Hello again everyone. It is once again time to try to give you some idea as to what I have been doing here in Brasil.

It has been a little while since my last update because computer access continues to be a problem. My roomates have been working on large projects for the schools they attend, and so there hasn't been much time for me to do much. Ebano, the younger brother attending university here, tried to set up the e-mail account so that I could use their copy of Microsoft Outlook to read and send e- mail. He said that this would be better because this would mean less time actually connected.

Connection time is a serious issue here because the phone company charges for local calls ( according to Boulivar, they even charge for busy signals ). There is no time charge between midnight and 6 am, only a fee to dial the phone, so most everyone waits until midnight to connect to the Internet. At that time, the entire country attempts to get on the internet simultaneiously, and therefore all the services slow to a crawl at that time.

In any event, he attempted to set up my e-mail system so that I could use Microsoft Outlook with the web based e- mail service I chose. It is possible to do this. However, when connecting Outlook to the service, it deletes all the messages off of the server and dumps them into Outlook. Supposedly, it is possible to set up Outlook so that it does not delete the messages off of the server when it connects. However, it does not seem to work on this particular server. I am assuming that the problem is somewhere in the webmail.exe program ( the program that Brasil On-Line uses to provide mail access over the web ). It is possible to use Outlook as an e-mail program, but it simply does not work in this case because it must run on one computer, and the reason why I signed up with a web based system was so I could get to my e-mail from any computer on the internet, no matter where or what software it has. Therefore, it simply does not work for me in this case because if I access my mail with it, get some messages, and donít have time to answer them all, I wonít be able to reply to them from another location.

It took me several days to figure out how to recover >from this problem. What I wound up doing was creating a new folder on Brasil On-Line, dumping all of my incoming messages into that to keep them from being deleted by Outlook, re-connecting with Outlook, and then forwarding the deleted messages to myself one by one. I then dumped all the previously deleted messages on Brasil On- Line into another new folder called "Old Mail", and moved the previously incoming messages in the temporary folder back to the incoming mail folder. I attempted to do several other things, including stopping Outlook from checking for incoming mail, but none of it worked. In any event, it is now back to the way it was before, so I can access it from many locations.

That is one reason it has been a little while since you have heard from me.

After the project of moving the drinking fountain at the ISBL seminary, I helped with an effort to do some painting out at the new church in Veneza. We painted the floor of the place, as well as the front of the church so that it now looks a little more like the Comunidade Shalom church ( the mother church ). Attendance recently hasnít been that good out there. Some of the people at the Central Missionary Church say that they went through a period like this at their daugher congregation in Imagawa. I think that the situation in Imagawa has made the people who are working on the church in Veneza feel a little depressed. Imagawa is only about a year and a half old, and they now have about 70 people there regularly - almost as large as their mother church. Veneza is showing no signs of such rapid growth. However, they have stepped up the effort to visit and get to know people in the neighborhood who have visited the church. Friendship is of vital importance to the way things work in Brasil. They say that family and friend relationships may be regarded as more important here than in any other country in Latin America. One investment company has advised people to be aware of this here, as business decisions are usually not made unless the people involved know eachother somewhat. If this is the fact in business related purchases and sales, certainly it is the case in deciding where to worship. The fact that the church is there is a good thing, because right now the only other church trying to do anything there is one tiny Free Methodist church that seems to be having just as much trouble starting than the Igreja Missionaria Jardim Veneza is. However, the church can not rely on being one of only two churches in the neighborhood. With an estimated 70% of the people in Brasil involved in some sort of voodoo or related spiritist practices, people are not going to just come in off the street. The churches must be active in the neighborhood, and be attractive in a friendly way. If you thoughht that creating a friendly atmosphere is important in churches in the USA, certainly that is the case here in Brasil, with the culture based on relationships the way it is.

I am learning a little bit about how these voodoo and spiritist practices remain popular. Although the specific example that I obtained some documentation on exists in southern Mexico, the same or similar conditions probably exist here. The spiritist practices in this particular case in Mexico involve animal sacrifices, incense, and strong alcohaulic drinks. All of these are expensive, and must be purchased from a particular set of local landowners, along with paying for the place to perform the ceremony. The landowners, therefore, encourage these spiritist practices because it generates a lot of revenue for them. Because the alcohaul used is so strong, many of the participants pass out. Generating alcohalics using these ceremonies helps assure the perpetual income for the landowners. I would not be surprised at all if some of these same general practices, perhaps dependent on different substances and circumstances, are used here in Brasil.

The people who worship in the voodoo fashion also mix enough Roman Catholicism into the religion so that most of the people probably think that what they are doing is Christianity, and if you asked them would probably describe themselves as Roman Catholics. Yet, most have probably never heard a single sentence read from the teachings of Christ, or for that matter the entire Bible.

Across the street from the Roof's house ( the missionary's house I was staying in back in August ) there is now an example of what the local voodoo / spiritist community is like. In that house, the group that worships there includes a little bit of Roman Catholicism in their description of who they are. However, the vast majority of the practices are of definite voodoo origins. Furthermore, they have thrown in a considerable amount of garbage that appears to be inspired by North American white supremist groups. The interesting thing about that last point is that I have yet to see anyone going in or out of that place that looks anything like someone that should be part of a white supremast group. The fact is that this is Brasil: virtually everyone who is born here is from some sort of mixed race background. I can hardly imagine how anyone whose skin is that dark would want to be anywhere near a white supremist group. Somehow, they get sucked into it.

One number that I have heard kicked around is that there are somewhere around 600 spiritist worship places scattered around the city. The all probably opeate about the same in terms of getting and keeping members.

I didnít mean to get quite that far off topic in my message, but it is helpful, I think, to put what we missionaries are doing here against the background of the environment. You canít start a church in an unchurched area of the city and expect that all of a sudden there will be a huge number of people from the neighborhood in there. At the very least, people are going to have to get used to the idea of having the church there, and it will take time for the people to welcome it into the neighborhood. Since the spiritist practices are so prevailent, people are not going to change their thoughts unless they suddenly have a good reason.

In terms of news from the Webb language school, I will be teaching one session of an English grammar module because Adriana is going to be of town. I, along with Noèlia, have been helping put together materials for the Portuguese program. The missionaries from Wycliffe are really enjoying the program. They are very understanding about the fact that they are the guinnea pigs for this part of the program.

However, I do request prayer for the entire program at ISBL. There are some changes being discussed (In an educational institution I think changes are always being talked about. Better textbooks become available, new materials are needed, outdated materials need to be disposed of, and everything else that is part and parcel with being an institution of higher learning.), and we really need to make sure that if changes happen that they are happening with the will and blessing of God. They should not be something that is done entirely from human motives and direction.

We have some very good news about ISBL: some US$5,000 is available to put a new roof on the main building. We had a rain storm happen inside the Webb office some time back, and certainly this is going to go a long way to solving that problem.

They have gotten a public pay phone at Acampamento Shalom. This has been a problem for some time, as before when people needed to call from camp they had to use the Scottís phone in their house. Because of the costs ( remember, the phone company here charges for local phone calls ) they had had to start charging people for the use of the phone. Now, all anyone needs is a public payphone card ( public phones here are not coin operated, but take a special magnetic card ), or to make a collect call. The arrival of the public phone has caused much rejoicing at the Camp, as it will solve a number of problems.

Last week Sunday, we had our third English language service for the semester, and fourth ever. We had a special emphasis on Thanksgiving. I was the one who put together the program for the service. For the most part, everything went very well. We had a few glitches at the start, but no one remembered by the end of the service. We even had some of the ISBL seminary students who don't know a single word of English join us. The one woman I talked to of whom this is the case said she enjoyed it a great deal, and even though she didn't understand a word, she understood the Spirit.

Thanks for your continued prayer support of what God is using me for here in Brasil.