News from Calvary Chapel Rio de Janeiro
Dear friends of Calvary Chapel Rio de Janeiro,
We hope that you all are doing well. The time seems to be flying by and one more month has passed that we have been able to see the powerful hand of God working here in our midst. It is truly a great priviledge to be able to be used by the Lord for His glory!
In May we started a Bible study with some Angolans. Truly we see God’s hand in it. It had been Pastor Alexandre’s and Russell’s (one of our missionaries) desire to reach Angolans for quite a while, and God lead the church leadership to live in a neighborhood that is full of Angolans, even of which many live in the same building as two of our church’s missionaries. Praise God for that! There are many Angolans who move here to Brazil to be able to work and find a better life. Angola is a very poor country in Africa, and is full of pegan worship. We invited a handful of Angolans to have a Bible study with us. The Angolans are many times treated differently and disliked here, so they chearfully excepted. God moved and the first study (through 1 John that Russell is teaching) two Angolans excepted Christ as their Savior! The next study five Angolans came. Please pray for these Angolans as we continue the Bible studies with them every Monday!
In May we also started going out into the street on Friday nights to evangelize. It has been an edifying experience for us to see God touching lives through that. Most Fridays we go to a place called the Lapa. It’s the place where the parties and drinking are held every weekend, as well as drugs, prostitution, and just about everything immaginable. It’s the same place where you see famous people, but at the same time all these other things. The heaviness of the atmosphere can be felt just being there. Praise God that there has been many seeds planted there through this evangelism. Matt 9:37,38 “Then He said to His disciples, “the harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. “Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”
Praise God for this opportunity to reach so many for Jesus! Pray that we could continue to minister through the radio since now the people who own the radio need to legalize their documents and fix the antenna. Because of these things the radio station will be closed for a while.
On the 27th of May the women of the church had a women’s tea at Pastor Alexandre and his wife Lílian’s house. Lílian taught a Bible study on being a godly women from the book of Ruth. The women enjoyed some good fellowship, good desert, and of course, tea. It was a blessing for the women!
Thank you so much for your prayers and support!
God bless you,
Calvary Chapel Rio de Janeiro
Praise report:
Praise God for openning up the door to minister to the Angolans and to be able to minister on the radio program
Praise God for brining this church more and more to maturity and to be more usable by Him
Praise God for recently being able to paint and fix up the church more
Prayer requests:
For the Angolan Bible study, that God would firmly ground those who accepted Jesus and that they would bring their friends and family
That God would bring people at the Lapa from darkness to light and bless the evangelism
That God would make the way for the radio program to continue, as we believe it’s His will
If you would like to be a part of the financial support for Calvary Chapel Rio de Janeiro money can be sent to:
Calvary Chapel Corvallis
P.O. Box 965
Corvallis, OR 97339
(note on the check or included a note – Calvary Chapel Rio de Janeiro)
Dear Family & Friends,
A lot has happened in the past 4 months since our last update, but let me just give you a quick overview.
God is continuing to grow our young church in size and maturity slowly and steadily. We are beginning to make a small splash in our community that we are praying will turn into a giant ripple as new visitors show up almost weekly. Our average attendance is now in the mid-30s, and about a third of those people attend our small groups.
There are 2 exciting events that I believe are worth highlighting:
First, is our Easter service. Once again, we invited family and friends, took out an ad on the local rock station, handed out postcards, did doorhangs, and prayed, and 76 people showed up! We did a salvation invitation, but do not know the response as our room is not large enough to have people come forward to acknowledge their decision.
Additionally, we just celebrated our 1-year anniversary! We first met as a church on Sunday, June 12th 2005. And so this past Sunday we had a celebratory service (see photos) to mark our anniversary. Our church body was very energized and excited as we did a message looking back at what God has done on our behalf and looking forward to what God will do in year 2. We had 46 people in attendance, and it was probably our best service yet. We then moved to a local park and held our first annual church picnic.
There is actually an important announcement that I made during the anniversary message that I would like to share with you.(You can hear more by listening to the message called “Backwards & Forward” on our website www.calvaryhartford.com). I have been working at ADT for the past 14 months, and trying my best to balance my family, the church and my job. Needless to say, this has been difficult at best. Well, last week, after tossing the idea around in my mind for months, I got the strong sense that God was asking me to take my trust in Him to the next level. It became clear that I needed to resign from my job and put my efforts into the ministry full-time. Those of you know me, know I am not lazy (I actually liked my job w/ ADT and was successful at it), but I really sensed that we could be so much more effective if I could give all my work efforts to the church body and developing outreach to the community.
So I went to work, and told my boss my thoughts and he was very supportive. I was so excited…until the drive home where I contemplated the very real question “Am I crazy?!?” I began to be reassured as Becky was very supportive and that same day, I got an e-mail from a family that attends our church indicating that they believed that God also wanted me to really devote myself to the ministry in a full-time capacity. Attached to the e-mail was a letter they are sending to their personal friends along with a commitment form. I called this person and told him the step of faith I had taken that day, and how awesome and encouraging it was to get his e-mail. We both were blown away sensing that God was orchestrating something behind the scenes. At present, we have raised some support through some churches and a few individuals and we are working on raising the rest (the letter and form Luke and Melissa wrote are attached in case you are interested in helping). We believe if we can raise support for 1 year, the church will be in a good position to sustain my salary after that.
As we move ahead, we completely trust in God’s provision and anticipate that God will do some wonderful things in year two of Calvary Fellowship. Let me again thank all of you for partnering with us in the work God is doing here. The prayer support, the financial support, and the words of encouragement have meant so much to our family and our church. You all play an important part in impacting the New England mission field for Christ. Thank you!
Godspeed,
Bill, Rebecca, Emily and Lily LaMorey
www.calvaryhartford.com
"How Great is our God!!"
Hello to my Calvary Chapel family!!!
Thank you for you for all your prayers!! We just love it here!!
Just to think that our trip will soon be over makes us sad. To wake up and see a beautiful blue sky without one cloud in it, it is truly a magnificent sight. Also, to see a nightsky filled with bright stars, moon, and city lights makes it all so special that I try to absorb it all to remember it.
These last few days have flown by so quickly that it is hard to believe that the weekend is here again. We have done so many different things and blessed so many people, not knowing that in return we were receiving the blessings from them!!
Everywhere we went, people have called out to us saying, "Welcome, welcome" even as we walked through the marketplace. The families that have invited us over have been teachers and people who have NOT received their monthly payments for over three months!! Yet these people offer you so many things to eat that you would think you were in a restaurant having a five to six course meal!! The minute you arrive, so do the cups and the three kinds of sodas. Next comes the coffee and the list goes on. Please pray that these people receive thier pay. Teachers that have not been paid continue to go to work on a daily basis. They say that they do it for the children.
We have learned some Arabic language and I want to share just one little phrase:
"Yasuua ma'aTHamaka" This means "Jesus, how GREAT YOU are". It is part of a song that we learned and Heather and I seem to sing it or hum it regularly.
We got to meet an elderly lady at Calvary Chapel Jerusalem who is a Holocaust survivor. She was so small and cute. She had beautiful blue eyes and she reflected
so much LOVE in her. She kept on hugging me and I held on to her for a long time. That is about all that I could do because she only spoke Russian. I told her that I would take her home with me and she just had a glowing smile.
We also met other people of this land that touched our hearts. Meanwhile we had so much fun that we also acted as silly goofballs!!
Enjoy the pictures!!
Love,
Lucy
****En Espanol: Mami te quiero mucho y me alegro saber que has podido ir a la iglesia y compartir con Mari Hafner y Mary Roman, que han sido una bendicion para nosotras al igual que muchos mas. Gracias por sus oraciones a todos mis hermanos y hermanas hispanoparlantes los quiero mucho en el Senor. Que Dios les bendiga a todos!!**** Disfruten las fotos y compartanlas el domingo en la iglesia, Gracias, Pastor Pedro****
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Since we have no way of watching any Heat games or World Cup games,
Pedro and I (Michi) decided to engage in our own competitve tournaments. I thought it would be nice to share the scores.
Ping Pong Tournament Scores:
Michi: 18 wins
Pedro: 17 wins
Fooseball Scores:
Michi: 4 wins
Pedro: 0 wins
0=)
Hey everyone, it's Michi with another quick update! We would again like to apologize for the lack of posts, but as I said before, we've been really busy! But "il hum
dili luh" (praise God in Arabic) that all is going extremely well and we feel your prayers!
Over the past couple of days we've worked in the community center's summer camp, did office work for the Musalaha ministry in Jerusalem, did more garden work and cleaning, visited another refugee camp, spent more time in prayer and fellowship, and in about an hour or so we will head out to an orphanage to do some activities with the kids.
Thanks again for all the prayers! We can't wait to come back and share the deeper things that God has been doing in and through us! We love you!
PS: Mom, Dad, Tito, Meli, and Natie: I love and miss you guys SO much! Hugs and Kisses from the Holy Land!
From Arlene & Josh:
Silence doesn't mean death! Sorry we haven't put anything in the blog but the team is doing such a fantastic job and we decided to save the best for last, so we just want to give a shoutout to all our prayer partnmers at CCK and our beautiful family: Susie, Lisa, Richard, Max, Joshua, Alex, Tatiana, and Heaven! Grandma and Grandpa love you, and we will have loads of goodies for you when we get home!
Office work in Musalaha:
Beit al Liqa Summer Camp:
Refugee Camp:
Prayer Meeting:
Other:
