Praying over the City

 One morning, during our daily devotionals, we all went out to our balcony to look out over the city and we each prayed for something different for and about Natal. It was really amazing how we all felt connected right then in our prayer and in our purpose here. If you would, would you join us in our prayers for the Lords work here?

Here in Christmas town

       Sometimes readers have a hard time re-scheduling time to read with us after a holiday like the one we had this weekend. We are happy to find that we are still going strong this week and we are even scheduling some new readers to start this week who had been on the waiting list. Last week Lauren was able to read with a lady who was almost 60 years old and had never read the Bible! We have several readers coming to the English and Portuguese church services and a few asking about the church here.  Even though this is the last week here we are all certain it's just the start of something a lot bigger than ourselves.

Reading session in the Luke workbook

 

Building Relationships

This week on Thursday was Corpus Christi, a national holiday. Because of this we did not schedule reading sessions, but we did, however, plan a few events. Friday we had a card night, and we played many games including Seven level Pig, Spoons, and Nerts. We had many readers come to the card night including a few parents! We also made chocolate chip cookies which flew off the plate so quickly I doubted that there were ever any cookies there to begin with. Saturday we all invited the Church and our readers to Cotovelo Beach to hang out, play soccer, and swim. After the beach we all went out to Pizza at Dom Gourmet, it was an incredible sight to see the Church (and mostly readers) take over the whole restaurant we stayed for a few hours having a great time with everyone. The best part is that Christ is at the center of it all!

 

 

Playing spoons!

 

 

 

at Cotovelo!

Parabens Lauren!

  Yesterday was our first LST party. We had a lot of readers come and celebrate two birthdays, both Lauren and Irvaiane, who is a youth member in the church. So it was a great opportunity for the church members to get to know our LST readers, considering birthdays in Brazil are something very important. We played the human knot game, where everyone gets in a circle and grabs someone's had across from them and they try to become untangled! We also went bobbing for apples, which is not a common game here at all, but everyone seemed to have a great time with it. The last game was musical chairs. The best part about musical chairs was choosing songs that had a slight break in mid song and seeing everyone sit down because they thought the music had stopped! Afterwards we had cake and sang Happy Birthday in English and in Portuguese.

Bob Carpenter and Melanie Scifers in the human Knot!

Bob, bobbing for apples!!!

Musical Chairs!

Irvaiane and Lauren 

We are here!

   Our team left the OKC airport at 1:40pm on June 13th and we arrived at 3:00 pm today (June 14th). We had a delayed flight while at DFW in Dallas, because of this, we only had an hour between connecting flights while in Sao Paulo.We are all thankful we were able to make it through customs and immigration in time to catch our flight. It truly was a blessing Bob, Donna, and Lauren all noticed the lines were moving along more quickly than they had seen in the past.
   

       We were greeted warmly by two of our missionaries, Cris Carpenter and Roberto Signoretti, at the airport here in Natal. Upon arriving at the church we met the rest of our host missionaries Osmildo and Marta Braga and Roberto's wife, Marisa. We were also able to meet up with Nicole and Kalie who are a part of the remaining LST team from Michigan.They have been so helpful in getting us settled into our apartment, and bringing us up to speed on the work LST has been doing here.

      Tonight we were able to meet one of the church members here, Jefferson, who started attending because of a friend who was reading with LST. He went along with us to the mall while we exchanged money, ate dinner and  purchased groceries. He speaks very good English and was so helpful while Melanie and Lauren were trying to communicate in Portuguese.

Bob and Donna contacting our host site about delays

Lauren and Jefferson on the apartment balcony 

Melanie excited about her first trip out of country!

Take me into the beautiful

      After months of training our Let's Start Talking team(Bob and Donna Carpenter, Melanie Scifers, and Lauren Hamilton) is fully trained and ready to depart on Monday to help spread the gospel in Natal, Brazil. We will be reading the book of Luke with those who are interested in improving their conversational English skills. Reading the book of Luke helps to provoke meaningful conversations about Jesus and faith and how these topics affect our daily living. This blog will be used as a way to update those who have chosen to be a part of the mission effort in someway. Whether your support is by way of prayer or through monetary donation you will be able to read about our LST campaign in Natal, Brazil on this site. We would like to thank all of our supporters for being apart of this effort! May God bless you all as he has blessed this team!

From Left to Right: Lauren Hamilton, Donna Carpenter,Melanie Scifers and Bob Carpenter