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.

Merry Christmas!

Feliz Natal!

Priceless

Plane trip to Argentina then to Brazil: $3,500
Lawyer fees to make sure our documents were good: $1400
Mostly hidden fees paid for getting a work visa: $750

God blessing every step of the way and providing what we need: Priceless

BRAZIL!

Jeff & Lindsay are in Brazil now!

We left at 6:30am from Buenos Aires, Argentina. We didn't sleep the night before because we had to leave the house at 3:00 am. We just stayed up and played Settlers of Catan and Dutch blitz. The plane flight was good even though what we thought was a direct flight ended up having 2 other stops. We went to Rio first then to Salvador. Thankfully we didn't have to get off the airplane.

It has just about been 24 hours since we have arrived and so far we have been recruited to run the sound system for the Christmas play on Saturday. We are also helping setup the paintings that the kids did. Jeff has already fixed the internet and a few other problems like a printer issue. So now we are taking time to unpack and organize.

Time for pictures from Argentina.
Burial place of San Martin a liberator of Argentina and other parts of Latin America
This is the Argentina "White house". Jeff is standing with Nate Dunlevy who hosted us in their house.

Jeff and Lindsay get a visa.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!
We got our Work Visa!
God is good!

Isaiah 40:31
But those who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.

PS
Here is a drive around the area in La Plata Argentina.

Brief Update 2

We are still in sunny Argentina, just south of the capital in La Plata. No news from the consulate yet, but like they say no news is good news. If we hear from the consulate it is because there is a problem, so we don't really want to here anything. We'll head back in to BA on Monday and pick up the visa if all goes well!
We have just been relaxing with the Dunlevey fam. or in the empty duplex they rent behind their house. More of their team will join them in a few months, so they are renting this amazing two bedroom duplex. It is sort of serving as a guesthouse, so for now we have all to ourselves. I'll try to get a few pictures posted later... after nap time. :)

We went to the zoo yesterday with the family and had a good time until we visited the last animal of the day. Elle, their four year old, got a boo-boo from slipping on some metal bleachers. She had a pretty sizable gash above her eyebrow, so they spent the rest of the day getting stitches. She's fine now.
"I'll go back to the zoo again, but I'm not going to go back to that other place," she told us.
We hung out with their two year old, Scott and the puppy back at the house while they spend the day at the children's hospital.

We had some major accomplishments yesterday:
playing with dinosaurs
reading
napping
watching the movie Evita
eating icecream

I even had a few spare minutes to work on our budget for bedtime. God is so good, we're really having a great time.

Lindsay

Brief Update

We arrived in Buenos Aires today. Headed to the Brazilian Consulate straight from the airport and spent about 3 hours there. Everything looks promising. They said that our visas will be processed and ready on Monday between 12-1.Just very surreal. God's been working on this for how long? And it's happening. It's hard to take in.

So we went out for Argentine steak, a lovely way to celebrate. Our host showed gratitude that I was no longer a vegetarian.

We are so blessed. Especially to have such a seriously wonderful family, the Dunlevy fam, (thanks Tim for the hook up!) to stay with here in Argentina. God is such a ninja. He's always pulling off the most amazing moves when we least expect him to. Everything going crazy up to the time we left. This week of downtime is really what we need while we wait for our visa to go through. And we thought it was a mistake that our visa was sent here. Ha!

Lindsay

Argentina or Bust

This is going out to everyone! It’s been a while since our last correspondence (again). We wait and wait for something definite to happen, but it never does. We hate to confuse everyone with the long and complicated story (especially before we know how it ends), but it’s definitely time, past time, to share what’s happening.

We are going to Argentina.

Argentina. You read right. We have been trying for 2 ½ years or so to stay in Brazil long term, but now we’re going to Argentina... to get our Temporary Work Visa for Brazil! It is a weird story. Here’s the big picture: six months ago, when we were still in Brazil, we asked the Brazilian Ministry of Labor to send our work permit to the Brazilian Consulate in Argentina. It was going to be easier and cheaper to pick it up there since we were already in South America. Well, we had to come back to the US when our Tourist Visas expired after the last 6 months stay. As Jeff was leaving to pick up the Visa in Chicago last week we discovered some interesting news. The Visa was sent to Argentina. We thought we had changed the pickup location (to Chicago), but there had been a recent change of policy with the Ministry of Labor and they said it couldn’t be done.

Part of the change in policy means that we need to pick up the Visa and be in Brazil before 90 days. Even though there is more paper work to fill out, a work permit is a visa authorization in the eyes of the Ministry of Labor. Our work permit was issued a month ago. That means we have until the 16^th of December to be in Brazil with visa stamped passports. That’s less than two months away!

Woah. It is now going to be more expensive and difficult to get these visas since we are starting out in the US, not Brazil, but, Lord willing, when it’s all done we will have our Temporary Work Visa, which is what we have been working to get for so long.

When it’s all over we can stay in Brazil for 2 years straight, then when the first two years are up, take a 45 minute trip to the Federal Police in Recife and get it renewed for another 2 years. That is 4 years without needing to leave Brazil! Lindsay and I are so very excited about finally being able to settle in at the World Renewal Ministry in Northeast Brazil.

This time around both of us will be teaching at the International School. Lindsay will be teaching English and Jeff will be teaching computers and technology. On top of that Jeff will be keeping up on the WRBrazil.blogspot.com blog site and finding new ways to get the word out about all the amazing things God is doing in this church planting ministry. We also hope to rent an apartment away from the main ministry headquarters in downtown Carpina to learn the language better and be more immersed in the culture. If it works out this will be the first time in 2 ½ years that we will be away from communal living, not in the ministry headquarters “hotel room” and not with family or friends.

We are finally going into FULL-time ministry so we need your help. Our budget needs a kick in the pants with all the new expenses we are expecting. And we have a lot of new startup costs again. It almost feels like we are fundraising for the first time. We are extremely thankful for our supporters that have stayed with us even when we have been back and forth so many times and have been poor communicators with our situation (it’s been tough enough for us to keep up with all the changes). Your support (especially the prayer support) has allowed us to get through this crazy, crazy process of getting our Work Visa. Included in this letter is a copy of our monthly needs and a list of startup expenses that we will mostly be purchasing in Brazil. Please pray about supporting us monthly or giving a one-time gift to help launch us full-time in Brazil.

Jeff & Lindsay Turner

PS Please keep reading our blog – jlbrasil.blogspot.com or find Lindsay on Facebook to keep in contact with us!

Launching Needs
Bedroom Set	$1,000.00
Household items	$1,000.00
Camcorder	$1,000.00
Plane Tickets to Argentina then Brazil	$3,000.00
Total	$6,000.00

Monthly Needs

Total needed after taxes & WRI fees $1,870.00

Current support $1,085.00

Amount needed more $1,300.00

To give send a check to World Renewal earmarked Jeff & Lindsay Turner or you can give online at https://www.usaepay.com/ make sure to put Jeff & Lindsay Turner under the Description section.

WORLD RENEWAL
P.O. Box 399
Greenfield, IN 46140
(317) 467-9899
fax: (317) 467-4615

Personality Test

So I (Jeff) took a personality test online that was recommended to me by a friend. I didn't really like a lot of the questions and didn't think it was going to be very accurate. Then I saw what careers they said I would be good at. This list is just freaky to me because it is almost like looking at my resume. I have been working in Social Service industry for 4 years of my life as a Direct care provider. I have been in school for Religious Education and of course am exposed to that a lot in Brazil. I will be teaching come January at the International School in Brazil. I will be teaching Technology and computer classes. Which leads to closer to the bottom of the list. I was a Tier 2 Desktop Support technician at Roche Diagnostics for a year which is like combining the Customer Service and Technical fields. Then the big job I do in Brazil is Graphic Design and communication. I can assume I will be doing a lot of translation once I learn the language better.

This was a very weird look into my life through a simple personality test.

YOUR TYPE
I	S	F	J
Strength of the preferences %
33	38	6	44

Career Social Service Social Work Religious Education Education Child Day Care Management Health Care Health Care Administration Medical Records Administration Nursing Radiologic Technician Customer Service Customer Service Specialist Real Estate Broker/Agent Secretary Paralegal Art/Technical Translator Computer Programming Design Graphic, Industrial, Interior Engineering Famous people of your particular type Jimmy Carter, Frederic Chopin, Jane Fonda

Work Permit

We officially have our work permit now! Praise God! Now It gets sent to the consulate in Chicago and we can apply for the work Visa.

The Long Wait

The depression set in once we arrived back in the USA. It seemed that every other day one of us was feeling it. That is part of the reason I have no posted a single thing since Lindsay and I have been back. I wanted to wait until we actually had some news for you. So, here comes the news:
We were able to get the reference documents legalized by the Brazil consulate and off it went to Brazil. Then we got a bill for all of the translations that they had to do for all of our documents. Shortly after that we heard that all the documents were in the right hands. I just got off the phone with Emily Taylor who is in Brazil and the rumor is, that we will hear on the 16th of this month if we get the Work Permit. Then all we would need is to take that document to the consulate in Chicago and get the Visa.

What we are doing now:

Lindsay is at IUPUI going for an English major. This was always part of our backup plan if we came back to the US this time around. Lindsay is also working at Maria's Pizza part time.

Jeff has been doing odd jobs and helping his parents. He has been applying for I.T. jobs like mad, mainly places in Indianapolis. He has applied for 3 positions at IUPUI and 1 at UofI. So far no one has gotten back to him.


Please pray for the outcome on the 16th and that God will provide a job for Jeff if that is His will.

Saudades do Brasil

It’s 6:30am. I can’t sleep. I’ve been awake since 4:30 and there is probably no going back now. About 40 teens here right now on a short-term mission trip. It’s been a lot less noisy than I feared – and a lot busier. And we have kept them busy right from the start – so I’ve been pretty occupied also. Mostly sorting gifts for Brazilians and prepping for English Camp. It starts in about 2 hours. All I think about is English Camp, but I’m trying to make sure I have time to pack, too.

I don’t really know what to think. Things change so drastically so fast. Last week we didn’t know what we were doing next. Now we know we have to go back to the US. We'll be going back next week thanks to an awesome flight deal from my cousin. I’m heartbroken, nervous, a little excited (about seeing loved ones), and trying hard to remain a hopeful. We’re going back a little more visa savvy this time. We know that it might still be a while before we get this work visa. We know there are still mounds of red tape. We aren’t even sure that this work visa will go through. We’ll be living out our contingency plan (see the post on July 06, 2008), meeting up with family, visiting our supporters, and trying to recruit some new English teachers for the school.

We do still believe that God wants us to serve Brazilians. We feel like we fit in here more and more. We feel like we have a place here and that they need us. We’ll be back. It might be one month. It might be one year, but we’ll be back.
So, see you soon.

-Lindsay

Update #4

Etc. (The Beach)

A couple of weeks ago was a holiday called São João (St. John the Baptist day). Saint John festivals are a big deal around here; they’re a country-style harvest party where dishes made with corn are served. The best part is school is out for two days. Perfect time for a road trip to the beach, right? We thought so. Tele let us (Roberto, David, Alyssa, Emily, Jeff and I) visit his parent’s beach house for a few days.

When we arrived the electricity was out. We were fine with our food situation; the neighbors let us keep food in their fridge and stoves in Brazil are all propane. We bought candles and made a fire on the beach at night. We might have had more fun because there was no electricity. Jeff and I slept out on the beach beneath the stars each night and I got up to watch the sunrise each morning. One of the highlights of the trip for me was watching monkeys in the wild! We saw them at the neighbor’s house two doors down. It was pretty cool, until they came to watch me…

The last day of our trip, while everyone else was at the beach, I stayed back to take a shower. I was almost finished when I heard some mysterious scratching. I looked up to see a monkey looking back at me. I screamed grabbed my towel and belongings, and ran to the next room, where there were two more monkeys in the rafters watching me. I finally found a room that was monkey free, so I locked the door (monkeys can totally open unlocked doors) and changed quickly. It was on my list of things to do before I die. See monkeys in the wild. Check.

Back to the USA

Our last documents we sent to the lawyer were rejected because they were not "legalized" by the Brazilian consulate. This news gave us our answer about wither we needed to go back to the USA or just wait and see if we can get our visa soon and take a less expensive trip to Argentina and get the Visa.

I really like the reaction from my good friend Jon when I told him the news. He said "it seems like you probably should have everything legalized, notarized, blood sealed and consecrated to several different gods in order to make sure everything is setup ok". We have in no way given up on staying in Brazil and we will be coming back here as soon as we get this visa. But, it is nice to have an answer from God about where we should be right now. Even though this answer is frustrating we are looking forward to see how God uses us back in the USA for a while.

We don't have tickets yet but we should be coming back early August.

Update #3

Ministry

July is a busy, busy month for the ministry. There are a lot of outreaches that happen through out the year, but July is the biggest month because of the short-term mission groups that come from the states. The first of the three groups have already arrived two woodworkers and Jeff’s dad. The second trip arrived on the fourth, a medical team, and the third group (40 some teens and adults) will arrive on July 15^th. Jeff’s dad comes every summer to coordinate the groups. We have really been enjoying having him around. If you want more info on what’s going on in ministry you can always check out the ministry blog, wrbrazil.blogspot.com.

New drug ring or medical mission trip?

Update #2

Life

Jeff and I are gypsies. Ok, maybe we’re not real gypsies, but we are really starting to feel like we can’t stay in one place for more than a year or so. Here six months. There a year. Here six months again. Living with my parents, his parents, my brother, at the ministry building, in a tree, on the moon. Where are we going next? What are we doing next? What are we even doing for dinner tonight?

We still don’t know. We still don’t have a permanent/semi-permanent visa to stay in Brazil. We’re trying every avenue we can. We are still working with the same lawyer. He still says it will happen soon. He says that the judge has all info he needs now, hopefully. We’re also trying to pull some strings with some political connections Tele has. In Brazil sometimes it is all about “who you know” to get things done. We’re also going to give the case number for our visa to a friend who’s in law school. He’s studying international law, labor law, and immigration law and he thinks he might be able to help work things out. It’s all still taking time. If things pan out soon we’ll go to the Brazilian Consulate in Argentina to pick the visa up, because we found out for sure that we have to be out of the country to get the work visa.

If things don’t pan out before August 10 (the date our tourist visa runs out for the year) we’ll be headed back to the States. I applied to go to school at IUPUI as a contingency plan if all of our visa arrangements fail and Jeff has some possible job prospects back in Indiana, too. Whatever happens we know that God is with us and that he has a plan for us. No matter how mysterious and nomadic our life seems to be, we continue to trust him with our future.

Lindsay

Update #1

Jeff does a great job as the communications link to Brazil, but when it comes to my contribution to the blog sometimes I get caught up in daily life and procrastinate for weeks on end. Jeff asked me to write a post about three weeks ago and I’m just now doing it. Oops. We have been finished with all school business since Tuesday. Now, since I have even more free time on my hands and I am out of excuses, I’m writing several posts to try to get on his good side again.

In the next few posts will hopefully catch you up to speed with school, life, ministry, etc.

School

There were two end of the semester programs to prepare for and present the last two weeks of school. Since I mainly work with the preschoolers the last two weeks were filled with repeating the same songs and dance moves, over and over again. The first program’s theme was focused on Pernambuco (the state where we live here). The international school kids presented special projects, sang songs, and performed skits. I learned my first full song in Portuguese as a result of helping the preschoolers with their presentation!

The preschoolers singing for the first program

The second program was a fund raiser event called “Nations’ Celebration.” The children performed dances from around the world and then sampled international food with their parents. We even held an “art auction,” selling the paintings the children made in their art classes this semester. The event raised around R$1,800 for a children’s hospital in Recife. I contributed by helping guide the preschoolers in their South African dance and by making chocolate chip cookies for the American food booth.

Joyce, one of our preschoolers, and her mom dressed up
for the Nations' Celebration

We completely wrapped up the semester with parent-teacher conferences last Friday and a teachers’ meeting on Monday. At the teachers’ meeting Emily Taylor and I presented a new English program that we formed to create a bridge between Portuguese subjects (ex. Math, Science, History) and the English language. We’re really excited about starting the program next semester!

Emily & I being awesome at the beach

-Lindsay

Dia De Namoradas

Happy Valentines day!! Well at least the Brazilian version which actually translates to "Day of the Girlfriends/boyfriends".

Well for every concerned friend of Lindsay, don't worry I am taking good care of her and giving her plenty of chocolate and goodies. She wanted me to take pictures of her and her presents so that other people can see how happy she is.

School is almost out and my Dad will be arriving on the 24th! I am pretty excited. If all goes well we will be going to the Beach house with Tele and his family this weekend. Please continue to pray for the Visa situation.

The Fundemental Elements of waiting

We still don’t know much about the status of our work visa and our Tourist Visa only lasts until August 10^th. We currently don’t have tickets back to the US or to anywhere. These things have been stressing us out like crazy. But, it has been becoming very obvious that God wants us to wait and trust in Him.

The past couple of weeks have been busy for me (Jeff) because I have had to help out with the Learning Centers in the afternoons. I usually help out with that one or two days a week, but recently I have had to do it every afternoon. I really haven’t minded it that much. Most of the time I am in Learning center with Lindsay which is nice and I think we work well together in those situations. I have been struggling a little with trying to figure out what else I should be doing here to keep people informed and it has been a slow month. I think with the start of Summer in the US that not as many people check the blog site and such. Plus up until a few days ago we didn’t have a memory card for our camera. Ours broke about 3 weeks ago. Thanks to Roberto’s friend we have a temporary card until my dad arrives with some new cards.

I think the whole theme behind this post is that Lindsay and I need prayer for guidance and that we will not just do what we think is best but wait on God for direction. I am really thinking the smart thing for me to do is go ahead and buy plane tickets now because they will be more expensive the longer we wait. The problem is, I don’t think that is from God. I just think that is the best choice in my head.

We have been able to do some fun things while we are here. We went to the beach with Roberto and Emily Taylor because Emily had yet to go. It was a good time even though it is starting to become the rainy session.

Yesterday was a holiday. We went to Recife and were able to watch the new Indiana Jones movie. We also ate at Burger King. It was a very American day for us.

We still don't know anything with our Visa and Tele is sick right now. We need to have Tele call the lawyer and see about going to Brasilia to get this taken care of. At this point I don't see anything else we can do to speed up the process. I am finally at peace about the whole thing. If we end up going back to the US I will be fine with that and I know God has something for us there. I think if we go back to the US we will stay for a while and Lindsay will go back to school. If that is God's will that is. We have thought about a lot of things. We just want to do what God wants us to do.

Iron Man and Visas

Last Thursday Lindsay and I renewed our tourist visa for 3 months. It went very smoothly and afterward Tele wanted to go to a Money conference so he dropped us off at the mall for a few hours. We had a wonderful time together. We ended up finding a Donut place inside the mall which you can't find to often. So we sat down together and enjoyed a banana and cinnamon donut. Lindsay said it was the best donut she had ever had. I think I would agree with her, it was pretty amazing. We also went to see a movie, since there was a cinema in the mall. We got to see Iron Man which I had been wanting to see. It was an amazing super hero movie and I think they did a perfect job on keeping true to the origins of Iron Man. Overall it was a very good trip to Recife. I even ran into somebody I knew there, which is really weird when you actually know so many people in a foreign country that you can bump into people almost everywhere that you know.

The Work Visa situation is still really up in the air. We are in Brazil for another 3 months for sure but are uncertain what will happen after that time. We got a call from our lawyer telling us that we would have to leave the country in order to get the work visa and we told him to send it to Argentina if it comes. That way we only have to spend about $300 on plane tickets to leave the country get our visa and come back. But that is only practical if it comes in the next 3 months. So, we still need a ton of prayer about this.

Also, because of this stress and being in ministry we are getting attacked emotionally at lot by Satan. Please pray for Lindsay and I's emotional states and stress. Even though we had a fantastic Thursday the weekend was the most depressing and emotional weekends for us. Maybe it was because it was Mother's Day weekend, who knows. We just could really use your prayers about stress.

15 Years of Ministry

World Renewal Brazil is celebrating 15 years of ministry and it is very weird to think that I have been coming down here for 14 years of that. I first came when I was just 10 years old on a short-term missions trip with my family. I guess that is what happens when a family does stuff for God together.... God uses you for His glory. So beware parents if you send your child on a short-term missions trip they just might get involved with missions and furthering God's kingdom.

To celebrate the 15 years the Churches held a Forum where several Pastors talked about different areas of ministry and everyone shared about their experiences. The last one was Pastor Ricardo Silva and he was talking about the Unity of the Community Churches. The example he used was getting all the strong, big guys to circle up.

Then he had Duda (the all around handyman at the Alcance) pretend to be a "problem" or "difficulty". His job was to get inside the circle.

It was awesome to watch and even though Duda gave is his best, he didn't manage to get in the circle.

The whole forum was amazing to be apart of and was so uplifting to have so many of the Church Pastors around to share about their Churches and experiences. Gary Wright came from Indiana for the celebration and he started it off with a sermon on Jesus movements.

Holiday & Boxing

This weekend was back to Lagoa De Itaenga!! But I (Jeff) was sick. It was very frustrating because I really wanted to go and help out but my stomach was bothering me a lot. That morning a group of people from the Alcance went to a lake in Paudalho and had a picnic for Karine Moraes. She will be leaving soon to go to England and then to Word of Life Hungary in August. But, I was not able to go to that either. I am feeling better today but please pray for health. I haven't been nearly as sick as everybody else has been recently so I most likely got the tail end of the stomach virus thing going around.

Lindsay and Emily were still able to go to Lagoa De Itaenga. They were 20 mins late so they only had 4 kids at the English class, but the class went really well and they have decided to do it every Saturday now.

Lindsay & Emily teaching the English class

The Youth program will still only be every other Saturday. By having the English class every Saturday it will help a lot more with the comprehension of the kids. It was just to much time in between classes to retain English that have no other outlet of learning it.


At the end of this month Gary Wright the president of World Renewal Intl. will be coming to Brazil. The month marks the 15 year anniversary of the Ministry in Brazil so Gary is coming down to be apart of the celebration. He is also bring some things down for us, which will help a lot. The current internet here is really bad with only 15kps download speeds which is about 3x faster than dial up. Then there is usually about 5 or so people online at one time which makes the internet nearly impossible to navigate. So after talking with Tele we are hopefully getting better internet this week. It should be going to about 60kps download speeds and then Gary will be bringing down a Bandwidth control router with him. Basically it will be able to set programs on a priority list and gives more speed to the things higher on the list. So I will be putting things like Skype on super high priority and downloads as a low priority. This should solve most of our internet problems.

When Little Kids paint.

Lindsay has her hands full sometimes with these young artists.

We are doing well here and it has been a big blessing to have Emily Taylor here now. Lindsay and Emily are becoming friends fast, as for me I am happy to have another Settlers of Catan player. The school schedule is changing a lot because of Rachel Winzeler leaving at the end of the month. Emily has taken over David's classes and David is taking over Rachel's classes. It all is a bit weird, but the transition seems to be going well.

We will be going back to Lagoa de Itaenga this Saturday to teach an English class and help with the youth group. This time I will bring the camera! Pray for this time, that God will bless it.

Sickness & Work

So, it seems that some type of stomach virus has been going around and has made people like Tele not eat for a long time. The funny thing is, neither Lindsay or I have gotten the stomach virus. But, Lindsay did get sick. It is more of a bad cold. This is partially why I haven't updated this blog for a while. Too many sick people making me feel down also.

I have been working on the Brazil website and it is pretty much done for now with the content part. I just need to get the outreach section complete which is actually going to be called Church Planting Strategy... section. This last Saturday Lindsay, Emily Taylor, and I went with Ricardo to Lagoa de Itaenga (The town which has one of the newest church plants in it) and we had an English class for the youth there. We also helped with the youth group later on that night. It was awesome to finally be able to use my Nintendo Wii for the ministry again. We really tried to get the youth group going with the Acacias church here at the Alcance but only one kid ever showed up. Anyway, the weekend went really well and the kids loved both the English class and youth group. We had one kid that was new who was very interested in the Wii and then came the next day to help out with a street market sale the Church was participating in. He also showed up to Church that evening.

It was good to see the Church raising money to make it a more Church like building. Right now the Church is a house that they are renting and it is pretty small. The Church sold about R$85 worth of clothes and items at the Street market, which is a huge deal for them because most of the Church members are not employed and they only give about R$6 a month in tithe.

Easter is coming

This last week went by really fast. My work with the website was slow but steady and on Friday at Brookville Road Community Church, they had a fund raiser for the summer trip which they had information about the website. So, even though the website is not complete it is getting foot traffic. That is ok with me. I am pretty sure they told everybody it is still a work in progress.

We had a big scare with the graphic design computer on saturday. The power in the graphica dropped a little which made the converter not put out enough volts and shut off the computer. When we turned it back on, it said it had shut down because it overheated. It also wouldn't boot into windows from there. So, we opened the computer up to see the fan that keeps the processor cool completely caked in dust. It was really bad. We did our best to clean it out without having a can of compressed air. When we went to turn it back on the picture wouldn't come back up. So, through all of this Roberto was freaking out a little that he had lost all of the graphic design data. Which despite me reassuring him that the data was fine, he still was worried. Anyway, I basically let the computer sit over night and cool down some more, then in the morning I turned on the computer and got into the bios and from there everything was fine. This morning Roberto came back to the graphica was a PC that is working like normal.

This weekend we also stopped at a new grocery store that I hadn't been to. It is called Tudo Dia which just means "all day". It is the newest grocery store in Carpina and also just so happens to be owned by non other than WALMART. Thats right walmart of all places have invaded Brazil. It was creepy walking into that place because it really felt like a mini walmart. I guess it is good for that town a little, since they do offer lower prices on a lot of their stuff. But, Lindsay and I really can't stand walmarts business practices. I doubt we will be shopping there much if at all. The good news is they have a atm at there store that I bet we will be able to get money from. The other banks in town used to have an atm that worked internationally and we would get the official exchange rate which is better than the underground rate right now. But, this trip we couldn't find any atms that would work. That meant we were giving Tele a check to exchange for us and that is just one more thing Tele had to do. We are all about helping him and not adding more things to his plate.

Ok, I have gone on for too long now. This week is a holiday week because of Easter. That means we only have two days of school!! Happy Easter.

A Fun Weekend

Since it doesn't have a single thing to do with the ministry I will briefly mention that we went to the beach this weekend. We went to Porto De Galinhas. It was a lot of fun and now we are burnt a little. Ok now back to work.

Post by Jeff

Lindsay

Jeff really wants me to post a little about what school is like for me this year. It has been quite a bit different from my teaching experience back in 2006. There were only a handful of students and I taught a variety of ages. Back then we had 2 preschoolers, 4 kindergarten kids, and an afternoon English tutoring program for around 7 kids. This year I have an English nursery program for 6 toddlers (ages 18 months to 2 ½ years) from 8-10am, an English class for 5 Kinder One (preschool ages 3-4) from 10:15-11:30am, and Learning Center* for 1-2 grades in the afternoons on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. In some of the in-between times I’m a hall monitor, playground supervisor, girl’s shower overseer, and 4-5 Grade Learning Center overseer. It sounds like a lot written down, but I actually feel like I have tons of spare time.

At 4pm things slow down for me. I do some lesson planning on Saturdays and prep a little in the afternoons. Unless Jeff and I are practicing Portuguese that day, I have my evenings free. There isn't a lot of paper grading for babies and preschoolers. I feel pretty lazy (especially since we got our hammock put up).

I'm really blessed with the opportunity (and free time) I have, but like most jobs or ministries it has ups and downs. Some days I think my students are the most gifted and brilliant little toddlers on the planet. There are also days I daydream about tying them to their chairs.

Alright, enough gibber-jabber. Here are some pictures from yesterday. We talked about healthy foods with the younger kids and shared a fruit salad snack. Here they are with their fruit masks.

Adorable aren't they?
Keep them in your prayers. Especially this last one:




















She's got a major problem with biting! She's bitten everyone in the class (including me twice) and bites every new kid who comes in the class. It seems to be a security thing half of the time and jealousy/anger issues the other half. She bites pretty hard.
Please be praying for change in her and for the safety of the rest of us!

I'll write more on school and the kids some other time.