Calvary Chapel Iguazu Falls, Brazil

Hey everybody, I just wanted to update everyone on my trip to Brazil. My self and another brother from C.C. Philly are here in Iguazu Falls, Brazil visiting a dear friend of mine Tim Rogers who is the pastor of the Calvary Chapel here at Falls. This is his second church plant here in Brazil, with the first church in San Vicente under national leadership now. I got to speak at the mid-week service tonight which was a great blessing.....for me anyway! The service was in their backyard under the deck - what an awesome night, worshipping the Lord together in Portuguese! Iguazu Falls, has a large population of Chinese, and Lebanese folks, so that would explain why I had one of the best swarmas of my life for dinner today here in Falls. We will be going up to a Calvary Chapel Brazil - church conference at the Calvary Chapel Bible College in Campo Mourao, Brazil http://www.ccbcbrazil.com/ (about 5 hours away from Falls). The conference will be from Saturday - Wednesday. I would ask you guys to pray that the Lord would give us wisdom, on how to encourage those that we meet at the conference, and that He would continue to show us how He may want us to get involved with the various church plants here in Brazil. I should be able to update in a couple of days. Thanks in advance for your prayers.

PICTURE 1 - The beautiful Iguazu Falls !

PICTURE 2 - Me with Tim and his 2 little ones Bethany, and Abraham, and Jenna Faehl (CCBC Brazil student......and part of our C.C. Philly family)

PICTURE 3 - Overview of part of the falls

I'll leave you guys with this question.

TRUE or FALSE

Tomorrow we will have breakfast in Brazil, lunch in Paraguay, and dinner in Argentina ?

blessings,

Carlos

Missions Focus Night - This Sunday Night !

Hey everyone. I just wanted to let everyone know about what is happening at C.C. Philly this coming Sunday night, January 27th.

Starting at 7:00 P.M., we will begin our "Missions Focus Night", where we are going to devote the entire night to talking about "Missions" here at our church. We will be sharing about the past couple missions trips that we have just gotten back from (Zambia, El Salvador), showing pictures and videos from those trips, and having some people who went on those trips share a little about them. We will also have one of our missionaries who is home on furlough share about her work in a Central Asian country. A portion of the night will also be given to sharing about the doors that the Lord has opened up for our church regarding "local outreach". Pastor Jerry will be sharing about the upcoming Harvest Crusade, and Buddy Osborn from Rock Ministries will be sharing about what they are doing to reach kids for Christ in the inner-city. Lastly, we will be talking about future missions trips for the church this year, as well as other ways to get involved in any of the areas mentioned above. All of the kiosks in the front hallway will be filled with pictures of our recent trips, and staffed with those who have gone on those trips in case anyone had any questions.

This is going to be a great night, so I would encourage you guys to come out, and to tell others to come out as well. This will be for the edification, and encouragement of the entire body at C.C. Philly, not just those who are "missions people". We all need to know and be reminded that the entire church body has an active role in this "Great Commission" ! See you guys on Sunday night.

January 6th - Home sweet home

Our last couple of days of the trip were some of the best. We spent all day on Thursday at the orphanage in San Martin that is run by Potter's Field and the main church in San Salvador. We had a great time hanging out with the kids. Someone from our church had given us new baseball gloves, bats and balls to give out and they had a perfect place to play there on the property. Some of the kids were naturals to say the least. They also have a Calvary that meets there on the grounds and the day we were there was the kick off to their after school ministry that they were starting, so were were blessed to be able to jump in and help with that. Rob and I both sensed the Lord's blessing there in a great way and we are really excited to see what the Lord is going to do there.
Friday was going to be our day off, but because of the high winds we were not able to do a couple of things that we wanted to, but that was the Lord's plan all along. We were able to get into the only children's hospital in the country and minister to the kids on the blood disease floor. There is a sweet lady from the main church whose son spent a lot of time on that floor before the Lord totally healed him and now she goes back to minister to the parents there, so it was awesome to minister alongside her and her son David. The kids were really sweet and our guys brought some bright light into an otherwise depressing place. The puppets, baloons, stickers and songs were enjoyed by everyone and we all left there more blessed than the kids no doubt. We had such a great group of people who even in the midst of a difficult place to break the ice were never hesitant to bring the love of the Lord.
The Lord also blessed us with a great hike up to the top of a huge cliff with views that were breathtaking.
The trip home was wonderfully uneventful and we are really glad to be home with hot water and a quiet place to sleep.
Please continue to pray for the work of the Lord in El Salvador. There are some amazing, faithful people there and I have no doubt the Lord's blessing will be upon the things He calls them to do. But like anywhere there a planty of challenges and hardships so lift up them and their families, there is a wonderful group of our brothers and sisters living there and desiring to share the love of Christ with the people of El Salvador.

Wednesday, January 2nd

This is Pastor Jaime from one of the outreach churches in the southern part of the country. We were there all day yesterday and had a great time. Our main work project was to try and rid the local soccer field of rocks, we were there for about three hours and only got 4. That might sound pathetic but each rock weighed about 200 pounds and we were trying to dig them out with poles made out of rebar and pick axes. The last one we got took all 8 of us guys to get it out of the ground and start rolling it off the field. The church here has found a great open door through soccer to minister to the community and many of the people from the church came out as a result of the soccer league.

After a futile attempt at the soccer field we focused our attention to a community outreach. Kids club went great, the children responded well to our team's drama, crafts, and activities. As usually the night ended with children running around with Ruth Riddel's baloons and faces all painted up. Rob and the girls played for the adults, they put the stage right in the middle of the dirt road in front of the church.

Today we went to another town which was more like a tourist town with beautiful old spanish buildings and churches. The leader of the home fellowships in the main church has started a church there so we came to help him. After a morning of painting, we got to play a 6 on 6 game of soccer against a team from the church and I am proud to say that we got a tie. Later in the afternoon, we did an outreach for the church, they rented a local disco club which was interesting to say the least. Probably the only event of its kind held there. The kids loved it and the adults were blessed by the music. Alde seemed to definitely have an impact on some of the younger kids who were there when he shared his testimony.

We are still injury free and sickness free so thanks for the prayers. We are heading to the orphanage tomorrow for a day with the kids and then they invited all the kids in the town to come over in the afternoon so we can share with them, so continue to pray that we have an open door. Thanks