We made it!

We're in Rio do Sol! After a long day and a half of traveling, we are finally here. It took  a couple tight connections, a ridiculously long flight, and a crazy bus ride, but we are all glad to be here. We met all of our translators. On our way from the airport in Curitiba to Rio do Sol, we stopped at a buffet where the waiters would bring around different meats and offer them to you. There were so many different foods I had never seen before. What an experience! I'm sure the boys will expound when they get home. Last night we met at the church and socialized for a while with the church people. It's a super fun group of people! Then we split up and went with our host families. Bailey and I were lucky enough to have a translator staying with us. I think other groups have been using more charades and google translate than us. My family is so hospitable. We had a great time getting to know them and sharing pictures. They loved the pictures of snow. I'm pretty sure we were all super happy to sleep in a bed (not a plane). Now we are at the church fellowshipping for a while before we start up and I'm listening to people worshipping in Portuguese and English. It is gonna be an awesome time! Love you Mom and Dad!! -- Samantha Timmons

Pure awesomeness

I will say up front if there are any misspellings it is because i am typing on a brazilian keyboard and they list every word as spelled wrong.  Plus i am too lazy to re read or try and capitalize everything because the shift keys are in different places.

Today is going to be pretty exciting.  We get to go and visit almost 250 high school students and invite them to Happy Day and to our English Camp.  And the local university is helping us so that we can hand out over 3,000 invitations to English Camp for every person who attends the University.  That is correct I did say 3,000.  Add that to the 1,000 or so we have already invited and all the students the level 2 team will invite (another 3,000 or so) we are expecting a ton of people to come.  This will easily be our biggest English camp and I have no idea how many people will actually come.  lets just say we are estimating conservatively 200 plus people! Crazy! So we are hoping for a lot of help from the church members and hoping that it is not  too crowded but if it is who cares!

Matthew 9:37-38 Then he said to his disciples, ``The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray eanestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.´´

2 More days of freedom

It is almost time for the level 2 team to get here.  Crazy how fast time goes in this world.

The last few days have been busy and chill at the same time.  During this week we've spent a little bit of time walking around the city to various schools handing out flyers for Happy Day this Saturday with all of the level 2 team at a park.  There are lots of people interested in coming and I think it will be a blast. Saturday we got to hang out at the church all day and it was their celebration of the reopening of the church. It was fun to be around a great bonfire, watch 11 baptisms and then be able to eat and talk with people. There were many there who don't normally attend because of the baptisms and it was a great opportunity to be with new people.

Sunday I taught a lesson on finding your identity in Christ and nothing less and got the chance to speak to the church inviting them and encouraging them to participate and help with english day and english camp. we are expecting a lot of people and because english camp is at the end of the trip this year (previously the beginning) we get to invite every school to the camp and are expecting a lot of people.  Fortunately things have really come together for this and we get to use the space for free and I personally think it will be our largest camp yet.

Tuesday we spent time in another city for "Dia de Namoradoes" (Valentine's Day).  We all went without dates and ate at a nice restaurant, listened to music, and had a good time.

Though as a group we would all ask for prayer for health. Jon and I didn't get great sleep last night and I've had a cough and a running nose for almost two weeks now.  We are hoping to all be 100% healthy by the time the level 2 team arrives so we are not hindered in helping them at all and leading. Love you all.  Thanks for all the prayers.

When in Brasil...

The last few days have not been too busy.  Sunday we spent helping at the church and talking with our host families.  The service was 2.5 hours long, and some people think that Mark goes a long time...don't complain.  It was all about the persecuted church in different countries and we watched about an hour of videos and got to spend time in prayer for the different continents and Christians that face persecution.  It was really good to watch and to think about such things.

Monday was Johnny's day off/day of rest because he works on Sunday.  So Jon and I went and hung out with our host family and then spent the rest of the day with Johnny at his house.  We watched some movies, visited a sick member of the church, and then got to read for a little bit.

Tuesday we went to a school with a member of the church.  It was a very short visit and we are going back this saturday for an english party.  Also Alek and Andrew got tattoos today!

Wed was super cool because we spent it at classrooms.  We visited the same school in the morning and afternoon which was a good time.  We played the kids in soccer which we won in case anyone wanted to know haha but it was fun to build relationships with them and talk with them.  They were very excited to see us there and are looking forward to seeing the level 2 team in a week!  It is crazy to think that the other group will be here in just a few days! Also a God moment was being able to talk with the students (middle school age) about purity in dating and waiting for sex before marriage and the ways that we wait with our girlfriends.  Totally a God moment that they asked that question because having visited hundreds of classes combined we have never answered that question before. Super cool!  Then we went to a BBQ because thursday is a Catholic holiday.  So everyone has the day off and decided to have food, friends, and a beer or two or three.  It ended up being a fun night and we built some more friendships with the people.

Today has been very relaxing because the American consulate emailed Johnny saying that if he can be in Rio de Janerio on Friday they can figure out a problem that they had concerning a visa for someone that was not coming.  So that is a matter for prayer that we can think about.  Johnny will leave tomorrow around 7 or 8 to drive 4 hours, get on a plane, and try to talk with them and a father concerning the visa into America.

Also needing of prayer; Jon and I are living with professor Illson.  Tonight around 5:30 his father passed away. Be in prayer. Thanks everyone. Love you all and really have been appreciating your prayers more than you know!

Why hospitals suck in socialism and the Stairway to heaven

Yesterday we had a lot of plans.  And then they all got changed in about two seconds.  We were messing around and having fun like boys do and decided to climb a tree.  Then we decided to get a little higher and Andrew wanted to jump from branch to branch.  He successfully did it twice and it was a lot of fun to watch.  Then he was coming down, it was a simple climb but the tree was mossy and wet, Andrew lost his grip, and fell about twenty feet onto his back.  He was pretty scraped up and we checked for different things.  So we went to the hospital and it was a wait.  Hospitals are for everyone and you can go there for everything from a cold to and emergency car accident.  He registered and waited 7 hours and did not see a doctor for an X-ray.  We think he is fine, don't worry all you mothers who read this.  The other three of us visited english schools and pitched our "Happy day" and English camp to them so that they will come.  Then all of us went with some brazilians to "men in black 3" in English and portuguese subtitles.

Today was a great day we spent most of the day (9-2) at church where we did a lot of cleaning and prep work for the celebration day of the reopening/christianing of the church.  They are almost finished with the work of redoing the church from the flood damage and it looks great.  Today we cleaned the floors and ripped up all the grass, layed sod down, and put down cement blocks to walk on.  Then Jon and I went to another house around 2 to help a girl and her family move (because Andrew was useless from his fall).  They lived on the third floor and had a spiral staircase.  Jon and i counted 49 stairs up and 49 stairs down.  In a little over 2 hours we made 70ish trips each with loads of stuff.  70 trips X 100 stairs = 7,000 stinking steps.  Needless to say we were exhausted at the end of this.  If you want to have an idea of what happened go to the gym, get on the stair stepper, grab a 25 pound weight and walk for two hours.  You'll get the idea.  Overall the church looks great we got a lot done and we are going to eat tonight, watch a movie at someone's house, and continue to serve in any way that we can.

Right now Alek is at a Portuguese Christian rock concert with a few of the members of the church and he can tell you more about that experience tomorrow.  We will all sleep soundly tonight!!!

Thanks for the comments and prayers.  We love you all very much!

Jefferson Pao

Hello all! It has been a while since our last update mainly because we have been out of town and very busy the last couple days! This week we started going into school in other towns to talk to administration to see if we can come with the level 2 team and do our "culture exchange" and share the gospel. God has blessed our time and every single school we've gone into the last two days has been more than happy to allow us into their schools! Tuesday night we got to all spend the night in a city about 20 Kl away called Lontras. We were with the pastor of the church plant there, his name is Lucas. We spent the night at his house and then went with him to schools on wednesday. Since we don't speak Portuguese fluently yet we let Lucas do most of the talking while we try to make a good impression by talking as much as possible and one time beating some Brazilians in a game of Volleyball. We have been busy with schools and bible studies. We have had a bible study tuesday, wednesday, and thursday night this week. We usually get back to our rooms around 11, take a shower, and then crash after some reading. We have been able to build some awesome relationships and have had great conversations. God is helping us learn Portuguese fast and giving us lots of opportunities to talk with people and also to do some physical labor. We got the opportunity on Monday, which is Johnny's day off, to go help roof a house for a couple that goes to the church. We spent the day putting bricks on the ceiling and running tubing for electrical throughout the house. This was Johnny's "off day". It was good to sweat a little bit, and even though the sun goes down at about 6 the sunsets are absolutely beautiful here! Thanks for the prayers and we will be keeping you all posted! -Andrew Hello folks well the time is midnight and we are very tired, but this is a good kind of tired knowing that God has used us to for his awesome plan here in Rio. Like Andrew said we have been really busy seeing new and old faces, getting opportunities to build new relationships and continue old ones. Today we travelled to a city named Taío, there we spent the day with pastor johnny and we went to three schools who were all very nice and loved the fact that we would be coming back with more americans, and we are excited for what this year is going to have in store for us. We are all growing closer to each other. The late night talks and the laughs are always amazing. Even though i am struggling with TD (travelers diarrhea) for over a week now (at least i hope thats all it is) God is still giving me the strength and the energy to continue on. We love the thoughts and prayers. Much love -Alek About the title... (inside joke) :)

The dog from Hell

On Saturday we went and hung out with the students of the church for a few hours.  We sang songs that we could sing in English and Portuguese at the same time and then played football, soccer, and volleyball for the better part of an hour and a half.  Volleyball turned into a spiking war trying to see if we could hit the brazilians harder or if they could hit us harder.  It was pretty fun and then we went out for pizza with members of the church.  It was pretty cool and we got to bless them by paying for the meal when it was over.  They have been so generous to us all and feeding us their favorite or best meals that we had to pay them back in some way so that was pretty cool for us and lets just say that they were all surprised.

After that we went to the house of one of the church members named Tiago (pronounced chiago).  He will come to New Orleans and Lincoln with us.  There we watched the NBA for a while and then Jon almost died.  They had a dog and it did not like Jon at all.  It barked at him, showed his teeth, and forced him to climb a couch to get away.  Did I mention that I could probably punt this dog twenty yards?  We thought it was better because after a while Jon held it in his hands and then it went bazerk again.  Lets just say it makes for a funny story and everyone laughed.

On a side-note Andrew ripped his skinny jeans in the crotch and it was hilarious.

This morning we went to a park with the church members and got the chance to pray together and sing a song. We also played rugby with them and soccer.  Really fun and tiring but also great for us to be able to have greater relationships with the people and meet some new members of the church.  After that Jon and I went to a friends house for churrasco, Brazilian BBQ.  It was super good and we each ate a steak or two.  Then we had one of our favorite things in Brazil, siesta.  Take a nap, read, relax, shower and then we headed to church.

It was fun to be at church and see what a normal sunday looks like.  No translating, no English, just the people together worshipping God.  That was a new experience for us but pretty cool at the same time.  I can't really tell you what the message was about other than it was about John 3.  Then Jon and I went to get pizza with our host family and we practiced Portuguese and sang Disney channel with our host sisters who are 14 and 7. Fun fun.

Prayer requests for the church (roughly translated);
-For the families, especially for Christ formation
-Pray for Brasil, for more churches to be planted where the word of God is spoken and true
-Pray for the pastors, evangelists, and Christians in general
-Pray for the Haiti project and volunteers to go this year
-Pray for the challenge conference to hep equip Rio do Sul to participate (the group going to New Orleans to be prepared)

God bless. Love you all. Thank you for the prayers