September 2, 2008

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Hope all is well with each of you. We are doing fine here. Lots of things are happening around here.

We have started something new in the church. Since we have so much space here at the home, we have started having special nights every other week. Last week we had a fish night. We encourage members of the church to bring friends to the supper. This time we had eighty present and fifteen were first-time visitors. Most of them had never been to church. That was great! But what was really wonderful was that Sunday morning almost all of them were at church. One of the ladies that was here is an alcoholic. Sunday in service she said she wanted to accept Jesus as Savior. Please pray for her.

Like in the USA, it is an election year. The politicians have had many meetings and have asked us to attend some of them. One of the subjects that was mentioned is the problems they are having with teens ages twelve to eighteen. They don't know what to do with them. One of the politicians that was there answered and said, "Those kids need to get to Alpha and Omega."

Sunday morning we had baptism and we had four baptized. Two of them were adults and two were kids. Baptism, besides meaning the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is also a public testimony of their new faith. Without a doubt, this was true this time. The young lady that was baptized used to be a drug addict who had suffered a horrible motorbike wreck and almost lost her leg. The man that was baptized used to live a life of crime from one city to another. His wife was already a faithful member. She suffered through all of this and got to see God change her husband. The little girl that was baptized is the daughter of one of the deacons and the little boy is my assistant pastor's (and like my own) son.

We have been doing work on the land around here. The very back of the land here at the home was not usable. We have been clearing out the area and cleaning up and now you can see the whole back part of the land. Since the area has lots of sand we have been building it up to where we are going to build the new church building and we are also building a sand volleyball court.

In Christ,

Odali and Kathy Barros