Getting Ready for the Brazil - Chile Game!

Late Picture of Culto Unico - 335

World Cup 2010

World Cup 2010. We have been watching all of the games at church. It is quite an experience to be in Brazil during the world cup. It is unlike anything we have in the States. Everything and I mean everything closes during the game and the streets are empty until Brazil scores and everyone sets off fireworks and runs around screaming! It has been fun to celebrate as a church.

Tea Set

Paisley loves her talking singing tea set she got for her birthday.

An Afternoon at the Park

We didn't get to ride the swan boats but it was good to get the girls out! Trish went with us too. It was a beautiful day!

City-Wide Service Today and Going Away Party

Nothin like 8 hours of church together (including travel time)! We had 335 in attendance for our city-wide service (just outside of the city) and it was great to see so many brothers and sisters from different parts of this huge city. So many faces and friends that I have missed and didn't realize how much. Paisley and Aubry were passed around and everyone ooed and awed at their matching dresses. It was quite the event with a 2 hour fellowship and breakfast before service a 2 and a half hour service and couple hours of lunch, fellowship, and trampolene time for this kids afterwards. The girls sacked out when we got home and we got to rest just long enough to get ready for the next event - Heather's going away party for our church.

Heather will be greatly missed. We (our church) gave her a picture album with everyone writing memories between the pics. Many blessings were given and a nice prayer time finished off a wonderful night together. It will be even harder to say goodbye on Tuesday morning. Heather has not only worked with us for two years but lived with us that whole time. Aubry only knows life with Aunt Heather. Heather, from our family, you will always be welcome. We love you and we are sad, sad, sad for you to leave us. We know you'll do great in whatever you do and we pray you'll come back to visit us as soon as you can. Blessings on your next adventure. Seek God in all you do. Love, The Maberys

Paisley's First Birthday Party

Space. The Final Frontier. Paisley had a great time "walking" around to all of her friends at her birthday party at the church building. Paisley, I mean Princess Leia, was soooo good on her special night. She was enthralled by all of the decorations and new food and all the people (about 47 attended). Her sister, Queen Amadala, had a blast as well. She kept posing for the camera with Mr. Fantastic (Kelton). Chewbacca (Jackson) and storm trooper (Sammuel) were cute but more camera shy. Daddy was good looking too in his Captain Kirk uniform. Mommy was just an officer on the Voyager.

Decorations and Party Favors. Everything glowed. We had balloons hanging from all over the tall ceiling with little glowing stars at the end of their ribbons. Marcy made a wonderful florescent paint Happy Birthday sign which glowed above the black light place on the food table. There were star headbands and glowing necklaces for all the guests. And the kids made their own creative constellations with glow in the dark stars. The interns did face painting. Mommy got an alien on her cheek and Aubry got a beautiful sun.

Food. The astroids were chicken nuggets and meatballs. The black holes were brigadeiros (Brazilian chocolate balls). The comets were the yellow streamer candies. The half moons were sliced apples. The stars were popcorn and the planets were the big round grapes. The UFOs were the hit of the party - cupcakes. And Princess Leia had her first bite of white confetti cupcake with white icing which she got all over herself and her Mommy.

We love you Paisley! Happy Early Birthday Sweet Heart! (We had to have it early so Tia Heder could come and so we wouldn't run into Sao Joao and World Cup madness next week). We're glad to have such a wonderful, happy go lucky, laid back, beautiful daughter as you! Piedade led a heart warming prayer and blessing over you with the lights out while everything was glowing and I was reminded of how much I have been blessed myself by having you.

Marcy, Candace and Trish

Our new interns have arrived. Marcy from Harding and Candace from ACU are here on the World Wide Witness program and arrived two weeks ago. Trish from Riverchase Church of Christ just arrived on Wednesday. All three proved to be promising workers and have in fact already been contributing greatly to the work here. Even Trish who just got there has done more and learned more in three days than you could possibley imagine. They are going to be helping start a new English Bible study, do LST studies with non-Christian friends, prepare for VBS and campaign group, help with Toddler class at Sunday school, painting projects, youth lock-in, Marriage Matters seminiar, benevolence lunches and much much more. We're excited about there summer and are very impressed by these three already. Picture to come...

Tabernacling

Our church has recently made the big decision to move again. This was not made lightly. Our landlord raised the rent again and while it was a leap of faith to stay or go, we feel that God is beginning to lead us on a journey of unity and commitment building with our members through this new transition. We will be staying 5 more months in our rented space and then we will be a homeless church for a while in order to save money to hopefully buy our own space in the future. We are forming committees within our church - one to find a temporary place and storage and another committee to come up with a plan for reaching somewhere more permanent. This is also a great opportunity for some leadership training and a reminder that WE are the church and not our building. May God be with you as He is with us. He is leading us on a Great Adventure and we are both scared and excited. Please, pray for protection for our members and our team that God will not allow Satan to use any fears or anxieties in our midst but that He will increase our faith in this process. Thank you for your continued support. God is good and faithful.

The Two Cutest Girls in The World!

Thanks MyMy and MommaLou and Grandma for all the cute new clothes!

Ever Seen A Turtle Resting on a Gator?

MyMy's Visit

We had a great visit with MyMy. MyMy brought lots of presents, nursed us back to health at the beginning of the trip, let Mommy and Daddy go off for a two day anniversary trip, and helped clean out all of our closets. Daddy, Aubry and MyMy went to the Circus. We all five got to go to the Zoo.

Happy 4th Aniversary Church!

ICOS has it's fourth anniversary last weekend. We had a video slide show, lots of people wanting to hold the girls and we went out to eat with several members afterwards. It was a good day.

Chocolate Easter Eggs

I can't believe I haven't gotten these Easter pics out yet but at least it's still April. Well, here they are... We had a great Easter weekend. We taught some of our Brazilian neighbors and church kids how to dye eggs, something they'd never seen before. They had a blast painting and finding them. Here the tradition is to give away beautifully wrapped chocolate eggs (sold at all the stores here). Estefani asked Jennifer at church, "Did you get a chocolate egg this morning?" Jennifer said no and Estefani replied, "Me neither. Maybe I'll get one at Virginia's tonight." Thank goodness I had bought extra chocolate eggs at Bom Preco for the Brazilian kids who came. I didn't realize how important they actually were here and our church kids have had very few Easter's when they actually got a chocolate egg. It was a fun and rewarding Easter. Below are the Easter outfits from the real and the pretend Easter (My-My's packages got stuck in the mail and we had our own second Easter at church two weeks later).

Samuel's 2nd Birthday Party

Yee-haw! We had a great cowboy party at the Porter's today with a lot of church people and some of their neighbors and families from Kelton's school. It was a great time had by all with three-legged races, pin the tail on the horse, chili dogs and lots of American candy. They even had yellow cake and chocolate icing cupcakes (my favorite!). It was a great turn out and there must've been about 60 people (although that's a guess because I didn't count). Happy Birthday Sammy! We had a wonderful time! Aubry especially liked the twizzlers! Her face is still red!

Five Years On The Mission Field

Wow! We've been on the field for 5 years now today. We had our team banquet Thursday night to celebrate. It was a winter theme with Olympics awards for recognizing accomplishments of team members over the last year. This year instead of going out, we had our banquet at church and cooked ourselves. Well... Matt and Heather cooked. Matt made is famous chilli and Heather her wonderful potato soup. Mary V bought a really chique chocolate strawberry cake. Valerie and Mary V and Randy decorated (Matt and Russ contributed with a few snowflakes). Our thank yous to each other were more personal this year and our kids were a little more wild since it was at church. All in all, it was a fun team banquet and it was good to celebrate this big 5 year marker!

My Cute Little Valentines

Sometimes packages take a long long time. Here is Aubry and Paisley wearing their valentines outfits that MyMy sent through the mail.

Today was the last Sunday for the Sass family here in Salvador, Brazil. It was a good day but a very sad day for all. There was lots of crying and prayers and blessings and presents presented. We will miss Travis, Alicia, Ceara, and Calen greatly. (Aubry will especially miss Ceara since these two girls are close in age and best buds). It has been a good five years on the field and it is time for this family to move on. Please keep them in your prayers as well as they head back to Canada.

Crawling

Well, I'm sitting here watching my baby girl crawl. She's getting all around Aubry's room. Both are playing on Aubry's pink carpet. Paisley starts out inch worming - a pace or two lunging forward and then back on all fours for another pace or two. She's gotten to where she can do a few paces at a time now with some elephant walks in between. She also rode in the big girl swing for the first time and had a blast.

Wow! God answers prayer! We had a great Sunday and it seemed like everyone we prayed for by name (together as a team before service) was there. We had a blessing during the worship time for all returning students since school started back this week from the summer months. Tennyson, one of our Brazilian leaders, preached and did a great job. We had 5 youth who all really seemed interested and honest during class time. Matt started a new Sunday school series using 5 evangelistic videos created by Antenor Gonzalves (a famous Church of Christ preacher in the South of Brazil). We had over 20 kids for the back to school party, quite a few people we haven't seen in a while, along with visitors, and almost 60 total for worship. God blessed our day on Sunday and we pray a special prayer of thanksgiving for those that He sent our way. To God be the Glory!

Oh and Paisley got another tooth - that makes 5 now!