Monday, December 29, 2008

Christmas 2008




We had a nice Christmas Eve service. The youth put on a short program. Everyone looked sharp.




On Christmas Day, we went over to Charlie and Isabel's. We had an awesome meal and played a lot of Clue! We also watched a movie with the girls - The Christmas Card. We ended the night with a game of Monopoly...Charlie won!


On Friday night, we had the youth Christmas party at our house. They seemed to have a lot of fun eating and playing board games. It was a lot of fun to teach them how to play the gift exchange, where you have the opportunity to take somone else's present. Some of them were too nice, but they got the hang of it!



On Saturday night, we had the adult Christmas party at our house. We taught them how to play Pictionary. That was a riot! We had a lot of fun. They also learned how to play the gift exchange game. They weren't as worried about being nice. It was hilarious to see which presents were taken by other people!


All in all, it was a great Christmas! Fun was had by all!


Monday, December 22, 2008

Trip to Araras

Last week we had the opportunity to travel to Araras. We visited Leandro, Bruna, and their new baby, Kevin. Leandro is currently taking care of a work for an American missionary that is on furlough. Tim was able to preach and Charlie translated. The services went well. It was a blessing to see the work there and to see how well Leandro was doing with it.

Please pray for Leandro and his family. Their son, Kevin has had a rough time of it. When Bruna had her first ultrasound, the doctor noticed an abnormality. It was discovered that he had an opening in his stomach and some intestines were outside of the body. They monitered the pregnancy and scheduled a C-section. When Kevin was born on Nov. 6th, it was determined that he would not need surgery. The opening was small and the doctor was able to put the intestines back in and stitch up the opening. Because his iron was low, they gave him a blood transfusion. This resulted in Kevin getting a staff infection. The staff infection caused him to go into cardiac arrest. The medical staff worked for 40 minutes to resuscitate him. As a result there appears to be some brain damage and he has started having seizures. Only time will tell how extensive the brain damage is. He is on medication for the seizures. God is the Great Physician and can take care of all of these problems or choose to use them for good. Please pray that God would heal Kevin and give wisdom to the doctors and parents.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Christmas Tea

Every year there is a Christmas Tea at the church here in Formiga. We had a really good turnout this year! I'm not sure what the exact count was, but I'm pretty sure there was around 80 people there tonight. There were a lot of visitors, many of which were lost. Isabel gave the devotion. She spoke about the birth of Christ and His gift of salvation. I don't think anyone got saved, but at least they heard the Gospel. The food was great and the fellowship was fun. Here are a couple of pictures.





Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Doctor Visit for My Finger

Let me start off with praise the Lord everything went faster with this doctor visit and I got a good report! The doctor removed the splint and said to start physical therapy. My little finger is still discolored, fat, and stiff (it's really quite ugly)! Any attempt to bend it is quite painful! The doctor said that this is normal. So, tomorrow I start physical therapy on it and hopefully it will get back to normal quickly! At least I no longer have to bag my hand for showers! Woohoo!

Monday, December 1, 2008

Missions Conference

We had Missions Conference here from Wednesday to Sunday. Tim preached every night except Friday. Weber preached Friday night. It was exciting to see the people faithfully attend each service. On Sunday night, they took up and counted the Faith Promise. It was slightly higher than last year's. Praise the Lord!!! We also had some visitors on Sunday night. One of them indicated that they knew that they were lost. She did not get saved last night. Hopefully, she will be saved soon. On Saturday night we had an International Banquet. I somehow ended up in charge of the planning and cooking for this event. Thankfully, a few of the ladies came to help me cook. Our menu consisted of: pasta, cabbage rolls, swedish meatballs, kugilis, potato salad, carrots, salad, banana bread, pao de queijo, chocolate pudding, chocolate cake, white cake, and chocolate chip cookies. Everything turned out well. The people seemed to enjoy it too! (always a good thing!) It was a lot of fun!