Hey All! Check out this crazy couple. We decided to go all out Indian style! Just kidding. This is how the older people live and walk to their gardens and back. The man carries the gun or bows and arrows and constantly stays alert and attentive to any wild animal that might cross his path so they can eat a meal with meat. The woman follows behind with a basket on her head with any thing they bring from the garden.
Go ahead and print it out and remember to pray for us!
Well, there is actually no monkeys to get in my front yard.
Once again our month was full of activities and as God is moving and
working in such amazing ways that we will never begin to fathom all that
He is doing. I was counseling this young man as he and his wife split through a miss understanding and am praying that he and his wife will get back together. He wants to get back with her and we are praying that they will. He got up one night to sing and he sang, "Who can separate us from the love of Christ?" And towards the end he called his dad up and cried as he longs to have a deeper relationship with his Dad.
Here is Missionary Ms. Louis! She is so powerful and an amazing woman. Her life is a testimony to many to serve God no matter your age! I was translating for her.
Here in this picture is a church over in another tribe that broke off from ours over 2 years ago called Jerusalem. They built this church with out my being there and on their own they did it! It is one of the first Indiginous people's to build their own church with no missionary present in the tribe.
Me having a meeting with them to encourage them and get them to capture the vision of small group meetings and the importance of it because in the Church Meetings there is never space and time for everyone to get up to share and speak. The vision of the Church we are currently working under is to have small get together so they can share and pray with one another.
This Easter weekend now we had a Youth conference....
It was hard work because we hosted 37 Indians from 6 villages at my Mom and Dad's house. I with out thinking let anyone who wanted to come and who could make it come! Later I counted sleeping places and there was only room for 23 people with out counting space to put their bags! But thankfully God had His eye on me! My brother Dave took the weekend off from school and allowed me to use the school building to have more space for people to sleep! Thanx Dave!
Many of them bought tents so we could accommodate more people! It rained every single night! The bedding and bed's got wet... =( But that did not dampen their spirits! They were so happy and excited to get to just be there! The guy on the left didn't have any money to come....some guy blessed him with the R$10 subscription and he didn't have any passage money and was thinking of coming to town by bike! That is a 90 km bike ride! But at the last minute God blessed him again so he could get in by bus! God is so good!
We don't have a big stove to do all the cooking so our Pastor lent us his. We almost didn't get it in time because of the rushness and getting all the pans, cleaning supplies, etc. Everything we got was borrowed and we were thankful for all the people who helped pitch in to contribute what they could!
Our structure is quite small and we are dreaming of being able to host people for the Woman's Conference in June and Men's Conference that will be in September. Pray that we will be able to get up some kind of building so people can use hammocks (the school won't always be available and many are not use to sleeping on beds) and have some kind of kitchen structure so we will be able to host these kinds of events!
A dear friend of ours helped us build these bathrooms, 3 shower stalls and 3 toiletries! (Thank you Mr. Frank!) If it wasn't for these bathrooms we would never have hosted as many people as we did. The youth pastor allowed us to bring 20 teens and they could stay at the church grounds about 20 miles out of town for a really low price. But I hated the though of only 20 because we have many tribes that want to come to these events and at the last minute some drop out for various reasons and then we run after those who wanted but they always tell us, "If we had known it I would have saved the money." When I started making plans I thought to myself, "God has given us these bathrooms then we are going to grow in what He has given us!" If those who really want to come and will do anything to come, even to sleep on the floor or come by bike, I want to make it possible for those kinds of people! To be honest I am a guy of not very great faith but some how I cut the limb and the tree fell and God kept us up!
It was packed out many nights as there was hardly any seats and 1500 shirts were all sold out! Many of the daughter churches from several states and many cities came together to listen and hear a Theme about Running Against the World's Standards, the Current. It really impacted many of our guys.
Oli, my wife and João, missionary from another tribe sang in the opening of the Saturday night Meeting with others, singing in many different languages! POWERFUL! Click here to see it in Youtube!
(Right) This group is from Amarante...
(Left) This group is from Jerusalem. The tribe that built their own church building that I showed up above.
(Right) This small group is from the State of Para, the tribe called Gavaião. More were suppose to come but because of the distance and expense many weren't able to come.
(Left) This was from the tribe that my wife and I are currently working in....
(Right) All of us together! It was a memorable time as we played games and had icebreakers to bring the group together. We gave them a class on how to use the toilet because the majority of them have never used it, the dangers of using public bathrooms and how the guys should use it, etc. Also we taught them to use a bath sponge and how the dirt gets in our skin that creates a weird smell and I wanted them to be able to hang out with the Brazilians and not to be embarrassed It was quite amazing as the next day they were all smelling really nice. They had a really nice time with the teens from the church as they would come up to talk with them and ask them questions. Most Brazilians are scared of Indians.
Thank you all for supporting us and allowing us to be able to pull together an event like this. If it wasn't for your prayer's and support this would never have been able to happen. I would like for you to pray with us so we can see some facilities built so we can host a greater amount of people.
