The Fellowship of Believers.

"They devoted themselves to teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer...Every day they continued to meet together. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." -Acts 2:42, 46, 47

My summer in Brasil is about half-way over. In the big picture, time has flown by the past three weeks. When I am stuck on campus and we can't find anyone to talk to, or we wait for the bus for an hour, the day seems to crawl- 12 hours with the team seem like a week by the time we get back to our rooms at night.

But great things are happening. The past week our team has truly been as Acts 2 Community in every way (except for the whole miraculous healing stuff the disciples did). We are a team who eats together, laughs together and prays together in all circumstances. Some of the women have been having nightmares since we checked into the hotel. In the past four days the men have prayed over every single room. The spiritual warefare is more intense than I've ever seen. We take it as a sign we are doing something right.

And, the Lord is truly adding daily to our numbers those being saved. In the past 6 days of minsitry, eight students have come to Christ. Lately, every day someone has come back with a story of a student who has accepted the amazing grace offered through faith in Jesus.

On a lighter note, yesterday was Valentine’s Day. As if once a year wasn’t enough! (actually, Brasilians don’t celebrate the North American holiday in February). In light of this holiday, the guys surprised the women with a little gift. Each guy on project wrote a nice note and bought a flower and piece of chocolate for one woman on project, and presented these in a unique way- fun facts, songs, skits- one guy even made up a rap. It was pretty cool! My particular gentleman tried to play the guitar and write a song. I am now teaching him a few chords so the next time he wants to play a song he wrote, he will know how.

Because we were unable to get permission at USP, we ended up having a score a basket competition today- we gave each student three tries to make a free-throw. If they made any of the shots, the survey they filled out was entered into a drawing. We gave away some DVDs, Guarana and a PS2. A student on the project shared her testimony about her personal dislike of the church she grew up in- their focus on rules and regulations instead of on grace, which a lot of Brasilians can relate to. In all we think at least 150 students attended. Also, I got to meet the Director of Campus Crusade for Christ for South America. Pretty cool. Thanks for your prayers, everyone! I really appreciate them, and they are truly important to me and our team. Boa Noite-

Amy