One of the annual events that the churches participate in is our annual “Cristoval” celebration.  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 almost every city in the country shuts down allowing full participation by the people.  However, and praise the Lord, this was the 2^nd year that the mayor’s office did not fund any carnival event here.  The Vineyard churches combined efforts many years ago to begin “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 to redirect the youth’s energy towards God instead of the temptations of the world and drawing kids toward Jesus.  During the three day retreat, the youth had opportunity to connect with Jesus through lively worship and dynamic teaching.  Elba had the privilege to preach the first night. 

 

It was really powerful in the lives of the hundreds of youth and adults that participated in the conference.  However, there was one youth in particular that we were so fond to send to the event.  Yes, Camilly was old enough to participate and she had a great time being with her friends, and celebrating the Lord.  As parents, we got to experience Camilly for the first time initiate prayer for one of her friends on her own.  It was deeply exciting for both Elba and I and we were close to tears.  Unfortunately, in her 2^nd day at the event, she got very sick and we took her home. 

The church is doing well and we are in the midst of starting a new campaign to increase the number of home groups in the church.  Home group growth has always been a challenge for the church.  Challenges range from the home group leader feeling inept, to members not having time due to the busyness of life, work and such.  The campaign that we are using was developed by the Vineyard Columbus.  The idea is to have Elba create a video series and then we distribute the DVD to members of the congregation that are willing to open up their home, serve a snack, and play the DVD.  We are trying to keep it as simple as possible with the ultimate hope that the group stays together after the campaign.  In addition, once a month, we have been training our current small group leaders.  Please pray for great success and lasting results for the campaign.  I will keep you posted. 

During our time off we got the opportunity to visit the Maquine caves in Minas Gerais.  It was really massive, awesome and beautiful to see. 

We appreciate you so much for all your prayers and support.  May the Lord’s joy and comfort be upon you always.   

Please pray for spiritual, physical, and emotional health for us.   Also, please pray for Steve as he will be having a small surgery to remove a large varicose vein. 

Much love, Steve, Elba, Camilly, and Alyssa

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We have been traveling for personal vacation time which was very nice and needed.  We ended our time in Brasilia and the church asked Elba if she was interested in hosting a woman’s conference.  She agreed and spoke to the women.  During the conference she talked about the empowerment and transformation of women in ministry and encouraged the women to step up into leadership. 

As a strong woman leader in a predominant male hierarchy culture, Elba is unique because women in leadership is not embraced by everyone with welcoming arms especially in the North where we serve, but also in the South of Brazil.  It is a fight not only to be heard as a woman, but to be respected and to have authority.  Elba has done a great job in establishing and positioning herself as a woman leader, and is passionate to keep empowering and pushing through the resistance and removing all of the barriers.  We really believe that if we are to evangelize this world, we all need to participate and lead. 

After the conference, Elba spoke at 2 of the churches in Brasilia.  During Elba’s preaching she wanted to make it clear to the congregation by saying “you invited me to come and speak to the women and empower them, I believe that was accomplished, so now, let them do it.”  It seems clear to us. 

After the conference we went to our missionary care retreat.  The missionary care retreat is awesome as it allows all of our missionaries to come to one place and be with one another.  Our missionaries are now spread out distance wise and almost all of our missionaries are serving alone.  Serving alone in a foreign land with a different culture is difficult and challenging.  Day by day we walk out the call of God in our lives and our dependency to lean into the Holy Spirit is crucial.  Community with other missionaries who are walking out that same journey is incredibly refreshing, re-energizing, and encouraging.  We highly value this time.  We were grateful for Danny and Penny Meyer to come to minister to all of us.  

My sister Lynn came down as well, and she helped with child care at the retreat while we were in the meetings

Unfortunately, during our travels our cat, Bob, passed away.  It was very sad and there were tears.  He was a good cat, extremely smart and a good rat killer.  We will miss our Bob.  During that same time, one of our dogs had a litter of pups.  They are cute and are just learning how to start walking around. 

We appreciate you so much for all your prayers and support.  May the Lord’s joy and comfort be upon you always.   

Please pray for spiritual, physical, and emotional health for us.  

Much love, Steve, Elba, Camilly, and Alyssa

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Hello to our Friends and Supporters!

I want to start by thanking you all for the incredibly gracious words we received from so many of you after the news we sent out last month. It was very hard to explain to everyone what was going on, and you all made us feel very loved and supported. Thank you again.
We want to let you all know as well exactly where we stand as a family. Please understand that Ronã and I are very committed to each other and to do whatever is necessary to take care of our family. I think the beginning of marriage is often hard for most people because of all the changes. There is a lot to learn about each other and how to live with one another. For us, we have had to deal with that as well becoming parents, several moves, working as missionaries, an age difference and a cultural difference. All those things together have created a lot of pressure that we just weren’t handling very well. We needed space to grow and learn how to do life together.

Over the past month, we have spent a lot of time talking with each other as well as our pastors and leaders to decide exactly what our next steps should be and what our options are for moving forward. It is clear that the best thing for us is to go back to the States. However, this requires us to go through the immigration process. After a lot of research, we determined that we need to do the entire immigration process here in Brazil in order for Ronã to receive a green card before going to live in the U.S. This process could take as long as 2 years, however, we do not believe it will take that long for us. We have a friend who also married a Brazilian, and they both live in the U.S now. Their process took 10 months to complete. Of course, there are no guarantees, but we hope that our process will take anywhere from 10 months up to a 1 year.
As we explained before, the Xingu Mission is allowing us to continue to receive support until June 30, 2019. This is for the purpose of allowing us time to transition into our new lives. However, as you can see, our situation is a little bit different because Ronã is not a U.S. citizen. Because of the legal restrictions of receiving support through the Xingu Mission beyond June 2019, we have asked our home church, Vineyard Tuttle Crossing, for help.
Fortunately, we are able to continue to receive support through the church without a time limit. We are asking that our supporters would continue to give to us financially until we are able to receive the green card and start a new life in the States.

This process is the following. *Please note that if you are already giving through the Vineyard Tuttle Crossing church, there is no need to make any changes.

1. You would need to cancel any reoccurring donations that you have been giving through the Xingu Mission website. Contact Patty.Fultz@xingu.org in order to do that.

2. After the cancellation process is complete, set up a new reoccurring donation at Vineyard Tuttle Crossing website  http://www.vineyardtc.org/egiving

3. Enter the amount you would like to give and be sure to select the option for “Missions”. Follow the instructions to complete the donation.

During our interim, we are doing what we can to cut down our expenses. We are also setting aside funds to pay for the green card process, as there are many fees and expenses involved.  You may remember that I had started a hairstylist course in order to meet new people in the city. We have decided that it would be best if I continued with the course in hopes of possibly getting a job as a hairstylist in the future. Ronã is also going to take a course that trains airport attendants. We are doing these things as a way to help prepare us for a new life in the States. We are going to continue to be apart of the small church starting here in João Pessoa, but we will no longer be involved in active ministry.

We still have a lot of unknowns ahead of us, but we are taking one day at a time and trying to do our best to prepare ourselves for the future. We ask for your prayers for God’s favor and direction during this season of our lives. We thank you again for all of your faithfulness and sacrifice for our family. We are truly blessed because of you.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

Love, 
The Moura Family 

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We experienced two very exciting things at the church.  The Xingu Mission is all about training leaders and planting churches.  Unfortunately, these are not instantaneous occurrences and they take time to develop, nurture, grow and release.  We just had 15 member of our church complete training through the Vineyard Institute here in Brazil.  Vineyard Institute exists to equip people through high quality biblical and theological education integrated with spiritual formation so that they are prepared for kingdom work at any level in the church.  We are hoping that one day they will be church planters!    

In addition, Cleiton and Cristiane have been serving faithfully as our youth pastors for many years.  They are passionate leaders and love the Lord.  We have a small group that is about a 20 minute drive from the church.  This small group has been growing and are developing into a large congregation that is outgrowing their small wood house.  We are sending Cleiton and Cristiane to be the pastors of this congregation to help in the work that the Holy Spirit is doing.  We are so excited about sending them and we are excited about what the future holds for this group of believers.  Planting churches and watching lives change to be like Christ is such a blessing and brings joy to our hearts.  Please pray for them and the new Mexicano church. 

 

The girls helped prepare the Christmas tree this year.  However, there was a lot of fuss because Mom wanted to put the tree up before December.  It just did not feel right to put the tree up in November for the girls.  But since it was just a couple of days before December, they conceded, and the tree was up and they did a great job.  The girls also did well in school and received awards for their grades and performance.  They had a presentation and everyone got dressed up for the occasion.  They are always excited if they can go to school events without their everyday uniforms.  We feel blessed!

 

Again, Merry CHRISTmas to you.  We appreciate you so much for all your prayers and support.  May the Lord’s joy and comfort be upon you always.   

Please pray for spiritual, physical, and emotional health for us.  

Much love, Steve, Elba, Camilly, and Alyssa

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Thank you so much to all of you who pray, write, call and support us financially, we are incredibly grateful to get to do what we do because of the love and support of you!!

Moving Ahead With Something New For a few months now, we’ve been feeling that familiar nudge, that still small voice saying it was time to take steps forward, take things to a new level.  About a two months ago we started talking to the girls about doing a breakfast with them once a week, off the street, would they come?  They said they would. So we started to pray, about what that would look like where we would do it. As most of you well know we love to use Alpha, it’s a great tool that helps to level the playing field, strips away some of the things that can leave people feeling like God is distant and angry and gives an opportunity for people who have questions about God, faith and the meaning of life to really explore what they think of these things.  We know from personal experience that it can be the key that opens the door to peoples hearts, that’s how we ended up where we are today! We started to look around for a place that was close enough but also not too costly.  We checked with several of the hotels along the beach but either they didn’t have a meeting room or they wanted too much money for the short time we would need it. Then I remembered that the Anglican Church that is located on the same road had already offered up their space for us to use whenever we needed it.  I contacted them and they were delighted to help!   The space is perfect for our needs, open with an ocean view and a table for us to eat, as well as a small room that already has a TV where we can show the videos. For weeks we talked to the girls about what we wanted to do, we have found that we often need to have a long lead up to do something so they start to get curious and excited and eventually start asking us about it ‘when does that thing start?’  Despite all that we had no idea how many, if any, girls would turn up.  At first there were none, and we thought maybe we would just be enjoying a lovely seaside breakfast with our team.  We decided to take a drive down the beach and four girls decided to take the leap and come with us. They loved it.  Two days later when we were there praying, one of the girls who had come was there as I started to ask if the girls would like to come to the next one, they asked what it was.  As I started to explain, so did the girl who had participated so I closed my mouth and let her do the talking. This week we had TEN girls!  There first question before coming was ‘will it take long?’ I told them an hour, and the decided to give it a go. One of the most challenging things on Alpha can be getting people to talk, not so with this group, there was a very lively discussion after the video.  I said to them in the car on the way back that I understood it was taking some of their time, but they stopped me and said, ‘But it’s good! We need this, and we loved it!  We will be back next week!’ We feel privileged that they have trusted us enough to take part in something new, to allow us to begin with baby steps on what could be a turning point in their lives. We continue to pray that their lives will be changed, that the seeds we are planting will blossom and that these women will know who they truly are, and the future they can have.

Maevia We continue to walk closely with Maevia who left the streets nearly a year ago.  The road she is on isn’t easy, and it’s marked with high highs and low lows, both for her and for us.  In the space of two weeks she has gone from moving into a new place, in a better neighbourhood and starting her first job , leaving her first job to having a relapse in drug use last night.   There were a lot of changes that happened in too short of a time, and unfortunately despite our advice to the contrary on some of the changes.  We recognize that emotionally she is in a fragile state and needs professional help, we have psychologist here in João Pessoa who is able to take her though a trauma treatment therapy, she will start this treatment tomorrow.  Before anything else, she needs emotional healing to be able to move forward.  We continue to support and love her through all these challenges and successes as long as she is willing. Sowing Seeds In Traveling Fields In the past year and a half since we started ministering to these women and men, there have been many who have come and gone.  Some we have seen again and we get to hear their story, ‘I’m working now, full time, God willing I will never come back to the streets!’ Or we hear through other girls when we ask that they have found work, or we have no idea what happened to them.  Each time we go we pray that God will speak the words they need to hear, that we can bring hope and light and love to them.  Often, we leave having no idea if our presence has had any affect, sometimes it can be really difficult to see these women week after week still there.   As one of our colleagues who works in the same ministry at Shores of Grace in Recife said in their update this week, we have ‘to learn to rest in the unknown and to continually sow obediently, knowing there will be fruit and there will be victory, even if I never get to see or hear about it.’ (Robert and Ana Floyd) We are sowing seeds in traveling fields, the lives of these women can be transient, but we need to keep in mind that the Kingdom of God and the way He sees the harvest is beyond our ability to understand, all we can do is obediently act on the things he calls us to do. Prayer and Praise Report Praise God that we are able to continue to minister to these precious women and men Praise God that our small group church plant team is meeting weekly, strengthening our relationships as a leadership team Praise God that Faith is moving forward with her therapies and today studied for a test by herself, this is BIG news Please continue to pray for our kids, their schooling and their relationships here in Brazil. Please pray for our small group, our relationships and marriages Please pray for the women and men that we encounter, that their hearts would feel the fullness of what it means to be loved unconditionally. Please pray for Maevia, for the battle she fights daily and that she will continue, even when she slips, to get up and walk forward, trusting God Please pray for our team, Allison and Rona and Oliver, that we have the resources both financially and spiritually to continue doing what we feel God calling us to do. Copyright © 2018 Xingu Mission C/O Jen and Phil Snell, All rights reserved. You are receiving these emails because we consider you a friend who would like to hear about the work we are doing in Brazil. If you would not like to receive these emails anymore please send us a quick email and we will remove you promptly! Our mailing address is: Xingu Mission C/O Jen and Phil Snell Rua Odon Carvalho, 214 Barrio dos Ipes João Pessoa, Paraíba 58028-800 Brazil

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Hello to All of Our Wonderful Friends and Supporters!!

I just want to remind you, as always, how great it is to have you guys on our team! You make everything we do possible. Each and every day, as we minister to others in many different ways, you are right there with us. Thank you!

Alpha with the Girls…

One of the ministries that we have had the privilege of participating in is going weekly to pray for the women who work as prostitutes near the beach. Each time we go there, it is always a little bit different. Sometimes, we feel like we are able to really connect with some of the girls in a meaningful way. Other times, it can feel like we are running into a wall. There is always a tug-of-war happening in our hearts as we are both wanting so much to help them, but also having to accept that this is a very slow process.
However, recently, we have been able to take another step forward in connecting with them on a deeper level. Just last week, we started our first “Alpha” on Tuesday morning.
For those of you who don’t know what Alpha is, I will give you a brief explanation. Alpha is a program that was started several years ago to help non-believers have a casual environment in which they could ask questions and learn about the basics of Christianity. Once a week, we get together, have a meal, watch a short video, and talk about the discussion questions.
There is a church just up the road from where we meet with the women, and they have allowed us to open up the space to invite these women for the Alpha meeting. We were a bit nervous that we would be the only ones there for the first week, but thankfully, we had 4 girls show up! We served them breakfast, had a short time of worship, and then watched the video together. It felt like a very special moment, and God’s presence filled the space.

Watching the video together

Later in the week, Jen and Phil were able to go back again to pray for the women. They heard that word was getting around about our first meeting and how much the girls liked it! We are hoping for even more women next week!
As you can imagine, there is a lot of spiritual battle surrounding these women. The enemy has had so many hits in their lives already. There are so many things stacked against them. Please, join us in praying for them and that the power of the Cross would invade every area of their lives!

Update on Mãevia:

You may remember from a few months back that I told you about a young woman named Mãevia who had successfully left prostitution. At the time, she was still in the middle of battling a crack addiction. Mãevia had gone to a rehabilitation center, but had only remained there for about 15 days. Well, I am happy to say that we are still very much connected to her. She still has remained free from crack addiction and prostitution, but in many ways, her life still a mess.
Mãevia has lived most of her life being traumatized and abused. She has no internal structure to even begin knowing how to live a “normal” life. For us, as we try to walk along side her, it’s like being on a roller coaster. There are a lot of ups and downs! Right now, we are simply trying to see, one day at a time, how we can we helpful to her. Next week, she is supposed to start meeting with a therapist. Please pray that she is able to start working through some of her wounds. Our hope for her right now is that she can begin to learn how to calm down her emotions, as she is prone to explosive and defensive behaviors. We are well aware that this will be a long journey. We pray for the wisdom and patience and love needed to guide her along the way.

Moving…..Again

So, I’m sure you have already heard me talk about how much I love our new apartment and our new city and that we are so close to so many wonderful places and we even love our neighbors…… You can imagine that the idea of moving is the absolute last thing I want to do right now. However, we received some news a few days ago that has been a little hard to swallow. Apparently, the owner of our apartment has a son who will be getting married and wants to buy our apartment from her and live here. *Insert big, fat, cry face here* We can stay until our lease is up but they are requesting that we leave a little early. Despite all this, there is some good news in this situation. The tenant upstairs will be leaving at the end of December. That apartment is not as nice as ours and there are many repairs that need to be taken care of, BUT there is the possibility that we could at least stay in the building! We are in the process now of figuring out all the details. Please, please, pray that we can move upstairs and that it can be a smooth transition. I am so weary of moving. Every instinct in my body just wants to settle down in one place for a long while. We are always open to God’s will in our lives, even when it is painful or confusing, but please pray that God would give us favor in this situation. Thank you.

Thank you all so much, for your prayers and support. We are so grateful for them. We love to hear your words of encouragement.

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Love,
The Moura Family

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It has been another exciting month and one of the biggest excitements was the baptism we had at the church.  It is always a big celebration in the church, and praise the Lord, in heaven as well.  I love that during the baptism the church is singing and worshiping God and the symbolism of letting the person be completely immersed in water being baptized into Jesus’ death on the cross and no longer being slaves to self or sin.  When they are raised out of the water they are raised into a new life in Christ and are with Him forever.  Praise the Lord for these 10 people that made this public declaration of faith.  We are a bit partial for this baptism as Alyssa was one of the people who we baptized.  It was truly a blessing.  However, unlike all the others being baptized who walked down the stairs into the water.  Alyssa instead decided to jump into the water.  Yep, that’s the pastor’s kid.  🙂  Please keep these new believers in your prayers.

Elba went down to the National Vineyard Conference in Sao Paulo.  Elba has stepped into the National leader position temporarily in Brazil due to the death of our leader’s wife.  She helped coordinate the event and shared at the conference to the pastors and leaders in the South.  During the conference they had great worship, teaching, and time for prayers.  In addition, they introduced 5 new churches and 1 church plant.  Amen!!!

The conference was called “Why Church” which is an expansive response.  They focused on the topics “Church to worship, Church to reconcile and Church to serve”.  Another great benefit to the teachings is just being together with one another.  There is much encouragement, and refreshment when we can share our hurts, challenges, and accomplishments. 

This is what happens when you overextend your front flip on the trampoline.  OUCH.  She is doing much better now and it is healing.  She is a tough girl.  At the church, the girls participated in the children day celebration.  Children’s day is a National holiday in Brazil.  We hosted many children in the community with games, entertainment, food, and face painting.  It was a big hit.  

 

 

On a funny note, I was driving in town and saw this dog on the back of this guy’s motorbike.  I had to take a picture.  I was concerned the dog was going to fall off.  I followed them into town, and the owner was driving fairly fast, but the dog never fell and seemed to be having a blast.  

 

Please pray for spiritual, physical, financial and emotional health for us.  

Much love, Steve, Elba, Camilly, and Alyssa

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