Last day in Brazil

So here we are on our last full day in Brazil. The time has positively flown by! We have had the most amazing time though.

Here is a short run through of the things we have been up to since my last entry:

We have now performed the 'Everything' skit twice. Once to the kids at 'Projecto Pescar' and once at the youth service at the main church. The drama just blew me away with how much those 6 minutes can impact people. Each time there were people who were in tears with really cool testimonies of who God was doing in their heats. For the kids at 'Projecto Pescar', a few of us gave testimonies of how our lives related to the drama, then we gave an alter call to ask if any of them wanted to give their life to Jesus. Almost all the class put up their hands, and from what their teacher said, it was the first time for a number of them. I was in tears by this point and I wasn't the only one. We then taught the skit so that they could show it to other people after we left. They picked it up really quickly! And we all loved the fact that each group changed little bits, they added their own take on how to do things. So we added a few of those into ours the next time we performed it!

One of our biggest ministries has been to make friends. So we have done a lot of hanging out with people and just loving them, showing them that with our time and effort. We have hung out with the youth, the 'Projecto Pescar' kids. We have also joined the church's community missions group on a couple of trips. We have visited a government run orphanage for kids who have been taken away from their parents for various reasons. Some of them were abused, some had parents who just couldn't cope, and things like that. It was only a small one and the had recently had a number of kids move on so there were only 8 children. That didn't matter to us though, you can get a good game of football going when you have 11 extra people there to join in! The second trip we did was to a village about 10/15 minutes from the church. It was a poor village, though not one of the shanty villages which are apparently much poorer. The houses were mostly made of wood and looked much like my garden shed with a tin roof, some of the houses not being much bigger than a shed (though some were bigger). In the village our focus was once again the children. There were about 40 kids with whom we just sang songs and played games (which of course included football).

We were working with the tiny little church that was in the village and it was to the church that we gave the big suitcase of clothes that we had brought from Canada. As everyone was packing for outreach, we asked the SoM students for any spare clothes that they weren't taking with them. We then shoved those in a case and brought them with us. They were so appreciative of them- it really blessed them. The last thing at the village was lunch. The church had cooked up a huge pot of food. The kids then all came with bowls and Tupperware and pots and were each given a big dollop of spaghetti bolognase. We got to walk the smallest children home afterwards. For both these trips we only got to have a few hours with th kids, but they left a big impression in our hearts, and I think we also made a big impression.

We as a team have got a lot closer, with funny socials where we dressed up as each other, film nights, multiple trips to the park, card games, dying each others hair, shopping, caring for each other as we all got sick (about half the team have been ill enough to miss things at various points), cooking meals, having late night chats and getting manicures (ok so that's mainly the girls), eating way too much good food and just hanging out. We had the amazing opportunity to go up the nearby mountain at dusk and watch the sunset from the top of the mountain. It was so beautiful, and loads of fun. I think we also broke the Guinness world record for the most group photos taken in a short period of time! Despite being scared half to death that people were going to fall of the edge of the cliff because they were getting so close to the edge, it was an amazing time. So we managed sunrise over the sea and sunset over the mountains!

Since being in Brazil every single member of the team (bar the leaders) have given a testimony and preached. We have preached in a number of different churches in the surrounding area, each up to 35/40 minutes drive away. Sometimes we were split into two teams and sometime we got the pleasure of being all together. God totally took over the meetings and the ministry times. We had some fantastic ministry times where we saw people getting touched by God, healed emotionally, healed physically, people being set free from things, and a lot of tears. It has been a privilege being able to come in a minister to the people here. They have all been so friendly and welcoming and people have been incredibly open to receiving what we have to tell them. We have also had a lot of opportunity to speak into people's lives through prophecy. We have prophesied over the leaders, pastors, ministry team, the 'Projecto Pescar' kids, and various other people. We have also had the chance to lead worship which was amazing fun (if a little stressful in the planning). We had Livia (a past student and one of our translators) singing with us and we did English songs for which there was an existing Portuguese translation and we sang each song in a mixture of the two languages. It sounded hard when we started, but actually when it came to it, it was really easy to worship and we just had a fun time playing.

All in all it has been an eventful outreach with a lot of 'Outreach stories' (something that Robson informs us is a vital part of outreach!). We have seen God working in the people around us, and in us too. We have made some really good friends, many of whom I am sure we will be in contact with for many years. The whole team is going to be leaving Brazil with fond memories and not just a little sadness.

Prayer points:

• Much though we loved our stay over in Miami last time, we would love a smooth journey back to Toronto

• Amber was really not well on the journey over. We are claiming 100% healing for her from air sickness. We would love you to support us in that.

• Please pray that we don't get separate from our luggage this time.

• The next few weeks are going to be hard as we go back to school and then have to leave everyone again. Some of us know what we are doing next, and some don't. Please hold us in your prayers as we recover from outreach and face the next stage in our lives.

Ho-down & Beach

I can't believe how quickly the time here has flown by. We are now firmly into our second week here and so much has happened.

Saturday evening was one of my favorite times to date. The youth of the church have their own room in the church which has recently been redecorated. Saturday was the official opening of the room, so they decided to have a big party. So the entire party dressed up like... country bumpkins! (hillbillies if you rather). There were a lot of checked shirts, straw hats, patches on jeans and girls with pigtails. It was hilarious. Now we didn't come to Brazil with hillbilly costumes foremost in our minds, so most us just contented ourselves with drawing little freckles over our checks- including the boys. Throughout the evening we played a number of games such as prince, princess and knight. You have a partner, and dance around, away from each other, while the music plays, then when the leader calls out one of the three characters, you have to find your partner and perform the correct action; prince – one partner is down on one knee and the other sits on the free knee; princess – one partner sweeps the other up into their arms; knight – piggyback. Amy and Mettie-Anne were our representatives coming in second. This was a particularly impressive feat considering they were calling the words in Portuguese and the girls couldn't tell which word was prince and which was princess, so were guessing or copying everyone else! The whole room had been decorated with paper chains and streamers and at the back of the room there was a jail set up. While all the games and the dances were going on there were 'policemen' who went around arresting people and putting them in the jail! This was a fund raiser for them, because you paid R$0.50 to put someone in the jail. The person could then either wait 5 minutes, or pay R$1 to get out. It was a hilarious idea and one that we took full advantage of starting off with Cindy and working our way through the team (plus a few of our Brazilian friends). Now the dancing! The dancing was contagious! By the end we had all succumbed and joined in, running around like mad things laughing our heads off and having a wonderful time. I don't think I have ever joined in so readily at a party dance. I was exhausted by the end of the evening!

Sunday was our earliest start since arriving, we had to be up and dressed and ready by 9am! Lol. We were up to join the leadership team having breakfast, then we split into three groups and prophesied over each of them either individually or in couples. It was a privilege to be able to speak into their lives. It's been easier doing prophecy here, I think partly because we know nothing about theses people, so there are no pre-conceptions, also we don't know them so are less afraid to get it wrong and so are just giving everything that we have (in the same was that I found it easier to pray for people). From people's reactions and their feedback our boldness was well placed as the things we were getting were really applicable to them.

Sunday afternoon was a relaxing trip to the park – which has a wooded bit at the back which, when you are walking through, could really make you think you were in the jungle!

Sunday evening was not so much fun though because I wasn't very well. I'd had a bouncing temperature all day, but by the evening I was dizzy, nauseous and very cold. I felt thoroughly sorry for myself so went to bed. The evening wasn't wasted though as I held my own healing service just for me. I felt much better by the end I must say! Yay God!

I was super glad that I was feeling loads better come Monday morning because it was our day off and we were off on an adventure. Robson (pronounced Hobson) is our main contact here and his parents have a summer apartment by the beach. So we hired a minibus and drove 3 hours to the beach! It was a beautiful sunny warm day and you could see the sea shore from the apartment windows. It did not take long for people to get changed and scramble down to the sands. We had a couple of extras on the trip, Sessile – one of the guys from the church, Alana – one of our translators who is going to SoM next school, and Sam Fowler – an ex-students and small group leader (my brother's small group leader in fact!). We spent all day on the beach in the beautiful warm sunshine, with clear skies above, had all you can eat pizza for dinner, and watched 'Bella', all curled up on one rather overcrowded sofa bed. What can I say, it's a hard life being on outreach! I think my favorite bit of the day though was an opportunity I was almost to scared to take. As we were leaving the pizza place there was a homeless lady with a withered hand sat on a shop door step near the van. So stepping out, a small group of us went and prayed for her. She was so open to receiving prayer. When we left she looked much more peaceful, and much happier. Now her hand wasn't healed on the spot, but I believe that God has started working in that hand. The next day I kept looking out for her in case she was there because I want to see this healed hand of hers. Sadly I didn't see her, but it was really cool anyway.

Monday night we stayed over at the apartment, which meant that come 6:30 Tuesday morning we were still there, so the girls all got up to watch the sunrise over the sea, we watched the sky change colour, watched the sun peep over the waves and then rises behind some clouds, did a few beach aerobics and then Cindy accidentally stepped on a dead penguin, so we decided to head back to bed for a couple of hours. Once we got up for the second time we went and explored some cliffs nearby. All except Joe that is who was the latest victim to the bug going around. We watched cliff fishermen, clambered up and down the rock, got soggy from some over zealous waves while getting a group picture taken and admired the views. Sadly once we had explored the cliffs though it was time to head back, and prepare for our evening ministry.

The first few days

We have now been in Brazil for 4 days.

Monday was our day off. After a really lazy get up and then the delight of getting our cases back, we had lunch and set off to explore the town. We went to get money exchanged, but the travel agent needed to drive to the next town to get it, so we went to window shopping for a while. Alana, one of the English speaking ladies from the church came with us – she is actually going to the school in September which is cool. Window shopping turned out really fun. We met up with another guy from the church and the whole group of us hung out in the top floor of a shoe shop just chatting. The lady working in the shop let us try some Chimarrão, which is a strange herb drink.

They just stuff the cup with these leaves and then add hot water. Apparently it is a very social thing which is often passed around in groups. I thought it smelled like a mix between liquorish and BBQ chicken, then tasted a bit like meat feast pizza. Wasn't really my kind of thing, but some of the others like it. Dinner was a trip to a local burger joint with couple of the church youth group. Then we collapsed in front of our Monday night film – Minority report! Finally everyone headed to their rooms. The guys to sleep and the girls to chat, a patten that has continued every night since- lol.

Luckily for us, we get most mornings off. So on Tuesday it was a relaxed get up and then for the girls an abrupt wake up with the cold showers. The guys don't have the luxury of morning showers. They are using a different shower which is located in the flat of a couple who live in the church. So they have to wait until after lunch to use the showers – poor smelly boys! Breakfast was at 10, team worship at 11, lunch at 12 and then an hour free before our afternoon activity. In the afternoon we were working with 'Project Pescar', a kind of youth club that they run each afternoon that church. It's more than just a youth club though because the kids are taught skills like wood work and crafts. For our first day though it was a case of getting to know them a bit and just hanging out. So we were playing lots of games like; 'kangaroo, koala, platypus'; 'Splat'; and 'flush the toilet' (which is effectively stuck in the mud- a tag game). Then after thoroughly wearing everyone out we went inside to have a snack and play table tennis and 'sinooker' which is a bit like pool but with a smaller table and rather than using a white ball you use your balls to sink your opponents. All the kids are lovely. They are all very happy to practice their limited English on us and teach us some Portuguese words and phrases. We all had a really good time with them. So we were with them from 1:30 until 5:30. Despite having so much fun, it was really tiring and most of us were quite relieved to be able to go and have a short kip before dinner. Dinner was officially our first meal that was cooked by the team was a beautiful pasta meal cooked by the lovely Mettie-Anne and the equally lovely Joe – it was good!

Wednesday morning the girls woke to find a couple of work men trying to get into their room. It was a little strange lying in bed while these work men were attaching things to our wall, however this 'something' happened to be a heater/air conditioner so we really weren't going to complain. Houses in Brazil don't have heating, so whatever the temperature is outside, that is generally the temperature inside. Sometimes though, the church is actually colder than the outside temperature, just purely because it is so big and can't heat up very quickly. Once they had finished our room became the warmest room in the entire building! Breakfast was again at 10 and team time at 11, this time though we had soaking- yay! Lunches are always provided for us by the church. Each day the food had been so good. We get a selection of the following each day; shredded lettuce, carrot and beetroot, potato, beans, rice, these cute little deep fried rice balls, beef , meat rolled pancakes, cheese and corn rolled pancake. It's generally quite simple, but as I said, so good. Wednesday afternoon was a football (soccer) game with the kids from Project Pescar. Everyone was split into 5 teams and we played each team against the others with matches lasting either 10 minutes or up until one team had scored twice.

I was aware that as a nation Brazil was good at football, and it is so true. Some of these guys were really quite good, especially some of the girls! Not all of them were good of course, but a good number of them. So it was quite an interesting tournament, if a little cold for the spectators.

Wednesday evening was the first meeting that we were taking part in. We had Johnny giving a testimony and Joe was preaching. We also had the lovely Raquel (pronounced Haquel – Rs in Portuguese are pronounced like Hs) as our translator. Those of you who have worked with a translator before we have an idea of how very different it is to talk or preach with a translator. Everything takes more that double as long, and it's much easier to loose your place as your thought patterns are interrupted. This didn't seem to be to much of a problem for our boys though. Although Joe found that his 'introduction' section took up most of his time, it actually worked out really well. They both did fantastically and had really good points that seemed to really touch people. Joe ended his talk with a bit of teaching about healing. He then called out the words of knowledge that we as a team had gotten earlier, tinnitus, a scalp problem, problem with the elbow and a load more. These people he invited up to the front and we as a team prayed for them for healing. Most of the time we didn't know an kind of specifics of what we were praying for, because there weren't enough translators for us all. So the people we were praying for were merely pointing to the general area and we were praying general prayers (unless God gave us something more specific as we were praying). Good thing is though that God knows exactly what was wrong, so it didn't matter that we didn't know- he healed them anyway! God healed a good number of people that night- it was so exciting.

Thursday we had WARM SHOWERS!!!! Apparently by trying to have both showers on, we had blown the fuse! Oops. So once the fuse had been replaced we got lovely warm showers again- a huge relief. After breakfast we had small group and then drama practice in the afternoon. We are performing the 'Everything' skit while we are here and we all had to learn our parts. The Everything skit is a really powerful skit that goes along to the song Everything by Lifehouse. If you have never seen it before you can find it on youtube. It makes me cry every time that I watch it. By the end of the practice we had choreographed the entire thing, basing it on the youtube version and actually managed a reasonably good run through. Thursday evening was another preaching night for us. This time however we were not at the church in Sapiranga. The team was split into two teams and each teams went to another of the local churches, one was about 15 minutes away and the other about 30 minutes. Team A had Roland giving a testimony and Becky preaching on 'Dreams and Destiny'. Team B had Otis giving a testimony and Mettie-Anne preaching on 'Shame to Honour'. Although I am in team B, I went with team A this time (just due to the number of spaces in the cars), so I got the joy of hearing Becky preach :) The service went really well. Becky preached the best she has ever done that sermon (I should know, I was her practice audience) and people were really touched. After the talking we had a ministry time where we were praying for people. It is very strange praying for people when they don't understand what it is that you are saying. In the end though I found it actually really freeing knowing that they don't understand you. It removed all of the possible performance issues of “Am I saying anything wrong?” “Have I head this word of knowledge from God right?” all of that was moot. I'm not the only one who found that we just got something form God and prayed into it without questioning. After the service we prayed for a man who was severely short sighted and saw his eyes improve while we are there. I am excited to see him next week to see how he has improved over the week. Then it was time for food. The church had put on a lovely spread for us. We had hot chocolate made with condensed milk – oh my word it was so sweet, hot dogs in pancake kind of things, cheese bread, chocolate cake and more. It was a real treat to round off the evening.

Prayer points:

• A number of the girls have got colds, so please call in that healing

• The damp weather is also not helping those with Asthma

• We were so excited to see real healings in the first meeting that we held. Please pray for an increase of that anointing, that these miracles will just continue to flow.

• Blessing of Portuguese. We are learning piece by piece, so just pray that God would cement what we have learned in our minds and give us even more understanding.

• Homesickness. Most of us are missing the school and home a bit. So pray for a release from that.

Our mamouth journey

So then lovely people, let me tell you a little story, all about our adventures on the way to Brazil.

So we started out in Toronto and right from the word go we had change. Our original flight with American Airlines was canceled and so to get to Miami we were re-routed via Montreal. So that was fine, we hopped on a plane to Montreal. It was Otis's first flight – very exciting for him. Not so exciting for Amber who wasn't feeling great. Now Montreal is a rather strange airport where you have to pick up your bags and re check them for connecting flights. We had been told about this so we naturally went to baggage collection when we got off the plane. No one had mentioned that our bags would go somewhere else though :S so we ran back up stairs, well we got the lift, but we were willing it to go faster. Then had to go through US customs. I had managed to fill in my Visa Waver on one side only so then had to go fill it in and jump back in the queue. I was by this point more than a little flustered. Then we ran for the gate. I was the last one to go through so was feeling even more pressured (because of course in my head I thought that if we missed the plane it would have been because I hadn't filled in both sides of the form!). Amazingly though the flight had been delayed and so we were in plenty of time. So we were off to Miami – plane number 2.

On the flight I watched Spiderwick, which was pretty good and then chatted to the lady next to me. She was a francophone, but spoke perfect English as well. She was asking about the t-shirts we were all wearing, so I told her all about the school and what we were doing. Then we got into a deep conversation about what it was to know God and have a relationship with him. It was so cool. She was from a Muslim background which made it really interesting.

Once at Miami airport we were due to take our connection with TAM airlines. However because of the extra connection we only had about 40 mins to get the plane and by the time we got the the check in desk the entire airport was all but deserted. There was no one there. Eventually someone wandered up asking what we were doing and he explained that the check in had closed quite a while before and that we would not be able to get the flight. So then he went off to see if he could get us on another flight later on. So we waited and amused ourselves by weighing various things on the check in scales and pushing each other round on the luggage trolleys. After an age of walking from counter to counter and some fantastic negotiation and arrangements by our amazing leaders we had a new plan. The new plan involved a revised flight time of 8, in the evening, the next day. So now here we were having to stay in Miami for another 24 hours, being put up in a hotel, having all our meals provided- I mean how rubbish is that! ;-P

The hotel was lovely and once we had all sorted which rooms we were in the girls headed down to the pool. Now the only draw back of our little stay in Miami is that we only had our carry on luggage. Our main luggage was going to make it's way to Porto Alegre and we would see it there. So with no swimming costumes, the only way of going swimming was to go in with what we were wearing and hope that it all dried over night! Lol. So I can officially say that I have had a midnight swim in Miami!

Thankfully all my clothes had dried by the next morning, so with a late start we grabbed breakfast/lunch at the airport and headed down to Miami Beach (which as I found out is a separate city to Miami itself!). The first place we went was to the beach- golden white sands, beautiful blue sea and clear skies. Now tell me, could you have resisted going in the water? Every single one of us (bar Cindy) succumbed and removed as many clothes as would keep us acceptably dressed and then trusted that the hot Miami sun would dry the rest. The water was beautifully warm and again for Otis it was a first – the first time in the sea ever! He remarked that it did taste slightly funny! Eventually it was time to head back into shore, and try to dry out a bit. None of us had a change of clothes or a towel so there were quite a few pairs of under pants making soggy patches on jeans as we wandered along Ocean Drive. We saw coconuts growing in the trees, wild green parrots, beautiful cars and a lot of very tanned people. We even got a free ice cream from a van giving out samplers. It was the best afternoon. God is so good- giving us a Miami holiday right before outreach. He made what could have been a nightmare event into a huge blessing.

Our transition onto our plane at Miami was simple and straightforward and the 8 hour flight passed without incident. On arriving in Sao Paulo we checked up on where our luggage was, to see if we had to pick it up and re-check it. Turns out that our luggage hadn't made it out of Miami! So we spent another half hour or so making arrangements for our bags (when I say we I of course mean Johnny and Cindy, the rest of us lounged on the floor). Then we rushed through customs and tried to find our check in. With the huge queues and the delay due to the luggage problem we managed to miss our connection – again. The funny thing is that by this point we were all so tired and so used to missing flights that no one even cared. We were laughing and joking and all planning what we would put in our hand luggage on the way back. Once check in Johnny and Cindy went to call our contact at the church to let him know what was going on. The rest of the team collapsed in a heap and almost everyone else fell asleep. I however had a good book so was content to stay awake and keep half an eye on the luggage. My good book wasn't good enough to keep me awake once we got through to the gate and like everyone else I decided that the floor looked comfortable enough and had a bit of a kip.

It was a two and a bit hour flight to Porto Alegre, until finally we landed. Each of us let out a sigh of relief as we realised that we had no more flying to do for a whole 3 weeks!

In Porto Alegre we were met by the church youth pastors, who took us to the church to drop off our bags, then to the house of some of the church members who fed us up good (Junior wasn't joking when he said we would have the best food ever!). Then back to the church for a short rest before the evening service started. The worship was good, even though we couldn't understand it all God was clearly there. After worship we were all introduced to the church- just name, where you are from, and age (well except for Joe who decided he would rather tell the church how long he had been wearing his t-shirt!). After that though we all deserted the service and headed to bed. I think the boys went to sleep fairly quickly, though the girls of course stayed up for a while chatting. However it was still lights out at 10 for us.

No one in our room stirred for a good 12 hours. Then after 10ish we started the queue for the shower. Now Cindy managed to get some hot water, none of the rest of us were so lucky (and Cindy only got about 3 mins of hot water). So after a very cold shower we had to go and put on the very same clothes that we had left Toronto in – eeeewwww. A couple of us had brought one change of clothes, but only one. So when the news came at 12 that our bags had arrived, you can imagine just how excited we were. So now, 74 hours after leaving the school in Toronto, we are all safely in Brazil, with all our luggage safely in our rooms, with clean knickers on. We are very happy and contented monkeys.

Outreach

So the time for outreach is fast approaching, so I though I would give you a bit of an update on what is going on with that.

We can start off with a HUGE thank you prayer. When we sent off our passports to the Brazilian embacy, there was a mix up somewhere and they all got sent to America! So we had a really big pray that God would come in and bring them back to us safely and quickly. The passports have now all been found and they are at the Brazilian and we are going to get our visa's (by we I am talking about the Americans and Canadians on the team, the Europeans didn't need a visa).

So here is our flight itinerary.

Toronto	Miami	27th June	13:40	16:50
Miami	Sao Paulo	27th June	21:20	6:30
Sao Paulo	Florian- Apolis	28th June	8:10	9:15
Florian- Apolis	Porto Alegre	28th June	9:45	10:40

Porto Alegre	Sao Paulo	19th June	19:20	21:10
Sao Paulo	Miami	19th June	22:45	5:55
Miami	toronto	20th June	9:40	12:50

Prayer requests:

• Safe Travel

• Easy changing on flights

• No lost baggage

• No air sickness

• Ease of keeping together

Then when we are in Brazil, we have draft schedule, but I have a feeling that it is all still very likely to change. However some things that we have planned are:

1. Visiting an orphanage

2. Working at youth centre for recovering drug addict teens, teaching them skills and working with them (we have at least 6 slots booked, two each week)

3. Possibly visiting a local hospital

4. An outreach to one of the local villages

5. We are also preaching almost every night!

Prayer requests:

• Open hearts for the people we talk to

• Ease of communication across the language barrier

• That we would stay open to what the holy spirit wants to do

• That we would grow in unity as a team

When we are in Brazil we will be staying in a church, on their floor. However, the only issue with this is that the church has no heating. Now this might not sound so bad, but we are in south Brazil and it is their wintertime, so it's going to be below freezing at night. The other thing about there being no heating is that we are going to have cold showers :S However we will be staying in a good safe area, we have shelter and running water, so that's a blessing.

Prayer requests:

• Patience & good coping (I love nice hot showers, so cold showers is going to be one of my big hurdles)

• Supernatural warmth at night.

• Good sleep even though we are sleeping on the floor.

So that's a bit of a breakdown of what we are doing on outreach and a few prayer requests that we have. Obviously there are more things that can be prayed for, so don't limit yourselves to what I have pointed out ;-)

I look forwards to telling you all about what happens

Home alone

I had the 'Home Alone' post all done and ready to be posted on Thursday. All I needed to do was wither borrow a laptop, or sit next to one of my friends as they used their mac (I love mac's internet sharing). So I was planning to do that at break on Friday morning. This plan, as you can see, failed rather.

Friday morning dawned far too early. I got up and finished packing, tried to call my mum, got breakfast and came to morning worship. We had got about 6 or 7 minutes into worship, still on the first song, when suddenly the music and the lights all stopped! We had had ANOTHER power out. It was awesome though, because everyone just carried right on and we worshiped mainly using the drums as backing. So we sang and danced for a while before starting a fire tunnel. Teams Mozambique and Brazil had done a fire tunnel for the other's when they went off on min-outreach, so they returned the favour. It was so funny, it being in the gloom of the emergency lighting, accompanied by about 5 of the guys on the various drums we had on the stage.

We had the first part of our lessons in the dark as well. We have had Rick D'Orazio this week, speaking about church planting. He is an amazing speaker, so immensely likable and entertaining and he had some amazing messages to give us.

Right after the morning session we were off to mini outreach.

Break down to follow

Last weekend 4 of the 6 outreach teams when off on their mini-outreach. Mini outreach is basically a shorter version of our main outreaches. The team goes away for the weekend and works with a church preaching, doing worship, running car washes, prophesying- anything really.

Team Brazil (that's me) and team Mosambique however are going this coming weekend, so we were, for a whole weekend, home alone. Ok so there were about 20 of us, but after having 60 or 70 of us around for 2 months, it was a big shock.

Throughout the day we waved off the various teams. Lizzie and I were so sad to see them go that we sent them off with waving hankies and tears, running alongside the cars – it was good fun.

Later on in the day both teams bundled into the cars and headed off to Woodbridge where we went to see the latest Narnia movie... AHHHH FILM, it's a film! I have picked up so many americanisms! It's awful! So anyway we saw Prince Caspian. Personally I thought it was an amazing film, but it differed from the book so much that it really detracted from my enjoyment of it and I came out feeling really betrayed by the film makers and really quite angry. After journaling about it for over an hour and talking to God about it (no joke I was journaling for about 2 hours on Saturday morning and about half was about the film!) I feel much better and can say that it was an amazing film with some fantastic points. So after the film we came back and had a late night boogie in the car park (was just about to call it a parking lot!). It was hilarious, because Otis' car was blaring out music and whenever a heavy base part came on the lights on the dash board would dim and you could hear the engine revving harder to produce enough power!

Saturday I woke up at about 12:30, so after my mammoth journaling session it was half two before I even thought about getting dressed. But get dressed I did and went to read my book out in the sun. It was incredibly windy though and after having to chase my notebook and my pillow across the carpark I decided to re-locate to the other side of the building. Here however although the wind was as often, when it gusted round it would pelt me with bits of debris. So I had to find a place that was in the sun, but out of the wind and away from the bits of grit that were now peppering my clothes and hair. Shawn's truck! Bingo! So I clambered up in the back of Shawn's pick up truck and lay reading my book and soaking up the rays. It was bliss.

Saturday evening I helped out with soaking in the main church. They were short of a keyboard player so Jonatas asked if I would help out. I'm up for getting all the practice I can, so I agreed. The soaking session is two hours long, so as you can imagine we played quite a lot of songs and we didn't manage to practice many of them before hand. To add to that I hadn't played with anyone in the band before and they use in-ear monitors which I have never used before, so I didn't really make best use of the sound check, meaning I couldn't hear everyone in the levels I might normally ask for. So it was an experience. However I did it, I played the majority of the chords right (though there were some stonkingly bad ones which I really hope didn't distract everyone else too much). Was fun in the song they transposed though when I realised halfway through that there was another chord that I hadn't worked out and I had to do it on the spot. Like I say, it was good practice. I'm glad I did it, and God came which was fab. After soaking it was party time. We had food, we had music, we played games in the dark, and games in the gloom, we ran up and down, scared each other silly and just had a great time. We were up until about 1:30 playing games!

Sunday was it's usual long day, with church (where we prophesied over the entire youth group), a trip to Nandos for lunch, kids ministry and then the glorious return of the other students. I went quite silly as I realised just how much I had missed everyone, even after only 2 days. I can't imagine how bad it's going to be for the 3 weeks of normal outreach! I was so pleased to see everyone that I just talked with everyone, ran around and beamed at them all. Then stayed up till half three talking. I didn't stop talking on Monday either as I used the day off to sleep, and talk, and talk, and talk. I didn't really manage to do any more on my book report! Woops. Oh well got a few more days to do that.

My day off

After each conference the SoM students get the Monday off, mainly just because we are all completely exhausted! However, I was so stoked to have a day off that I didn't want to waste it all by sleeping (not that sleeping is a waste of time, but I wanted to go and explore somewhere). So at a very bright and early 10:30 Candice and I headed off to Woodbine Mall with Lizzie and Rebeka. So I got shampoo, flip flops (which when I wore them then rubbed my feet raw in 1 minute flat), jelly beans and phone cards. Lizzie also got phone cards and while she was there she made friends with the guy on the stand. We were just chatting and talking about where he was from and what we were doing in Canada, and Lizzie led him to the Lord! It was crazy exciting. She told him the gospel message, the fact that Jesus loves him and wants a relationship with him and all he needs to do is ask Jesus into his life. She asked if he wanted to ask Jesus, he said yes and so we prayed with him and he accepted Jesus. WOW.
So then on the journey home, we got in the taxi and Lizzie struck up a new conversation with the cab driver.
Every time I complain to God that I don't know how to talk to strangers he reminds me that I have seen Lizzie do it a ton of times. We went to Tim Horton's once and when she came to join us with her drink, she already knew where the server was from and how many kids he had! She has an amazing talent for talking to people.
So she started up “So what's your name?”
“Kingsley”
“So Kingsley are you are believer?”
“A believer? A believer in what? God?”
“Yes”
“Of course”
“So do you have a personal relationship with him?”
“You can have that?”
Oh my word, if there was an evangelism text book I think that would be one of the examples you never expected to get! We of course lept on this golden opportunity to tell him all about the fact that you can have a personal relationship with Jesus, because of what he did on the cross. All you need to do is believe that he died for the sin in our lives, the things that separate us from God and ask him to come into your life. Tell him you know that your way doesn't work and that you want his way. Kingsley had grown up in a Catholic background but hadn't ever really know God and walked away from him. So we asked if he wanted to start walking with Jesus and he said yes. So we sat in front of the SoM building for about 10 minutes talking to him, answering his questions and praying with him.
So there we were, lunch time and I had just been a part of two people becoming Christians! Completely unrequested, both guys had given us their numbers, so Lizzie has been in contact to invite them along to TACF and stuff- so we didn't tell them the gospel and leave them stranded. My goal now is to not make such things any less exciting, but for them not to be so much of a surprise. I want to see people come to Jesus more often!

After lunch we once again rallied the troops and a group of us sauntered down to the bus stop on the start of our adventure to Toronto Island. Well I saw we sauntered, 5 of us sauntered, the last of our member was doing more of a hobble. Poor old Mark was helping set up at his church on Sunday morning and had the 120 pound sound board fall on his foot. He then spent the rest of the morning in casualty. It wasn't broken, but even with a bruised foot I thought he was a bit silly to come on such a long trip, but he insisted. So equipped with a pair of borrowed crutches, old hobble-along joined us on the adventure. To get to the Island is not a hard journey, but it is reasonably long. We took the number 58 bus to the end of the route, the subway to the bottom of the loop, we then had a 10 minute walk to the lake shore and a beautiful voyage across the waters to the Island.
It was one of those times when I truly felt that the atmosphere changed the way I was thinking. I felt alive, there was grass and green and water and ducks and trees and squirrels and birds. It was amazing. So we wandered by the water, swang on the swings, got lost in the maze and strolled along the pier. The pier was strange because the island is on Lake Ontario, however the lake is so huge that it looks like it's the sea. However, seeing swans swimming in the shallows and having fresh water blown in your face rather than salt water, was very strange. We also played pooh-sticks over the slowest moving piece of water I've ever tried to play it on. We must have been standing for about 10 minutes waiting for the sticks to come under the bridge, but it was hilarious fun.
At 6:45 we jumped back on the ferry and headed back to the mainland. We were all flaking a bit by this point (some more than other's), but were all starving, so we wandered and hobbled to find food. We settled on Jack Astor's for dinner, and although the restaurant was far too loud, making ti quite hard to talk to one another, we all had fun. The table cloth was a nice long strip of brown paper and on every table was a pot of crayons! So we were all drawing little pictures on the table cloth while we were waiting for our food. After a hearty meal, we were all stuffed to the brim, so we rolled back onto the subway and headed home, ready for a thoroughly good sleep!