Brazil 2008 Days 4 & 5

Day 4 & 5 are combined for your blogging pleasure...
Here's my personal favorite story from the trip. Last year Jessica and I met a special girl in our first VBS group. We've stayed in touch throughout the year through Ebenezer and kept her in our prayers. She's now baptized, confirmed and a regular singer at church! She's a great little girl that has tremendous potential. With God's help we can capture some of this tremendous human capital that is placed in the toughest of circumstances. Bruna will be a favela success story, Jessica and I are very proud of her. Here she is conducting a group of kids from the favela mission church at the Sunday service.

The reason there was no post last night is that we closed down the Brazilian Home Depot buying lighting and electrical materials to light up the stage in the church's new theater area for the kids. Here we are at the store checking out the latest in Southern Hemisphere electrical supplies. Can you imagine 56 meters of 3/4" electrical conduit in a Renault clio (think Toyota Yaris)... it can be done!

Tanya and Lori did a great job organizing the VBS supplies for us and packing for our mission on day 4 of conducting two VBS sessions. Also, thanks to Jessica, Lori, Tanya and Helga for purchasing and organizing all of the crafts, school supplies and Portuguese bibles so well. Really cool and made for easy work of it all (well sort of).

Pastor Tom spreading Jesus love to a few fine folks... This is at Jardim Evana, the poorest of the Ebenezer mission churches. It is amazing what this congregation does, the Holy Spirit is everywhere here in challenging circumstances. Amen brothers and sisters!

A packed house, we had the privilege of walking the favela (slum) streets and collecting these kids for VBS. We had around 75 participants and although it was a packed house, it was a great place to be! These kids are awesome, smart, well behaved, good hearted God's children that crave opportunities to grow. I'm hopeful that we provided some...

Mathias makes friends easily, especially since he is fluent in Portuguese. Here you can see he's a chick magnet!

Lori had a new friend that didn't want to get out of her arms. A little love on a beautiful Saturday morning.

Almost all smiles, I believe the kids had a great time.

Here are the local kids doing a presentation for us, it was awesome! Pastor Heber and Izabel do great work here in a very difficult environment. The local drug dealer was across the street of this mission church and apparently controls the streets.

Here's Jesus (aka Michael Ford) with the grateful leper at his feet. The kids dug this performance of Luke and Pastor Tom's 10 lepers performance.

Here's Pastor Heber and Izabel in front of the soccer field that they dream of a larger satellite church with school and medical center for the kids. If anybody can bring Jesus love to this area, it's these two with the help of Ebenezer and a little help from St Paul. Thanks everyone for making a difference!

The Ford family...

Here's a panoramic favela view.

On the favela walk picking up the kids. The boy on the right is David who was with us last year. He has new glasses and a new bed courtesy of Ebenezer Lutheran Church. Helga, Dylan and Alex are naturals...

A view of the favela, most of these power lines are home grown. Try doing this with FPL...

Here's some of the kids in their home.

Another favela view.

Here's the entrance to David's house. There's a mother and 12 kids that live in these two rooms.

This boy was hit by a car over a year ago and was in a coma for 15 days (the favela traffic can be harrowing) he's back stronger than ever and a permanent attendee at the mission church. Go pastor Tom and Nimbu!

Buddies! Flavia in the red shirt is the sweetheart of the Ebenezer congregation, you won't see her without a smile.

Here's Cayla with her new friend in the favela, he was feeling the love this Saturday morning.

All I can say is that the Boca Raton Christian Blazers are EVERYWHERE! She's a church member that helped us with VBS...

Sabrina snagged Alex and hooked him up with some liturgical dance makeup, he's a sport...

Sabrina and Mathias hamming it up at lunch between VBS's.

Dylan, Michael, Cayla and Alex rocked with the Ebernezer contemporary band. Does anybody remember Deep Purple? These boys do! How about a little Skynrd, yup...

The kitchen crew makes each of us gordo (large in Portuguese)... These ladies ROCK!

Here's some of our team lending a hand...

Ching ching... a toast at lunch.

Claudio is a congregant that works non-stop. Here he is while we're doing VBS.

In the afternoon we move to Juquitiba, a ranch in the Sao Paulo countryside that a church member converted to a country retreat for local kids and the city kids. Soccer court, fruit trees, fishing pond, swimming pool, church structure, it's all there... Here's some liturgical dance for the Saturday night worship service, it was awesome!

Here's the evening look at Juquitiba, it was a beautiful evening.

We added a team member, the St Paul sock puppet sheep. He was excellent at working with the kids although his Portuguese is limited.

Here's some of the local kids building Noah's ark.

More ark construction, complete with animals, Noah and a rainbow!

Everyone got into the action.

Sunday morning worship back at Ebenezer. The liturgical team checking things out from the nursery.

Here they are in action, great job Izabel getting this team to Rock!

Here's a Sabrina dance that was incredible in any language.

Pastor Tom, Pastor Nimbu and Evelyn... it was an awesome service!

Mateus had his whole family at the service and it was his birthday! We sung for him and gave him a soccer ball that was ultimately autographed by almost everyone.

In the afternoon we had an opportunity to cruise Sao Paulo and see the sights. here are the boys in downtown, it was cool.

Here's Wagner's (congregation president that organized our trip) church school that he teaches music in.

Here's his classroom, it was beautiful...