Quick Brazil Update

God has been blessing our weekly Sunday morning outreach class! We have sometimes 40 to 90 young teenagers. They are tough teens that, among other things, are drug users, traffickers, some thieves, major class disturbers, cut ups, into immorality at the age of 10 and 11 and many other kids with serious problems and/or who have no home life. They are completely lost and hell bound. One boy, Lucas, walks eight kilometers weekly to come to church or just hang out with us at AMO. The last three months or so the spirit of God has been moving among them in such a way that, last Sunday, many of the Sunday morning bible class stood up and made confessions of sin and received Christ. This movement of God has happened frequently…… more or less once every month. I have never spoken so directly (eyeball to eyeball) to kids about repentance, hell, heaven and the need of believing in the Good News. Decisions at the end of the class are made with everyone’s eyes open looking at who is raising their hands and there is no embarrassment among them. The whole class started clapping spontaneously after they were led to Christ through prayer! It has been hard work to get these young kids to make a stand to live for Christ, let alone to get baptized. We received the sad news Sunday morning that Bruno, one of the “tough” teens we were reaching died. He drowned in a local lake….he dove in and never surfaced again. Just the week before, at our place, he was bragging to one of our guys at how good he was getting at swimming as he was practicing in our pool.

This last month the AMO team has been very busy as we had over 72 people for sleeping over on campus for Camp 2011 (our living room was wall-to-wall girls!)and, then a week later, we received a team of 25 (youth group from TN) taking them into the favelas. It was a wonderful time of visiting, sharing, evangelizing (using the water filters provided by the Texas Baptist Men)and loving on the kids. It was such a blessing to see all the teenagers giving their testimonies and evangelizing for the very first time!

We have made so many tough and good adjustments to our lives because of the ministry as we press forward with what God wants out of us. Jodi has made a living sacrifice out of her life even more so lately as difficult adjustments have been made in our lives by receiving Beatriz (7), Marcela (14) and Karoline (17) into our home. She has been saving up special individual offerings designated for her personally over the last couple of years. She will be flying home at the end of this month to see our daughter, Jessica, graduate from UF, spend several days with her non-saved mother and, when she can, be at church perhaps in your area. Jodi and I cannot travel to the States together as we have only temporary guardianship of the AMO kids and it’s not permanent yet.

Please pray your blessings upon Jodi, our AMO team, and these precious kids God wants to use for His Glory.

Pete

We will be sending out our newsletter very soon……God bless you!