The boys had an amazing week in Teresopolis! Teresopolis is a small city located in the mountains overlooking Rio. We stayed in an estate tucked in the mountains that was surrounded by rushing river and jungle-like vegetation. This beautiful setting was the backdrop for our weeklong men’s retreat. It was quite clear how starved we are of quality male fellowship and accountability. We were very thankful for that time and really felt God ministering to us through one another.
Each day we traveled through the mountains to center city Teresopolis where we had daily ministry opportunities. Our main church partner was Church of Christ (Igreja de Cristo). This church has a ministry in their city among underprivileged kids called, Project Grow, just like the girls. The leader of this project is a man named Pablo who was by our side throughout the week. Pablo gave up a lifelong dream of playing professional soccer to share the love of Jesus with kids in his community through soccer. Needless to say we learned a lot from him and were humble to be able to serve him for the week. Along with Pablo, was our translator Rebecca who did an amazing job of translating for us wherever we went.
We spent time visiting schools and had the opportunity share openly about our faith. Many of these kids lead a very tough life and daily battle the reality of life on the street.
Each night we visited a different church to worship with them and encourage them in sports ministry. Although, not our strength we shared a few songs along with several testimonies. The Brazilians were so warm and welcoming. We really enjoyed being involved in their passion filled style of worship.
We played 4 matches while in Teresopolis. The boys got a good taste of Brazilian futbol and really represented Christ well on the field. We played two teams that were a part of the professional club Varzea; losing the first 3-1 and winning the second 2-1. We also played two futsal matches, which is a small sided version of soccer played on a hard court with a smaller weighted ball. It was quite clear that we don’t have the experience with this that the Brazilians do. We played a professional team the beat us 12-1! We did however manage to beat the teenagers from Project Grow later in the week.
A visit to the National Training grounds of arguably the world’s best soccer team. The guys walked around in awe thinking about the legends who have trained and stayed there through the years.
There were countless stories of how we saw God at work during our week in Teresopolis. This is definitely the short newsy version, but I encourage you to ask the boys about the many exciting ways they saw God’s glory revealed. It was awesome to so many guys really take hold of sports ministry, boldly sharing their faith everywhere we went!
The girls finished off their week in Goiania with a few different activities. We had the opportunity to lead the children’s Sunday school class in the morning and then attend service at night with the same church. Between the classes and the evening service, the church body mingled and relaxed at our camp and we had a great time of fellowship.
We finished off the soccer portion on Goiania with one win and one loss. It was good competition and tough games but the girls did great. Ana had a chance to share after the game that we lost and it was a great chance to show Jesus to have the keeper share her testimony after losing by a few goals. After the other game Hannah had a chance to share and we had a good time of mingling with that team as well. Having such a small number of girls has been a challenge soccer wise. We’ve had some injuries and well as some illness that has taken some girls out of the playing rotation. Please pray for some lingering stomach issues and nagging injuries!
Our last day we thought we were going to spend more time at Project Grow but we got there and realized that nobody was there (as happens often on tour!). God obviously planned that mishap because we had a chance to go speak in classrooms at the local school. The neighborhood is quite poor and the children there are dealing with a lot of hopeless situations. We had the chance to split up and sing for them before we shared our testimonies. One classroom in particular had a really powerful time and was able to pray and share with the presence of the Holy Spirit and some breakthroughs happened for the kids there.
The final evening we attended an Atletis de Cristo meeting. This group could be compared to an FCA in America. There were a few professional athletes and some former athletes there and we had a great time of sharing and worshipping together.
We left Goiania with heavy hearts. We made some great friends there and had a really powerful time. Most of the girls were sad to leave that all behind. We knew God had more plans in Rio and wished we could bring all our new friends in Christ with us!
We had quite the reunion when the boys and girls got back together in Rio. You would have thought that we were one big family seeing each other for the first time in over a year! The boys had bussed back from Terresoppolis and we girls had just gotten off the plane to be greeted by them at the airport. It’s been fun to experience ministry together since we’ve been in Rio. There seems to be a bond between brothers and sisters in Christ when you serve together that’s unmatched in any other area of life.
The boys really served us girls that first day in Rio. The girls had some LATE nights in Goiania and were starting to get sick and run down. The boys took over the clinic our first day and allowed the girls to stay home and rest during that first day. It allowed them to run clinics which they hadn’t done before, and it allowed the girls to have some rest and team bonding time over devo’s.
That night we spoke to a group of seminary students to hopefully cast a vision for sports ministry in their future churches. Seth and Mandy shared how sports ministry changed their lives and the students seemed to really enjoy listening and asked some great follow-up questions later. We pray that sports ministry will catch fire in more churches to help spread the gospel!
Yesterday we had two school visits. We went in the morning and run some “controlled chaos” there and got to share afterwards. Most of the children there seemed to have some background in the church but Anna’s testimony was a great example of how the relationship with Jesus is the important part of faith; not just going to church. After the school visit, the girls had practice and the boys had a game. The boys lost 1-0 but they did a great job displaying Christ despite some cheap play.
Today we have another clinic/school visit and then both teams have games late tonight. On some of the down time we have had some great times hanging out with the church members here and playing games at night. This group of young people is special and the Lord is doing great things through them!
Some prayer requests…we have had two girls with some stomach/fever issues for a few days now. They’ve seen a doctor and are under constant care but we are still praying for healing so they can join us the rest of this week! We miss having them around with us! Please don’t worry, they are not in danger and have already gotten much better. The fevers are down and they are feeling much better already…we’re just praying for the completion of it all! A few others have had some minor stomach issues as well (as is common overseas). They are persevering through the trips to the bathroom but we’d like that to be over for them! Please also pray for perseverance through the end of this week. We have long tiring days and would like to not grow weary doing the work God’s laid out for us. We will be traveling back to the U.S. on Tuesday and would appreciate your prayers for safe travel as well.
Looking forward to final Brazil update at the end of this week!
