Yet another update from Brasil;

Iím hoping that this message will be a little better in terms of the spelling, as Noèlia has shown me how to get the Brasilian version of Microsoft Word to change spelling dictionaries from Portuguese to English. ( The menu system doesnít call it "Dictionario" or "Lingua", instead it is called "idioma") The bad news is that the Auto-Correct feature doesnít change when the spelling dictionary is changed, so that it still auto-corrects words from English into their nearest Portuguese word, if they are close enough. The worst word by far is the English word "an", which each time I type it is magically changed into the Portuguese word "na". Thankfully, Word now immediately underlines it in red after it changes the word, because the English spelling dictionary doesnít recognize it as being a word from North America. Thankfully, Wordís red-underline feature of spelling mistakes is one thing that does change when the ìIdiomaî is changed. My apologies for previous spelling problems in previous messages. There is some hope for some improvements now. I do plan to leave "Brasil" as Brasil, because that is the way they spell Brazil here in Brasil, and it doesn't make any sense to me to change it back. I waste enough time making sure all the ìnaîís are eliminated.

Recently, Pastor Israel, the president of the Missionary Church denomination, visited the church in Foz do IguaÁu. He asked the congregation to consider trying to give more money for the construction of the church in S“o Miguel, the community from which the church has been bussing people into town to worship. The congregation responded by pledging another R$19,000 above and beyond the money they have already raised. It is very good to see that the congregation is so willing to help that community obtain a church of their own.

Since the Webb Institute and the Missionary Church Convention office are right next to each other, I have had the opportunity to talk to Pastor Israel a little bit. The church membership has recently reached about 10,000 members. He is expecting that, with the amount of growth the church is experiencing, that within 10 years that may be around 40,000. He thinks that they will have churches in many more states of Brasil than there are now, and he thinks that, through the church in Foz do Iguaçu, they may also wind up with a few churches in Paraguay and Argentina by then. The unique mixture of the Missionary Church, with worship that is somewhat pentecostal in terms of the style of worship, but not as pentecostal as the Pentecostal churches here, seems to have hit a very good medium point in terms of appealing to a large number of Brasilian people.

"Clevy" Clevinger, one of the missionaries here, will return to the USA soon for eye surgery on the 18th of December. He is one of the seminary professors here. Although he is officially retired from the missionary field, he continues to work here 6 months of the year because they still need him, and he is willing to continue to teach his courses at the seminary until a new professor is found to replace him. Fran Noah, the wife of the field director here, is soon returning to Florida to be there for her mother's surgery. For those of you who are praying for the Brasil field team, please keep in mind these medical needs.

This past Sunday, we had our last English service of the semester. This went extremely well. They even had a handbell choir. There is a missionary family from the USA here working with one of the big Presbyterian churches. They are not here through OMS, but they have been willing to help out in our program. The husband of the family is teaching a music module in the Webb school using chimes this semester. He says he likes this for beginning music students because the student only has to concentrate on one, or maybe a few, different notes. It also is something that is best when it involves an entire class of students, unlike a solo instrument. Recently, he received as a gift from someone in the USA an entire set of handbells for forming a handbel choir. He was able to find enough people who read music from among our missionary family and friends to put together a handbell choir in a very short amount of time ( about two weeks ñ he would have used his music workshop students but unfortunately few of them could come to the service due to other commitments ) and despite the fact that they were only able to practice together very few times, they did their performance error-free in the actual service. One of them said later "only by the grace of God."

The Noahs - the field director and his wife - have found a car that is available for sale that is within their budget. This is an answer to prayer, as their existing car had been giving them a lot of troubles, and the car that they have found is pretty much exactly what they wanted to find.

As I have mentioned before, it is very difficult for a seminary such as ISBL to become self-supporting. The primary objective is to train people to work in the churches. The more the facility charges, the harder it is on the people to find the money ( either through the churches of through other means ) to attend school here. Although the eventual goal for all the OMS projects here is to eventually get them to the point where missionaries and financial support from overseas is unnecessary, that goal is still quite a ways off. However, ISBL is making some progress in that area. The Webb Institute has, in the process of teaching people English from a Christian perspective, also generated a fair amount of income for the seminary. They still have some financial problems because the funds of the seminary and the funds of the Webb Institute are not separate, so they can not, for example, pay Noèlia a salary directly from the income that Webb generates. However, they are helping progress happen in that area. Furthermore, many of the classes offered by Webb are currently during the days, when the seminary doesnít have much in the way of classes to put in its classrooms. This means that the Webb is also helping the economy of scale of the entire facility.

However, as Evangèlica, the grade school associated with the seminary grows bigger, there is going to be some space problems. There are already space problems happening now on certain evenings when Webb and ISBL have full course loads. One of the Webb classes has been regularly meeting in peopleís homes. This is why it would be very good if money could be found to purchase some of the buildings that are for sale on the same block as ISBL. It is not possible to buy them with a loan, as bank loans here have an exorbitant rate. Not even the people who build sky-scrapes here have enough income to build their buildings with a bank loan, and so they are built slowly, week by week, as the owner has money. This is why there are so many unfinished buildings around town. For those who are praying for things here, please keep these concerns in your prayers as well. Progress is being made in finding money for an additional building, but it is still far from a finished process, and it is still very much in Godís hands.

The financial performance of the elementary and pre- school that is associated with the seminary has been less than excellent. They have been operating with a plan of adding one grade a year, and they are now advertising a complete program through 8th grade. The grade system is a bit different here, but I think that, just as in the USA, the 8th grade is a dividing line of some sort between school levels. Perhaps the addition of this one grade will allow them to attract more students into that program. They are also considering some changes, including going to a school schedule that would be a little closer to what we have in the USA. Many Brasilian schools operate classes in shifts, with one set of classes in the mornings, then an afternoon set, and some even have an evening set. This limits the amount of time the students spend learning. Another problem is that in many cases the children, when left to their own devices, get into a lot of trouble when they are not in school ( it is for this reason that some of the churches in the Igreja Missionària denomination have started day-school programs ). They are still working out the logistics about how this whole program would work. There are a lot of changes that may happen over at the Escola Evangàlica that may be happening, and please keep the people over there in your prayers. Keep in mind that any changes will also affect some of the missionary families, as the missionary children are enrolled at this school as well as it being open for the Brasilian students.

One of the other programs that they have is what they are calling Pós-Graduação. This is a post-graduate degree program. As near as I can tell from the pamphlets for the program ( which, of course, are written in Portugeusese , so I only understand about a quarter of the words in each sentence) at least one of the degrees offered is some sort of certification program for teachers. I believe that this program was also aimed at Christians in education at the beginning. However, unlike any other program currently operating at the seminary, this program has attracted a large number of non-Christians. Laura Edwards, one of the OMS missionaries, was recently talking about how the class that she teaches in the Pòs-Graduação is currently mostly non-Christians. It is good to see that there are so many non-Christians that are not shy about going to an obviously Christian institution to learn these things. It does make for a difficult balancing act, though, I think, between continuing to keep the value of the program for Christians with a majority of the students now being non-Christians.

No&egravlia, on Tuesday evening (actually, with the hours she keeps now that she is having to use someone else's computer to write final papers for the end of semester, and the trip home on the bus to the far north end of town, it was closer to 12:30 Wednesday morning) almost became a crime statistic. Someone approached her on a motorcycle with a gun raised in his hand. She let out a scream and the person made a fast exit. She only got about three hours of sleep that night, and spent most of the rest of the time lying in bed awake. She is currently up to her eyeballs in end of semester papers for the seminary, and this only adds tot he stress in her life.

One item that people on the OMS field have asked prayer for is the various Christmas-time travels. Nobody remembers a time in the past 50 years that there were never any OMS missionaries here. However, there are always some that go home for Christmas ( or, in the case of some, home for Christmas and medical procedures ) . The Clevengers and Fran Noah of course are going home for medical reasons. Julie Keller will be coming back to Oregon for Christmas as well. The Murphys left on Monday of this week. If you are praying for the OMS Brasil field, please pray for the various travels this time of year.

On Monday, one of the other missionaries here observed that I have started ìeating things in the Brasilian wayî. Most of the time, Brasilians do not eat things with their hands. A knife and fork is used for almost everything, including pizza. However, when there is something such as a snack food of some sort, or a sandwich, that is to be eaten by hand, a Brasilian will wrap a napkin around it so that their hands do not touch what it is that is being eaten, or in the case of a sandwich ordered at a restaurant or road-side food stand, normally the place will provide a special wrapping around it so that it can be eaten in this way. Apparently I have now become adjusted to Brasil enough that when handed a napkin and a piece of cake to eat by hand, I eat the way the Brasilians do. However, I donít think this will lead to much culture shock when I get back, considering the reason I have gotten into this habit is to try to keep from getting sick. It seems to be working, since I think the lst time I had any cold- like symptoms was back in August or early September or so, when I was still living with a missionary family.

Of course, I have also been trying to drink one liter or so of acerola juice a week. This is the stuff where one small acerola, which is only slightly larger than a cherry, contains about as much vitamin C as about 40 oranges. I have also tried seriguÈle juice. This is a fruit that is grown in Monto Grosso, and is apparently similar to acerola in size, but it has a lot more juice per fruit. It is common here to be able to order fruit juice made with very cold milk rather than water. In some places it is more expensive to do this, but even so in my opinion it is worth the cost for those juices that are this way. Some fruit juices do not taste that good in milk, but many do. A particular favorite among many people seems to be strawberry with milk, but the seriguÈle with milk was very good also. The owner of >the juice bar next to the seminary had me try something else a few weeks ago. I'm not sure exactly what it was, as it was yet another fruit that I couldn't find in the Portuguese-English dictionary, but it was extremely good in milk. The owners of the place are a Roman-Catholic family who seem to be mildly entertained by the fact that some of their best customers come from the Protestant seminary next door. They have become reasonably good friends - at least as reasonably good as can be expected with only being able to communicate with very limited Portuguese.

Diogo has told me that there is a woman student in the seminary that has been having family problems with her husband. I donít understand the entire series of >events, as this is one of theose cases where there was a lot of sentences that probably make perfect sense in Portuguese, but when translated word for word in Diogoís mind before saying them in English, the order of things didnít quite make sense to me. I do know that the woman is a very new Christian, but was interested enough in Christianity to start taking seminary classes here. It is not clear to me if her husband ever was a Christian, or what. The man left her recently and moved to the USA, although she is currently pregnant by him. While in the USA, he decided to convert to some Indian religion, and he has given her an ultimatum as far as everything that she must do in order for him to consider coming back to Brasil. Those demands would make it difficult for her to continue practicing Christianity, or continue to study at the seminary.

Several people have let meknow that they are willing to help with keeping Noèlia here with some finances. I will be contacting those of you who volunteered to help agaiin soon to let you know what the best way is to get the money down here. I subsidized Webb to pay her for December, so it isnít as pressing of a priority right now. Iím going to try to convince her that, since the people who agreed to send money all have e-mail, that she should try to write something for those of you who volunteered - a bit like our standard missionary prayer support / news letters. She is studying here at the seminary, after all, and she may as well at least get a little practice writing support lettters. She doesnít know that much English, but I think she knows enough to write a few simple things about what she is doing.

Diogo leaves Friday for his home city. He finished up his seminary courses early enough that he doesnít have to stay here for the last week of the semester. Boulivar has agreed to come with me to São Paulo to help get me into the airport and all that.

Next week is the last week of classes at the seminary. There will be a graduation ceremony in the Comunidade Shalom church. I will be taken over some of Jan's classes for brief periods as she does a final test in other classes that are happening at the same time some of hers are. She wants to do oral exams of students to see how much they can actually say, how their pronunciation is, and so forth. Thankfully, her classes are advanced, so that I shouldnít have too much trouble. I have taught both of them before.

I hope to send out at least one more message before I leave. If not, it will be sent from inside the USA.