Party!

Here is one tiny, inadequate photo of our Bunko party with our readers. I've waited more than 20 minutes and the rest of them will not download. So glad my life does not depend on the internet here!
We had a great time. They loved the game and it was great to see our readers and their friends interacting with the missionaries and church members, which is the only reason we host parties on LST trips!

Tomorrow is our only free day of this project. We are going to try to see Sugarloaf, Christ Statue, and Copacabana/Ipanema all in one day. We'll see....

Reader Photos

Mitch and Andrea

Jamie and Edna

Jamie and Fabio



Shannon and Rebeca Ashton and readers at info mtg

This is not all of our readers, of course, but wanted to give you an idea of some of our new friends.

Big Moment

This is our typical day here: we meet in our apartment living room at 9 am for a team devotional/prayer/meeting. At 9:20, we leave for the church building, walking about 2 miles in 25 minutes down sidewalks crowded with residents and through a beautiful park. We have reading sessions scheduled at 10 and 11, lunch from 12-2. Since it is an hour's walk round-trip to work, whoever is cooking lunch stays at the apartment during the morning to shop and cook. Today, that is Patrick and I. The team arrives for lunch about 12:45, we eat and clean up, then head back to begin reading again at 2. We have reading sessions until 8 pm. Any breaks we have are filled with meeting people on the street to hand out flyers, read, study, maybe even play a card game with team members and readers.





Please pray for our reading sessions today! This afternoon, one of my readers is Luciano, our van driver from the airport.





And now for the Big Moment: the traditional mission trip blog Elvis Sighting!!

This was in a little sandwhich shop on the way home last night. Ashton found it for me! The shop is owned by a man who knows no English but loves to throw in some German at us along with his Portuguese.

Auf weidersehen!

Reading Sessions

There are few things more exciting than the first day of reading sessions on an LST project. We all went to work a little nervous today and God just blessed and blessed as He always does. All of our readers showed up or called to reschedule, they showed up on-time or early (which is a miracle in a Latin American country!), and all scheduled to come back again, some of them for every day.

We took turns between readers to stand out front and hand out flyers and some of the people we met came in to schedule a reading session or to stay and have one right then. We also had many come in from off the street to see what we were doing and to meet the Americans. The O Caminho church is on a major thoroughfare with a glass front so is very visible to the community, and making it easy for us to smile and wave at all passersby. ;)

Here is a picture of me with my reader, Edna, who says she is "a Baptist in the morning and a Presbyterian in the afternoon". Believe it or not, I understood her explanation of that statement.

Information meeting

Bon dia! (Good morning) Thank you for your prayers over our information meeting last night. We signed up 27 readers! Since the concept of an information meeting/orientation makes no sense to Brazilians, that is a huge number. There are many more readers that have responded to the advertising but did not attend last night so we will be calling them to schedule their sessions. Through the advertising for the LST teams, over 30 people whose English is non-existent or very low have signed up for an introductory English class that Carrie Gotcher will teach on Tues and Thurs evenings!

It was such an exciting moment to finally meet and see the faces of those who we have been praying for over the last few months. It's very difficult to keep our emotions in check while chatting with them because they have no idea of our attachment to them through prayer before we ever get here. It's a little like finally meeting that sweet baby that you've been waiting for for 9 months!

We have our first team devotional at 9 this morning then head out for our 25 minute walk to the church for our first reading sessions. My first reader will be Renata who is the Portuguese teacher to Jill Nichols, one of the Niteroi mission team. Very excited!

Arrival in Niteroi

Greetings from Niteroi! We arrived safely this morning, on time, with all of our luggage! We were met by Wes and Carrie Gotcher, settled into our apartment, had an orientation meeting, then went to lunch. Here is a video taken by Shannon Wilburn of Jake and Ashton being introduced to some potential young readers by Carrie Gotcher:

We have our information meeting tonight to which all those who have responded to the advertising are invited. We will meet our readers for the first time and schedule their first one-on-one reading session. We begin those reading sessions tomorrow morning!

Please pray that all those God has selected will be in attendance and for us to have good rest tonight to be ready for our work tomorrow.

Thank you for your prayers!

On the road again...

This is an LST trip year for us. Patrick and I are going on a 2 week project to Niteroi, Brazil with the Wilburn family. We leave tomorrow which means today is spent thinking, organizing, praying, concentrating, searching, shopping, and finally packing. We fly through Houston, departing there at 8 pm for a 10.5 hour flight into Rio de Janeiro, arriving at 8 am on Tuesday. Missionaries Wes and Carrie Gotcher will meet us at the Rio airport and help get us over the bridge to Niteroi.

We will have a planning meeting Tuesday afternoon and that evening will hold an information meeting where we will meet with our readers for the first time and schedule our first reading sessions for Wednesday morning. Lots of excitement and nerves for all of us!

Please be praying for our trip and that God will send us the readers He has selected for us to wok with. We've been praying for them for several months and can't wait to meet them!!