September 2018 Amazon Update!

Thank you so much for your prayers for the dentist team that came and served.  It was another amazing time of serving the community and helping people with dental needs that otherwise would not be able to get easy access to this care.  This year the dental team went on the river with the Marantha III and VI to serve communities near Belo Monte.  The Marantha III was retrofitted to serve as a dental clinic and the team worked tireless hours serving the community needs.  In these short two weeks the volunteer dentist team served 353 people doing cleanings, repairing cavities, pulling teeth, and making dentures.  It was an incredible work and we pray the Lord’s continued hand upon them all.  It has been a pleasure partnering with our sister church in Brasilia to serve the people, and share Jesus Christ.




Here are the statistics of the people served in the last years.  Amazing work considering they do this once per year for 2 weeks.  Since this project is self-funded, they are limited to only once per year.

Coming right off the boat we got prepared for our annual pastoral training.  The retreat training was surrounded around various topics such as mental health awareness such as depression and suicide.  They also taught on ethics in pastoral counseling, and marriage and divorce in the church.  It is training that a lot of our pastors need to become more skilled.  There were more pastors wanting to participate but were unable to afford the travel cost to get here.  In some of those cases, we tried to at least help 1 pastor participate. 

In addition, the pastors did an exercise with some of the years written on the wall and they were asked to write significant events that happened during that time.  It was very encouraging for all of us to stop and look back and reminisce at where we have come from, and then, start pushing ahead into the work for the future.  

The girls are doing well and are participating fully at school.  One of the things that I think is cute is that the girls really like to listen to 1950’s music.  Camilly's favorite music is Mr Sandman, and Alyssa likes Lollipop by The Chordettes.  I think it is sweet.  Below is a picture of Camilly listening to some music, and Alyssa participating in her annual “Independence Games” competition at school.  

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

Much love, Steve, Elba, Camilly, and Alyssa