We're Moving!

We're moving to a house in less than two weeks now. It's close to the same price as our apartment, we'll have more space and be able to rent out a room to our new missionary Heather Alkire (coming in June to be part of our work for the next two years), less noise from busy street traffic, less termites and a YARD for our dog Nalah (and for Aubry when she gets a little older). And more space for visitors when y'all want to come see us! We're very excited but with everything happening at church this month: baptism, small groups, team banquet, evangelism series, new bible studies, anniversary service, women's study, english class, youth night, two new babies, visiting mission team, and church building hunting (church is moving in June); We haven't packed a thing yet!!!

Homemade Applesauce-Different Texture!

Confession

Mary Virginia taught the women's spiritual disciplines class yesterday and the topic was confession. It was not a theme that the Brazilian women were used to hearing. Since, catholicism is so big here, the protestant churches try hard not to be like the catholics. And since the abuse of confessionals was one of the major issues that brought on the Protestant Reformation, evangelical churches here are still afraid to talk about confession in the church. Protestant churches in Salvador do not usually have an invitation at the end of the service where people can confess either Christ or their sins or both. Churches in this culture can easily be seen as being full of hipocrits - people trying to be perfect who never expose their own humanity. In fact most evangelical churches (if you're not catholic, they call you evangelical) in the area have lists of rules - things you can and cannot do as a Christian - everything from not shaving your legs to what you eat. Many come to our church asking what our rules are. One of our four identity points that we are teaching our members is that we want to be authentic people. Our church is a hospital for sinners. That the Bible teaches redemption is both an event (baptism) and a process (an ongoing relationship with God). That sin is not breaking one of the rules and not letting anyone know or even a moral or social wrong (although this can be a part of sin). Sin as the Hebrews understood it, is anything that hurts your relationship with God or others. When Jesus told us to love God above all else, and love our neighbor, He was showing us how to live a pure and righteous life here on earth in harmony with our Creator and all those around us. And as Christians when (because we will) we fall short of these two very important things, the first step is admitting it. The second is asking for the forgiveness that God is so ready to give us (1 John 1:9-10). This may need to be just to God but it often needs to be to a trusted brother or sister in Christ (James 5:16), an accountability partner, or perhaps the offended party. We need each other. We need prayers, strength, and support from each other. We need to go to God with and for each other. But always remember that we don't have to talk God into forgiving us, it is He who is working to make us ready to accept His forgiveness.

Jackson and Samuel Together At Last!

Aubry is 7 and 1/2 months old now. Not interested in crawling yet but she's certainly mobile. This is her on the go in her walker - she chases us everywhere in it. She also likes being surrounded by her friends. Don't we all!

Happy Easter!

Baby's First Easter! At church today we took the Lord's Supper around tables. It was a neat service!

Youth Service Project

The youth had a service project this weekend to deliver food to families our church knows who are in need of our help. Each family received a large bag of food and a great big chocolate Easter Egg (as is the tradition here). We were able to help 7 families who are either friends or family of members at our church. One family was very emotional since their father who was just in his mid thirties passed away this week last year. The Mom (an aunt of one of our young professionals, Danielle) has found no steady job and is trying to raise three children now by herself. The other families we visited are also low income families who are either single parent families or are trying to care for at least one family member with a handicap or in many cases both. Our youth learned a lot this past Saturday and we appreciate our supporters who make days like this possible.

Mesias' Baptism

We had another baptism last week. He is an older man named Mesias. Travis had been studying with him but he first came to church as a friend of Ida, our widow at church (we think Mesias may have a crush on her). He was baptized in the ocean after church. It was so great that the Nitoroi team could be there too. They are a mission team in training to go to Niteroi - a city near Rio. They were here visiting us on their survey trip asking some really tough but good questions. We pray for their work as they move to Brazil next October. Please be in prayer for this team as well as for our new brother in Christ here in Salvador!

80's Team Banquet

Wow! It was a night to remember complete with thank-you's, awards, 80's music videos, and, yes, even a moonwalk contest. We are now 8 missionaries celebrating 3 years on the mission field in 2008. What better way to commemorate this than a look at our past. Thank you to Aubry for being so good so Mommy could MC the night! Thank you to Alicia for the decorations and to Matt for help with the awards ceremony and Russ for the improv kareoke! And thank you to God and to my teammates for an incredible 3 years here in Salvador, Brazil.

Samuel Josiah Porter -Welcome To The World!

Baby Sam was born at 8:20 on March 12 - the day we all traveled to Brazil together just 3 years ago. The labor lasted about 6 and half hours. Samuel was 8lbs and 10oz. and about 20 inches long. (3.925 K and 51.5 cm). We were ready for his arrival, especially big brother Kelton, who stayed with us while Randy, Jenn, and Samuel were in the hospital. It was a little strange having two kids for a few days. Now there are 5 team kids. We came to the field with 4, 3 left, and now we're up to 6 including our unborn baby Sass. Samuel and Jackson are just 3 weeks apart while Aubry and Ceara are 9 months apart. It's strange to think of Kelton as the big boy on the team now. Will post a picture of all of our team kids when we can get them all together.

Coming Back from Furlough

Well we’ve been back here in Brazil a month now and I think our bodies are finally adjusted from leaving the cold winter there to coming back to the middle of a hot summer here. It was so good to spend time with you and worship with you during furlough. We wish you could see Aubry’s two new teeth. All the Brazilians say she’d grown so much while we were away. We are glad to be back and back into our ministry here. We had to hit the ground running and here are some of the happenings from this past month back…

Evangelism Series

In Brazil, February (or March depending on when Carnival is that year) is the time for new beginnings. After Carnival is over people come back from summer vacations, school starts back, and people get ready to truly begin their year. We wanted to start off this year with a focus on evangelism. We have over 30 members now who can reach out as well (if not better) than us missionaries. We began an 8 week Sunday School class on training them to teach an evangelistic one on one Bible study with friends and family. The study itself is 8 weeks and the lessons are: Purpose of Life- To Glorify God, O.T. God wants a relationship with His People, What Is Sin, Life of Jesus, Teachings of Jesus, Baptism, Church, and Holy Spirit. After studying the first we had a practice day this past Sunday after church March 2^nd where they paired up and practiced with each other. Our members are becoming more motivated to share God’s word and we recently have three new studies. Please pray for upcoming studies and especially for Messias as he is nearing the end of studying these lessons and says he wants to be baptized when he finishes.

Sermon Series

Also, to begin the year we wanted to define our Identity a little better in a city with so many religions and churches and denominations. Since most churches here lack a sense of community, we decided to focus on our identity as a Family of God. Each week we have emphasized four values: Authenticity, Growth, Invitation, and Healthy Theology. Both the Identity sermon series and our evangelism Sunday School series will take us through to our Anniversary service on April 6^th.

First Pot-luck of the year

Our first potluck of the year was a hit, we had 81 in attendance! This is about 30 more than usual. Our Brazilians love to invite on potluck days!

Baby Jackson Turner Quirey

Baby Jackson Turner was born the same day as the potluck February 17^th at 5:31 pm to his proud parents Russell and Valerie Quirey (for those of you who know Matt Quirey – he is now a first time uncle). J.T. weighed 7lbs and 2oz and was 20 inches long. He is just beautiful. Our team is still awaiting baby Porter in a week or so and we just found out that there is a new baby Sass due in August.

You didn’t know this is what our team meant by growing the church!!!

Women’s Ministry

We’ve had a couple of baby showers recently. We’ve also started our monthly Christian disciplines lessons again. This month Jennifer taught on service. We had a nice luncheon and about 20 women attended. Next month will be Mary Virginia’s lesson on confession.

Youth Back To School Party

We were so proud of our youth at their back to school party. They brought visitors and showed off what they’d learned. We had 25 Brazilian kids. They won prizes of school supplies for answering questions about the devo lessons over the past 4 months. We’ve been studying about God’s work among the men and women of the Old Testament and some of the questions were pretty hard.

The Youth leaders (Matt, Mary Virginia, Randy, Jennifer, and a young Brazilian couple Tennyson and Diana) are spending once a week for 6 weeks together in prayer for the youth ministry. We are praying for God’s guidance, growth, a multi-generational vision committee, and a Brazilian male intern.

New Church Secretaries

We still can’t afford to hire a church secretary so some of our Brazilian women stepped up to the plate! We now have three women volunteering at the church in order to keep the building open and help out at the church (especially with all of the team women being pregnant or with little babies to care for)! Their biggest project lately is mail-outs to all of the visitor cards we have received over the last year in order to invite people to our big church anniversary beginning of April and our English classes that begin the end of this month. Our new volunteers are Luciana, Diana, and Cremilda and we don’t know how we ever got along without them now!

Aubry likes to squeal

This is Aubry's first time to role over from her tummy to her back. We got it on video! Way to go Mary.

1st Trip To See Santa

Christmas Happenings

Christmas is in the air... not really since it's getting hotter and hotter... but people are getting ready. There is a lot happening at church right now. Lots of Christmas parties and the big church picnic! At our North American Christmas party for the English classes we had 35 or so (see above pic) and everyone enjoyed the games and really different sweets that Valerie, Mary Virginia, Matt, and Jennifer made. Our annual church picnic is going to be a cookout this Sunday at Randy and Jennifer's new place. Last year we had about 90 attend. Pray that this year is as big a success. Matt is preaching on the big day about how we worship God with our whole lives. Tonight is a game night for our small group of young professionals. Next week we have a team gift exchange and Christmas meal together and the youth have planned their evangelistic event for the month as a Christmas party next Friday night. All this and more is going on while we prepare to leave for a month to come see you on our furlough! See Ya Soon!

The Work Part 2

The Salvador women’s conference went well. There were about 170 women present. Valerie, Jennifer and Mary Virginia taught on the spiritual disciplines of prayer, meditation, fasting and Bible study. Today we had 48 at worship and 19 in our new Sunday school class. We had a breakfast this morning together at church to kick off our new class on the Beatitudes. Russ Quirey’s parents are in town and they each got to play a part in church work today: making orange juice, having a part in children’s time, and leading a translated closing prayer. For those of you who have been praying about our church’s rent situation, we have negotiated to stay in our building for at least 6 more months and within that time our rent will be discounted to pay us back our deposit. Our small group is having a game night at the building next week to try and invite more of their friends to be a part of our Bible study. Christmas activities start this coming Sunday. The English class Christmas party at church is this week. The church’s annual Christmas picnic is next Sunday and our youth party is two weeks from Friday. It is hard to believe that we will start our furlough trip three weeks from today. We have much to do to get ready to leave for a month. We are excited to see our families and some of our friends during the holiday season. It will also be good to go home to get things in order again with things like our teeth and our taxes. May God be glorified in all we do even in the little things like running errands and paying early bills!

This is a picture at our team retreat. Aubry’s first time swimming.

The Work

Thank you to all who have written cards, e-mails and given gifts to us and baby Aubry. It has been an adjustment having a new addition to our family, but Aubry is such a blessing we hardly even notice how busy we are. It is hard to say now what we ever did without her and she only just turned 3 months this week! We appreciate all the love and support that you have sent our way.

There has been a lot going on in our church these past few months. This past Sunday we had 55 in attendance with 2 families who were first time visitors. We are beginning a sermon series on worship. Our English classes at the church are well attended and many of the students have begun participating in some of the church activities. Matt enjoys teaching and some of his advanced students are helping out in the beginner’s class now (which is a big help). We are adding a new small group in our church which brings us to four small group meetings per week (6 if you count the youth and young married meetings). The young professionals’ small group that meets in our home has been very encouraging lately. The youth still have weekly Friday night Bible studies where the teens are also planning their monthly evangelistic event at the church building to invite their friends to come. This past month it was a costume party. We had 32 kids and 8 adults present. We are having our regular kids help with the follow-up work from the events to invite these new kids to Bible studies and their families to church. The next event will be a movie night. Matt is studying the Bible regularly with a group of teenagers every Saturday. Mary has an ongoing Bible study with 2 college students eager to learn more about Jesus. Mary will be speaking at a ladies’ conference this week. There are usually about 200 in attendance at this conference and Mary’s a little nervous about her Portuguese. Please, pray about all of these things plus our building situation as our rent contract is up soon.

The team is doing well. We just had a team retreat two weeks ago and it was time well spent. The Sass family is on furlough. The Porter’s and Quirey’s are both expecting their babies to come within the month of March. It was good to see many of you when we came for Spencer’s wedding; but if we didn’t see you because it was such a short whirlwind trip, we will be seeing you soon on our furlough in January. We are thankful for you! Happy Thanksgiving everyone! And Happy Anniversary Riverchase Family!

First Day at the Beach!

Aubry had her first beach day. On our day off, we took a short trip to the beach with the Sass family - Travis, Alicia, and baby Ceara. The Sasses are leaving for furlough the day we come back from our vacation time (our trip to Birmingham for Spencer's wedding). They are only taking one furlough in their 5 year time here and are therefore leaving for 3 months so it will be a long time before Bree and Ceara see each other. Ceara will turn one year old this month! Hard to believe it. Here is a picture of Hollywood Aubry as she watches Ceara play with the birthday present she gave her - a toy that shoots bubbles!

Aubry Blabbin'

Aubry wakes up cute

Here is our daughter waking up and stretching.