Runaway

A friend of Pat & Harold Hood (the retired couple that has been down here teaching this semester) is in town for a few days. It has been really nice to have her and it has been really neat to see Pat & Harold be the tour guide of sorts. It is always nice to see how other people perceive Brazil. Also, it is nice to see what we have shown to the Hoods cross over to them being able to show/tell their friend.

So, we were going around to a lot of the churches today just to show the Hood's friend the ministry. We were in the town of Guadalajara about ready to leave. Everybody was in the car and I look over and see a 4 year old child that looked like he might have down syndrome or something similar. The kid took one look at the car and headed straight for the back passenger door. I could see something was up and I thought he was going to start betting on the door but instead he opened the door and started to climb in to join us. I quickly stuck my hand in front of him but he had already managed to get one foot in the door and was trying to sit down. Some of the neighborhood kids saw what was going on and quickly came to my rescue. It took 4 of the other kids to finally get his leg out of the car. Pat Hood was in the sit next to the one the kid was trying to sit down on and I think she was so shocked she didn't know what to do. Something tells me that if I had let the kid come with us nobody would have cared that much. At least it struck me as sad that the kids parents weren't anywhere in sight.

The day was really good. We visited the churches of Guadalajara, Pauldalo, Tracuenhaem, Carpina, and Lagoa de Itaenga. (I might have miss-spelled the names) I took some video footage in Guadalajara of the new classroom construction and some footage in Carpina of Ricardo talking about how many of the church leaders came from the youth group at that church. I will eventually put those up on the World Renewal Brazil Blog.

Please pray for Lindsay because she is still having joint pain off and on. We are pretty sure it is reactive arthritis and we have already been to a good Doctor about it. Basically it can go away at anytime but it can also turn chronic. There isn't a treatment for it but anti-inflammatory medicines  help with the pain.

Halloween Birthday & Fun

On Jeff's b-day there was suppose to be a talent show for the English class in Lagoa de Itaenga (Ricardo's church). When we got to the church, Ricardo's daughter told Jeff "Jeff Jeff tem cake, tem cake." Which means we have cake, we have cake. When Jeff went down the stairs to the church the lights went out and back on again with everybody singing happy birthday. It was a great surprise!

Earlier that day Emily, Lindsay, & Jeff with the vocal assistance of Pat & Harold Hood made a fun video to show at the talent show. It was originally Emily & Lindsay's idea for the plot of this video. I hope you enjoy it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb6hoNG3uag

Prayer for Lindsay

Please pray for Lindsay because she has been having weird joint pain for about 2 weeks now. It wasn't a lot of pain for a while so we thought it would just go away but it has gotten a little worse. We have gone to see Dr. Santos (those of you who have been on a medical trip know him) and he has ordered some blood tests. We will be going tomorrow morning for the tests.

Please pray that Dr. Santos will discover why Lindsay is having this joint pain and find something that will take it away. It normally hurts the most in the mornings which makes it very difficult to get going and start teaching.

Tele is in the US right now, so don't forget to see him and hear more about what is going on here in Brazil.

Rest & More Work

Last week we had Monday and Tuesday off from school because of children's day and teacher's day. It is very strange that those two days are so close together. Technically teacher's day wasn't until Thursday but the school decided to stick them right next to each other. Because we had some time off we thought it would be a good idea to go to the beach. We have been trying to take the couple that is here teaching from Kansas lots of different places. We have been doing this partly to get used to driving more and to figure out how to get to all of these fun places. The beach trip was the same. We went to Porto de Galinhas which is the biggest tourist beach in the region. We stayed over night at a beach close by because it was a little cheaper. It was a very fun and relaxing time. I think we are all prepared to take Lindsay's parents there when they come here in late December.

God has been stretching me (Jeff) recently. I am so very thankful for my brother in Christ Pastor Ricardo. He always seem to try to challenge me and keep me growing. He asked me to preach at his church a few weeks ago and I always give the excuse that I am not a pastor and don't have the skills. But, I told him I would be willing to if I could make it more of a testimony/sermon. So, last week I talked about my life and how God brought me to Brazil. A lot of my life has revolved around the verse John 10:10: ¹⁰The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.. God has shown me in many ways that He wants to the best life for me possible. I talked about the time in my life that I finally gave up complete control of my life to God.
It sermon went well and it was encouraging to see how people responded. So, then Ricardo said that he was going to go to his first church plant at Guadalajara and asked me if I could preach the same thing there. This was last night. It was a lot bigger church but again I trusted in God and He worked through me while I was preaching. Normally I feel very ackward preaching but God gave me a peace. After I preached yesterday Ricardo asked me if I would talk at a youth conference they will have in November. He asked me to talk to a group of all boys about sexual purity. Now, that is a big difference of giving my testimony/ life story to actually preaching about sexual purity. But, God gave me a peace about saying yes and I have agreed to talk about that subject at the youth conference. Please pray for me about this. I will give you the dates later.

It took us a while to get back into the swing of things once we got back from the beach. I have been working on a video about Pastor Asseurio going to Africa. Tele will be presenting that video while he is in the USA. I will also put it online soon. I want to start a video mini series about the church and town in Lagoa de Itaenga. I am not sure if I will start that soon or wait a few months after I get some more video equipment.

Please keep us in your prayers.

Video update from the town of Lagoa de Itaenga (Pastor Ricardo's church)

I decided it might be a good idea to do a video update since I have started doing the video update "Tele Talk" for the ministry. I am not sure why I haven't done this type of thing earlier.




Here is the link to the video: Lagoa de Itaenga Video update
I recommend watching the video in HD

Life with a Car

Having a car now is such a huge blessing. I have never felt this much freedom/independence in Brazil before. It is finally starting to feel like we are here for a long time and that we are home. It is so nice to be able to take Pat and Harold hood (the teachers from Kansas) downtown and other places when they need a trip away. It still feels very weird driving in the car and knowing that I am not just borrowing the car but it actually is ours. This last weekend I went to Ricardo’s church on Saturday night for the youth program, then we went there on Sunday afternoon for the English classes. We also went again that evening for the church service. I am starting to feel like we are Pastor Ricardo’s groupies or something. But, we really love the ministry that he does and we are so happy to be able to help out that church plant.

A big part of having this car will be being able to go to the other churches and gather information about the ministries. My first stop will be Guadalajara early next month. I am going to try to bring back the Church spotlight section for the WRBrazil.blogspot.com site.

Lindsay has been super busy this semester. She is teaching full time at the school plus she has a teachers class where she teaches English to the international school teachers. Emily is splitting the load of that class with the more advances people with Emily and then Lindsay has the beginners. Lindsay & Emily are also teaching English on Sunday afternoons at Ricardo’s church. Then, Lindsay is taking 2 online classes from IUPUI. So, some days I feel like she never stops doing things. My schedule is a lot lighter but it seems like I do things at weird hours sometimes, like start a project at night when I hadn’t done very much that day. Generally I have class in the mornings on Monday, Tuesday, and Fridays. Then on Wednesdays and Thursdays I am at home working on the blog sites or websites or video project, or really whatever is going on at the time. There are a lot of peaks of tons of work then all of a sudden there will be nothing else to do.

Overall Lindsay and I are doing fine. Right now I have the car filled with ethanol in the tank because it is a flex car which means it can take gas or ethanol. The car has a computer in the dash that keeps track of KM/L and such but I am still trying to figure out how it works. I think the car gets about 8 km per liter. Which I have no idea if that is good or bad.

Fiat Palio

Back in Brazil

We are back in Brazil! It was a super fast trip only 13 hours to get here. I feel like we just took a long car trip to get here. We want to thank everybody that we were able to see during our trip to the USA, Thank you for being apart of our lives and taking the time to see us and find out what is going on with the Brazil ministry. We had a fantastic time meeting with people and being able to hang out with our friends. Julie Turner now Julie Landrum’s wedding was just perfect and made the trip complete. We wish Julie and Tim all the best as they start new lives together. We hope that you will make your home a “vortex of love” (taken from Julie’s fake vows).

When we got back to our apartment, I had Lindsay wait outside the apartment because she didn’t know that I had bought a futon for our living room (thanks to a donation). When I went to open our wood door the key just melted off into the lock. I barely had even turned the key. I called to Lindsay to stop Gilson (our ride) from leaving. Luckily he hadn’t left yet. It was about 7pm though and everything in town closes at 6pm. Gilson went down to the locksmith places and they were all closed. He took down all of the phone numbers though and came back to us. He went to call them and discovered he had no more credit on his cell phone ( almost everybody has pre-paid phones in Brazil) so thanks to my dad we still had Reais (Brazilian currency) in my wallet. I gave him R$10 and he was able to go to a drug store and buy credit. Thankfully some drug stores stay open later than normal shops. He finally got a hold of someone and then we told Gilson to go be with his wife, because before he dropped us off he dropped off his wife at the hospital because she thought she might be pregnant and had been throwing up. (we do not know if she is pregnant yet) So, Lindsay and I waited outside for the locksmith to show up. Lindsay kept speculating if it was the locksmith every time a car stopped near us. She never guessed right. Ok, to be fair she went to the bakery to get a drink for us when he arrived. The locksmith went up to the door and jammed in this metal key looking thing and started to wiggle it around so fierce that you would have thought he had fire ants on his hand. I couldn’t figure out if he was trying to pick the lock or was just hoping that he would randomly find a combination of moves that would open the door. He finally stepped back and said he needed a different tool. He went outside and walked the 100 feet to his shop to open it up and get this other tool he talked about. Lindsay and I went back outside and sat by the street again to wait for him. The next thing I know he comes walking up with what looks like a 3 feet long screw driver. It only took him 30 seconds to open our door with that monster of a tool. We were very overjoyed. He continued to mess with the lock more until he took the whole part out and said he would go make two new keys for it. R$50 later we were happily in our apartment with two new shiny keys. Gilson showed up again right at the end to make sure we got in. I still made Lindsay wait outside the apartment to make sure the place looked clean and the new futon looked good. When she finally came in she shrieked with excitement that we had a futon.

Today, we have been cleaning our apartment after finding some mold in a few places. We have yet to unpack but plan on doing that later this evening. We are at the Alcance right now, Lindsay is getting all of the updates on how her classes have been going and what they have been doing, (Rachel Winzeler has been teaching her classes) and I have already helped two people with computer issues. We do not have internet at our apartment either because we haven’t paid our bill in a month or because our ISP is terrible. Either way we are switching to a more reliable internet service. But, that means we might not have internet for a week to 2 weeks at our apartment. I will be able to e-mail and such from the Alcance but I won’t be able to talk to people over skype.

Well, I think we will head back and finish cleaning and unpacking. I hope you enjoyed hearing about our adventures of trying to get into our apartment.

Jeff & Lindsay's Ministry Open House

Jeff is officially in the USA now so don't forget to come to our open house. If you can't make it please get a hold of us so we can get together with you. 317-215-7093 or Jeffroyturner@gmail.com

Come and hear what Jeff and Lindsay have been up to in Brazil. There will be Brazilian snacks and lots of sharing/fellowship time.

Date:	Sunday, July 26, 2009
Time:	1:30pm - 5:30pm
Location:	Steve & Ann Turner House 9925 E 12th ST Indianpolis, IN 46229

Groups etc.

From Missions Groups 09

I look really sleepy and Amish in this picture. Well, the groups have arrived and I am busy yet again. But, in this case I am very happy to be busy. The teachers have been getting ready for the end of the semester program and the Medical group has been packing medicine in individual bags for the medical clinics. The school program this year is all about the different regions of Brazil. I think there will be dances from all sorts of times and regions.
I have been very happy to realize that I can translate general things for the groups here and help them understand different aspects of the culture and food. I will be filming the program tomorrow and taking pictures, afterward some of us are off to Lagoa de Itaenga for the youth program there.
Please pray for the groups that are here and continue to pray for me as I am still missing Lindsay.

Lonely June

It is coming up on July and that means a break from school and the short-term trips start arriving. I (Jeff) have been a bachelor this month. Lindsay won't come back to Brazil until August 19th. I will be going to the USA around the 21st of July to spend time with my family and be in the US for my sister's wedding. We also really need to raise some more support while we are back.

This month has been rough because I miss my wife like crazy and I have had to teach most of her classes. I finally managed to sit down over the weekend and finish the new redesign of the ministry website. You can check it out at www.wribrazil.com. I put a lot of time and effort into it but I am still open to suggestions. I think I still have a small issue with the menu bar when viewed in Internet Explorer. Anyway, I have been trying to keep myself busy and well feed. I look forward to when the groups arrive because that will help keep my mind off of missing Lindsay. I think this will be the longest we have been apart since we got married over 5 1/2 years ago.

I think I am basically done with all of the big projects I have been working on. I am slightly still setting up a website for the Bible Seminary here. It is finished but just not on the right server. Which I am affraid that trying to switch servers is going to end badly. I think that is why I haven't done that yet.

Both Lindsay and I will be in Indiana from July 21st through August 18th so if you would like us to speak at your church or would like to know more about what we do here ect. we would love to fellowship with you. Like I said before we do need to raise more financial support, so if God is leading you in that way we would love to talk to you and let you know how to get involved supporting us financially and spiritually.

Lindsay going to the USA

*Lindsay is on a plane back to the USA
(Note from Lindsay before she left)

I am going to come back to the US this week Lord willing. My Aunt Pat, my dad's sister, is in the hospital with terminal pancreatic cancer. I was planning on coming back the first week in July to help take care of her, but the doctor is only giving her one more week. I'm just really shocked right now. Numb. I guess I was in denial about how bad things were. She had a big part in raising me. She lives up in northern Indiana on our family's farm alone. She helped care for my dad with my grandparents until they all three died. She doesn't have any children only nieces (3), nephews (2), and cats. So I need to be there.
She has a secure faith in God and so I try to play it down in my heart because I know know I will see her again regardless, but I don't want to wait 50 years to talk to her again in heaven. I need to be there with my family.
I'll try to talk to you again soon. Please pray for her and pray for everyone here. It's really hard to leave, you know, this is home. I feel like I am leaving things unfinished, my responsibilities, but I really feel have to go since I am able. I know I would regret not going for a long, long time. I am just going to change my plane ticket that was for July 8 to this week. Jeff will teach my classes for the remaining 4 weeks of class.

Tennis

From Tennis

The last two Sunday afternoons Jeff has been able to get to Recife and play tennis. Recife it the closest place to play tennis. Jeff is in the process of getting an estimate to build a tennis court at the international school. Which most likely will mean Jeff might be teaching tennis in the future. It was a lot of fun to be able to get to play tennis which just so happens to be right on the beach. This last Sunday David Moraes joined in on the fun.

Redesign

Last time I talked about how I wanted to redesign the official World Renewal Website. Well today you can get your first glimpse of what it is going to look like. It still has a long ways to go but the basic design is done. I also found a really nice RSS flash based feeder for the homepage. The right side is currently blank, but I plan on making a few catchy images that link to things currently going on. Like if it is summer time, have a link to Short-term trips. I haven't fully figured it out yet but I think it will end up looking good.

After looking over the original site and because of the link progression that I setup for the new site. I have a lot of information to add still. If anybody reading this is good at writing I could use some help in this area. Mainly to condense some of the things I already have and to create a few small sections. For example, the history section is giant and needs to be condensed to a size that a normal person would be willing to read.

Without any more delay you can check out the design at http://www.wribrazil.com/wribrazil/

Websites

I (Jeff) have been working this month on a lot of things for the international school. I finally got around to editing the videos from things like the Christmas play. I edited video from 3 different events and uploaded them to youtube. Then I put them up on the Internationalschoolofcarpina.com website.

I am still a novice when it comes to web design so these last few months working on two different websites has been a challenge. I feel like I am learning a lot about CSS and sadly a lot about how terrible Internet Explorer is. Please please use Mozilla Firefox. It is so much better and powerful. Even after making two websites I am not so sure I like doing it. Mainly because I like designing from a visual aspect but it is better to do things from just code. Anyway, the other website I designed with Roberto's help is www.engenho-verde.com. There is an English version of it, you just have to click on the US flag at the top left.

So, I was reviewing the WRIBrazil.com website. Which is the official ministry website. I am going to redesign it. Mainly because I didn't design it and would like a crack at doing that. So, if you have any suggestions let me know in the comments.

I few things that I know will improve the site:
1. Have a RSS stream of the blog site on the homepage
2. Simply the links
3. Have a non blocky design.

Passion of Christ Play

From Passion of Christ Play

On Sunday we went with Roberto, his sister, and Jessica to the Passion of Christ play. It was in a town called New Jerusalem that is 3 hours away in the interior of Northeast Brazil. The whole outdoor theatre is the largest in the world. There is 9 different stages. We got to the town around 1pm and had time to look around and eat. Then the doors opened at 4. They have a statue in the middle of the place of the guy who build the theatre. During the play when you are suppose to move to another location, the statue rotates and points to where you need to go.

It was a bit scary when we moved locations because I think there was around 10,000 people there. Besides the stage all you could see was people.

From Passion of Christ Play

Overall it was a very good experience, but it was a long day and made us tired.

This has been a crazy couple of weeks for Lindsay and I. First Lindsay got the stomach flu that was going around, which then turned into a bad cold. Luckily she only had to miss one day of school. There was some random saint holiday on Thursday so she was able to use that time to recover. Then our internet (which has never been super reliable) went to lower than dial up speeds slow. So, it got so bad that when we called people using skype they couldn't hear us at all. It was really annoying because we were trying to make sure Jessica got all of the right stuff from my Dad to bring back to Brazil. It ended up that they had to much stuff and went over weight and paid a fee of $150. Since they couldn't get a hold of us my Dad ended up paying for that fee (bless him).

I am very grateful to have my father helping from the USA with the Brazil Ministry. He is going to go full time in the ministry this next semester, which is going to be a huge blessing for me and for the overall ministry. This is going to take a lot of faith for him and my mom. It also means that they are going to have to raise support. So, please be praying for them and be asking God is this is something He wants you to help with.

Now I sit and wait for the internet people to come and hopefully make my internet the speed I am paying for.

English Class Outreach

Lindsay has started teaching an English class as an outreach project at the Community Church of Lagoa de Iteanga. We go every Saturday and then every other Saturday we have a youth group program during the evening. Last week we had about 14 people from ages 18 to 30 at the English class.
Please continue to pray for this Church and this outreach.

Washing Machine

Lindsay and I feel so blessed to have wonderful people in our lives. We want to thank everyone who gave us money for our washing machine. It took us a while to finally buy it, because we wanted to make sure we were getting the one that would last for the money that we were paying.

Washing machines here in Brazil are expensive. We finally got our for R$1,025. which is around $450. Most of the washers we were finding before God provided this one were around R$1,400.



We were told that Brastemp was a good brand that will last. We have been taking our laundry to the Alcance every Thursday to was clothes. This has been difficult because we don't have a car, so we had to take a bunch of bags of laundry on the bus with us. Most of the time we ended taking stuff back to the apartment at different times. Roberto has been really awesome and giving us rides home a lot also.

So again THANK YOU for your gifts!

Mini Vacation/ Carnaval

Lindsay and I got a week off of teaching school because of Carnaval. Carnaval is basically Marti Gras also know as Fat Tuesday. Brazil goes nuts for Carnaval, that is why we get a week off for a one day holiday. Generally all of the Christians just hide during the events. So Lindsay and I did the same. On Monday and Tuesday we went with Pastor Ricardo Silva and his family to join the Community Church of Amexias for a camp. Camps here basically mean that people will rent a house either near the beach or away from the city and swim at the pool, play volleyball, and have other activities.

From Amexias Church Camp 09

Amexias had their camp in Caruaru which is a town in the interior of Brazil. It is further inland than Amexias is. The camp was a lot of fun. When we arrived I played volleyball, then we had dinner. At night we had a worship service. A little later that evening we had funny skits. Ricardo had recruited Lindsay and I to help with that. I think he gave me the biggest speaking part there was. It was a little weird and I almost didn't do it because it was all in portuguese. But, I got over my fear and God is good. I was able to do the part just fine and it made it even more funny because of my bad accent.

This is Loraina Pastor Assuerio's daughter. Amexias Church Camp 09

Pastor Ricardo and I relaxing. Amexias Church Camp 09

These guys were crazy. They cooked that pigeon they caught. Amexias Church Camp 09

Lindsay being all cute. Amexias Church Camp 09

Ricardo's daughter Rebeca being all cute. Amexias Church Camp 09

Happy Valentine's Day, America!

Another busy week has come and gone. The school days flow like normal now. The International school has more similarities to a high school campus than a grade school. Children have many different teachers that they visit from class to class. The younger kids have a teacher who stays with them, but the older students move about with less help.
We've received about 99% of the books we need for the English classes. It's been a huge ordeal to get all of them and now we are just waiting for the three teacher's manuals.

I could write more, or I could leave you with some pictures.

Pictures it is.
Happy Valentine's Day, in the US.


Lindsay

Jessica, our newest English teacher.

Typical evening

There's a party in my tummy! So yummy, so yummy!

Foundations (all day kindergarten) with their teacher Paula!

Some of our awesome 6th and 7th graders!

So it begins...

The first week of school passed by quickly! Actually, all of January passed by quickly!
We spent the 17th through the 22nd with Jeff's dad and pastors from Community Churches in the US. They spent the week visiting churches and the three new church construction sites. That's right, we have three new buildings being constructed!

Jeff and I rode along a few times to visit the church construction sites and took pictures. Jeff filmed interviews with the pasters of many of the churches to show at BRCC. Someone at the church will be editing them together, we hope to get a copy back afterward and post them here. If not Jeff might just make his own edits and post them later.

This first week of school has been good even though we are still waiting on a lot of the English curriculum books to come in. Ordering books has been a long terrible process each year. This year we have been very blessed to have Emily Taylor helped research and contact the book sellers to find the best curriculum for what we need.

Jeff is now the Informatics teacher and he teaches seven classes. Basically first through seventh grades once per week. The first week went well. He is mostly teaching typing right now, since everybody seem to be bad at it. Third grade is a bit big. There are 13 kids and only eight computers. Jeff taught the older kids today and is enjoying those classes because he can teach a little more advanced stuff to them. Like the parts of a computer.

During the time that Jeff wasn't teaching he was working on the International School of Carpina website. This will be for the parents and people interested in knowing about the school. So it is in Portuguese and the content isn't all in the site yet, but he was mainly working on the layout and design. You can check it out at www.wribrazil.com/escola

Lindsay has kept herself super busy and a little stressed. She has been working on getting the school curriculum with little success. Like we said before Emily has been a big help with this.

Lindsay teaches the nursery class. That is right we teach English to toddlers, two years old in this class. She really enjoys teaching the babies and this year we have a really nice new classroom/playroom for them. Newly this year she also teaches the gradeschoolers a daily English class. The children are divided into two groups, older students (forth grade through seventh grade) and younger students (first grade through third grade). From there we divide children further into one of three levels. We don't want some students to feel slow or dumb so instead of telling them what level they are in we've given names to the classes. For first through third grade there are Otters (Lindsay's class), Moose (Jessica's class - she's our newest teacher from the US for the semester), and Okapi (David's class). For the fourth through seventh there are Heroes (Lindsay's class), Gypsies (Jessica's class), and Pirates (David's class). Lindsay also teaches History/Geography in English to each grades once a week in the afternoons and an English class for the teachers and staff. Since we are short staffed our English teachers plan and teach more than 22 English classes a week!

We haven't started helping in Lagoa de Itaenga yet because Pastor Ricardo is still on vacation. But, that has been good because that means we still have some downtime to "relax" (and plan more lessons)!

Please pray for good attitudes for us and the kids as we are teaching. Please pray for God to use us and protect us from evil (there has been a lot of spiritual warfare since we have gotten our visa).

Apartment Tour

We are all moved into our new apartment located downtown Carpina. It took a while to get everything we needed for the apartment because apartments in Brazil come with absolutely nothing. We had to buy our own seat for the toilet. We still need to buy a few more small things but it is pretty well done. Check out our video tour of the apartment.

Apartment Tour from Jeffrey Turner on Vimeo.
To view an HD version click on the link above.