• … be ordained next week, along with other missionaries and church workers.
• … be limiting our involvement with the cell groups ministries in the city.
• … be passing some of our current responsibilities with the Health Ministries to others, but will remain as overseers.
• … help organize various aspects of the mission department.
• … be more involved with the river/country churches, perhaps even overseeing a few ourselves.

We look forward to these changes and the challenges they will bring.

Health Ministries
The aim of the Health Ministry is to assist on the plantation of new churches in the rural and river areas and the strengthening of existing churches in those areas.

Clinics Summary

• There were 18 trips
• A total of 36 communities were visited and served as host for the clinics and nightly evangelistic services
• People from an additional 151 communities came to clinics
• A total 187 communities impacted!
• 5 medical doctors, 5 dentists, 6 nurses, 2 nutritionists, and 1 physiotherapist participated on various trips
• The doctors saw a total of 393 patients, including 27 small surgical procedures, while the nurses helped 1,904 people.
• The dentists brought back the smile on 728 faces
• The nutritionists taught 438 people how to eat healthier and the physiotherapist helped 69 people.
• The health professionals also conducted 46 talks on the host communities covering things like women’s health, basic hygiene, disease prevention, hypertension, diabetes, dental hygiene, etc.

Evangelistic Summary

• On some evenings we shows evangelistic movies, some evenings the visiting volunteer health professionals also give their testimonies and the supervising pastor gives evangelistic message.
• During the day we seek to do children activities (ie. games, puppets, bible stories) , as their school schedules allows, and, when possible, during the evening services.
• The health professionals make use of the opportunities to share their faith that crop up during the consultations.
• A total of 108 adults and 101 children made a decision for Christ during the trips!

Water Filter Ministries
Our current goal is complete the supervision all of the 10,000+ filters installed in the Amazon. To achieve this we are training the local church workers and their supervising pastors to carry all the filter supervision and maintenance activities on their own.

We trained most of the health missionaries in the Santarém Base, divided into teams of two. Each team has adopted an missionary area/region, is working alongside the supervising pastor, ’till all the filters in the region are supervised and active and all local workers trained on maintenance and proper report preparation.

Training Summary (from May to Nov 2011)

• Almost all of the health missionaries went through a hands-on training on proper filter supervision and maintenance and also on proper report preparation
• 26 hands-on training were conducted on the communities undergoing supervision. Members of our team guides the workers and their supervising pastor through maintenance and supervision procedure several times. 35 workers/supervisors went through this process at least once.
• Each rural/river region have conferences at various times of the year, gathering nearly all the local workers for that region in a single local. We conducted a one to two hour session on vision of the filter and proper report preparation on three such conferences. A total of 60 workers attended a session.

Supervision Summary (from May to Nov 2011)

• 26 communities were visited
• A total of 764 were left in good working condition
• A total of 199 were found abandoned by the host family. We always seek to get the family to give the filter another try, failing that, we look for a new host family on the same or nearby community. Many of these have already be reactivated, but I don’t have the report to confirm how many.
• A total of 27 were broken beyond repair, mostly by the flood. Whenever possible we seek to reassign one of the abandoned filters above to these host families.
• A total of 990 filters of the 9,700+ filters in Base of Santarém were visited during May ‘till November 2011

Cell Ministries
This year we multiplied our cell area into three smaller areas. We passed two areas to two capable leaders and stayed with a smaller area of only twelve and the challenge of raising a capable leader to take care of them.

We are going to be even more involved with the river ministries in the coming year and it would be even more difficult to maintain a high level of involvement with the city ministries at the same time.

Rescue Japan
We spent seven weeks in Japan helping with the tsunami clean-up effort and encouraging the PAZ Churches there. Both aspects of the trip was a success.

• During the week the team worked on the clean-up effort: Four weeks in the region of Iwake, inside the radiation zone from Fukushima, helping with the Global Mission’s effort there; and one week in the region of Sandai, helping with the Samaritan’s Purse’s effort there.
• One week we stayed in Kawasaki and did minor repairs, remodeling, painting, etc on the PAZ church building there.
• During the weekends we visited the five PAZ churches, encouraging, sharing, giving personal testimonies, doing outreaches, passing the MDA vision.
• The pastors there were encouraged with the fact they are not alone but are part of greater family that will be increasingly more involved in the work there. This was only the first of many teams. The next one is already in the works.
• We left a handful of new Christians, the fruit of the outreaches, in a brand new and growing cell group.
• We touched many lives as we listened to their stories and showed God’s love through our service.

Thank you, as none of this would have been possible without your faithful prayer and support.

Here is a quick video that the mission put together to remind what to pray for:

For more info, hop to Rescue Japan article on the PAZ Mission website.

Though we received generous donations to cover team expenses, we are still short of our need. If you would like to give financially to this project, follow the instructions click here

If you like to help with personal expenses on the trip, just follow the instructions on the How to Help section of our blog.

Thanks for your prayer and support.

First Trip of the Year

On February we had back to the river.  Our first trip was to the river communities of  Ilha do Bom Vento (Good Wind Island) and Pai Antônio (Father Antônio).  When we arrived Pai Antônio had only one Christian lady, who just had moved there from another community. The nurses led 3 adults to Christ during the health consultations and thirteen children gave their to Christ during the children activities held on the local school.   We installed twelve water filters, giving a river missionary a perfect “excuse” to visit each of these twelve houses to check the clean water, while sharing the living water.  We were there just a day, but we left the humble beginnings of a local church.

On Ilha do Bom Vento we provided basic health care to the river workers attending a regional conference and conducted activities with the their children.

Nurse Ticiane conducts a basic eye exam.

Telling Bible Stories to the kids

  The 12 filters were delivered to each house via an ox cart (on the background).

The river workers sharpening their saws at the conference.

Cuçary Trip

Isaura and the health team and three visiting doctors went to Cuçari to conduct surgeries for the removal of  pterygium and nevus  (both  are fairly common in the region and you can learn more about them clicking on them).  They did regular health consultations also.  I did not go on this trip, instead heading up the Amazon river to Auerana work on the water filters there.

During the day they conducted the surgeries,  a total of 11 removals of pterygium and 8 removals of nevus were done.  On Saturday night they showed the Billy Gram movie The Last Flight Out and on Sunday they held service.  Two persons gave their lives to Christ at the service.

Dr. Ribeiro, Isaura and Micah at work

Missionary nurse Katie with patients.

Dr. Rogério and Katie at work removing a nevus.

First Trip to Auerana

While Isaura and the health team were down the river in Culçary, I headed up river with a construction team to check the water filters there.   While the construction team worked to finish the church, Samuel, the filter plant manager, and I visited every filter in the community.  We discovered that all 20 concrete filters there needed to be reinstalled.  We had enough material to reinstall two of the concrete and a new plastic filter at the local school.  We also found 20 families wanting filter a filter in their homes.

The camera went with Isaura on the Cuçari trip, so I have no photos of this trip.

to be continued…

Health Ministries

The Health Ministry Team

The Health Ministry Team participated in 21 ministry trips, visiting 42 communities along the rivers and dirty roads of the Amazon.

• Six volunteer doctors treated 1,005 people.
• Thirteen nurses helped 2,569 people with their specific basic health needs.
• Fourteen dentists brought back the smile on the faces of 1,160 people.
• Three nutritionists showed 471 people how their could improve their diet to achieve better health.
• One physiotherapist helped 69 people understand how simple exercises and proper posture could improve their quality of life.
• Various members of the team gave 48 talks on topics like community health, dental hygiene, women’s health, clean water.

Dr. Edson, Missionary Dentist, at work.

Volunteer Doctor doing a “house call”

We also counted with the help of other volunteers:

• Volunteer children workers had fun with the kids, sharing Christ’s love in creative, fun, and simple ways.
• Volunteer beauticians cut hair, did nails, sharing Christ’s love in a very practical way.
• Volunteer and local church workers shared the gospel with those waiting in line to see the doctor, both one-on-one and in groups.
• Volunteers visited homes in the community, lending an ear, offering prayer, and inviting to the evening services.

Volunteer giving a haircut.

Volunteer Children Workers sharing the gospel

One of the Showings of the Jesus Film

During the evenings we conducted evangelistic meetings, with testimonies, music, gospel preaching, evangelistic films, and children activities.

As  you can see, we were busy, but so was the Holy Spirit as 552 people gave their lives over to Christ –half of them were children and youth, the leaders of tomorrow.

Water Filter Ministry

Our water filters team were busy installing, supervising, and maintaining the BioSand Water Filters as well as training local workers how to care for them after we leave.  The final numbers are not in yet, so I don’t have statistic on hand for the work done.

Cell Ministries & Discipleship

While not in the rivers and roads of the Amazon,  we are busy expanding God’s kingdom in the urban areas through cell groups and one-on-one discipleship.  Currently we have 44 cell groups under our care.

On our year end party we honored the cell groups leaders and supervisors. Kaká was one of the leaders honored: although he had money for bus fare, walked for 45 minutes to and from his cell group so he would have money for the offering.  We honored Kaká with a brand new bicycle.

Kaká with his new bicycle.