july summarized

So this crazy month of JULY is A L M O S T over! It's hard to believe what all has been accomplished in these few weeks. We spent a week ministering with our church family from the states and being tremendously blessed by each of them.

I was told my crohn's disease is in "remission" (I still think God's just healing me but whatever) so that's a HUGE praise! We have a new place to call home that we love and in case you didn't see from the earlier posted pictures we have a HAMMOCK. Yes, indeed, it is the simple things that make me REALLY happy.
We experienced PROMIFE, an evangelistic camp for youth here in our city that has opened many doors for discipleship!

We were able to connect with many of the m's from Brazil. The kids got to make tons of new friends doing bible school with FBC Oveido and Mike and I have DIRECTION for where we will be living in six months!


We also had the opportunity to worship with a new body of believers here in Ribeirao that we look forward to working with soon.
Needless to say, it's been a busy month...hence the lack of earth shattering blog posts from this side of the equator. BUT I promise to make this site a priority now that things are slowing down a bit. I know how important connecting with all our friends and family back home is. Your prayer support is invaluable to us.

Once we finish language school here in this city we will be moving to Sao Luis, Maranhao. It is a very old city with a lot of history.


We will be working with the Quilombolo people. Please begin to pray for these peoples that will soon be such a huge part of our lives. Pray for fertile soil there and that we’ll be able to shine the light of Jesus to these peoples. Pray that we can persevere through our language learning so we can be effective in our work.The 3 young men are still growing and learning each new day but if they don't stop correcting my Portuguese I will be sending them home to their grandparents soon! ha They will begin school next Monday and will have some new American friends there this semester for support. Continue to pray for their hearts to embrace this nation!

the view from the balcony

Jacarei

We spent the last week in Jacarei working with a team from our home church in Lexington, Kentucky. We worked with missionaries Russ & Diane Dean and Patrick & Ann-Janel McClure at Haven of Hope Children's Home. We had an amazing time with old friends and new ones as well. We were able to witness God working in the lives of many people as they came to faith in Christ. It was wonderful to see how God used even our children to help translate for the team.

We were also completely humbled by how HE used a body of believers, CPC, to minister to our hearts in ways unimaginable. We were loved on and prayed over continuously throughout the week and all five of us have returned to our work here in Ribeirao with renewed vigor. They brought enormous amounts of supplies to us including several HUGE bags of baseball equipment for an upcoming ministry that I'll fill you in on soon, TONS of peanut butter, fishing poles, Twizzlers and Blow pops, books, and just to give you a little idea of HOW good they were to us, I had Dr. Pepper with my dinner tonight! Lots more to share but I'm exhausted and it's REALLY late here...