Maribel, InterVinha 2011, Baptisms and more!!!

A boat ride to the Spainard Island where there is a health post. We went with Dr. Daniel a friend of ours to treat the folks out there. We took in the sun, had a picnic and did some swimming with our good friends Fernando and Ana and their 3 kids!

The next day, Clyde and the men's group from the church we attended in Altamira in 2010 had their retreat at the island. It was a perfect spot for refreshing! Here is Clyde with a Caibo.

God is so faithful and always takes care of our every need! Our truck caused many headaches in July and we were again growing in our faith as we couldn't see how we were going to afford fixing the truck. But when it doesn't work out on paper, and the bills are paid, you know it is simply another moment of mercy and grace from our heavenly father. Kind of like the fishes and the loaves! So the truck was working well enough to make the journey home to Uruara'. It had many new sounds that we have to get use to. It also has many new sounds that just don't sound right, but it's running and we are praising God for it! MAINTENANCE IS EVERYTHING!

It could be that the Lord used that month to refresh us or give us an unplanned holiday. Altamira is away from our immediate ministry work and we have many close friends there. We were able to hang out with friends, go to church, homegroups and Clyde got in a men's retreat, birthday parties and 4th of July!!!. We had some good rest except the stress of the truck. Once the truck was in order, we were set for a busy schedule again.

We traveled as a family to Maribel for the weekend. That was fun to see everyone again.

It wasn't an easy trip in the sense of relaxing. The house we have there we left in the care of someone but in the end it didn't work out. There was no water coming to the house, rats have over run the place and it was dirty! We immediately worked and worked and worked. It was finally clean when we left! HA! But we have hopefully controlled the rat population as we have sent out rat poison to kill them off.

We encouraged the folks that make up the church out there and that was our highlight!

The bummer is, we had to tell them that we would't be moving out there again until after our furlough next year. That was hard because we had every intention of moving back out there, thus planning our furlough until after the ministry season out there. Our reasons are because the Uruara' project is not at a place where we can leave it. I'll share more about that in our next blog!

Lindalva, one of our most special friends who lives in Maribel with her family

After coming back from Maribel, we headed back to Altamira for the Inter Vineyard Regional Conference with several families from Uruara' and a few from Maribel as well. It was a great time of communion, teaching, learning about the Vineyard movement and seeing the growth that our region made, the fruit that it is bearing!

12 Churches represented here from the work in Altamira and surrounding towns and cities including Uruara' and Maraba. Also including 2 pastors from Southern Brazil who came. They see the work in the North as an encouragment to the church in the South! There were many who were not in this picture to represent the works going on, but there are many, many more!

Fabiano Alves, from the Vineyard Piratininga in the Sao Paulo area, is an anointed worship leader and song writer. Fabiano has come to Altamira before to teach on Vineyard values in worship. This time he inspired many of us to compose and the surprise talent that was discovered!! We hope to someday have a CD from the northern Vineyard churches. Please pray for him as suddenly has developed a problem with his voice. It gets strained and he can't sing or hold pitch and there is nothing doctors can do for him. But we believe that God can do anything! His voice can be heard on many CD's cut from Vineyard Brazil including, Mais Do Que Tudo and Tua Voz.

We headed back to Altamira and the schedule never stopped. Our first weekend back we had a baptism and Father's Day in Brazil. We had a wonderful time seeing the fruit of the Holy Spirit. We had 8 that were baptized and afterwards, 2 more came and we jumped back in the water to do it all over again! It was really awesome!

Father's Day was also incorporated and that night, the Father's were treated to a special dance the girls did for them. We had cake and celebrated with the dad's that came!

As August is nearly ending, we praise God that we were able to book tickets for the States. I'll write more about that as well. Just know, we're coming home in November!

Blessings to all who care and pray for us, support us as we are so much stronger with you behind us. You form the body of Christ that surrounds us with love and support!

Wherever we go, whatever we do, we want to be lead by the Lord and we feel so honored with your friendship and love! Thank you!