July 6, 2008

Dear Friends,

Our community is still growing at an incredible rate. Our subdivision (called a "bairro" in Portuguese), began in 1993 as a cow pasture. Now we have over 130,000 living here, with new additions every day. In fact, the Department of Urban Development has over 200 apartment complexes under construction which will house an additional 30,000 people within the next six months. We constantly receive visitors in our church services who are new residents in these buildings, but we don't want to sit back and wait for "church folks" who have moved near us to visit. We go out to reach those who wouldn't normally attend church services. The mission field has come to us and we hope to take advantage of this situation.

One of the ways that we work to maintain and develop fellowship and personal growth among our growing congregation is by having small group meetings in the homes of the members on different weeknights. These small, and rather informal, meetings provide opportunities for folks to share personal needs and prayer requests. Here our members also encourage one another with testimonies of God's provisions. They also provide opportunities for neighbors and friends to visit and get to know some of our church members before coming to our regularly scheduled services. We have several new converts in our church today who began their contact with us through these small group meetings in a member's home.

We began the construction of our men's dormitory for our evangelism team, Project Life, this past month. A special thanks goes to Ahava Baptist Church in Plant City, Florida for their huge participation in this needed project. When our three teams return to the home base for repairs and maintenance these dorms will be a tremendous relief to the pastors' wives who usually provide room and board. We now have thirty-six full-time members on the Project Life ministry team.

Charlene coordinated a tremendous outreach event for couples early last month. We had a total of seventy-two married folks present for a couples meeting. I brought the message, but Charlene did all the organizing, serving and decorating that was involved in pulling off this successful event. More than half of those present were non-church members. We shared the gospel and provided biblical teaching on how to have a happy marriage. Our next couples' meeting will be in August and we already have visitors from our last event making reservations to attend. I thank God for this wonderful partner that He has given me for her sweet spirit and faithful help in ministry.

I'm certain that you are aware of the decreasing value of the US dollar in the world markets. This translates into less money for us. Not because we receive less offerings, but because what we receive buys less. We also have a loss of buying power due to the inflation within our own country of Brazil. So, we are getting hit from two directions: 1) We receive less buying power; and 2) what we buy costs more. I share this to say how grateful we are, first to God, because He faithfully meets our every need, and secondly, to those who have remained faithful in contributing to us personally, and to you who have begun to contribute recently. May the name of the Lord be praised for His grace and provision.

In Christ's love,

Bobby, Charlene, Jessie and Brennen Wacaser