We're Back!

After almost a month of traveling around FAR from the internet, we are so happy to be back! Not only are we glad to be back to the internet, but also our home, our normal ministry, and our routines.
We have been busy over the past weeks with many different things - some ministry related, some family related, and some just for fun. We've had lots of ups and downs, times of refreshment, and times of total exhaustion. But rather than retell it all in one entry, I'm going to take this entry and at least the next one to fill you in using lots of pictures we've taken.
We are so glad to be back in touch with you and if we haven't gotten back to your email yet, we will VERY soon!

To begin catching up, I'm going start to with a bunch of pictures from our 10 day ministry trip to Tocantins, Brazil. Tocantins is one state over from where we live in Brazil and we went to a small community called Colmeia. The trip was exhausting and in a very hot place (over 106 F without air conditioning) but it was definitely worth it for the ministry opportunities that we had.
You might remember that originally the plan was for me to work with a ministry to teens in this small community and Jeyson was going to work with evangelism to adults. However, when we showed up at the meeting place in Anapolis, we discovered several people from the teen ministry team backed out at the last second. The leader was ready to cancel the teen program since we would be so short handed, but Jeyson and a few others chose to join the team and we continued on with the plan. Above is a picture of us with a bunch of teens that came out to our program. This was just after a huge water fight.

The outreach plan for teens was pretty simple. We partnered with a local church in the community and invited their teens and all the teens from the community to participate in a week of activities. Each morning and afternoon we met in a nearby building and spent time with the 25 teens who came out. We did all types of activities. Here I was teaching the girls how to do a little craft.....

And we played lots of games.....
(Here is Jeyson leading some fun with paper airplane games)


And of course Brazilians LOVE soccer! We played until the ball split open and eventually popped! They even played a bit longer just kicking around the popped, deflated ball!

Then each time we led the teens in an Evangelistic Bible study. Each day we addressed a different question - Who is God? What is the Bible? Who is Jesus? etc. About half of the teens were not part of the group from the local church. These Bible studies were a great opportunity to present the Gospel to them over a whole week rather than just one quick session. They were really able to understand the big picture of our faith.

Then to address the group of believing teens, each day we would also present a skit about an issue they might be facing in their Christian walk. We then had an open discussion with them and challenged them to step-up in that area of their life. (Jeyson is in the blue shirt on the left)
(Jeyson is in the photo above with his back to the camera in the blue shirt)
One of the most important parts of the week though, was just chatting one on one with the teens. This girl above, Isabella, was a teen who came out almost every time. She was not a believer and I was able to build a relationship with her and share the Gospel with her very clearly.


Here we are with several teens from the church who we became particularly close with during the time. It was so sweet that several sadly asked if we could stay for another few weeks and spend more time with them.

In addition to the teen ministry, there was also a group involved with ministry to children in the community, a group who did door to door evangelism to the adults, and a medical/dental clinic where people could come to receive treatment and hear the Gospel.

Then each evening a big screen was set-up in a different place and the whole community was invited out to watch a movie about the Gospel. Jeyson was in charge of setting up with the movie, which meant he had to run from the teen ministry to the place of the movie with all of the equipment and get it all set up before the community arrived. He was exhausted by the end of the week!

Depending on the location, it is not always possible to stake the polls of the screen into the ground. They had to get creative, and one time the screen was even attached to a soccor goal, but it worked!

I was shocked to see how many people came out to such a simple event! One night there were over 100 people there. People brought their own chairs and lined the streets. After the movie each night, many people came to talk with people from our team. We were able to share the Gospel and put them in the care of the local church we were working with. It is amazing how many people here are ready and anxious to hear the news of Jesus Christ.

This man sat on his bike watching the entire movie!

The woman on the left and the one in the middle are from the local church.

When we tell people about these trips, we are often asked where we stay - a hotel? Not quite! We stay at different places, sometimes a school or community center, but in this community we stayed at the small, humble church itself. Here is one of the bedrooms (actually a Sunday school type room) where 10 women slept. The men slept in the church sanctuary itself - putting several pews together to form a bed.Since we're married, here's our hotel room! We borrowed a little 2 person tent so we could stay together. It was so tiny we couldn't even keep our luggage inside, but worth the effort :)Here's the church kitchen where all of the meals were cooked - right outside. We had lots of typical Brazilian food everyday, including rice and beans once or twice a day. Most of the cooks were ladies from the church who gave up the whole week to cook outside in 106 degree weather for us! It was very humbling.Here's where we ate all of our meals and had a morning devotion.
Here is one of the bathrooms.

Here are two girls from our team praying together.

Wow what a week! Each night as we went to sleep in our little tent, we could honestly say to each other than we gave absolutely everything we had that day. It was incredible to see how God opened doors to share the Gospel and how (as imperfect as we are) God used our lives to challenge and encourage teens in their faiths.

There is so much more to tell but it would be impossible to say everything. Next entry I'll post some more pictures of everything else we were up to these past weeks.