During the weekdays, I continue to tutor at the Webb Institute and there is some news in that area also. I didn't realize until later how much that was going to change things.

AIM = Africa Inland Mission. In Portuguese ( Brasil and Mozambique ) the abbreviation is MAIFI.

The latest news as far as the English program at the seminary goes is that there are now a group of people studying to become missionaries in Ecuador that are interested in coming here. They are planning to go to a nation in Africa that speaks Portugese, and were therefore going to study this language in a language school in the USA. However, the living costs would probably be less, and the language study a bit better (considering that Portugese is a lot more common in Brazil than in the USA) if they were study here. Because English is pretty much a vital language for international travel, they would probably also study English here as well. It is hard to say where this may wind up in the end, but the Webb language school here may become an extremely busy place, both in the English and the Portugese program.

I continue to meet with students on a regular basis. They are starting to get a little braver about trying to talk to a native speaker. For those coming down here on the Valley View Church team on September 3, if any of you wind up talking to any of the students here, please keep in mind several things: 1) speak slowly. 2) Be patient. A huge number of people in Londrina know at least a little English. Everyone and their dog owns an English school here, or so it seems. I've heard the number 40 English language schools kicked around as a sort of guess, in a city of a little more than 500,000 people. It may take several minutes to communicate what would be a simple sentence between two English speakers, but the students here would greatly appreciate any time taken to communicate with them.

As for the work to be done on the seminary by the Valley View team, the telephone company, or the electric company, or maybe the city ( no one at the seminary I have asked seems to know who ) cut down most of the trees in front of the seminary on the Monday morning at the start of the semester. This means that the work of repairing the front sidewalk will probably be considerably easier than had they not taken the trees out. It also means that it will be a bit hotter than before. The weather has taken a turn for the hotter too. I'm not sure how hot it got today, but it was warm enough that many natives were slightly uncomfortable. It was probably somewhere in the 80's or low 90's. In the words of one "It hasn't even started getting hot yet - wait until December." I think the problem is the severe contrast between this month and below freezing weather we had in July.

Progress on the new church seems to be going well. Last week Saturday we distributed pamphlets to the neighborhood and cleaned up construction debris at the building. There was probably a team of 25 or 30 people there to do all of that. The houses where we were not able to talk to anyone, we simply left the pamphlet in the mailbox. This is a common advertising method here, and because it is near election time, there are many advertisements of all kinds being dropped into people's mail boxes. If we had an opportunity to talk to people ( if they were out washing their car, or otherwise on the street ) we did talk to them. There wasn't anyone who refused to take an invitation outright. Most seemed relieved that we were not part of the political campaigns that had trucks circulating in their area.

These political campaign trucks are also a common advertisement method here. They mount giant speakers on top of whatever vehicle they can find, and drive through the neighborhood with the message, advertisement jingle, or whatever playing at a fairly high volume. Sandra Graça, one of the people running for office, has a 20 foot long truck completely loaded with speakers and a giant photograph of her on its side. Hers was one of the trucks going through the neighborhood that day.

In any event, the people seemed to be glad that we were not part of any of these campaigns. It says enough about the attitudes of the neighborhood to say that the two large political billboards in the neighborhood have been mildly vandalized. One of the politicians' photographs has at times been repainted with a Stalin-style beard (which has been painted over again as of now), while the other politician now features a goatee and mustache. The only people that have had anything close to a negative reaction was some of the older people in the area said "We're Catholic, so we can't go." However, they seemed glad to have a church in their area at long last anyway.

The first known reaction to the pamphlets occured Sunday, only a day later, when someone visited the service of the Airport Church. This is the nearest Missionary Church to the neighborhood the new church is in, and the person stopped by to see what the Missionary Church was all about, and what the services were like. It is a positive sign that at least one person that we know of is interested enough that they wanted to know what it would be like - a week before the church was open.

During the week, the future pastor of the church and one of his assistants who knows something about sound took a day's drive over to Paraguay, where one can find better quality sound systems for the same price as one can find them here in Brazil. This past Wednesday evening, they had a test run of everything by having a "small" Bible study at the church that was not announced to the neighborhood. There were a little over 100 people there from the Communidade Shalom Missionary Church that is providing the bulk of the effort behind starting the new church.

One conclusion that was reached was that the church needed ceiling fans, or some sort of ventilation. They are planning to start installing those tomorrow. The inaguration service is set for 8:00 pm this coming Saturday. I mentioned before that one of the new churches in Maringà featured a speach by the mayor. We know that will not happen in this case ( the mayor of Londrina has vanished with a lot of money from the city and is being hunted by police ), but we hope to draw a lot of people anyway.

-Glenn