Current News
January 2005
Psalm 126:3
“The Lord has done great things for us and we are filled with joy”
I don’t know how many times we have started an update with this scripture, but it never fails to be true in our lives here at Lar Batista. The Lord has done great things for us and has blessed us so much, as, He, at the same time challenges our faith and stretches us out of our comfort zone, allowing us to see Him at work more and more.
We just wrote on the year of 2004 and shared about the many blessings the Lord showered on us and we have to tell you about our Christmas and some other joys this summer is bringing us this year. I will also give you an update on my health and on our construction here, but let me start by sharing about the blessings before I share about the challenges we have.
Again, we will try to report chronologically.
Mãe reporting:
We had a wonderful end of the school year and we had an amazing 100% approval of our children attending school at all levels. Cheiyenne finishing kindergarten and getting ready to start first grade all the way to Marta and Priscila B. Graduating from College, but we will talk more about them later.
We are blessed to have Rute helping us with the after school program and all her effort and work does not go unseen. It was a blessing for us all to see her recognized as one of the volunteers of the year, by our city. We are very blessed by having Rute in our family! We are also very proud of all the children for doing great in their studies. For some of the children, that are in private Colleges and schools, it was difficult for us to afford their tuitions, but God blessed us with some wonderful donors that made it all possible. We are again, thankful to you for your generosity. We love you and pray for you.
In their free time, our children managed to prepare a Christmas program which they presented at our church on Christmas Eve. By the amount of preparation we knew it would be good and it really was.
This Christmas we received a team from the US and it was great to have them here with us. Some of our friends were coming back bringing with them some new friends. The highlights of the team were the children, the young travelers and it was good to see how young they can pack and come so far away to be the face of family to our children.
Wayne and Angela brought us their little daughter Audrey, and it was so good to finally meet her. Her Portuguese is good and she is such a joy! Wayne first came here as a single young man, and then brought the girlfriend, then came as a married man and now brought us a grandchild and we couldn’t be happier!
Another joy for this Christmas we only received a few days after Christmas, Elias, son of the house, called us in September to inform us of his wedding date, December 24th. We were sad we would not be able to be there since we had a team booked for that date and because it is impossible for us to be gone over Christmas.
Well on December 30th, we received a phone call that Elias and his wife Jo, were in town to be with us for New Years! What a joy it was for us to see them and to receive her into our family! We are praying for them and couldn’t be happier for them.
Pai reporting:
A different thing for us this Christmas was that for the first time since our daughter Grace went to the US we received a team from Orphanos without her. Grace is adjusting her visa status and will have to wait for those changes in the US. It was hard not to have her here, but we know she was well taken care of, by some good friends of ours. We missed Grace a lot but we know that in His time God will bless her with the upgrade to the visa she needs.
The Guesthouse:
We were so glad to be able to host the first team into that house. The interesting thing is that we call our Christmas team in Portuguese: “a dream come true” and seeing the building’s lights on the showers running with hot water and all else working well, was for me a dream come true. I would like to thank each person involved in making this dream come true and we mainly praise the Lord for trusting us with this project.
We were able to finish 6 of the 13 rooms to be ready to receive the first team, but we still have a lot of work to do before we are all ready. We still have a lot to pay regarding the building, so we will keep asking you to pray about helping us finish a room at a time. Several churches have joined us and made a big difference in the construction, Please help us by sharing the need with more churches and friends so we can finish the building. The Lord has been so good to us this far and we trust Him to bless us until the end. There are still several rooms we need sponsors for, so please keep that in your prayers.
The church:
We are also blessed as far as our church is concerned. The Lord has blessed us with a good attendance and several new people have started attending church. Joaquim Jr. has been my helper, as well as Gilberto.
Joaquim leads the services and has preached most Sundays since October 2003. He is only 20, but has almost two years of preaching under his belt. He also leads the youth group and is always coming up with something new.
Gilberto, married to one of our girls, Rozeli. He does a lot of visitation and hospital care to people in our congregation and city. He also leads prayer meetings when Joaquim cannot do it because of his College classes. I am blessed to have them both assisting me in our church.
Our church just hosted a weekend seminar on Sunday school growth; once again the Lord blessed us using talents within our own family. Bela, our niece who is always here for VBS, came from Sao Paulo and lead the seminar. All evangelical churches in town were invited and the seminar was attended by 30 people, besides our own church representatives! What a blessing it was!
The next upcoming big service in our church is a Thanksgiving service to the Lord, to praise Him for blessing Marta and Priscila with their College education. These young ladies have had to fight their odds to this point in their lives, and step by step, the Lord blessed them an honored their dedication and obedience. You will be reading more on them soon.
We just want to start this year with gratitude and praising the Lord for being so wonderful and merciful to us and our children.
There is a lot to do here and we welcome your prayers, support and helping hands. We will soon be posting the dates for teams coming here this year, and it is always good to see you all. Please come see us.
Mãe reporting:
On the 10th of February we will resume school with all of our children enrolled. As I said before, we had 100% approval rate in 2004 and we want to keep that in ’05. Can I please ask you to pray with us and help us with the back to school expenses? We will need new uniforms, books and school supplies, just like you need to send your children to school, only times 30. If that is something you can help us with, please contact grace and she will tell you what the best way to help is. She is aware of our needs here. Thank you so much for your continued blessing to us.Update on Pai’s health
Pai is healing very slowly but in a very healthy way. He has adjusted to new diabetes medication well and insulin has helped him a lot. He has been able to reduce the intake and this is good.
We have incurred some hospital and pharmacy debt since Pai got sick and we could use help with that, should the Lord impress that in your heart. Please contact Grace at Orphanos if you can help.
Graduation
Pai and Mãe reporting:
We were so blessed by the events of last week. We drove for 5 hours to Maringá, where Marta, our daughter was graduating from College. God has blessed her in great ways and he has blessed her obedience to us, even when things didn’t make sense to her. (you can read more about it in issue 2.2 of Orphanos' Love Letters)
Marta graduated (Cum Laude) from Cesumar, University, with a degree in Business geared towards Hotel and Resort management and Tourism! That was a dream come true to her and a huge testimony that God honors our obedience to our parents.
Marta was delivered the speech on behalf of her class and took advantage of that to honor Mãe, for taking care of her. I (Pai) was so blessed as so many parents at the event would come and congratulate me on the wonderful daughter I have, Somehow a lot of back stage community work started to be brought up people commented that they had come to know the Lord because of Marta’s testimony and nothing could have blessed me more. She is a city on a hill, and what a beautiful city she is!
We would not be able to give her this level of education on our salary, but God brought His angels around our family and they gave Marta wings, which will determine how far and how high she will choose to fly. We are so proud of her and so thankful to the Padrinhos who Blessed Marta.
We are now preparing for Priscila B.’s graduation which will be on February 11. She is a pearl God gave us and she is always shining for the Lord. Priscila was given to us and she was told she would never amount to anything. We are pleased to inform that such prediction was so wrong! Priscila is a blessing and now she has a diploma to go with it. I am glad they decided to postpone her graduation for a week, so my heart can rest before it will have to work so hard again, as I see this other child of mine walking the stage! It was worth all the investment and time, it was worth it pushing these girls hard and not accepting anything but their best.
In a country where so few graduate from College at all, we are able to graduate two daughters in one year. God does know the plans he has for us! Praise Him with us!
In closing
Children reporting on Mãe!
“We are so thankful to God for blessing us with our parents, Pai and Mãe. We thought we would share with you that January 27th was Mãe’s 27th anniversary in ministry here at Lar Batista. She is the only mom I know and I am so thankful for that! She is all I need!” — Jorge Mueller, 14
“She has been a great mom to us all and we just cannot praise God enough for her. She is always caring for us, running us around town for our school, doctor’s appointment, dentists, and all tat. She also takes time to spend time with us individually because she wants each of us to know we are special and she loves us. We find her crying at times, sometimes because she is happy and sometimes because she is proud of us and sometimes because moms… they just cry sometimes!” — Yano, 9
“She is very strong and she always knows what to so, but sometimes she is afraid and she tells us. She is afraid something will happen to us and she says she is always praying we would love Jesus more than we love her. OH, she is also afraid of frogs and mice, even though she can slaughter a cow! Go figure moms!” — Tinim, 16
“Last year (2004) our city recognized her as the mom of the year, even though we all had to pass the school year and stay out of trouble for that to happen. We knew we could do it for her. It was fun when she came to our school for that and everyone clapped for our mom! It made us all feel good, but now… she wants is to do it all over again! We’ll see?” — Felipe, Daniel, Eduardo & Yano
“We love our mom and she is sooooo beautiful!” — Ingrid, 4
“I finally decided to get married and I thought that was the answer for all my questions, but right them my fiancée asked me: Whose name do you want as your parents on our wedding announcement? Your biological ones or the orphanage ones? Well, I thought for about 30 seconds and told her, 'my real ones!' It was my chance to make her think for a while. It was such a blessing for me when I finally saw the wedding announcement and I saw Mãe and Pai's names by the wonderful sentence: Mrs. And Mr. Joaquim B. Fragoso have the honor to invite you to the wedding ceremony of their son, Elias Gonçalves That meant the world to me. No wonder we were at Lar 4 days after the wedding!” — Elias and Jo Gonçalves (married on Christmas Eve 2004)
“You have always been there for me and I just can't wait to make you proud of me!” — Marta, graduation speech, Jan. 2004
“It is not that I am always busy, I am always trying to keep pace with Mãe!” — Acacia
“Thanks for taking time to take care of me, too! I appreciate everything you do and praise you for that.“ — Love, Pai
“I am so glad we can share her with so many other children, our friends, teams and whoever comes our way, and to know that she has room in her heart for all of us! Thank you for always pushing us hard and showing us what we are able to accomplish! You are Proverbs 31 girl! Love you lots, Mom!” — Grace