An Awesome Trip to Brazil
November 12, 2024
As we prepared to go to Brazil this month, we also had to make another type of preparation. We were told that a hurricane was slated to come right over our town, so we needed to prepare our trailer for this destruction that we were told was coming our way. So, we prayed and prepared what we were told to prepare and put our 7 bags in the car and started on the 3-hour trip to Miami airport.
On this trip, we were unsure even when we arrived in the airport if it would be open or shut down because of the hurricane. About halfway to the airport, we looked out the right side of the car and saw what we thought was a tornado looming there. Believe you me, we upped our prayers, stepped on the gas, and kept one eye on the twister and one eye on the road. By the grace of God, we outran it and got to the airport; it was open and we flew to Brazil. As we were waiting for our flight, we saw on the news that the tornado passed across the road we were on and wreaked havoc as it passed across Florida. This was my first time to see a tornado up close and personal and hopefully my last.
This trip to Brazil turned into an AWESOME trip. Not only was the Bluegrass Baptist Seminary business conducted but we were able to do much, much more. The first part of our trip was to expose the church where we attend in Florida, with the Pastor, his wife and two young adults to the ministries in Brazil, the church plants, mission, and the Guarani Indian group that we have worked with in the state of Rio. Then we had the fun privilege of helping the Church in Caraguatatuba to host the Children’s Day festivities where we did face painting, popped popcorn, and made cotton candy and hot dogs. Amid all this fun, the church pastor, his wife, the youth director, his wife, and the youth brought several skits that told the children of the love of God and the plan of salvation. A GREAT TIME was had by all!!!!
In those 7 suitcases we carried shorts and t-shirts for the Indian children and another group of children that the missionaries work with. Also, we carried lots of American candies, many school supplies, paint supplies, and wooden things to paint. All of this was given to the children in Caraguatatuba to help with their school needs and for their fun activities for Children’s Day. God is so good all the time and all the time God is good. Just the looks on the faces of the children when they received these things were without a doubt too precious to imagine. Thank you to all who contributed to this trip.
One of the purposes for this trip was to meet others who have an interest in the Seminary. We also met with some churches with the same interest. The churches were interested in how they could be involved as a church. I also met with a friend who has given his life to the ministry and will be ordained this month. He wants to enroll in this upcoming semester. How AWESOME is the God we serve?!?
While we were there, we had a small glitch with our communications systems in the Seminary. As the students were taking one of their exams, their test scores became scrambled, and the computer crashed (the students were in a panic). The problem was solved in about 45 minutes. All’s well that ends well.
Next summer’s trip will be involved in much traveling to several other Seminaries in Brazil. It looks like we will be going there at least 3 different times. Pray for the future students and for our health and for the Bluegrass Baptist Seminary. We also ask that you pray for one of our Pastor friends in Brazil; his name is Pastor Markus and he has been in the hospital for a week now with heart problems.
As we were concluding the trip I became sick with what they call “grip” (a bad cold) and when we got back to the States, Barbara also became sick. It turned out to be pneumonia and she has been sick for over 2 weeks. She has been to the doctor’s office twice now. Pray for her recovery.
Just to complete our trip, we came home with no damage to our home, just the loss of everything in our refrigerator and freezer, but we have a good friend who came and cleaned out everything so we did not have to come home to a stinking mess. Thank God for good friends.
In His service,
Aj and Barbara
CONTACT INFO
AJ & Barbara Hensley
30524 Mimi St
Sebring, FL 33870-0530
AJ: 859-539-2302 | Barbara: 859-539-1424
ajcaragua@gmail.com
For ministry donations:
Pastor George Sledd, Treasurer of BFM
P.O. Box 471280 | Lake Monroe, FL 32747-1280
or click here to donate to BFM online.
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Celebrating Children’s Day in Ubim
October 21, 2024
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Pray that all are doing well and blessed by our Lord and Savior. We are doing well thanks to our Lord. We thank each of you for your prayers and support. You are an important part of the ministry.
We have had many blessings. The prayer program we mentioned in our last letter has been really great. More and more of the members are getting involved. We have had more visitors coming to the church. We are encouraging the members to get involved in different ministries in the church. Several of the youth are helping Kathy with the kids’ program at the village of Ubim. Last week was kids’ days here in Brasil. The group put together a party for the kids. Also, a friend of one of the youth donated toys for the kids. We had 60 kids. The party was great. Then at the mother church we had a party on Sunday night. They had a great time. Two of the ladies at the church and 2 teenagers planned the party.
The last few months we have had lots of problems with our cars. Thank God, we are getting them fixed and working.
Odali and Kathy Barros
Contact Info:
Odali & Kathy Barros
Iranduba, Amazonas
Brasil, SA
odali_kathy@hotmail.com
For ministry donations:
Pastor George Sledd, Treasurer of BFM
P.O. Box 471280 | Lake Monroe, FL 32747-1280
or click here to donate to BFM online.
Read more
Children’s Day Outreach
October 20, 2022
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Hope all is well with your family and churches. We are all doing well—praise the Lord. This month we had a wonderful experience with our church. We have been doing training and encouraging for the work and ministries in the church. We are trying to get more and more of the members involved. October 12th is Children’s Day here in Brazil. So, we planned a special day for them. It was great to see the members get involved. We had special kids’ music, puppets, games, and a trampoline outside for them. Also, we had hotdogs, popcorn and popsicles. Everyone had fun. We brought the kids from the village of Ubim. There was around 55 that came.
Pray for the village of Ubim as we are working to reach more adults. We have a couple that lives near that are helping us there. It has been wonderful having them. We are already planning to new places to have pizza day. Both of these places have to be done while the water is low. Because when the water is high there is no access to the villages. Now that the water is low it is good fishing time. We take advantage of the time and take different people to spend time with them. Through this we have been working with 2 that have problems with drugs. Today I took the drug dealer that lives near us. I got to talk to talk to him. I asked him not to sell drugs to the mother of the kids that lives here with us. Also, we asked if we could take his daughter to Sunday School. He said we could take her. Please pray for them and for us as we reach out to help them and to show them God’s love and salvation.
Love in Christ,
Odali and Kathy
Contact Info:
Odali & Kathy Barros
Iranduba, Amazonas
Brasil, SA
odali_kathy@hotmail.com
For ministry donations:
Pastor George Sledd, Treasurer of BFM
P.O. Box 471280 | Lake Monroe, FL 32747-1280
or click here to donate to BFM online.
Read more
Ordinations, Outgrowing Space, & Couples Being Used in Ministry
October 20, 2021
Dear Friends,
I can’t use the word ‘proud’, because it would assume that some credit goes to us, but we are very grateful and thankful to the Lord for our couple’s ministry leaders, Edinei and Debora. The husband, Edinei was an eight-year-old boy when we met him 35 years ago. His dad was an alcoholic and his family had no interest in the things of the Lord. Charlene and I started a children’s Bible club in the garage behind our house and Edinei was one of the first kids from our neighborhood to accept an invitation to come. He started attending weekly and eventually brought several other members of his family. Edinei came to know Jesus as his Savior and Lord and has been faithful in Christian service for all these many years. His wife, Debora, was 11 when we met her. Her father and brother were doing some remodeling work for us on our house. We became friends with their entire family back in 1995 and since then, she, her mother, sister, brother, and several other family members have surrendered to Christ. Both Edinei and Debora volunteer many hours each month in ministering to the married couples in our church and in evangelistic events to married couples. This weekend they are holding a retreat where we will work together to evangelize and teach 30 couples for three days. Charlene and I feel like the two are practically our children, but more than that they are God’s children and our co-laborers in His service. We are thankful for them.
This next Sunday we’ll have the privilege of ordaining two young men to Gospel ministry, Cledson and Adriel. Cledson is our youth minister and has been doing a fantastic job together with his wife, Fabiane. Our youth group has grown from 8 to 35 under their leadership in the last year.
Adriel and his wife, Lorena, are our traveling evangelistic team leaders. That ministry is made up of 12 volunteers who travel by a 15 passenger van throughout Brazil and South America taking the gospel to public schools and parks. Adriel has proven to be a wise leader to his team and a very effective evangelist to students and adults. It will be a joy and blessing to ordain these two men as dedicated servants of the Lord in spreading the gospel and discipling converts.
October 12th is a national holiday in Brazil (a patron saint’s day). Informally it has become “Children’s Day” for more commercial reasons. For whatever reason the day is celebrated, we took advantage of the long weekend to do a special event to attract families with their kids to our ‘Children’s Day’ gospel play. Our drama team worked for many weeks in rehearsals and stage preparations to perform the play in two services. The team did an outstanding job, working with a great attitude and sweet spirit despite the long hours and the personal cost of travel back and forth to practice for several weeks. The Lord blessed and we did have one 11-year-old boy make a public profession of faith in the Lord. The folks who were on the team were also greatly motivated by their participation in the event and the great reviews from those who watched. In fact, someone who saw a video of the presentation who attends a different church has asked our drama team if they would give the presentation at their church as well.
The Children’s Day presentation also helped us to come to a huge decision. We must move to a larger building. For the event we just held, we asked the church members to divide into two groups in order have a smaller congregation at each presentation, allowing the people who would come as guests to have a seat in our crowded auditorium. It helped some, but our last service was stilled packed to the max. This with only half of our regular congregation in each service and more than 30 workers behind the curtains engaged in the presentation. We are presently in the process of signing papers on a larger building. We pray the Lord will guide and provide as we seek to grow this church and as we train leaders to go out to begin new works as well.
We are super excited with all that the Lord is doing through and in us.
Thank you for your prayers and concern for us.
In Christ’s love,
Bobby and Charlene Wacaser
Contact Info:
Bobby & Charlene Wacaser
Rua Laudelino Ferreira Lopes, 279
Sobrado 1, Novo Mundo
81050-310 Curitiba, PR. Brasil
Phone: 55-41-99899-2333
bobbymichael_1@hotmail.com
For ministry donations:
Pastor George Sledd, Treasurer of BFM
P.O. Box 471280
Lake Monroe, FL 32747-1280
or click here to donate to BFM online
Read more
Children’s Day Celebration
October 20, 2021
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
We hope and pray that all are doing well and being blessed. We are doing great, and God has blessed us and kept us safe.
This month has been really wonderful. After all the problems with the pandemic and not being able to have special programs, it was great to celebrate the special day we have for the children. Here in Brazil, October 12th is Children’s Day. The church I pastor, Pedras Vivas, had a special day and we brought kids in from the communities near us and also from Ubim. From the Village of Ubim, there were 87 that came. Since there are lots of small children, the mothers came with them. It was really great to see the members of our church getting involved in the activities and others in serving the food. The kids had lots of fun.
I have challenged our church to make this end of the year different. So many times, churches slow down the end of the year doing less things and sometimes having financial problems. We have planned a meeting with the men and women of the church to challenge them to visit and reach out to more people in the community. Pray that God would touch their hearts to see the need to tell people about God’s love.
How would you like to catch one of these? It’s called a pirarara. Come and visit us. One of the things we do to reach out to people by friendship is fishing. The last few weeks we have been able to go fishing and have taken some people with us. This young teenager in the photo is living with us. On one of my road trips with him he accepted Christ as Savior. God has blessed us. We are thankful to each of you that pray for us and give to the ministry. May God continue to bless you and give us wisdom to do His will!
Love in Christ,
Odali and Kathy Barros
Contact Info:
Odali & Kathy Barros
Iranduba, Amazonas
Brasil, SA
odali_kathy@hotmail.com
For ministry donations:
Pastor George Sledd, Treasurer of BFM
P.O. Box 471280 | Lake Monroe, FL 32747-1280
or click here to donate to BFM online.
Read more
Using Friend’s Boat for River Mission Trips
September 23, 2021
Greetings to all of you who have been a blessing in our lives and ministry! We thank each one of you for your prayers and support! May God continue to bless each of you!
We are doing well, and God has blessed us with health and protection from any harm. In the area that we live, there have been some problems with 25 prisoners who had escaped from prison. They were attacking cars and also stealing in homes, but things have calmed down. Praise the Lord!
The services at the church and the missions are back to normal, and more of the people are coming back.
We are excited that next month we are going to have a special day like we used to have four or five times per year before the virus appeared. October has a day that is called Children’s Day. We are going to take advantage of the date and have a special event. We will be bringing kids and families from around the area and mission points. We will have a special service for the kids with puppets.
We have a friend that has a boat that he has offered to be used for missions on the river. This coming weekend he has invited me to go with his church on a mission trip of 3 days to the Village of Gapoaçu. Looking forward to this trip and it will be exciting to plan others. There are many villages that can only be accessed by boat.
We are finishing the baptistery at the church. We always had baptism on the riverside, but it is somewhat of a problem getting everyone there. So, we decided to finish it. Soon we will be having baptisms there. There have been several saved. Praise the Lord!
God bless each of you!
Love in Christ,
Odali and Kathy Barros
Contact Info:
Odali & Kathy Barros
Iranduba, Amazonas
Brasil, SA
odali_kathy@hotmail.com
For ministry donations:
Pastor George Sledd, Treasurer of BFM
P.O. Box 471280 | Lake Monroe, FL 32747-1280
or click here to donate to BFM online.
Read more
Praising God for His Protection; Getting Ready for Tapioca Festival
Odali and Kathy Barros served the Lord in Sao Paulo, Brazil together from 1987-2013. In late 2013, they transitioned to Manaus in Northern Brazil to start sharing the Gospel and planting churches in villages along the river.
October 25, 2018
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
We pray all is well with each of you. We are all well and praising God for His love and protection. We certainly saw God’s protection in our son Jonas’ life. He was helping a friend from church get his bulldozers out of the hole and they put a rope around a palm tree that we have here that is very strong. All of a sudden, they heard a snap. The tree was falling. It missed Jonas’ head and back and landed near his hips and got stopped by a bunch of dirt which kept the tree from falling in full strength on our son. Praise the Lord! No broken bones!!!! He has to rest for 30 to 60 days.
We had a special day for Children’s Day. We spent the day at the camp. Everyone had a great time. We had a service and games and swimming time—a great time for families to be together. We had people from the Indian tribe to come for one of our special events for the first time. They are from the community of Ubim. More and more of them are coming each week to the mission point.
This month we are already getting ready for our tapioca festival. Tapioca is a typical food here and is round like pancake. Then you fill it with different flavors and fold it. We are making 10 different flavors. We have the festivals for outreach to bring people to visit our church and present the gospel. Everything is free. When we invite people, they can’t believe it’s free. Also, we like to have these kinds of programs to get our members involved in reaching out to our communities.
We thank each of you for your prayers and support.
We are praying and looking for a new car. We are on the road a lot. Pray that God well lead us to the right deal. God bless each of you.
Odali & Kathy Barros
Odali & Kathy Barros
Caixa Postal 1
Iranduba, Amazonas 69.415.000
Brasil, S.A.
odali_kathy[at]hotmail.com
For ministry donations:
Pastor George Sledd, Treasurer of BFM
P.O. Box 471280
Lake Monroe, FL 32747-1280
or click here to donate to BFM online
Read more
Training Teams and Praying for a Leader in Limão
Odali and Kathy Barros served the Lord in Sao Paulo, Brazil together from 1987-2013. In late 2013, they transitioned to Manaus in Northern Brazil to start sharing the Gospel and planting churches in villages along the river.
November 11, 2017
Hope all have had a good year! We have had a blessed year! We have had good times and hard times, but God has been there with us and for us. We serve a wonderful God!
We are in several places—there are still so many communities to be reached. This year we have seen God working in the lives of the members and bringing new people to know Him as Savior. Seeing the old members growing and reaching out to the people around them has been a real blessing.
We now have Sunday school at three of the churches. Kathy and I have been helping in two of the places. We are training the group from the mission in Iranduba. They are coming along and excited. The mission of Multirão already has a team that goes there. They are doing great and investing there with the people and the building. What a blessing! Now we are training and new team to go to the community of Limão (lemon). There is a great need for a church there. We are praying God will give us a man that will go. We will go in the beginning while they are being trained. Pray that God will raise up the right person.
We really need a building in the community where Kathy has the kids club. We run an average of 45 kids. That’s about all we can handle on the patio of the house. God has provided a church that will come and build, we just need to buy the land. A few days ago, Kathy found out that there are 2 lots that are being sold not far from the house where we have club. We have used this family’s home for over 2 years. We really are thankful, but we need our own place. Please pray that God will provide the money we need. From time to time we have different kinds of festivals to reach out to new people in the communities, so they can see who we are and so that we can meet them. This month we are having one and all the missions are going to come. We are excited and looking forward to what God has for us.
We would love to reach out more and more. We are praying that God will raise up more people that want to serve, and our other great need is a good car. We spend lots of time in the car. The mother church is close, but all others are at least 30 minutes away.
Thanks for your prayers and your gifts, God bless each of you!
Odali & Kathy Barros
Odali & Kathy Barros
Caixa Postal 1
Iranduba, Amazonas 69.415.000
Brasil, S.A.
odali_kathy[at]hotmail.com
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