Taquari Outreach

Please be in prayer for the outreach and church planting program in Taquari! A neighborhood in Palmas. We have been working in evangelizing the neighborhood but still have a lot more work in front of us. We hope to have a visit from two of our seminary students in Bahia either at the end of this month or in July. This visit will allow them to see the area and also get a better idea if this is where God is calling them in their pastoral ministry. We would like to see one of these pastors living in the neighborhood allowing for more friendships and contacts to be made which is very important in planting a new church. Pray that God would speak to the heart of each of these men and that their decision can be God's decision. Also pray that God would open doors in this neighborhood.

Two twins learning how to read at Friday tutoring sessions.

This year saw us begin a new tutoring program at the church in Taquari with children of the neighborhood, since it is a free service to the neighborhood we hope that people can see that the church is interested in helping their community.

Family that is attending Taquari church plant to left of Natinha (Natinha in Center).

We also saw our first couple begin attending services on a regular basis. The church has had visitors come and go, but this family decided they would stay and attend services with us. They have been a great support to this ministry. Last week they announced that they would be moving to another city sometime before the end of this year, this saddened us but we rejoiced with them in the hope of a better life in the other state. Pray that God would form a core group for this church.

Thank you.

A lot of times we get a lot of cards, especially at Christmas and near our Birthdays. We usually can't respond back because of the amount. So it is nice to have this form of saying thank you. We want to say thank you to everyone who expressed their sympathy toward us in the loss of our child. Your prayers and encouraging words were and are very important to us. Never think that we don't read cards and letters that we get just because we do not respond back to you. If we responded back to every card, letter or email that we get we wouldn't get any work done down here and I know you don't want that.

So once again thank you for your kinds words and support and God bless.

Mike and Natinha

CAMP 2007!

CAMP 2007!

Wild boar that wandered in to camp. Actually he is not so wild just escaped from his pen and is now living loose. (But try to catch him)

Every year people in the church look forward to our camping program. This year was no different people were anticipating the Carnival holiday to arrive so that our church could go camp on a small farmette. This year with the help of the Shippensburg Church of God we were able to rent something a little nicer. The plan was for a group of people to come from the Shippensburg church but that was not possible this year. We thank them for their help in renting this facility.

God is so good! We prayed a lot that it would not rain on us at camp. This has been the most rain that people have ever seen during the rainy season here. To give you an example since January 24th to February 26th we had one day where it didn't rain. We camped within the city practically this year on a nice property that we rented. The only place that we heard of that it did not rain during the day in Palmas, are you ready for this, was where we were camping! It poured during the night time and was sunny during the day. But meanwhile... where the Carnvial celebration was taking place it just poured buckets of water down on the festivities. God takes care of his servants!

I invite you to take a look at some of the pictures below to get an idea of what happened during our camping celebration. God bless!

A little bit of God's word never hurt anyone, as a matter of fact a lot of God's word wouldn't hurt either! We actually met for praise, worship, prayer, and study six different times during camp!



The children took advantage of a small playground that was available to them almost all day long, when they were not in the pool they were here.

Our coreography/dance team also performed one evening.

We baptized Edinaldo and Antonhia both accepted Christ last year. Naldo accepted Christ at last years camp making an already special baptism even more special.





Our special evening this year was the night of the hill billy. If you see someone dressed like you dress please don't be offended, it was all in good fun.


More miscellaneous photos follow if you haven't had enough already.






Nice group shot of all the camp participants, and a sunset to fnish it all up.

Camp 2008 will be here before we know it!