How awesome it was to share the news of Gicilene's baptism this morning!

We've been a little short-staffed this weekend because several of the team are traveling. It left just Keith, Stacey, Randy, Russ, me and all the kids. It was tough, but we soldiered on. With both Travis and Paul gone, Russ got to preach. I'm biased, of course, but I think he did a great job. I asked him afterward what kind of feedback he got from the congregation. He said, "One lady told me my hair was beautiful!" Not the feedback every preacher wants to hear, but in a land where people don't hold back from telling you how fat you are or how bad your Portuguese is, it's a welcome compliment!

We're getting excited for Let's Start Talking to get here. The team is arriving on Tuesday afternoon. One family will be living at the building for the six weeks they'll be here so I've been trying to make the place a little more livable (those of you who have seen it in person will understand). At first the job was really hard because we only had power in the front two rooms and the bathroom. The power company said it wasn't their fault and everyone else who looked at it blamed the power company. Thanks to the persistence of some of our guys, it finally got resolved.

Problems like that have been coming up, just like we had before our first service. I guess we should be used to that by now. We've been advertising the courses all around town but no one could call for information because our phone wasn't working. The phones are back up now and people are calling. This is the first time LST has been offered in this city and the responses have been interesting. Everyone who calls is skeptical that the courses are free. This morning as we were getting ready for worship three police officers stopped in to ask about the course. Some friends of ours that own a fabulous Italian restaurant have been give people LST fliers along with their check. We've handed out fliers in the street, in language schools, left them in taxis, put posters in stores, taken out a newspaper ad and talked to everyone we can think of. Now we have to sit back and wait. We have informational meetings this week on Wednesday and Thursday. Please pray that they go well and we have great turn-outs. We have spaces for 65 readers so that's a lot of potential new contacts for the church.

World Cup fever is officially over. The game ended at about 6:00 last night and by 9:00 many stores had taken down their special displays. Everyone is so disappointed, especially because it seemed like Brazil didn't even show up to play. I have to confess that I'm a little glad it's over since we're trying to get things done this week. It was hard having to schedule everything around the games. But I'll miss the opportunities we had to watch them as a church family.

Two weeks from today, we'll get to worship with our family in Winnipeg. We can hardly wait!