May Update!

May Update! The days fly by and before we know it we are caught in the middle of the year! It seems like each passing year causes the years to go by faster than before! (Does anyone else out there feel the same way?)

Well to our surprise when we went back this month we found our house out of order, not bad but enough to know that someone had invaded our house!

After we called our friends to help pray for us (as it was quite hard for my wife, Oli) we discovered little feet marks over the wall and only stayed up in the upper part of the house. The monkey opened lids, got oil and poured it all over my motorcycle! Prolly thinking that it was gasoline and wanted to fill my tank up! Got into the chocolate and tried the different ones, got a glass candle and stuck up top! Well you know, it seemed like the work of some skilled person who was trying to make us discouraged, especially after being broken into once and an attempt again. Well thankfully Oli's two cats kept a good eye on things and didn't let the monkeys get to the lower part of the house! =D

Here is the English version of the CONPLEI video! Over 400 Indians from 10 tribes getting together, here in Brazil, to have a time of communion and hearing of God's Word! We are needing your help! If you can't give anything, there is one thing you can do! That is watch the video and share it with at least 5 people!

This month we had a big worship time over in Amarante and it was a blessings as many people from different tribes came together to sing and testify and sing to the Lord!

It went till 1 in the morning as there were many singers! You got to give them all an opportunity! =D

Missionary João did a great job!

We started Bible studies in our tribe! There are about 12 students! Pray for them that they will be able to comprehend and for the teacher! They will be doing it Saturdays and pray that there won't be many interruptions as there is constant interruptions, events that go on that we have to cancel and postpone it for another Saturday!

This month was our friend and brother in Christ Birthday. We did a little surprise for him. He cried as he shared that he never had a BD party and at 22 years of age it was his first! Most of them never had one!

We got together with the teens...

To study Proverbs and...

Cut out the letters and past them on papers....

It took a while but it was a nice time as we had fun doing it!

Oli playing with the kids while it was raining!

Teaching them to make little boats...

Oli got a teaching position to teach out in another tribe 5 km away. Pray for safety as we go and come every day....

It will be a blessings for them because most of them at 10 12 years of age still can't read or write. Plus a little extra $$ will be nice.

We had a visit from a Missionary from Africa! His testimony and story was inspiring and Challenging! I hope you and your church constantly invite Missionaries to share and show what they are doing in the ministry and what God is doing!

A picture afterwards....

Ahhhhh...this man here. If you don't know him yet, my! What an inspiration he is! At 78 he is still carrying on the work. A linguistic, who learned Portuguese in 2 1/2 months and learned the Indian Language in 6 years. Translated the Bible in 40 + years, he is back to to correct the Bible translation he did over the past year. He comes once ever year or 2 to check his work with the Indians. This man speaks and sings fluently in the Indian language and when he does you think it was an Indian that was.

He came along with his daughter, Andrea and her husband Mike! They have left and he will stay on in another tribe to continue on. Once done he will come and spend his last week in June with us!

Lunch time! Along with our co-workers Fernando and Ms. Louis.

I went to Amarante to drop them off...along the way we went to visit some old friends of his in another tribe!

Love this picture!

The work continues!

We got together with over 80 kids so U. Stan could tell them a story in the Language! That night we had 2 more church meetings! It was tiring but lots of fun!

Blessings and thank you for all of your love and support in our lives! We pray that God will bless you and encourage you in every way!

Denis 4 the Baileys in Maranhão

God is Moving!

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.

March Update! 2nd Update 2013

A little change on my blog. I am looking for a new look and a way to make it easy to navigate! Tell me what you think............

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Here is a beautiful sunset from the mountain overlooking the tribe!

A view from the mountain, looking down to the tribe.

With a powerful zoom I can zoom in on the church building.

We have began an Awana like program with the kids to memorize verses, books of the Bible and much more!

As you can see the kids off in the distance shy and timid. This was the first meeting with them to explain what we were going to do.

Here was the first night to begin the games and memorization! It rained like cats and dogs. But that didn't stop us and we had a small group.

The group super excited!

The first 5 books of the bible!

The church building has been such a blessing as we have a larger place to gather and do events and to stay out of the rain! Still lacking the flooring and we have to carry all the equipment and chairs by motorcycle to every event we do.

Oli doing a little dance with the kids. =) The kids love her and love to do dances.

Game time! When Mom and Dad came back they brought a several books back given by Pastor James Blewett! Thank you Pastor James as they have been a great tool in coming up with amazing games!

We have not only been doing it in our tribe, São José but in 2 other tribes and we are aiming to get a few more but one is a distance of 100 km! This amazing group is in a tribe called Campo Alegre. The chief of this tribe is on the right and has been very friendly and open. He wants us to come. He isn't one to show emotion but I sense he is excited about these events.

There is such a pureness, innocence and excitement so beautiful that it has just captured my heart. This is the smallest (there is one smaller then this one that just started out but is really far!) of the tribes and they have been asking for missionaries for so long and it has been hard for me to get there because of the distance and the quantity of tribes to go to. They are a tribe that works all day in their garden's to not go hungry and at night they are so tired that it is not a good idea to do a meeting, it is hard to find the right way to be able to reach them and have contact with them. This event with the kids has been a powerful tool in having more contact with them and winning their hearts.

Here we are in the other tribe called Jerusalem. We are teaching the Bible verses in the Language which has been great so they can learn to read and write at a younger age.

The guy with the microphone participated in a memorization event that my mom had done many years ago and learn to read. He is an amazing person and desires to know the Lord and serve him! He and his wife have a call on their life to be missionaries.

This guy here is Fernando and is working along side us as a co-worker and has been such a blessing as we trade nights and do the meeting in the villages on the weekends. Here too is lacking a cement floor and it has ruined the sound equipment and sound box many times due to the dust created.

We are not only just concerned about the spiritual condition of the spiritual man but also of the natural realm around us as there is becoming less and less trees. My Uncle said once, is spiritual to plant trees? The first logical answer would be, "No". But he pulled out of the scriptures that God himself planted trees in the Garden of Eden in Gen. 2. The interest that is generated in us is the point of contact that we have while as kids and we become aware and concerned with our surroundings. So about 20 kids came along to plant 2 types of trees to recuperate the waters that use to run through hear all year around when my Dad was a kid.

Through these events we are accompanying them in their growth through keeping points and when they recite a verse or set of 5 books of the Bible they get a candy to stimulate there desire to participate. 

These kids are so amazing and fun to work with and play with!

Planting a native tree called Bacaba.

Here are the kids participating in these events...

Not all of them are contently with us...

Pray for them and us!

As God will lead and show us to reach out to them and through these events we will reach out to their parents and families!

Take these pictures and print them and post them on your wall, refrigerator, or cabinet to remember to pray!

We are using these pictures to accompany them and their progress...you might see a the same face or two.

The ages here is from all the way from 5 - 20 +

Thank you all for your love, support and prayers!

These are the men and woman of tomorrow and we must reach them before they grow up. Once grown up they will get married, have work, kids, studies and won't have time to learn about God.

Now is the time to evangelize and invest in the future!

We hope to do this in the other tribes as we are slowly building up to get a momentum and movement going here. Pray that God will give us wisdom and direction as the Workers are few and the Work is great!

Peace to you all!