Greetings from Brazil!Today I have a few hours of dead time so I figured it'd be smart to update the blog.

Sunday started week 4 of our trip and the halfway point for Brent, Randy, Cailin, and I while Nate and Bethany are going to be leaving us in 2 more weeks. It’s crazy to think that we only have a few more weeks to spend on this amazing trip before it will be over. The more time we are here the more I can see the good we are doing. Many of our readers are starting to spend a lot of time with us and some are starting to come to visit the church on Sundays as well. It’s amazing to watch God make our seemingly small daily efforts into something that could save a soul.

Sunday we went to another soccer game. One of the four local teams signed an all star forward from a club in Italy. Adriano brought a huge crowd of more than 70,000 to Maracana stadium. The stands were so full that we had to stand on stairs for the entire game. Even if we would have had seats we wouldn't have sat down because the entire stadium was standing on their seats waiting for the giant of a striker to touch the ball. We were all rewarded as he capitalized 2 times for Flamengo, ensuring the win 2-1. It was a very exciting game!

Yesterday we were on our way to Tijuca Forest when it started to rain as we got off of our first bus. Anderson, one of Brent’s readers who came along with us, works in the forest and told us it would be a very bad decision to continue into the forest because if it was raining hard where we were then it would be even worse in the forest. So our forest day is delayed until later in the trip and we spent the day at the mall. Barra (pronounced Baja) shopping is the biggest mall in South America (according to many, although Sao Paulo claims they have the biggest). Although it was very disappointing that the forest didn’t work we had a lot of fun in the mall.

Everything is going great and this week will probably be our busiest yet as we are still getting new readers and our schedules are all filling up very fast. Please keep us all in our prayers as we plunge deeper into friendships with our readers and try so hard to show them all the love of Christ every day.
In Love
Heath

Lost in Translation

ok, there are a lot of pictures, and they were a huge pain to organize, so I'm just going to give you a basic rundown of the pictures, and hopefully you can match up the captions with the pictures. hese first few are just pictures from around the building, just spending time with some of the teens and young adults, playing volleyball and soccer.

The next set of pictures are from our day off on the beach with Jefferson and Shrek. (Pedro)

Then there's a random soccer pic of lightning fast Brent.

Then you can see a picture of the boys family (pic of girls coming soon)

Next is the view of the favellas that you can see from the top of our hill.

Next picture was Brent having fun after a hard days work... unfortunate for Cailin.

Next picture... we were VERY tired after the 11 hours of flying and the 6 hour layover in Atlanta.

Then we have some pictures of the view from the top floor of the church building.

The next little bit of pictures are from the same day at the beach. The big group is a soccer team that Randy found working out, so he and Brent decided to jump in with them and take a pic.

The next few pictures really got switched around, but among them are Magno's baptism, more beach pictures, and a few from the Gringo vs. Brazilian soccer game.

We are finally here! Not even just visiting another country, but we’re actually here, acting as though we are Brazilians, kisses on each cheek, greeting the morning with “Bom Dia” “Tudo Bem”, and having churrasco (sounds like shoe-hah-shkoo), or as Adrienne puts it, “death by meat”, every day! We truly are
blessed to be here, it is very obvious that God is working through us and for us, and that He truly had big plans for us to be here. In this post, I just wanted to fill you in on some of the things that are happening here, the activities that we are getting involved in, the fun things we have been doing with the church here, and the amazing ways in which God has already been working. I will write about a few of these things, but many of them can be seen through the pictures that have been posted.

First things first, the most exciting news literally within days of us stepping on Brazilian soil, Magno made the decision to put on Christ in baptism!!! This obviously was not because of any of us since we hadn’t yet been there long enough to influence him, but none the less, it was definitely encouraging to know that this is the kind of church that we were stepping in to. A little background just so you all know how much this means to us, Magno and Elisangela are a new couple to the church who began attending about a year ago. Despite being new to the church and once more new to christianity, they have become very involved and offered to house us, so for our 6 week stay here, they are our adopted mom and dad!!! So it was amazing to see the baptism of the man who was soon to be our dad, and who is daily becoming more and more a very close friend to each of us.

We also have stepped into possibly the most warm, welcoming, and hospitable mission site that we could have found. We got off the plane and worked our way toward baggage claim, but we couldn’t find any of the missionaries at the entrance of the airport, so one of the men at the airport (who spoke no english) attempted to call the church for us, and eventually, through much laughter and confusion and help, sorted everything out and we finally met up with Daniel and Sergio, one of the missionaries and an elder. This truly is not a culture for introverts, and you should have a very strong stance and very small personal bubble if you want to ride the bus, but otherwise, this truly has been an amazing first few weeks.

I thought that you also might like to meet our host families. One you have somewhat met, and we also have a picture of all of us posted. Magno, Elisangela, and their 6 year old son Nicolaus decided that they were up to the task of taking us 4 boys into their home, treating us like their own kids. As you know, this young couple only recently became involved in the church, and Elisangela was baptized not long before her husband Magno. Jefferson and Dani, of which I don’t yet have a picture posted, chose to take on the feat of hosting the 2 girls, and so far have had a blast doing so. Jefferson just recently finished preaching school and became the minister at the church here, while his wife works at a physical therapist at the gym just 10 minutes walk down the street. The two of them are very fluent in English and have made out to be the perfect match for the girls.

But enough about the side comments, what about the work that we are actually doing? Total, we have taken on somewhere between 50-60 readers, most of them coming upwards of 2 and 3 times weekly, and ranging anywhere from learning basic words by a 1 hour session of charades to speaking fluently and asking us questions about conjunctions, transactions, and other English grammar that we don’t even know! It has been a blast through every situation! We have seen all different topics of conversation, some very light hearted and entertaining, and some more deep than you could ever dream of from a relationship built in 2 weeks. It’s very obvious that prayer has been at work here, and these people were truly ready for us to be here. Thank you so much to all of you who prayed and are still praying!!!! God really is using your prayers to make a difference in these people’s lives.

If you know about LST, then you realize that this really is the bulk of our time spent here, but we still have some spare time that we have been spending doing none other than... FUTIBOL! I have never in my life been in a place where you can take a soccer ball out into an empty parking lot, start playing, and wind up with enough people to play a full game of small field. It’s great!! So whenever we don’t have any readers and we’re not advertising trying to find more, we usually scrounge up a hodge podge of people from the church and get a soccer game going. It really has been an amazing way for us to connect with a lot of the high school/college age kids from the church. Even though we can’t talk, this is still one thing that we all have a common interest in and that we can all get together and build a relationship by playing together.

And just a little tid bit so that you can all be updated on what seems to be the popular thing to talk about, what have we been doing on our off days. It has been incredibly relaxed, but a lot of fun. The first day, we went with Jefferson, one of the missionaries, and Pedro to the beach. It was beautiful, and if you like the color red, so were all of our shoulders for the next 4 days... But the sun burn was well worth the time we spent playing in the ocean with Shrek (we’ve decided Pedro looks like Shrek) and Jefferson. That night we grilled American hamburgers at Adrienne’s house, another missionary, and had ascenola juice straight off of the tree. And the next day we went downtown to all of the street shops and street vendors and learned the joys of trying to buy something strictly using the only language we both knew, counting on our fingers. It has definitely been a fun experience so far, and we are enjoying every minute of it.

I apologize if this seems like a long post, but there are a lot of things that happen in 2 weeks when you are doing the best job in the world. I mean, after all, who wouldn’t want to share a message with someone that could change their life, give them passion, desire, and a real hope for the future. And some call this work? Well, it truly is exhausting, but there is no doubt that each and every one of us are loving every minute that we are here, and wish for nothing else than to continue doing the work here that it’s obvious that God has planned for us to do. Thank you for your continued prayers, and we will continue to pray for all of you in return out of thankfulness.

Sincerely,
The Gringos

and another picture of Heath and our host's son, Nicolaus in their new Brazilian soccer jersey's

Brazil! Soccer! Mission Work!

Hi! Greetings from Brazil!


Wow. What a wonderful, crazy, intense few days! I cant believe less than a week ago I was sleeping in my bed in Colorado still packing for this trip. The plane flight was amazing. Very long but very good too.



When we arrived we got to meet two of the missionaries who work at the Church: Daniel and Adrinne. Dan drove us back from the airport through heavy traffic and then we met Adrinne and she got us started on checking things out around the church and neighborhood. Fátima the churches cook, made an amazing lunch of beans and rice (it comes with pretty much any meal) and some amazing garlic beef.



Then in the evening we went to our host families. Magno, Elisângela, and Nícolas host me and the other guys and Jefferson and Daniela host the girls. I have not been to Jefferson´s house yet but he lives in an apartment complex. Magno and Elisângela live on a giant hill that we walk up and down every morning and evening. We will certainly be in better shape thanks to the walk when we get back!



Last night was the info meeting for LST. In my little group 4 people showed up and all scheduled reading times with me as the others also scheduled times to read with their readers. Randy gave a short speech on what the group was here to do and how the readers should go about scheduling times to come in and read.



That night we went to a Flamengo futebol (soccer) game. The stadium can hold around 100,000 people when filled to the max. It was a dream come true. I was like a little kid at Christmas on the way to the stadium. Probably the most fun I can remember at that soccer game.



This morning I had my first reader come in. Filipe and I read for about 45 minutes until he had to go to study for his class. He was a lot of fun and I can tell we will work well together. I have at least one more reader coming tonight so we can read together. I'm sure it will go just as well.



The mission trip is going great! I love you all!

In Him

Heath