keys. She quickly went for her purse. I chatted with several as I waited for her return. If you know Dawn’s purse you know that it has many compartments. I always think of Captain Kangaroo’s pockets when thinking of her purse. Captain Kangaroo had deep coat pockets which always revealed anything and everything strange. He seemed to have whatever was necessary for every situation in those bottomless pockets. Dawn quickly came back with a somewhat befuddled look on her face. That is NEVER a good thing unless I'm playing a joke on her. She couldn't find the keys. The whole church quickly became involved in the search. We looked everywhere. Suspects quickly began to come to mind. Could it be that "so and so" took them? She was a tad mad at me tonight? Did someone play a mean trick and chuck the keys in the weeds? What happened to those keys! As we all were scramb...

Tais Give me just one job....  It was my job to fill the baptistery at Calvary. We used that church because we don't have our own yet. I was told that it, "takes ALL day long to fill up." I turned on the water at 11:00 AM and let it run. Later that evening I returned to turn it off. As I entered the darkened building something didn't look right. It almost looked as if the tank was empty. But I heard water running. I stuck my arm into the "empty" tank only to find it to the BRIM and overflowing onto the platform! Praise the Lord for wet-vacs. The carpet was still damp on Saturday but that didn't stop the girls from being baptized. The Word was preached and both sets of parents heard the Gospel.  We saw the Lord work in a special way earlier in the week too. Wednesday was Children's Day. It is a BIG deal hear in Brazil and we had an activity for the little ones. There were several kids who made decisions to receive Christ. The Lord gave us perfec...

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...

Yesterday, Tuesday, we had our first Bible study with Marcia (left to right: Dawn, Jonatas, Marcia and Joelma, our coworker). She had informed me earlier that it was her birthday and so Dawn made a birthday cake. She celebrated her ___ years with the FIRST (yes first!) birthday cake she has ever had! Man that is hard for me to believe. I’ve been spoiled with about 56 in my lifetime! During the study she related time and again how confusing her religious past has been. At one point she said, “ I have been in church since childhood and NONE of my pastors have ever told me how I could have the Holy Spirit’s peace until you all shared it with me just two weeks ago !” She also had many good questions about spiritual things. Marcia has four sons. It was her teen son João that got baptized just three weeks ago and we are seeing God begin to move in this family. The oldest, Josué (Joshua), is a big 250 lbs teddy bear and is in my juniors Sunday school class. He just LOVES his teacher and...

  We had a great weekend of activities at Faith Baptist of Sorocaba. Saturday night we took six teens to a youth rally at Hope. There were over a hundred teens there to hear a great challenge from the Word. Earlier on Saturday afternoon we had over fifty kids at Bible Club. Many had participated in club in the past but had left for one reason or another. The club's new theme has a "Mission Impossible" type emphasis. Each week the three teams get a "Mission" that they have to work out during the week. On Saturday they come with either a successful or a failed mission. Success brings boo-cu points and failure brings latrine duty! The Green team (mine) did really well Saturday but we were edged out by the blue team 1300 to 150. The Red team got latrine. During club a little boy showed up that I wasn't exactly excited about having. He is a little "demon" or at least that is what I've heard. His name is Alex. He lives next-door to our newest ...

Have I explained our new ministry? We are in a new church plant. It is called Faith Baptist Church (Igreja Batista da Fé) and is on the north side of the city of Sorocaba. Our other churches (New Life, Calvary and Hope) are sending teams each Sunday to help with Junior church, song leading, special music and the like. This last Sunday at church Aline from Hope said to me that her husband Cristiano didn't know that we were working in the new church plant! I was a bit shocked with her statement but it made me wonder... "have I officially told anyone?" I thought that I had but if you are not aware, let me explain. This work is a bit different than our first two works. In those we were in a team of Americans planting a church in Brazil. This time we are still planting a church in Brazil but we are a part of a Brazilian team. Our coworker Alexandre is the team leader and also less than half my age. He came to Christ in 1999 at our Calvary work and then felt God's call to m...

We had a busy week with the 18 man BJ soccer ministry team here from Thursday until Sunday afternoon. There were several exciting opportunities to share the Gospel and literally hundreds heard the message. Many were talked to one on one and several made decisions for Christ! (That is Gil with the kids from next door at right.) Wow! That was refreshing to write. Things around these parts are definitely getting exciting. Which makes it even harder to think about leaving for a year! Our Sunday school class had 10 kids for the second week in a row! And that with 4 visitors. Jose Carlos, a little boy I met while talking with the kids next door, and who basically lives on the street, brought his parents to church last night and both raised their hands for salvation! Carol, Ana Luiza's friend was back too and she also raised her hand at the invitation. Man do we have work to do. I am so thankful for all of your prayers and look forward to sharing what the Lord will be doing in the near fu...

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...

I went to do some odd jobs at the church last Thursday and as I worked I noticed four raggedy little heads peering at me from the crumbling fence that separates the church property from the "house next door" (the words are in quotes, because if you saw "the house" you would probably place the words between ? Marks). "Pasthdoor, comeer!" Thadeu, is three years old but he is still sucking a pacifier which makes his "three-year-old Portuguese even harder to understand. "Can we wide your bike?" I had ridden Jackson's bike to work and Thadeu and his siblings: Marcia, Eduardo, and Edson were enthralled! "Our dad had two bikes, but one of them boke and he gave the udder one away." For the next half an hour seven kids (Edson, Marcia, Eduardo, Samuel, Mateus, Jacklyn, and Maria Julia) took turns taking the Schwinn for a spin around the parking lot. I winced a few times as they whizzed by on a rapid rush down the ramp that runs beside th...