Here in Brazil, Children’s Day is at least as big as Christmas.  Here are a couple

pictures from our Children’s Day activities at church.

We hosted the last married couples’ meeting at our house.  It was a blessing to have, and be able to use, the extra space provided by the former MK school where we live.

Here are some photos from the module Barry taught Sept. 21-25.

Everyone taking the module gets taken out to a Brazilian steak house, or Churrascaria as we call it.  Unfortunately, the picture does not show the nicest cuts of meat…I was busy eating then.

Since some of the men auditing the module are local pastors and professors they were not all able to be there for every class. Nor were we able to get everyone in one group picture, although we took two different times.  That is the reason we recorded the module.

You can see a few more pictures on the Seminary’s website: sbrscuritiba.com

Here are some pictures from our trip to see Barry’s parents in Campo Grande

God granted David a special blessing at SBRS’s annual Music Conference.  The guest speaker’s wife is his “real live reading teacher!” (We are using BJ’s DVD homeschooling set for his first grade and he had just finish his first Book Link, Once in Blueberry Dell, taught by Mrs. Cox.) After the evening service, we were visiting and, by God’s amazing plan, put the name and face together and taa-daa!!!  David said he was so excited he almost cried!  “Thank you, Lord, for extra special blessings you bring to your children.”

God brought a special challenge to Barry.  Eight months after arriving in Brazil, Barry was asked to translate for one of the workshops for the SBRS Music Conference.  It was a challenge since his Portuguese vocabulary does not include a lot of music terms. (It is now slightly more expanded:)  It was a lot more difficult to do than he imagined.

We went and visited our friends James and Christen Taylor who recently moved from Curitiba to Florianópolis to start a new church there.  James is working with his brother and his wife, David and Sharon Taylor.  While we were there we all went sledding…on sand.  It was a lot of fun.  On the way back home we also stopped and explored a ship that was built to look like one of the boats involved in the discovery of Brazil.  Here are some pictures of these two places.  You can see some more photos on their blog:  http://taylors4brazil.blogspot.com/

David and Paul are getting used to Sunday School.  It has taken them awhile, since, at first they didn’t understand anything! Now they know many of the “basics” and have made friends with the other children in their class.

Mark and Luke are in the same Sunday School class with Pastor Ari’s son, Daniel.  Pretty soon they are all going to be running around with Luke!

Soon after we arrived in Brazil last October one of the founding missionaries at the seminary, George Wells, left to the States for an extended furlough and transitioned the leadership of the seminary to Ed Alexander.  Now another missionary, Max Lanz, who has been at the seminary for many years, has moved on to ministry in the States too.  We need more help!

At his going away service at the Seminary, he dressed up as a Gaucho, a cowboy from southern Brazil.  I thought some might like to see how the cowboys dress here.

This is Pastor Ari, the Brazilian pastor I am working with.  We are really enjoying working with each other. By the way, here in Brazil I am going by my middle name, Alan, which is much easier for them to pronounce and helps me to not stick out so much like an American. So at our church it is Pastor Ari and Pastor Alan.  Missionary Phil Taylor is also helping us out as a special counselor while he is working in another church plant as well.  He is on a short furlough right now though, so I will add him to the picture when he gets back.