Please Pray for Children's Day

This Saturday, October 10, there will be somewhere between 400-500 children filling our Main Day Center to celebrate Children's Day.  Like our Mother's Day and Father's Day, Brazil has a holiday to celebrate children.  Restoration Ministries takes full advantage of this day with an annual party for the children they minister to year-round.  This year there will be great food and games, including a surf machine in the parking lot.  Also, it became apparent that I will be volunteered for every embarrassing thing until I learn Portuguese enough to know what exactly is going on in our staff meetings.  I am going to be playing the part of Sampson in the skit, and its going to be goofy, and I have to learn my lines in Portuguese of course.  Please be in prayer that through the fun, excitement and the laughter (at me playing the part of Sampson) that these children will feel the love of Christ and the Lord will speak to them through the Gospel presentation.

Teen Night Extravaganza!!!

Every other Saturday night, teens from the five different favelas come together to fellowship, play some games, hear a message, sing some worship songs, dance and of course eat. This past Saturday, ice cream was the big menu item, and it pulled in the biggest crowd yet, 68 teenagers. One of the leaders started a series based on Rick Warren's book, "Purpose Driven Life". It was a cool message for a lot of these teenagers to hear that they are not an accident, they were created by God for a purpose. You can click on this link to see some more pictures:

http://www.photoshopshowcase.com/ViewAlbum.aspx?AID=251747&AT=3

My First Day in São Paulo

I arrived at midnight on Sunday and was greeted by two of the leaders of Restoration Ministry. I will be living with Wellington, the worship Pastor, and his son Victor, who is 11 years old. We stopped at Habibs on the way back from the airport and scarfed down some mini pizzas before our 3am bedtime. It turned out to be more of a nap time, because Wellington woke me at 7:30am to go pick up the founder of the ministry, Paulo, and the President of WorldVenture, Hans Finzel from the airport. It was quite a treat to have Hans come to visit Restoration Ministries the first day that I was here.
Speaking of treats, after the RM staff meeting where I met the other staff members, we all went to Boi Brasil...a Brazilian Steakhouse. In case you dont know about these, you eat all the perfectly cooked steak you want, as servers bring around 1 of 20 different cuts of beef, lamb, chicken and pork. It was sooo good! In Minneapolis Kristy has taken me to a Brazilian steakhouse where it costs $45 dollars per person, but in Brazil it only costed about $10 per person. I could not have asked for a better first lunch.
Speaking portuguese has come pretty naturally for me, much better than I anticipated. Everyone seems to be mildly impressed with my language skills, but I still have a long way to go.
I did not arrive at home until 8:30pm, so it was a great but long day.

Flight Complications

Sorry to everyone who has not received my email yet of my update letter. Things were extremely busy for me as I had to move out of my house and pack for an entire year before I left this past Saturday.
My flight was cancelled on Saturday night in Chicago, so I had to wait an extra 14 hours to arrive in Brazil. The airlines put me up in a Crowne Plaza with a sleep number bed and a 40-inch flatscreen TV, so I couldnt complain about one more night of luxury and rest. It was actually really nice to have more downtime for prayer as I prepared for Brazil.
The 10 1/2 hour flight was really long, but it was good other than having the bathroom door opened at an inconvenient time. I was not quite finished in the lavatory when someone was not satisfied by the red occupied sign or the door being locked. So after nudging the door a couple times, all the sudden he hit the door so hard that the lock released and he saw me half naked. But that wasnt good enough either because he did it again after I quickly slammed the door shut and shouted WHOOOOAAAA! Good times on United Airlines.