After a long day, we retreated back to Sao Jose dos Campos for tea before turning in. We were pooped. The girls were staying with a family from the aka. Saddleback Brazil Church where Tom who had made the arrangements joke how we must tell everyone when we get back home that we really really had to suffer for Jesus. We were in a middle-high class area, in a gated community, two-story home, with our own room and bathroom/shower, trampoline, serenity garden and pool. Oops and can't forget the Ping Pong table. We had a lavish breakfast served to us every morning by Sandra. Breads, Tea, Coffee, Yogurt, Granola, Cereal, Fruit, etc... We are very thankful for their hospitality and enjoyed fellowshipping with Sandra and her father Karl. They truly took care of us as one of the family.

The next day, we spoke on SHAPE to the entire church. SHAPE was something that was on the back burner during the earlier discussions of preparation for this trip and then suddenly 1-1/2 weeks before we were to leave for Brazil, I was told that we would be leading a 3-hour teaching/speaking on SHAPE. 4 days before we arrive in Brazil I sat down and typed up the 3-hour teaching over a course of 15 hours. We didn’t know what to expect, but when we arrived I immediately discerned that most of this church was spiritually dead, and it was confirmed when Tom came up to me who he had been working with the church that this church was dying. The pressure was on to get the message across about SHAPE. The teaching was geared to not only to educate, but to guide everyone in the direction of their spiritual gifts so that they had a direction when we were finished what to do. Immediately after we were finished, we were bombarded with life changing experiences and testimonies of the impact of our teaching to this church. The pastor himself commented that he did not know or was using his spiritual gifts. Leaders, youth, adults all the alike were asking questions, empowered, on fire…we watched a church come alive again. After talking with everyone, we gave a guideline to the pastor to implement ministries within the church for the following Sunday that could easily be established. The pastor later spoke from his heart what our time with his church had meant and how a divine leading/calling it was for us to be there. In addition, there was a visiting pastor in the audience that will be going back to his church to duplicate what we did. He needed to hear what we had to say, and of course, we know it wasn’t by accident he was there. We passed along to both pastors all our teaching material. They received a purchased SHAPE book and booklet to implement SHAPE from Purpose Driven – Brazil. AMEN!

An official report that was submitted to Saddleback Church/Purpose Driven written by Tom Turley on our team stated, ”The first church was overwhelmed that this group would even consider working with them; a small congregation, in a small rural town. Teaching S.H.A.P.E...opened this group’s eyes to be used by God. The results were immediate. Now, three weeks after the fact, the pastor is asking for more help from PD-Brasil (Purpose Driven Brazil), about how to mobilize his congregation more.”

Later that evening, we attended aka. Saddleback, Brazil church services. We had a tour of the ministries and we were just amazed at the significant role of this church in the community. The pastor (who we attended is 10th year pastor anniversary on Wednesday during the week), was given the key to the city by key government officials. The church works with social services and provides food to those referred to by the government where they have a medical clinic, grocery store (you pay by earning points), training center (everyone is required to take 1 class a week), thrift store (proceeds are used to support the grocery store) and more…known as the Social Services ministry.

Many of you know that we were on the mission trip under the P.E.A.C.E. Plan. We were not scheduled to visit the Social Services ministries, and when we walked into the thrift store on the grounds we were speaking to a woman who volunteers her time at the thrift store and she said, “I am being led to give each of you a gift”…she then searches in a basket and pulls out a lapel pin that says, can you guess…PEACE and she had enough for each one of us…it wasn’t until then we told her where we were from and about the PEACE Plan. She was just in awe as the rest of us still were. We wore the pins on our clothing throughout the rest of our trip.

In the beginning of the week, we headed off toward Paraty about 6-hours from where we were staying. We would eventually meet up with the indigenous Indian tribe – Guarani. Along the way, we stopped at a country farm restaurant, oh, don’t worry you will see pictures of this…I milked my first cow. It was amusing to everyone except myself and the cow. HA! Don’t need to do that again. So we ate who knows a 21-course lunch and rolled back into the Purpose Driven Bus and continued our journey.

We witnessed vehicles being stopped randomly by police who can search anything and everything of any vehicle traveling and many will find themselves losing property or paying bribes. The Lord blinded them to our presence and we were never stopped though we witnessed many others being stopped and searched.

We stayed two nights in a flat that was about an hour from the Guarani tribe. It was only then that we truly realized that we were far away from home as the surroundings were jungle in nature and more primitive from what we were seeing when we first arrived.