The last Blog from all the Team 31st July

Thoughts from us all on the last 2 weeks:

Hi everyone its James, the last two weeks have been quite a shock to me due to the culture difference but the main thing I have struggled with is the very early mornings when the sun to me hasn’t even come up yet. It has been such a good trip though over everything that we have done i feel that god has used the team in many ways but also that my relationship with him has also grown and i feel closer to him, glad that I had this opportunity to come to brazil.

Ola. Brazil has been a once in a life time experience. Some of things I’ve seen over the past two weeks have changed my view on things I take for granted at home. Before I came to Brazil I was told people come before everything else in Brazilian culture. Over the two weeks I’ve realised this is how i should live my life back in England all the time. There have been times whilst in Brazil that I haven’t always understood why we are doing things in a certain way or why a certain decision has been made but god has guided me through everything I’ve done. I’ve enjoyed spending time with the friends we have made out here. I’m glad I came. And i would love to come back again. – Sam Donnell

Ola this is Sam Hayden. My time in Brazil, I think, has changed me, like my view on taking things for granted and doing things even if you don’t understand, because God will guide you. I have seen things that have changed my ways of seeing things and I am very grateful for this experience. I have made quite a few friends out here, young and old. And one day I hope to come back. Although I got annoyed God and my friends helped me through it. Tchau.

Well what an experience it has been! Its definitely been one of the best experiences of my life and changed my outlook on many things in life. I’ve enjoyed being around people in Brazil that are very willing to spend time with you. Whatever they are doing they take time out just to sit with you, but I guess everyone enjoyed spending time with us especially because we’re English and different. We could see that everywhere we went when people just stopped and stared at us. Overall it’s been a real blessing and great experience. A paz de senhor, Joe.

Beth now, well another amazing experience in Brazil, It has been so good to help people that are truely in need, building the bathroom for someone who really has nothing was an amazing experience. God has really blessed me and i feel that i will come back with an even softer heart to reach the lost. Look forward to seeing you all when we get home. Bechy xxxx

Oi its Chloe! I have loved every moment in Brazil. I’ve done things that at home I wouldn’t think of doing, (building, singing on radio, a day-worth of planning for events). My parents will be pleased to hear that I have done everything asked of me without a single moan (well maybe sometimes the odd little one). God’s blessed me more than I think I was able to bless others. If another opportunity to return to Brazil arose, I would most certainly snap it up! Can’t wait to see my family and friends, see you soon. Tchau :)


Where have two weeks gone?!? Been fantastic to see the encouragement an English team visiting a Church makes here and the doors that have been opened in the community for Ruth and Izaias ministry as a result of our visit. The opportunity to make a real difference to a family by building them toilet / shower room and learning how to build in Brazil was a great experience and a warm one in the heat of the day! Overall it has been good to be amongst people who are so spiritually open and show love in action in the construction and young people’s work. Chris

So what have i learnt over the last 2 weeks? Well...
-to like rice... (well to just about bare it!)
-the Brazilians are crazy! Who on earth think its reasonable to get up at 5.50 every morning?
-to drive Izaias’ truck! And that you need to slow down whilst going over bumps!
- the easiest way to lay cement and render is to grab a load in your hand and smoosh it about!!
- And on a more serious note, to trust in the Lord always, even if i don’t have a clue whats happening. And that my strength comes from him!
Anyway... will see you all soon. God Bless, Love George ? x x x

Hey guys,
It’s been a great two weeks, lots of very early mornings, with exercises and devotions! Some people were left stuck to the floor ( i won’t say because of which one). God has moved in so many ways, from sport, to toilet building, sermons, testimonies or Rods singing. Look forward to seeing you when home, and telling you of more of Gods blessings.
Dave P.S. Someone tell les i’ve missed his singing in the mornings!

Hey everyone! My name is Sarah. I am 8 months through my year in Brazil with Ruth, Izaias and Jonjon. Thanks so much for sending such a marvellous team to Brazil. It was great to have a bit of England brought here. After two weeks I have just about got used to their sense of humour! The place will certainly be a lot quieter without them! Love Sarah

Hi this is Rod I have not got any time to left to write my comments cos everyone else has taken so long but it has been a privilege to lead the team and I will leave my thoughts till next week in church
See you all soon, Rod

Okey doekey, so the last few days have entailed-

Wednesday saw the completion of the bathroom, walls rendered, floor concreted, room put on and water tank on the roof! Just waiting now for the Brazilians to come and connect the water to the mains, so they could be waiting a while for that! That evening we did another Kids Games in Aririus, another evening of chaos, but God prevailed and a good evening was had by all!

On Thursday we got up bright and early for JonJons birthday! By 7am there was a large group of Children outside the front door with bikes for us (not sure where all the bikes came from tho!) and waiting for JonJons birthday bike ride. After a hot and sweaty ride in the blazing sun, we went for a dip in picturesque lake, however, it was a little stagnant, so pray none of us get ill please!!! In the afternoon, we headed to another lake for Jonjons baptism. We started by singing quite a few songs which drew a big crowd, and the baptism took place at sunset which was lovely!!! In the evening we went to a Pentecostal church, who provided us a translator that learnt is English from playing Playstation 2, so his spiritual language was somewhat hindered! The service was... interesting, with lots of shouting , dancing and sweaty men! However, there was a massive movement of the holy spirit! After that, we went to a surprise birthday party at a crazy (but lovely) ladys house, who insisted on kissing everyone and saying ‘a kiss for your mother!’ a few of the lad went a little red!!!

Today we visited sobral on the bus, which was actually a 16 seater mini-bus with 29 people crammed in! So was a little cosy!!! The town was a little more built up than carier, and a lot hotter!!! And this afternoon we packed and cleaned!

Muchos love, see u all in a few days!! Bye bye, love George x x x x

27th + 28th July

Ola Chloe speaking,
So, we’ve been busy for the last two days!
Monday we had: - Visits to children from the ‘Kids Games’ last week.
- Finishing the building work on the bathroom.
- Viewing the land that we are looking at buying.

The visits to the children went well and we’ve finally finished them!
The building on Monday was slow but we started to render the inside walls. Sam Hayden and Joe had a good try but their wall looked like polka dots. Beth was exceptionally good at rendering and I thought I did a good job too. Also, we got the roof on and we started painting it on Monday with waterproof stuff.
We were able to visit the plot of land we are looking to buy. It is 7m x 30m, an adequate size for the purpose we wish to fulfil.

Tuesday we had: - We looked around the market (Dave and Joe bought a hammock).
- Card making in the morning for a mini ‘Kids Games’
- More building work!
- Mini ‘Kids Games’

The Building work went really well! Everyone worked hard on it :) We have completed the rendering on the inside and on the outside. We’ve even concreted the floor inside too. We are just waiting for a plumber now to sort out the shower.
The mini ‘Kids Games’ was great fun. We did it near the area we were building in with all the children we’ve seen since we started building. We faced painted at the beginning, it was hard because the kids moved a lot but they loved it. Some of the children there accepted Jesus. Afterwards we had cake and handed them out some cards thanking them for participating.

Prayer points:
-Pray for the children we have visited that they will read the books we gave them and that their desire to know more about Jesus grows day by day.
-Pray for the land. That God will oversee all decisions.
-Pray for all the families and children we’ve met during building. That God will bless them and that he will stir up a curiosity in them about Jesus!
-Pray for the children who accepted Jesus in the mini 'Kids Games' on tuesday that they will have a real desire to know more about Him!
-Continue to pray for our health

tchau from Chloe and the Brazil team!

Hello,

Its Sam D. and Sam H. writing the blog for today. So this blog is gonna be a good one!

Yesterday evening (Saturday) we all went to a church gathering called a Crusade (Which wasn’t as bad as the name suggested.) It was held in a sports arena just down the road from our house. There were about 200 people from different churches there. There was a lot of shouting from the preacher that we couldn’t understand but the worship was good and we also sang open the eyes of my heart and dancing generation. Turns out 200 Brazilians can’t keep in time while clapping along to fast worship songs, or dance either.
After the preacher finished his sermon he called everyone to the front to pray and worship. The Holy Spirit started moving in people – literally! People were jumping, clapping, dancing, spinning, falling… etc. When the prayer finished there was a celebration time and everyone sang and danced. After the service lots of Brazilians took our photo and then we went home.

Today (Sunday) we had our outing to the mountain and swimming in a natural pool at the base of a waterfall. Isaias managed to get a minibus to take us all there which arrived at 7 this morning. The driver told us all that it takes about an hour to get to the mountains … 2 hours later we were there. When we arrived we went on a cable car to the caves. After the caves we went to a small lake under a waterfall on top of a mountain to swim. The water was really cold but because the weather was so hot we didn’t mind.

We have just got back from a meeting at a church about 45 minutes away. When we were there we sang a few songs and did a drama, then Chloe gave a really good testimony, As David preached some of us went into the building next to the church where we taught some children the actions and words to a kids song called shine. We then performed that in front of the rest of the church with the kids. After the service we went to a restaurant and had pizza with the pastor and his family and some of the congregation of that church.
There is some sickness in the group and we would like you to pray that God heals them and against the dodgy mayonnaise (which we think has caused some it)!

See you all soon. Good night and peace out.

Sam and Sam, on behalf of the Brazil Team

P.S. Gone a bit photo crazy today! Photo's (nicely jumbled by blogger!) are Team in waterfall at a Mountain Park, Singing 'Shine' with the children at Reriutaba Baptist Church, Team singing at the Church, David preaching, Joe enjoying the waterfall, Dave in the cave, enterance to the mountain park, George in the pit for the bathroom, Rod fitting the door frame to the bathroom, Beth the brickie, Rod the Foreman, digging the foundations, the before picture and the long awaited picture of us exercising at 6 am!

Saturday 25th July

Hey all Beth blogging today. Well yesterday we started building a showeroom/toilet in the back garden of some ones mud house, for a family in need. we began by digging the cess pit. It was 1 metre wide and 1.2 metres deep, the boys dug very hard whilst the girls formed a chain of bucket carriers! It was very hot and quite tiring but by the end of the day we had completed the hole, and laid the foundations for the shower room. Lots of people were watching for most of the day a great witness of how we can demonstrate Gods love in action. After our building we came home for tea, which was beef stew with rice and spagetti (no rice and beans for us!)

Our Devotions in the morning focused on how we need to keep rejoicing so Chloe thought it right to have a time of worship. Izaias then suggested we go out in the street to do this after ten minutes we had quite a crowd of children and adults + 1 drunken man who rather liked George!!! It was a great witness and quite a crazy time with the children chassing bubbles and air guitaring to our worship. But we are now suffering a little bit of mossie bites!

Plans for today are more building, visting the children who came to kids games, and practising dramas. We are also going to a crusade this evening which is all the churches together having an open air meeting. Please pray for this as the churches dont really work together.

Prayer points:
* please continue to pray for our health and energy.
* Please pray for the land as no news yet.
* Tommorow we have a chuch service, David is preaching, the drama team are doing a drama, and more songs.

Keep comenting we love to hear from you

MUCH LOVE

Beth and the Brazil team xxx

Wednesday 22nd July

Ola everyone!

Well, we have still been waiting for a project to undertake as a team whilst we're out here. As you would have seen from previous blogs we're not going to be doing the building work which we were initially planning to do.

So for much of the day there hasn’t been a great deal for us to do. Izaias, Chloe, Dave and Rod took a journey back to the village where the house is. There are 2 Christian families in the whole village. One was the house we were going to be reconstructing. We went to the other one first, as we had previously asked a man about buying some land to build on and he was going to let them know. They hadn’t heard anything, but we stayed there for a bit just to talk to them. People out here are very happy to give you their time and stop whatever they’re doing just to welcome you. Many people have invited us into their homes and got all their chairs out for us so we can sit and talk with them. We have definitely attracted a lot of attention! As we walk down the road everyone stops and just stares at us which is quite funny, and we try out our Portuguese.

The others stayed at home and made cards for the kids from the kids games which we did last night. In the evening we organized the addresses of some of the kids that had made a commitment to God and went to visit them, giving them books to read and the cards. The families were really nice and welcoming. It was very surprising actually how receiving they were when 16 people turned up at their house. That would freak people out back home!

We went for pizza when we got back from the visits and we picked up a couple more Portuguese phrases, like how was your day and what did you do.

At the moment we're just taking each day as it comes and finding out what we're doing 10 minutes before we're actually doing it! It's been an amazing experience so far and it has been changing my outlook on life. I've felt a lot more motivated to do more things since I've been here as we have to get up at 6 every morning and do exercises! And also it's been teaching me to put others first a lot more. I've learnt this from being in the Mission Team and also from meeting the Brazilians, who are much more people orientated and willing to give up their time for you.
Thanks for the prayers and haircut photo requests, think they're on the way!
Tchau for now
Joe

P.S. Long awaited photo's are of: Kids games epilogue, Chloe trying on hats at the market, Snake game, Team having lunch at our house, Kids Church Daniel and the lions den, walking in Ararius, goodbye hair, Team on Ruth and Izaias's balcony

Tues July 20th (Rods Birthday!!!)

Got up at 5.50 did exercise in the street everyone enjoyed that !!!!.
Did a little planning for kids games tomorrow in morning.
In afternoon went to visit the man who’s house we will be rebuilding, very sad and not good news. The family who own the house have rebelled and think we are trying to take the house away. After long conversations we failed to convince them. We all think that that they are trying to punish the man because he is a Christian. We went on to visit another family and in conversation it was mentioned about buying a plot of land and building a house for the man. We even found some land, and are now waiting to see if someone will sell it to us and how much. So keep praying

We had ice creams in the evenings.

Weds July 21st (Izaias Birthday)

Got up a bit later today 6.30 did exercise in street beside the market!
Had breakfast with the Mayor told him all about what we were doing including the kids games later that day. He offered any help we wanted. We then prayed for him and God gave us a word for him. Not sure how he took it but he ended up with tears in his eyes and promised to come back and meet us again.
Planning for kids games which we are doing at 5pm this afternoon I am learning to go with the flow but it is not easy. Let me give you an example we are planning to run children games in the middle of the main high road at 5pm it is now 1pm and we are hoping 50 kids will come even though no one knows about it. In England we would plan for a month or two. Well here we go Ill let you know how it goes.
We’re back now. It was the most un-organized thing I have done but amazing we had about 50-60 kids turn up, well it could have been 100 but who knows. We also had the same amount of adults. Who all watched the drama and listened to the talk, about 14 children became Christians. We are planning to visit them and their families tomorrow.

Now the funny side, it started an hour and a half late, we did most of it in the dark, and we did rope off the high street and stop all the traffic for a couple of hours. Very funny can’t wait till next week. No CRB, or health and safety here Ian! Can’t make up my mind yet if I could live here in all the chaos but its growing on me.

No news on the land yet, keep praying hard!!!!

From Rod and the Brazil Team

Monday 20 July

Hi from Brasil. The Saturday evening meeting in Ananaira went really well. Thank you for your prayers. There was a great (and very loud) band and our songs went down well. Georgina gave a great testimony and Chloe tried to win a box of chocolates for complimenting a friend (alas no chocolates)! Other highlights included the Sam´s, Joe and James going for shorter haircuts due to the heat resulting in them all looking like members of the band Madness when dressed in their team T-shirts and jeans!

Sunday morning we walked to a poorer area of Carire and assisted with a Children´s service in a tiny Church the size of the TCC coffee lounge. Beth led a drama of Daniel in the lions den with the children acting as lions. Izaiah´s then spoke about Daniel and at the end we tried out our balloon modelling skills (Salvo would be proud)! In the evening we walked to another local Church (there are 5 in Carire) where we sang, James gave his testimony and Rod preached.

This morning has been spent planning and checking out locations for a Kids club. More details to follow (as we find out what they are)! Part of this includes the Mayor joining us for breakfast tomorrow morning. Please pray it is a succesful meeting and the Mayor is open to what we our planning.

Please also pray for some ill health amoung the team and tiredness from getting over the time change and the heat (which is generally very nice but a little humid). Thanks for all your prayers and support and encouraging comments (please write lots more).

On behalf of the whole team, Paz do Senhor (Peace of the Lord), Chris

Saturday 18th July

We have arrived safely in carire, Brazil, after a 25 hour trip involving plane and minibus. We are no longer staying in a school but a house someone has let us use, which is very nice. We have cold showers which are quite refreshing and Joe`s bed has already broken! The list of things Sam Donnell has forgotten is growing by the minute!
We had a very nice breakfast, with fresh bread for ham and cheese sandwiches! We then had our first group meeting of prayer and worship in which Isaias shared with us about the local area and about what God wanted us to do. This was very encouraging.
We`ve just had the tour of the town.
If you could pray for us tonight as we have our first meeting, a youth meeting.
All previous prayer requests still need your prayers, thankyou.

God Bless
The Brazil Team

In the airport

We are currently in Lisbon airport waiting for our flight to Fortaleza. Slightly boring as we just want to be in Brazil, getting started with our adventure with God. We will post when we are in Brazil. Keep praying!

The Brazil team

Six Hours to go!!!

Only six hours to go, and we are all eagerly anticipating our trip with God, (not the early start though). We will be leaving at 3:30am, friday 17th. We have all been busy in our prparations and our packing, trying to keep our luggage below 20kgs. We have a few prayer requests:

• Firstly for our Journey, that all goes smoothly, we remain safe and that we don't lose luggage.
• That God will go before us, protect us while we are there from the stuff the Devil will try to throw at us, including any health issues.
• And that we will come back from this adventure with God having had our faith stretched.

So in summary three words for you to remember in your prayers for us:

1)Protection, 2)Health, 3) we are Stretched.

Thank - you. will blog hopefully when we arrive

love you all

The Brazil Team

xxx

The Team

The Team (from top left going clockwise); Rod, David, Beth, Chris, Joe, George, Sam H, Sam D, Chloe and James.
The team ranges in age from 16-49. There is also many gifts and talents among the team from Music to Drama, Singing, Sport, and Building. All of which we hope to put into use while we are out in Brazil

See ya soon