Dear Everyone;

I just got back from another visit to the new church that is being started. It is really impressive how much work has been done in the past week on it.

The most visible change from the outside is that there is now a sign that identifies the church.

The name of the area the church is located in is Veneza. This is located in an area that is very new. Directly across the street from the church is an older area known as Ernanie. Neither area really has much in the way of churches, and certainly none within any reasonable distance. Although there is a large bar directly across the street from the church, there are no commercial houses of prostitution (at least none that advertise themselves as being such) in the neighborhood.

The bairro around the church is a mixture of things. The road actually separates into what appears to be planned as a frontage road, though it doesn't go very far right now. There is one very large appartment complex at the end of the main road that appears to be quite wealthy in nature. The frontage road, where the church sits, comes to an abrupt end. The area behind the church consists of a number of small single family houses, ranging from mild to moderate poverty, plus a few others that are quite large and wealthy looking. (The range of wealth right next door to absolute poverty is part of life in South America). There don't appear to be any favela shacks in the area, but it is pretty obvious that some of the households have a lot of financial trouble. There is so little traffic that the children have drawn out on the street a diagram that appears to be a makeshift futebol field.

There have been some attempts at starting local Bible studies in homes in the area where the church is located. Although they were mildly successful, they didn't work out that well, in many ways because of the lack of a local building. For example, in one case the Bible study was interrupted when the husband came home drunk and kicked everyone out of the house. Such incidents as this would be avoided with their own building. The other item about opening a new church in the area is that it is the nature of Brazillians to use any excuse possible to throw a huge party. Such will probably be the case when this church opens.

It has also been the experience of the new churches in Maringà, a nearby city, that new churches are very successful when they have a building, but if they are meeting in someone's home, operation is much harder. It was also the experience in one particular church that, when opened in 1998, the city closed off the street, a speach was given by the city's mayor, and they had some 800 people attend the opening ceremony. That was just for a tiny little daughter congregation that was started in a warehouse, just like this one is being started. It will be interesting to see what happens to this church when it officially opens, and I am very excited at the possibility that I may be here to see it happen.

As with many of the new churches here, this church is starting in a rented warehouse type building. Because the rate of inflation in Brazil was so bad even just a few years ago, few people trust saving money in bank accounts. Therefore, it is the habit of a number of peole to invest by building. The standard building is a concrete block warehouse type building in the 500 to 5000 square foot range with a small office or two attached to it. It is the habit of the small churches here to start in such structures, since they are pretty much everywhere, and used for just about everything. Just as a guess, the new church building looks like it is in the range of 100 feet deep by about 30 feet wide.

Rental procedures are a little different here when it comes to renting an entire building, such as a house or a warehouse such as this. The basic agreement is that the renter can make any changes they want to to the building except "major structural modifications", just so long as the building is returned to a state that is just as good or better than the condition is was in when it was first rented. The renter then takes whatever they added to the building and wants to keep. This may include everything from electric light fixtures to shelving to bathroom fixtures, just so long as the original fixtures, or better, are put back.

The original plan was for a group of us to get some painting done inside the new church over the past week. A new ceiling was also going to be installed because the warehouse type roof trusses don't look that great and cause a nasty echo that would make worship music very difficult. The Brazillian pastor who is in charge of the church found out that they could have a different type of ceiling installed for a considerably lower price. With the particular type of ceiling that is being installed, it is best to install the ceiling and then paint. Therefore, for the past week, a contractor has been installing a ceiling in the building. From what I just saw today, it is going to look really nice when it is done. They are estimating that they will be done completely on Monday or Tuesday of next week. There was some talk that the church might take the ceiling with them if they outgrow the building (this would be considered a fixture added by the renter), but that was with the more expensive type of ceiling. This type of ceiling would be harder to move.

Here, the border around the top of the ceiling has been started. Some painting and other work will make the building look a lot more like the inside of a church and a lot less like the inside of a cave.

They still hope to have the first service in it in late August or Early September. It is an interesting month to open a church, to say the least. There was an article in Thursday's newspaper declaring that "August coincides with the month of displeasure, the mad dog, and bad omens. This is one full plate for the supersticious, that relate negative happenings with the most distinguished time of the year." According to a presentation about Brazil given to the English camp team before the camps started, somewhere around 70% of the population of Brazil is involved in some sort of occult or voodoo practices.

As I said, this promises to be an interesting month to open a church here.

I have helped in a number of small jobs in and around the OMS operated seminary here in Londrina. This has included some small concrete patches, some new sections of fence, and some electrical work. Electrical work here is very interesting, as such items as electrical tape were not available for a while here, and so it is not unusual to find electrical connections held together with masking tape or whatever else the electrician could find. Thankfully, one of the people I am working with has a good supply of electrical tape, and so in a few cases we put in connections that are much better than what was there previously.

I have also been helping to tutor one of the English students at the English school here. He is a music minister at one of the churches here. His dream is to one day be able to travel to the USA and study music there. He had some medical problems, and so was unable to attend his class, and he fell behind. I think I was able to get him a little bit further ahead. Next week, the next period of English classes will be starting, and so I am told that I will be much busier with tutoring students then. This is particularly the case since Audry, who was here for 6 months from Ireland helping to teach the students, has now gone home.

Speaking of Audry, for those of you I am sending this to who met her, she apparently hit the ground running when she returned to Ireland. The day after she arrived she went right back to work with the traveling ministry team she was working with there.

Thank you, all of you, for your support and prayers,

-Glenn