Hello everyone! It’s February 2021 already. While you may be facing some winter storms in the USA, we are having some 90 degree days (without air conditioners). We are excited to share with you what we are doing around here and the plans for the future at GNBC – Good News Baptist Church.
Good attendance: GNBC has an attendance of about 40 people for our Sunday Evening Services at 6PM. That’s the only service we are having in person at the moment. We praise the Lord that the church is really happy with Pastor Messias, the newly appointed lead pastor in a part-time position. Odir is busy participating in lots of meetings and planning for the future for the church together with Messias. He is also preaching this coming Sunday and he is going to be helping the music department of the church (not singing nor playing, of course, but organizing the songs and assisting the worship leaders).
Missions at GNBC: Cynthia is the new missions team leader at GNBC. The church did not have one for quite awhile – in fact, many do not know anything about the 7 missionaries that the church supports monthly (like where they are serving or even their names). In the coming weeks, Cynthia will be able to restructure the whole missions department of the church, interview the missionaries on the field and help this ministry, taking the American churches as a model – Brazilians have lots to learn from your mission’s mindset! The church is very excited to see Cynthia using her experience in missions.
Women’s Ministry: March 8th is International Women's Day, and Cynthia is preparing to launch on March 13th the first meeting for the women at GNBC. The purpose is to strengthen the relationships among the ladies, to encourage them in the Word, to chat about opportunities to serve, and to discuss plans for the ladies group.
Youtube: Another way that GNBC is growing is through social media, especially Youtube. We are raising funds to purchase a good camera for the church to improve the quality of the videos that Odir and Pastor Messias are recording. If you want to donate for this specific purpose, please let us know.
New Missionary Colleague: A single ABWE missionary who recently finished her Portuguese language school decided to join us at GNBC. We are extremely excited to work alongside her.
Bulletins: Starting this coming week, Cynthia is also responsible for the bulletin of the church. She did one for the anniversary of the church last year and it was very well received. It’s been at least 7 years since the church has not had any kind of bulletin.
Government restrictions: Please keep remembering the churches in Sao Paulo in your prayers with regards to the Covid situation in the world. The state government here is still making very strong and arbitrary decisions regarding quarantine and many small business are forced to shut everyday after 8PM (which for a state that has a “night life” culture, it is something very hard to do). Because our main services are at night, the churches are also suffering some impacts. Even at GNBC, we are trying to make new decisions about not having coffee after services like we were used to (so we don’t take off our masks at all), but even with some new precautions there are people in the church approaching us and commenting that we should stop the in-person services. It has been extremely hard to navigate through these waters of different opinions regarding Covid restrictions. We also decided to stop the Thursdays Prayer Meeting at the church because of these government restrictions.
Lots more to come: There are many more things that we are planning to do at the church and we ask for your prayers for wisdom on the “when” to start these due to the Covid situation. More urgently, pray that we can open up our big extra lot located in the back of the church so it can function as a parking lot (pictured here) on Sundays and in a way that we can use it on weekdays for some outdoors activities to give the church more visibility in the neighborhood. As you can see, we need to make the lot look more appealing to the eye.
Blessed Vacation: A couple of weeks ago we took a 4-day vacation to the beach. Sao Paulo has a south beach area (40 minutes away from where we are) and a north beach area (3 hours away). We went to the further one in a more private kind of beach. You will see in the pictures that Odir’s mom accompanied us and that David definitely had a blast!
Speaking of David: David has a new haircut style. It wasn’t exactly the way we asked the guy at the mall to cut it, but it looks funny-cute and David liked it too. You can see the pictures here in this letter. He is also having some great times with his Brazilian cousins – not speaking in Portuguese yet, but that time will come; we prefer to focus on his English for now and he is communicating very well.
Stay tuned: We have an Instagram account and now a closed group on Facebook just for our American friends so you can follow up with us and see the pictures and stories we share about our life and ministry here in Sao Paulo. Please don’t forget to find us there!
Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/brandaos
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ocbrandao
We thank you for your many prayers!
Association of Baptists for World Evangelism
PO Box 8585
Harrisburg, PA 17105-8585
www.abwe.org
Sending Church:
Hope Baptist Church
Galloway, Ohio