June 26th

Today was a day filled with many mixed emotions for our team and for the Brazilians as well. It was an encouragement to see the continued work of the evangelism team as well as to see the progress the kids have made throughout their week at the VBS. It´s quite the amazing sight to look around and see kids praying with adults and other kids to receive salvation. Some of the kids are so eager to accept Christ that they came up to us asking if they could pray with us. Praise God for working in the lives of these kids.

By the end of the first session most of us were pretty tired and mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually exhausted from the previous days and from having to say goodbye to a lot of our new friends... and then we realized that we had to do it all over again this afternoon!!! In the midst of our tears and hugs Pastor Darril told us that crying wasn´t so much a bad thing, but instead it meant that we had done our jobs this week in sharing the love of Christ with these kids.

Tonight was a special night because there were close to 200 men and women who came to a service that we held. The guys were at Kids Place to attend a `young men´s night.´ They learned about what it means to be a real man of God. The ladies had a Women´s Beauty Night at Imperial Baptist Church (the other VBS location). The women talked about being beautiful on the inside and then us `Americanos´ had the opportunity to wash the women´s feet and paint their fingernails. Both were very powerful experiences for everyone.

Thank you again for your prayers. We can see God working so much here in Recife.