June 3, 2008

Dear friends,

The Lord gave our congregation and us a surprise gift of encouragement the month of May. On a Sunday evening service, when no special programming was planned, and with several of our members unable to attend due to travels, work, or sickness, the Lord brought in our high attendance for the year -- 64! What a blessing and spiritual boost for us all. The next week, on Mother's Day, we had a high of 61 in attendance. Praise the Lord for His love and faithfulness towards His church.

Besides having high attendance in May, we started up the month of June with four professions of faith! Two young girls, Saran a (9yrs) and Rosane (10yrs), prayed the sinner's prayer after the Sunday night service. The next day two brothers, Cristiano (19yrs) and Leonardo (15yrs), made professions of faith when John and a visiting Brazilian missionary visited their home. Please be in prayer for these four young people.

We began in April a new thing to our congregation: A yearly theme. Though we started nearly four months late to get the theme in practice, the Lord is blessing. The theme is, "Advancing Toward The Goal" (not sport oriented), based on Philippians 3:13-14. We desire that the church grows in faith and unity to the glory of the Lord. Please pray with us, as we are working towards the spiritual growth and maturity needed for this congregation to be ready to call a pastor, and to be fully able to minister as a church without missionary help.

An unexpected financial need has arisen. As Emerson, one of our church members, has said, "We've got a forced construction situation."  Our neighbor to the backside of the church property has begun construction of his wall which divides his land from ours. We feel it's only fair and just to divide the costs with him, as it is a common wall. The problem is that the congregation financially is unable to help, and our ministry has been financially crippled toward extra projects due to the declining exchange rate and increasing inflation. John needs to get together with Israel, the neighbor, to figure out more or less our part of the expenses. He estimates that it shouldn't cost us much more than US$ 1,000.00. The church here in Caxias would greatly appreciate any extra financial help you could give. We also cherish your prayers in this matter.

We would like to be able to send e-mail updates to all those who receive our prayer letter. However, we do not have the current e-mail addresses of many of the churches. Also, we've been sending our letters at a low cost rate to the States (about US$ 0.48 per letter), and are not sure if they are reaching their destinations in a reasonable time frame. What we ask is if you could send us a short e-mailing to let us know you received this letter. That way we have your current e-mail address also.

A summary of our prayer requests are as follows:

	Funds provided for construction of the wall for the church property.
	Spiritual growth of Cristiano, Leonardo, Rosane, and Sarana.
	Spiritual growth of the Fundamental Baptist Tabernacle congregation.
	Wisdom in stewardship of our ministerial funds.