1st Full Day in Londrina!

Matt and Paulo (One of the pastors at the church)

Our first full day in Londrina involved much planning and preparation for the Volunteer Retreat that begins tomorrow. We have so many fun things planned for the 91 volunteers and their families. Many activities that will allow for team building and our message of One Team One Goal….Um Time Um Alvo! Our focus is showing the volunteers how much they are loved and appreciated for all the work they do for the church.
It’ll be a blessed day of activities such as the Human Knot, the Trust Maze, the Lego Challenge, the Jigsaw Cross Puzzle and MANY more!
Plus there are many skits to perform for the volunteers that will generate lots of laughs and smiles making each of them feel good about being a part of their church team here in Londrina!
We are so blessed to have the honor of loving and showing appreciation to each of them!
Our biggest prayer requests are for “continued” mission team unity and that God’s Will be done for the duration of the retreat!

Our bible verse for the first day of the retreat tomorrow is….
God will protect them from evil.(John 17:15) God will give them, His servants, wise and discerning hearts.(1 Kings 3:9)
God will open the hearts of those who hear and see to respond to the message. (Jer. 24:7)


Jim and Holly at a team meeting


Team before lunch (Left to right: Lisa, Richard, Holly, Dwight, Kim, Wendy, Laura, Matt, and Jim)


The outside of Capela de Gracia - with the new logo we LOVE!

Bon Dia!

Bom Dia (Good Morning!)

During diner last night we watched some of the soccer match between two Brazilian teams - Corinthians and International. Let me just tell you - these Brazilians don't mess around about their Football! There was much celebrating late into the night - fireworks, guns firing, horns blowing, and people yelling. We enjoyed listening to the festivities for a while, but thankfully we were all so sleepy that we didn't have a problem sleeping through it.

Early this morning there was a rain storm that came through with majestic thunder and lightening. It was overcast and drizzling when we woke up this morning but things have started to clear up and the sun looks like it is going to make an appearence.

We have a day of preparation ahead. We brought a LOT of extra luggage - supplies for the children, camp activities, t-shirts for the volunteers, printed material for the people attending the camp. Speaking of the camp, one of our team members will be posting soon a recap of specifically what we are going to be doing for those of you who haven't heard all the plans.

We are excited about what the days holds. Expectant that God is going to be working in and through us.

Our Verse for the day:
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us."
Hebrews 12:1

We made i!

For those of you calculating, its about 22 hours since we left our homes for the ATL airport. We are so thankful to have made it to the hotel in Londrina. We are excited, tired, and happy to be here. The trip couldn't have been smoother. We all made it though customs without a hitch and all our bags made it here. We hvae a few hours to shower, run, rest, and explore, then it is off to a big dinner Brazilian style with the leadership from the church.

Pics of dinner!!

GIG!!!!!!

Amen Sister!
Did I mention my enthusiasm for this mission is on FULL FORCE right about now???
Excellent prayer requests! And definitely an AMAZING accomplishment to reach our monetary goals and be fully funded before we leave for the airport TODAY!!
OMGoodness...did I say today????? 17 hours and away we go!

GIG....God Is Good!

Brasil Bound

Here I sit. 1:38 am. Mostly packed and ready to go. I spent the last two hours trying to decide which sweater to bring (its winter there) and how many pairs of shoes to bring (I usually limit myself to two, but since it is Brasil I feel like heels are in order...plus I heart heels). But to say that I'm pumped about the trip would be an understatement. Now that packing is done....even more pumped!

We had AMAZING news today. Laura who has been keeping up with ALL our support donations informed us that we are FULLY funded!! Wow. Amazing. What a God sized thing that we were able to raise nearly $34,000 in this economy. Completely amazing. And the day before we left. What a gift. We can go into the trip not thinking about the funding. So many thanks to you all who are partnering with our team on this journey. Did I say amazing?

I thought you might like to know what I'm praying for the team. Feel free to pray for these things or anything else!

1. Unity. Hands down a problem for teams in Brazil. The enemy attacks relationally.
2. That we would be able to leave distractions behind and hear the Lord speak to each of us.
3. For the details of the camp to come together. Camp begins on Friday and ends on Sunday about noon.
4. For the Spirit to move during the camp and Sunday service.
5. Health for the team as we travel and serve.

We are so thankful for your prayers.
We will be updating the blog as often as we can while in Brasil...we look forward to traveling "with" you!

Wendy
Team Leader

And we are off! (Almost...)

(focus on the plane here not the alps....we won't be flying over the alps on our way to Brazil)

We leave in 4 days! Wow, we can’t believe it’s finally here. We’ve been planning since late February and, yet, it’s still crept up on us. BUT, we are ready!! The team is so pumped – God has really provided us the guidance and confidence to carry out this mission.

We met Monday night and packed all the team supplies. Wendy has assigned a “leader for the day” so we each received our day to lead as well. We also finalized the itinerary for the team building retreat. Thankfully, we have some creative minds that have put together some amazing skits and beautiful artwork. We are so excited to see what God has in store for all of us – our team and those we are serving.

We leave Atlanta Tuesday, June 30^th, flying straight to Sao Paulo, Brazil (9 hour flight), layover there, and take another flight to Londrina. A long travel day for sure.

Our support network has been amazing so thank you again! We look forward to providing you many more updates so you can see what your support is doing for God’s good work.

God Bless you all!

Meet the Team

Here is a pic of most of our team recently....enjoy!

Check back!

Keep checking the cheesy thermometer to the right to see how we are doing on support...we are getting close! Whoo hooo!

Getting there....

I have exciting news......drum roll.....we are 68% there on funding (see the cheesy thermometer on the right)!! We more than 150 supports. Wow! Amazing. THANK YOU to all who have given. If you are still interested in giving (and being a real part of what we are doing in Brazil) you still have time! Here are the online giving instructions.

1. www.GOglobalx.org
2. Click "give"
3. Fill in contact info and click "Short term mission trip"
4. Under "Short term mission trip" select "Brazil" then "Brazil Volunteer Retreat"
5. For individual type "team" (if you want to give to someone specific then you can type their name rather than the team)

We are thankful for all funding - $10 - $10,000!!

Where will we be going?

The first post was titled "Who are we?" so I decided to follow up with "Where will be be going?" mainly because we will be leaving in 33 days! Crazy! We are looking forward to having you on this journey with us. Now on to the where.....

Where: Check out the Map...We will be flying into Sao Paulo and we have a short layover. Then on to Londrina where our partner church is. Londrina is in the state of Parana (Yellowy orangish at bottom) in the Southern most region of Brazil. It will be early winter there - probably in the 70s during the day and maybe mid to low 50s at night. A nice change from the 90s it will likely be here!



We will spend 7 nights in Londrina and then start making our way back to the USA. We will have two night in Sao Paulo (Red) in the city of Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo is the largest city in South American, and one of the 7 largest cities in the world! An estimated population of 11,105,249 the city has both wealthy areas and very poor areas. We will be debriefing from the trip, talking about our experiences, transitioning back to the American culture, and hopefully doing a little sight seeing on our free day.

Stay tuned folks for more EXCITING updates to come soon! :)