We had an early morning on Saturday; the conference started at 9am on both Saturday and Sunday for worship and then seminars after that. Our Hotel is at one end of town and VCF Piratininga is on the opposite end of town; its about a 3/4 mile walk to the church from the Hotel.......normally getting a bit more exercise would help melt the pounds away, but not this trip, we ate our way from one side of town to the other :-)
Our dear friend Paulo Vieira arrived from Brazilia on Saturday morning; he had a 13 hour bus ride to join us and had to leave on Sunday evening at 6pm to get back to Brazilia in time for work on Monday morning......it was wonderful to see him again, even if it was a short visit!
The plan had been to have three separate seminars or tracks at the conference; the same ones on both Saturday and Sunday mornings so people could choose one on Saturday and another on Sunday. One was led by Milton (on passion), one was led by Bebeto (on compassion) and the last led by Beau (on action). We ended up switching things around a bit and had Milton and Bebeto's seminars on Saturday morning and only Beau's seminar on Sunday. The conference attendance was not as large as hoped, so it made more sense to have two bigger sessions than three smaller ones.
Our whole Anaheim team attended Bebeto's seminar on compassion and fighting social injustice. Bebeto's church is located in the south of Brazil in a very poor, crime ridden city called Itaparasu on the outskirts of the wealthy city of Coritiba. The Vineyard has a day care / school for the kids, food program and job training for adults. As a part of church growth and caring for the poor, a lot of local government corruption was exposed. This has made Bebeto and the church a target over the years; Bebeto has had death threats and been arrested twice: the church buildings were taken away in the mid 90's, when officials stated that they had been sold to the Vineyard 'illegally', and when Bebeto and others peacefully refused to leave, they were arrested. The community rose up (non churched folks!) and demanded justice and when none was served up, local businessmen found a temporary home for the Vineyard in an abandoned cement factory. Later, choice land was donated to the Vineyard and they were able to build a better school/church in an even nicer section of town. Local businesses moved to be closer to the school/church, as it has become the town center with all of its programs for the community.
Bebeto's seminar was very challenging and focused on outreach to the poor and outcast.
It rained very heavily most of the day on Saturday, so the outreaches that were planned for the afternoon had to be cancelled. We did go out to lunch at the only restaurant in Piratininga that serves Feduada - a Brazilian favorite made with beef and pork in a black bean stew. The braver folks on our team ate feduada and the not-so-brave ate chicken (frango).
When we got back to church for the Saturday evening service, Daniela from the park was there; she is the precious 14 year old that I wrote about in a previous post. We hadn't seen much of her yet; it turned out that she had been at kings-kids camp in Bauru most of the week and was back! She and her older sister Priscilla were both there and on a dance team! Daniela, Priscilla and ~10 others performed a hip hop worship dance for us. Right after that, Flavina and two others performed a lyrical worship dance; it was wonderful to see the living work of our King dancing for us......Flavina, because her heart was healed and able to dance; Daniela, because she is now rooted in church-life and could have been a discarded 'park kid'.
Before the main message, diploma's were handed out for everyone in the church that had attended and completed the 'Maos a Obras' (Doing the Stuff) class at VCF Piratininga. Daniela was the youngest member that completed the course and was beaming on stage when she received her certificate........she read every word of it before she looked up and saw the team and church looking at her thru teary eyes.....I can't tell you how proud I am of Daniela!
Bebeto spoke on Saturday night on Compassion with an even more pointed message on the necessity for Christians to serve the community they are rooted in.
On the walk back to the hotel, we stopped by a Churro cart and the owner insisted on giving us several free churro's, one chicken churro and two dessert churro's filled with cream cheese and topped with chocolate, banana, caramel and sprinkles.......we of course had to add some meat and cheese pastels (pastie's) so we didn't have to feel guilty about eating dessert :-). The churro cart owner serves something like 39 different flavors of churros and he was proud for us to share in his accomplishments!
Lauren and Joelle spent the night with Flavina at her new house in town; it was only a few blocks from our hotel and Flavina was so happy to host some of the team!
It just doesn't seem possible that we are down to one last day of ministry in Brazil; we have made so many new friends and family on this trip, it's going to be hard to leave!
Bless you all for your prayers,
VCF Brazil Team 2009
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