Brazil Update #2!

Hello friends!
We are continuing to see God do awesome things in Brazil. We had a meeting in a house last night, where around 30 Terena Indians and several pastors gathered. I shared out of 1 Peter and Acts 2 about the church as a body of believers (not a building!) and our role in ministering to each other. Afterwards, I shared a word of knowledge about people with pain in their noses and asked to pray for healing for anyone who was sick or in pain. The porch was crowded with folks who wanted prayer. We saw the Lord heal 5 people last night, including two with pain in their noses! All of the people who were healed had had the pain for many years. It was awesome to watch.
We are in town for the night to do a little shopping for essentials (like shoes for Selah - she grew out of hers and now she has a funky purple pair of Brazilian shoes - so cute!). Tomorrow, we head out to a new tribe where a team hasn´t been before. Please pray for us as we go. Pray for health over our team and for a productive time there. The team will be doing some hard manual labor, and we`ll be teaching a leadership seminar at night.
After a week in this tribe, we will return to the Terena`s to visit 7 different schools. We also hope to hold some meetings at night to teach on the Holy Spirit and minister healing. Please pray to prepare the way for the work that God wants to do there.
Please pray grace over us as a family. Life is definitely more challenging here. Our family is sleeping in one room, it`s hot, and it`s more challenging to keep things clean. It just gets wearing after a while. But we are happy to be here and excited at the work the Lord has.
Thank you for standing with us.

I will post some pictures as soon as I find my camera cord and have enough Internet!

Love you all!

Sarah, Chris, Davy, & Selah

Brazil Update #1 - God is on the move!

Oi!
We are on the ground in Brazil and having a GREAT time! God is moving in our midst! I preached in a church Sunday night and led the church through some freedom ministry. Then we prayed for physical healing and saw multiple people healed! One was a lady from a Terena Amazon tribe who is a person of peace for her tribe. I had a word of knowledge about an arm with a lot of pain, that was difficult to move. She came up for prayer and the Lord completely healed her!! She is serving us by making a lot of our meals, so we´ve been able to continue to check on her, and her arm is doing great! A boy was healed of a headache and sore throat; another man with pain in his knees. Then we prayed for a man with a very swollen hand and I literally felt the swelling go down under my hand as we prayed. So awesome!!
We are now out among the Terena Amazon tribe and are actually going to have a church service in the chief´s house tonight. We expect most of the village to come. Chris is going to share and then we will minister to the people.
Thursday night we have an invitation to come to a tribe that has no church among them and has never had a team come, as far as we know. Please pray for us and for them!
Blessings!

Sarah, Chris, Davy, & Selah

Almost Time To Go!

It's hard for me to believe that we've almost finished the first half of DTS!  In ten short days, we're jumping on a plane to fly to Brazil!

The lecture phase of DTS has been a whirlwind of experiences, complete with things like hearing from Peter Xu, the incredibly humble mentor of the Heavenly Man, who has been imprisoned 5 times for his faith.  This week, we're learning about evangelism from a father-son team from South Africa.  They sold all their possessions 9 years ago, in obedience to the Lord, and have been travelling the world sharing the gospel in many different nations.

We are getting really excited about our time in Brazil.  We will be in country from Aug 30 - Nov 8.  Our cell phones won't work (we're not that tech-savvy yet) but we will have email and Skype.  We are excited to have opportunities to do evangelism on the streets, help equip the Terena tribe to share with and disciple other Amazon tribes, as well as do some teaching in churches and schools, and a lot of prayer walking in the city!

Selah & Daddy practicing for Brazil

We'd love it if you'd help cover us in prayer while we're gone.  Your prayers are vital and we really feel them!   Please pray as the Holy Spirit leads but here are a few suggestions.  :)
Key prayer points:
* Wisdom and physical energy for us as we lead the team along with another student, as well as good balance for our family life
* Transformation in us and in our team
* Safe, smooth travel (for some of the students, this is their first plane trip and first time to leave the country)
* Boldness as we share the gospel & for the release of healings and other miracles
* Health & safety

Davy praying in the mic during a class worship time

Kids with our friend and co-leader, Erik

Our DTS class

New Davy Feats

Davy has been very busy lately - learning how to read!!  He's been working through a computer program called Funnix, that's based on a book called Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons.   We were only on lesson 26 when I took this picture, after he read his first book to me!  Funnix is a phonics based program, and things are really beginning to click for him.  

Davy is also restarting his 'Flips' lessons.  We found a local gymnastics program that has a fun boys' class.  After his first class, he proclaimed that he wanted to live there!  Little sister is also wanting to get in on the action - she's doing a remarkable job in mimicking her big brother in his gymnastics moves!

Fun times in KC!

Next stop, Brazil!

I'd like to introduce you to an Amazon tribal chief who has an enormous passion to see tribal people in Brazil have the opportunity to hear the good news about Jesus.  This man, chief of the Terenas, walked up to our DTS school leader on the streets of Brazil and initiated conversation with him.  That conversation led to an open invitation for us to come and train his tribal members to go to other tribes and share about Jesus.  What an incredible opportunity!  

We will spend 3 months with the Terena tribe, teaching them more about Jesus and His ways, and equipping them to go to remote tribes that are closed to outsiders.  They are eager to learn and even more eager to go!     

We leave for Brazil on August 29, and will be there until November 8.   Please pray for us on our trip and ask the Lord if He would have you partner financially with us.  Plane tickets and visas are approx $1500 each, and on-the-ground living expenses for our family is about $7000 for 3 months.  

Partnering with us financially is a tremendous opportunity for you to be a part of what God is doing among the Amazon peoples in Brazil.   We need your support and prayers - this work of the kingdom is a team effort (praying, supporting, going), and each team member is vitally important!    

If you'd like to give, we have set up Paypal to receive donations.  If you designate your gift as "personal", it will be a free transaction.   

Thank you!!  

Four Days In

Our base in March

Wow, it has been busy and wild since we arrived in Kansas City!  We drove in Friday night, and got settled into our awesome 2 bedroom apt.  It is bigger than I was expecting, and it's such a blessing for the kids to have their own room!  Saturday was spent in orientation, and we visited Forerunner church on Sunday morning.

Classes began in earnest on Monday morning, and we have been super blessed to have Corey Stark from IHOP teaching us this week.  He has spent hours upon hours studying God's end time plan, and it's been amazing to see how simple it actually is.  The DTS (discipleship training school) begins with focusing on the 'end', so we can know our part in the big picture of God's plan.   Corey shared a lot about the merging together of prayer and missions, and how the end time church is called to intercede and to worship to help usher in God's Kingdom.

To give you an idea of our daily schedule, here is an example:

7 - 9 am   IHOP Prayer room
9am - noon  Teaching
noon  Lunch
1 - 3pm Work Duty/Outreach Prep/Small Group
3 -5 pm Special Topic/Work Duty/Prayer Room
5 pm Dinner
6:30 - 8:30pm Special Topics.

The schedule changes from day to day, and as you can tell, we're busy!  We don't always have evening sessions, and I pull back some in the afternoons to give the kids some rest time.
The kids are settling in great.  Davy has made a friend, and they played together great most of yesterday afternoon.  The other students love on the kids too.  Davy loves sharing a room with his sister.

God has provided a wonderful lady who comes to the YWAM base to stay with the kids while Chris and I are in class in the mornings.  They play outside on the 40 acres, do crafts, and play lots of Angry Birds.  She is an absolute God-send to us and we are so blessed to have her caring for our munchkins.

We're Off!

This past month has been an absolute whirlwind!!   A few highlights (and lowlights) include 

• Selling most of our personal items including all our furniture
• Selling our house to sweet friends
• Finding awesome foster homes for our animals
• Sarah & the kids getting sick with hand, foot, and mouth (nasty virus!!)
• Sarah getting two root canals (and one getting infected!)
• Fun friend time with our awesome neighbors (can you believe the above picture is missing 3 kids?)
• Good family time including a trip to the Ft. Worth zoo (Selah won tickets at an Easter Egg hunt!)
• Sarah having the privilege of teaching two Gateway Freedom classes & finishing an internship in Relational Care
• Learning about essential oils and hosting a class
• Discovering the advantages of a minivan (thanks for the loaner, dad!!)
• Packing, cleaning, and moving!  
• Plus normal work and life in the middle of it all.  

Whew. Is it time for a nap?   or maybe two?

We are now en-route to Kansas City and so thankful for the opportunity that God has placed before us.  He gave us so much grace amidst the challenges involved with moving (including teary "see-you-later's"), and we feel honored to be embarking on this journey.

We'll get settled in this weekend, pick up our farm fresh milk (delivered!!!!), and meet lots of new folks. Our training school begins in earnest on Monday.