Report for Brasil and Beyond Project – visit to Brasil –
16 August – 6th Sept 2007

Arrived in Brazil on Friday 17th August – our 33rd wedding anniversary!

During the first week: we made the final plans for the facilitator training and for the course.

It was also an opportunity to catch up with our friends from several different churches in Goiania. This included Duncan attending the weekly men’s lunch meeting at Sal da Terra with Pr Paulo Jnr and Pr Marcao and Jan attending the SdT Women’s meeting.

We also went to Sal da Terra on the morning and evening of Sunday 19th and were asked to share in the morning meeting Sunday 26th.

We were really pleased to meet with Pr Andre from ICN. This was particularly emotional for us as his wife, Liliane, was sadly unable to have the necessary heart transplant and her funeral was in May - just a month after our last visit. Andre’s church is currently working with some families in a very poor area of Goiania and we were pleased to be able to visit one such home and join in the bible study and prayer with the family.

We also visited our friends Pr Julio and Elizete at CMA - and Duncan spoke at Young People Meeting- 300 attendees!

One surprising and enjoyable event was the engagement party of our English friend, Derrick to Karla - we were the only English guests!. Derrick is based in High Wycombe, Bucks.

On Friday 24th Marcel arrived in Goiania from visiting his family in Brasilia to help us with the course. It was very special to have a Brazilian (missionary who is based in Greenford, UK) join the team. Equally we were really pleased to begin training 5 other facilitators on Sat 25th who were also to help us with the second CursoKairos in Brazil.

We were delighted to continue the training throughout the 5 day intensive course, (August 27-30th ) and felt we really were making significant first steps to achieve our long term goal of seeing CursoKairos run by national teams of Brazilians!

After 2 courses we have now seen 26 Brazilians follow the Kairos course journey in Brazil and we have commenced the training of 7 facilitators.

The graduation ceremony gave us an opportunity to do a small Kairos course taster and also to be greatly encouraged by the stories each person shared about how Kairos had impacted their lives, strengthened their relationship with God and alerted them to the mission heart of God. One particular encouragement was the invitation from one of the graduates to visit her church in Brasilia in November and hold a taster course for other Pastors and leaders from different churches in the Federal Capital.

We then spent a few days in Rio de Janeiro - 2-5th Sept, and made arrangements to hold a 3rd Brazilian course there in November with some introductory Taster meetings in Petropolis in the suburbs of Rio city.

We are now back in Farnham and have already completed the first 3 sessions of a Kairos course which is meeting weekly over 6 weeks and which concludes with a weekend on 12-14th October. . On the first evening (the day after we returned!), I found myself apologizing in advance in case I started speaking in Portuguese!!

We have also met with Linda Harding and Ron Viner who are working with us on the Brazil and Beyond Project. We will shortly be sending you an update of our expected plans for the next 15 months along with some prayer requests and an update of the financial side of the project.

With our love and thanks for your continuing support and interest.