February Amazon Update!

We made it back safely to Brazil and appreciate greatly all of your prayers. We wish we could thank everyone personally for their prayers, friendship, support, and love while we were back. It was truly a wonderful experience, and unfortunately the time went by so quickly. We wish we were able to see more of our family and friends while we were back but the constraint of time makes it a huge challenge.

We were very grateful to be able to see most of our family and friends, and have the opportunity to share at their churches. It was a real pleasure getting to see our old friends, and making some new friends along the way. Below are some pictures of Elba preaching. She was very busy as she had the honor of sharing at The Vineyard Community church in Pickerington / Reynoldsburg, Madison County Vineyard and New Hope Vineyard Church. Plus, she had a great time sharing at the Vineyard Church of Delaware County woman’s meeting, and then finally she was the key note speaker at the Vineyard Columbus woman’s conference. Praise the Lord, the Spirit was alive at each of these churches and events.

We are coming back running as the churches are preparing their Cristoval celebration this week. Carnival is Brazil’s annual “celebration of the flesh” before the initiation of Lent on the Catholic calendar. It’s a week- long party where “anything goes” and every city in the country shuts down allowing full participation by the people. The Vineyard churches began “Cristoval”, a retreat for youth, away from the city, with a focus on Jesus and having a lot of good clean fun. It has been a great success throughout the years, drawing kids toward Jesus and allowing an alternative during Carnival. Here in Altamira, we will be having Jim Anderson and his team come and speak about his book “Unmasked: exposing the cultural sexual assault”. We are expecting the Holy Spirit to show up in a great way and the participants will respond by changing a culture. Please keep us, and all the churches in your prayers.

We were also able to get away for a little bit of time before coming back to Brazil. We got the opportunity to go to the Creation Museum, The Ark, and then spent the rest of our time in Fort Myers. The girls loved swimming every day, playing putt-putt, and going bowling. They also loved the food…so did we. Camilly’s favorite food was a bacon cheeseburger, and Alyssa loved tacos with meat, cheese and sour cream.