Homecoming

Well, the time has finally come! Luciana and I are coming to the States to visit. We have talked about it several times, but had issues with my permanent visa for Brazil and so I could not leave the country. But now everything is worked out with my visa and we are ready to come for a visit.

We just finished our semester down here at the Bible College in Campo Mourao. We ended it with a special dinner/banquet for the students on Wednesday night. The semester itself was an interesting one, with a lot of teaching, but also a lot of fun. Filled mostly with modular classes, which are classes where we do the entire class in two weeks rather than once a week throughout the course of an entire semester, the pace tired me out. It has positive and negaitve points to for sure. I definitely was tired at the end of a two week session, teaching everyday, usually twice a day for three hours a session. It takes it out of you! But also, it was cool to have so much focus on one subject and get it all done so quickly.

Anyways, we look forward to coming to visit all of you. We will be in Southern California with my parents, then to San Luis Obispo for a little while and hopefully up to the Bay Area for a stop. It should be a great time. If you need to contact us, e-mail me at: tstowe77@hotmail.com, or try calling my parents house (949)366-1898. We will arrive on the 18th of December and head back to Brazil on the 26th of January.

Check out the picture of the lizard. He was in our front yard! Probably about 5 feet long!

Scouting out the Land

Two weeks ago Luciana and I took a scouting trip up to the Northeast of Brazil, to a city called João Pessoa.  This is the city that we are planning on moving to at the beginning of next year to start a church.  We first went there on our honeymoon and really liked the city as a whole; the laid-back vibe and beach atmosphere really made us feel at home.  Plus the strategic location seemed to be the ideal spot to start to plant churches throughout the Northeast, because it is on the coast in the middle of the region.  So, with a few contacts we had there, our goal was to see the whole city, meet with our contacts and pray.  The trip turned out to be a total success because we did all we wanted to and had a fantastic time while there.  The weather also turned out to be gorgeous, so we had a great day at the beach to go along with our accomplished goals, which is always a blessing! 

The majority of our trip was spent with our friend Hércules and his fiance.  Hércules is from Curitiba and was a part of our church there.  But he is a missionary here in Brazil (working mostly with YWAM) and travels all over the country.  But now he has officially moved to João Pessoa and is really excited about us coming to start a church.  He and his fiance gave us a personal tour of the whole city, taking us to see all the sights.  We had a great time and are looking forward to doing evangelism with them, since Hércules is an evangelist through and through.   Our mutual hope is that we can go do tons of evangelism and then plug people into our church to be fed the teaching of the Word.  We are excited about what seems like a great fit for ministry together with Hércules.  Please pray for all the plans and preparation that needs to take place!

Children’s Day

October 12th in Brazil is Children’s Day.  Here in Brazil it is a special day for children to have fun and do something special since some of them don’t have that opportunity growing up in very low income homes. So one of the projects here connected with the church in Campo Mourao is called Caminho Melhor, the “Best Path.” It is a children’s center located on the edge of our property here at the Bible College and also on the edge of one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. The center is not quite completely finished, but it is more than enough to hold a children’s day celebration. That is what we did this last Saturday.

The Bible College spent a few days doing evangelism in the neighbor and inviting all the kids we could find to our celebration. The community seemed really excited about the event and gave us a real warm response. Then, on the day of the event, hundreds of kids came out with their families to play all sorts of games, rides and eat tons of food. It was really like a small scale carnival. We spent all day playing with the kids (I got burnt on my neck, forehead and arms) and running the activities.  After all the fun, we tried to herd all the kids inside to have one last presentation about Jesus.  It was cool to see the kids listening to a message about the Lord and His love for them.  And as you can see in the pictures, Lu and I were able to get involved with it directly!  Overall it was a great day; it blessed the community and opened the door for future ministry with the kids once the community center officially opens in a few months.

The move

Well, we officially made our move from Curitiba back to the Bible College in Campo Mourao.  We arrived here on the 15th and got all moved in that night.  After a long last two weeks in Curitiba (we had a week of outreach with a team from Calvary Chapel, San Luis Obispo, a church retreat, and then a week of packing which was way more stressful than I imagined) the Lord made our transition amazingly smooth!  The morning we left, the moving van arrived early (which can sometimes be unimaginable here in Brazil!), we loaded it up and sent it off.  Then we had lunch with our good friend Karina, she drove us to the bus station, we got on, and went to Campo Mourao.  When we arrived, our friend Phil was waiting for us, took us to get some food and then to our new house on campus.  We arrived there and in less than ten minutes, so did the van with all of our things!  The students all came over and loaded the stuff into the house and we were ready to go! 

Our new three bedroom house is amazing; so far we are loving our new home with all the space and privacy we have.  The house is way bigger than we need, but that is all they have for us here, so we definitely won’t complain.  The house, situated in the corner of the campus, has two sides of the house surrounded by jungle.  We have actually seen tons of monkeys in the trees all around our house.  It is great.  We know we will only be here for 6 months before we head up to the Northeast in Mid-February, but we will enjoy it as long as we are here.

Here at the Bible College this semester, things are great.  We have maybe the best group of students that they have had since the Bible College opened two years ago.  We have a slightly different schedule because they are doing several modular classes.  The idea is to do an entire book of the Bible in a two week period.  So for example, I am teaching Romans for two weeks, twice a day, for three hours a session.  It is pretty intense, but then I get all next week off to rest.  I really like it.  This semester I am going to be busy teaching several classes, including Romans, Galatians, Inductive Bible Study, Evangelism Practicum, and Lectures in Ministry.  But we are so excited to be here and just enjoying all our old friends here in Campo Mourao.  It is a huge blessing from the Lord to come back!

The search begins

So our church here in Curitiba, Vivendo em Cristo, has been in a building for over two years now. They found this building a few years ago that is owned by another church, but that church moved out to rent a bigger place. So it seemed great. Unfortunately the leaders did not know about the leader of this other church. He has titled himself “the Apostle Alexandre.” In fact, if you do not call him “the Apostle” or “Apostle Alexandre,” he will begin to refer to himself in the third person as “the Apostle.” Well, being that he is an apostle of Jesus Christ and is by no means in the ministry for his ego or for personal glory, you would think that he would want to help us out by providing a quality building, with superior maintenance, at a low price, right? I mean, Paul said, ” For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.” So why would he not want to help us?

Well, he has been charging us a fairly high price for rent and has continued to raise the price at the end of every semester. He won’t fix anything, but we have to fix our own problems, pay for them ourselves and he will not even take a little bit off of our rent after we do things to make his building better! So all this to say that we are looking for a new building to maybe buy (if we can afford it) or rent. We have until December in our current contract, so we need to find something in the next couple of months because “the Apostle” is going to raise rent once again.

Please pray for us to find a great building that would be affordable for us. Even if it is just to rent, we will be better off there not dealing with this guy!

The month of June

So after the busy month of May, our head Pastor, David, will be gone for one month, visiting friends and family back in the states.  So for the four weeks that he is gone, I will be running thing here at Vivendo em Cristo.  This last weekend was the first weekend of his trip, and things here ran pretty smoothly.  We had no problems, good attendance and even pulled off some extras during and after the service including communion, rearranging the sanctuary just a bit to spice thing up, and koinonia (our once a month time of fellowship where we do sort of a pot-luck for the entire church).

For these four Sundays of teaching, I will be going through the book of Philippians doing an entire chapter each week.  It is a little different style because it is much more of an overview of the book than a normal teaching on Sunday.  But I think it will be a good change and give the people a good overall understanding of Paul’s letter, along with a sense of completion after we complete the whole book.  Please pray for us during this month for good leadership, good teaching and protection over the church in general and it’s members.

The busy month of May, Part III

Well, I wanted to write one last short update on what we did during the month of May. To be honest, what we did was really simple…we had a youth bowling night! Whoa! What a revolutionary idea! I know, I know…simply amazing. But down here in Brazil, they are really not well familiar with the dark, smoky, filled with weird characters everywhere-bowling alleys that we seem to have in every city in the states. They are just missing that part of our great American culture.

So while our YWAM team was here, we went to a bowling alley and had some fun. It was really much more difficult than you might imagine because so very few people have cars in our church. Also, their are only like, two bowling alleys in the entire city of 2 million people, so we had to commute a bit. So after a bit of carpooling wizardry, we got (I think) 35 people to the bowling to have some fun together. The Brazilians were generally pretty bad at bowling because most of them had either never bowled or had only been 1-2 times in their life. It is just not their thing, I guess; I think the Gringos sort of cleaned house. I bowled a disrespectful 106 or something like that, and that was maybe the highest score of the day! But the main thing was that we had a blast together and times like that can help bring unity to a small group of young people like we have. So hopefully we can plan a few more events in the up coming months!

The busy month of May, Part II

So while Pastor David and I were at the Pastor’s Conference in Campo Mourão, a YWAM team from Australia arrived here in Curitiba to do their outreach. The team, doing a DTS in Newcastle, Australia, just finished their schooling part of the DTS and were coming to do their practical portion in South America. They stopped in Chile for about three weeks and then hoped over the Andes to come work with our church here in Curitiba. After being held up trying to get their visas, their arrival landed exactly in the middle of our three day conference! It was a bit crazy, but it worked out. When we arrived at home, we found the team rested and ready for anything we could throw at them. As leaders we were stoked to see their willing, positive attitudes to serve the church.

So for three weeks we took to the streets and to local schools doing evangelism almost every day of the week. The team responded tremendously trying to talk to people despite the language barrier, performing music & dramas, and sharing the gospel with the crowds that gathered to watch.  The amazing thing about Brazil is that people on the street actually stop and watch what you are doing and will even talk with you most of the time.  You can hand people tracts about Jesus and they will stand there and read it, not just throw it away.  This is by far the best country I have ever been to for evangelism!  Not only that, but a local TV station saw the team on the street and gave them the opportunity to play a few songs, tell about the church, and explain why they were here in Brazil!  It was such a cool thing that the Lord opened up for us all!

We also put together a free English course that the team taught while they were here.  We thought of it as a way to invite people to our church, a way to build relationships and a way to bless the community since English is an extremely valuable skill to have in Brazil.  We were not sure how many people would come out, but people came out by the dozens!  The first Friday night we had the entire church full of people and were bring up more chairs from down stairs to accommodate everyone who came.  We must have had close to 50 visitors here!  I’ll be honest, I was shocked!  I never thought that there would be so many people.   But it was very cool to see and we are hoping that many of these people will believe in Jesus and find a home in our church.

The busy month of May, Part I

So things here at Vivendo em Cristo (this is the name of our church in case anyone was confused) have been super busy this month! It started with the Calvary Chapel – Brazil Pastors Conference the first three days of the month in Campo Mourão, at the Bible College. The conference was amazing. We had all the pastors and assistants together in one spot to have a time of fellowship, encouragement and a renewed sense of vision for reaching Brazil for Jesus. As Calvary Chapel always does, we spent time focusing on the Word of God and being reminded of it’s power to transform, correct, teach and raise up disciples in our respective churches.

After all the years I have been intimately involved with Calvary Chapel now, I have been able to see the strengths and weakness of our fellowship of churches quite clearly. I will be the first to admit that Calvary has plenty of weakness. But I also know that there is no perfect church in the world, and so I plan to stick with Calvary for many years, or as long as the Lord leads. But one thing that I love so much about Calvary is the simple focus of having the teaching of God’s Word be our main focus. So many of the stories of these head pastors are that they started teaching the Bible and only the Bible, and then people came…and grew. Now they all have churches with the simple focus of teaching the Bible. I love that. It gives me so much confidence to go out to start my own church here some day soon, knowing that I don’t need some crazy gimmick, strategy or ploy to attract people; I just teach the Word. That is one of the few things I can do! Praise the Lord! I am thankful for what Calvary has done and is doing here in Brazil!

Carnaval Retreat

Every year in Brazil, probably the biggest event that occurs (rivaled only by major soccer tournaments like the World Cup) is Carnaval. This is Brazil’s version of Mardi Gras. It is carnal; it is sensual; it is one huge, wild party. Most Christians choose to not participate because of the nature of the celebration (people are trying to sin all they can before Lent starts and they have to give up everything for 40 days). For Calvary Chapel Brazil, it is time for annual Carnaval Retreat. All the Calvary Chapel’s get together for an extended weekend of worship, teaching, and fellowship at the Bible College/Retreat Center in Campo Mourao. This year we had representation from every Calvary (7 total) except the one in Recife (which is just way too far away to come).

Pastors Brian Broderson, John Randall and Jim Gallagher came down from the states to teach at the retreat and all the churches brought their worship bands to take turns leading in worship. The Pastors went over some of the doctrines that make us Calvary Chapel and we spent time after the services praying for and ministering to people in need. I think the best part was to see the young people in our church hang out together and get to know each other better. I think some good relationships were established and others were deepened during the weekend. We needed it because our church is over half college aged kids. They tend to struggle with being overly sensitive and getting their feelings hurt over little relational problems with each other. Then instead of dealing with the problems, they create new ones by talking about everything with other people. This time together for the retreat was great because we just meet with each other and with the Lord, and we walked away with less problems than we came with. I think that is what should happen when we keep our eyes focused in on Jesus! Pray for us that our young people can continue to do this!