The Sunday School class did an impromptu Christmas story play. Emma and Adriana were the teachers.

Reinact the Greatest Story Ever

Mary was pregnant, and they had to travel.

Mary sat on the donkey when she got tired.

The shepherds can all were brown shirts this year, thanks to some generous donors.

All the wise men can wait over here.

The wonder of it all.

What was the kings name again, who wanted to kill baby Jesus? Let’s call him Ruan. King Ruan.

Juliana can be The Angel of the Lord who tells the shepherds the good news.

Brazil has a National Day of the Bible. Our youth took the opportunity to spend the day eating together and getting ready for a Bible Character Dress-up night at Church.

Emma and her good friend Thaís. Thaís is about 5 months pregnant.

The young people in the church dress up as Bible characters. Emma and Bella were the main costume finders.

The young people stand at the back of the church so they can dance during the worship part of the service.

This is Ivanildo’s wife, Monica, and their daughter, Bruna.

Douglas can really play the guitar! I hope he makes it through to adulthood serving God. God has big plans for him.

The boys at the back of the church.

Aline is in Grade 11.

The worship team dresses up as Bible characters.

We’ve got Ruth, and Esther, and the Bride of Christ, among many other great characters.

Another Aline. All these Aline’s have very sweet spirits. The Sunday School kids love them. They all radiate love for God. They are such nice girls, all of them. May God bless them with ALL that He has planned for them.

This is Aline who married Eliel. They are the Youth Group leaders.

Bruna

Deú is Deanna’s friend who comes over and paints her fingernails every so often.

She is a key person. There are always a group of ladies around her telling stories at her house.

Deú loves God, but experienced Him differently last week-end.

The girls started out thinking they would paint a snowman on a popsicle stick, but the project grew to where everyone could make their own manger scene.

Emma the Teacher

Emma and Bella created a manger scene craft.

Bella the Teacher.

Could you show me how to do this one part again?

Quiet Concentration

Now you carefully paint the stick.

Fun with friends.

We are ready for you to come and visit us.

Snack Time.

Vandro delivers steel around town for a job. He is not a church person. He started coming with his mother-in-law, and sometime later his wife started to come to church with him. Now they both want to be church planters in São Luiz someday. I am not sure they consider themselves Christians yet, but sometimes we don’t get the order of these things exactly right. It is the direction we are heading that counts.

I drove to Altamira on Monday for our annual year-end leadership meeting. Among other things we all submit our next year’s budgets at this meeting. Where we spend our money and time has a direct relationship to our values. If the Xingu Mission can be remembered for only one thing, I hope it is that we are focused on starting a national movement of Church Planters. We love the local church and Brazilian people.

During the Leadership Meeting on Tuesday, November 12, 2013, Clenildo and Elba shared their vision for planting churches across Northern Brazil. About two years ago Clenildo shared a vision with me and others that he felt was from God. There were fires being lit in seven northern states. These fires grew and starting spreading, sparks jumping out and starting other fires. He felt God was calling him to lead this movement to plant churches in these states, an impossible task. He asked God how he could possibly do this. God said something like this, “First you talk about it. Then start visiting these places. Then watch it unfold.” Clenildo has already travelled to some of these states on survey trips, and shared this vision with the national church leadership team. Christian leaders who knew nothing of this vision have told Clenildo they have seen him in many Brazilian airports visiting these other states. This has happened at least a couple of times.

Last week Clenildo and Elba presented us with a paper entitled “Project to Plant Churches”. The seven northern states they want to plant churches in are Amazonas, Acre, Rondonia, Roraima, Maranhão, Ceará, and Piauí. This is in addition to the three states where we are already planting churches, Pará, Amapá, and Tocatins. The plan Clenildo and Elba presented is really optimized for their growing council of Brazilian church here in the North. Currently churches give 5% to an outreach fund for church planting. The mission wants to work with the young national movement.The really cool thing is that the plan presented does not depend on the mission. It can continue on without us if necessary. Clenildo and Elba are challenging the local churches, and us as a mission, to help with church-planting in the way that was summarized by William Carey. He said missions or sending agencies need to plan, plod, pray, and pay.

Dream of Planting Churches in Seven More Northern States.

Clenildo and Elba shared at the missionary leadership meeting.

Clenildo shares the vision for planting churches in 7 more states in Northern Brazil.

Friday is a national holiday here in Brazil. Emma and Bella took the afternoon off to make special cupcakes to sell at the church fund-raiser party.

Emma and Bella decorate cupcakes.

Bella’s teeth are blue from eating the icing.

The brown cupcakes are owls.

The cupcakes sold out quickly at the evening event.

Special Cupcakes.

Cupcake art.

First Ivanildo prepares the soil.

Then he invites everyone to a Corn Planting event.

Now everyone is looking forward to the Harvest Party in a few months.

Ivanildo prepares the cornfield.

It takes the right person to have a lot of helpers and to still come out with something reasonable like you thought it would be.

The corn seeds are coated with pink stuff to keep the little bugs from killing them before they get started growing.

Angelo gives Ellen a handful of seeds to plant.

Corn seeds get buried and die so they can produce 100 times as more corn than was planted.

Eliete loves plants. She brought a lot of helpers.

The best time to plant corn is just before the rainy season.

Yara helps with the planting.

pink hands!

“Are you looking forward to tonight?” Big smiles. Big eyes. Shining faces. It is six a.m. on a national holiday. I am asking the young people who came to our morning prayer meeting at the church if they are looking forward to the church party the Youth Group is planning. (Of course, our whole church is “youth”. Youth doesn’t apply so much to age here. Nursing babies, children, adults and seniors will all show up. It applies more to louder music, more colours, smells, and tastes).

The Youth Group is raising money for the Cristovál Celebration in March, 2014. The church is organized into teams who compete to see which team can raise the most money.

Emma buys some traditional food called vatapa.

Emma poses with two of the neighbour girls and Kevin in the Photo Tent.

Edilton reads the Special Mail. For 50 centavos (25 cents) you can write a special note to someone and Edilton will announce it over the loudspeakers, and then a runner will take the note to whoever it was meant for. This was hugely popular. Everyone wanted to publicly announce nice things about other people. Hugs. Emotions. Kids with parents. Friends with friends. Who would have guessed?

Sammy and Miriam, or should I say David and Esther, sold Brazilian hotdogs, which is ground beef in a hotdog bun.

Our church party was a neighbourhood event.

Deanna.

Paula was in charge of the Special Mail booth, where for a fee helpers would run notes to people after announcing your message over the loudspeaker.

The jail was another popular event. For 25 centavos the “police” would go and get anyone you requested and put them in jail. Then someone else would have to pay 25 centavos to bail that person out. The kids loved having someone care enough about them to send them to jail.

Igreja da Vinha, Festa das Barracas

The food booths.

Aline is a great help in Sunday School.

A cup of cold pop is one real, about 50 cents.

Bella and Emma made a lot of food, and helped a lot of people get dressed up in costumes.

Paulo Roberto is a jailer. This was also a costume party with the theme “Someone from the Bible”.

Vera and Maria made and sold vatapa.

Marques and Izak sold cachorro quentes, Brazilian hotdogs.

Fransisco sold cake. His booth sold out quickly. Brazilians love cake.

Neighbour kids.

Karen

Natalha

Eliel

Aline’s personality matches her costume.

Daisy and Julianna sit with some of the local boys.