February 6, 2005

Greetings to our Dear friends,

Thanks for all your love, prayers and support.  God has been good to us.  God has used many of you to bless our lives and ministry.  The ladies that work for the government councils are still giving a hard time.  But God has shown His power through it all.  The new Judge in town came to visit the home.  He really liked the place and was very encouraging.  He said it was obvious that things needed to be done, but it was a matter of life and death.  Improvements need money, he said.

We want to thank all of you who have helped us in many ways.  We pray that God will bless each of you.  Please continue to pray for us.  We just want God to be glorified in all of this.

This week is Carnival.  It is the most carnal feast we have here in Brazil.  It is horrible.  Every kind of sin you can imagine happens.  Many of our kids are out of town this week.  The youth group went to Iguacu Falls, where we are starting the new mission point.  They will be having several services this week.  Teens that got good grades went to camp.  Wow!  It sure is quiet around here.  There are about forty of the kids here at the home this week.

We started a new school year.  Seems like we will have a good year.  We have some kids with special needs.  We are praying that this year we can make some progress with them.  Pray for us.  We have several new teachers.  It is our privilege to have our son teaching.  Amelia, our daughter, is helping us make function a much needed curriculum for the elementary school.  Pray that we can get the kids excited about studying.  Some of them need lots of help.  We are asking God for His guidance.

Thanks again.  Please pray for us and the ministry.

Odali and Kathy Barros