2nd Clinic

As Ricky promised last night...here are is the update from yesterday..."the lost pages of the Uruguay Team diaries". We have a couple of guest bloggers to fill you in..


Hola Hombres! This is Laura here. I am going to tell you about, yesterday´s successful clinic, our second clinic, but our first in Rio Bronco. We saw a total of one hundred and four people. Eladio did an amazing job caring for the patients. The clinic ran smoothly and everyone did their job. Becca, McKay, and MaryAnn were in prayer together. Many people who came to pray with them were saved, about ten to fifteen plus some re-dedications. The Children´s Ministry was amazing. All the kids were so loving and friendly. You could really tell how grateful the people were to have us there with them. God´s work was amazing in how he touched the lives of those who accepted him. Laura, Austin, and Scott working the pharmacy.

The prayer ministry team at the clinic.

One of the cute little boys to come through our clinic.

Tayler and Jenny in children´s ministry.

Laura with the face painting brigade.

Richard advertising our free clinic to the people on the street. Nice sign and hat!!!

During the clinic some of the team took a walk into the community to do some street evangelism. Some locals took us to a plaza, which was the center of town! We did some crowd gatherers and several dramas and testimonies. It was a great opportunity to take a break from the clinic and get out into the town to share God´s message. Here is Jordan, being tossed up into the air as one of our crowd gatherers.

Whats Happening? Hey this is Greg DeS. First, it is almost impossible writing this message to you because I have to literally pound the keyboard with my fingers. Its really frustrating. Yesterday´s service was pretty cool. We had some Brazillians we met the night before in the plaza walk like 5 miles with a bunch of their friends to the service. I don´t know about you, but I would not walk 5 miles in this cold on a Saturday night. I would be hanging out with my friends in a nice warm house watching a movie and cooking a pizza. Simply amazing. The service was great and even though the worship was in Spanish, we could understand everything perfectly; their joy, their passion, and their love. It was sweet the amount of energy they expelled praising the Lord. I don´t know the number of people saved that night and I don´t think we will ever know, but this I do know, God was praised wholehearted. I think what I will miss most are the friendships I have made with the people in the church. Their hospitality and warmth is awesome. I just wish the language barrier was not preventing conversations other than me llamo Greg.

This was taken after our night service. Here we have our group with some of our Brazilian friends and church friends mixed in. We had lots of fun goofing around after service, just having a time of fun ad fellowship.

After service, we went to eat at our favorite Brazilian buffet restaurant. The owner has always been so hospitable. When we were ready to leave, he made us all sit back down for a surprise. He was so proud to bring out a hat for every person on our team, featuring the name of his restaurant. He taught us to say thank-you in Portugese, "Obrigado".

SOOOOOOOO tired...

hello everyone, this is Ricky Farris, and I am here to tell you about our day...
m,;. bgb z. vas.djkvdghem,qfycjum O man, sorry about that, we are just so tired, that I just fell aleep on the keyboard... It is 11:30 here, and we just finished dinner, and are about to start worship, but i promise we will give a FULL update tomorrow, with pictures!!!!!! :)
Talk to ya´ll tomorrow, sorry again for the whole face typing on our blog thing...

Welcome to Brazil!

We made it! The team is thrilled to be here in Jaguarao, Brazil.

Here is Savannah to let you know how our travels went today: "Most of the day we spent catching up on our lack of sleep while we rode the bus to Brazil. But we all woke up for an amazing lunch in Minas. The scenery reminded me of southern Oregon with palm trees scattered throughout. Me and others at my table had pizza that was delish! The trip was about 9 hours! Crossing the border from Uruguay to Brazil was a snap, it was just across a river. When we got here we went out to dinner with the Pastor and her brother."




And now here is Amy to let you know how we spent our first evening in Brazil:


"After dinner most of us thought it was time for bed, but the leaders had a surprise for us. It was up to the room to get ready to do dramas in the plaza right across from our hotel (only 10 minutes to get ready!) It was a perfect night, very cold, but the center of town was lit up perfect for our performances. Right off the bat MaryAnn drew a crowd of students on their way home from school at ten at night. Our first couple of performances (along with a crowd pleaser) started to draw peoples attention, mostly high school and college age. We kept on adding more dramas to entertain the crowd which grew to almost fifty by the end (and they did not want us to leave!). Eladio was a blessing; he was able to translate our messages into Spanish. An unexpected gift from God was one audience member, Tomas, an Brazilian who was a Foreign exchange student in Chicago and had visited Las Vegas. He and his buddies were on their way to a party and decided to stop and watch us. Tomas translated prayer into Portugese and was truly a blessing straight from God, aiding us in our service tonight; everyone present knew this was a special night designed and orchestrated straight from God. Richard finished the night by calling out to the audience to see if there was any of our viewers who wished to be prayed for or to ask Jesus into their heart and be saved. All of our team went out to join in prayer in the center of our stage and at first our audience was shy to join, but they suddenly walked forward. Within moments we were very blessed to pray for many of our audience and lead most to accepting the Lord into their heart. Jerry captured the moment best by saying the angels in Heaven were throwing a party they were so happy! What a wonderful night! We are all so blessed by God to be able to speak to the people of Brazil through our dramas. Love you all and hope to hear from you soon. Amy"
I´d like to share a photo from Mary Ann´s camera to close out today´s blog. Here we are with some of the young people we prayed for in the town square tonight. Good Night!

P.S. Some of these students wanted to know when our church service would be tomorrow night:

27 Junio
La Iglesia del Evangelio Cuadrangular
en Rio Branco, Uruguay
A las 14:00-17:00 y 19:00-21:00

1st Ministry Day

Above: "Doctor" Jake taking blood pressure.

Hello! What a day, what a wonderful day! Before the sun had even come up, we had already left for our clinic location and began setting up. Brrrr....it was freezing, the grass was even covered in white frost. We set up our clinic in a church, which was simply a large tent, and the patients began coming through our system. In the end, we had about 70 people come through, and prescribed many medications na dprovided vitamins for every person. The ministry aspect of our day was amazing!!! As Mary Ann shares below, 5 women accepted the Lord, 5 children accepted the Lord, and 6 guys came up to recieve prayer for becoming missionaries themselves. The team absolutley loved the day and God truly blessed us in many ways. These are just a few photos we´d like to share...

Here are the friendly faces of today´s Pharmacy girls: Kellinee, Angel, and Becca. They did a wonderful job (along with Ricky) filling prescriptions for patients.Here is Teresa, working hard in the triage.
One of the cute little girls who visited our clinic and had a blast palying with our children´s ministry team. The kids are just so precious.

The team did several dramas today for the people in the clinic. It was wonderful to incorporate this ministry into the clinic routine.

Some of the team played a game of soccer out in the nearby field. They had such a great time and it really was a moment of bonding between our youth and some of the youth from the local church. It was so cool to see them connect through something as simple as a ball game. From that moment on, they were all such great friends, as if they had know each other for years, and there was no language barrier.

Here is our team in front of the one and only Foursquare church in Uruguay!!! This church has 16 menbers already and it has not even officially opened up yet! We may have a service here this Sunday.

Mary Ann is going to be todays guest blogger, and share something from today´s clinic:

"When we first opened the clinic today, I was not sure how the day would unfold. At the prayer station we attempted to write out and learn a few phrases in Spanish to greet the people and to pray for them. The language barrier was difficult, but we were able to connect with the people. Tayler and Laura did a wonderful job and then Emerson (a missionary to Uruguay from Brazil) joined us to help with the translation. We prayed for for the patient´s physical and spiritual needs, but as the day progressed, God granted us more boldness. We asked specifically if individuals wanted to receive Jesus into their hearts. Five women chose to accpet Christ into their lives as their Savior. With Emerson´s assistance we led them in prayer. One precious lady, Mary Castro, who came walking with a cane and had trouble with her digiestive system received Christ. After Emerson payed with her in Spanish, we prayed for her in English. She placed her head on my shoulder as we prayed together. Tears were running down her face and mine. It was truly a gloriously blessed day, and we saw God more greatly."

Here we have Kellinee enjoying a flavor of a favorite local cultural pastime. She´s sipping on a hot herbal tea they traditionally serve in a hollowed out gourd and a special tea filtering straw. This tea is called Yerba Mate, and it was hospitable of them to share this tradition with us. One of the brothers from the church actually gave this Mate tea set to Richard as a gift! What a nice demonstration of the friendly people here.

Paul wants to wish his Mom a very happy birthday!!!¨ "I Love you and happy 51st birthday, I wish I could be with you!"

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Tomorrow we are taking a road trip to Brazil! We hope to stop along the way and enjoy some of the beautiful surroundings of these two countries. Check back tomorrow, hopefully we´ll get to blog in the evening and fill you in on the latest adventures! God bless.

WE ARE HERE!!!!!!

After much anticipation and preparation, we have finally arrived in Montevideo, Uruguay!  Going through immigration and customs was incredibly smooth...only myself (Leah), Jake, and Tayler had their suitcases opened, and after quickly inspecting the bottles of vitamins and the bags of candy, they decided there was nothing questionable after all and sent us all through!  Praise God!  Rebecca Contreras had everything ready for us, a beautiful bus and a great hotel.  She has done an incredible job in preparing for our arrival, thanks girl!  We had a nice typical Uruguayan dinner and stopped at the bank to exchange currency.  The weather is brisk and cold, that is for sure!  But nothing we can't handle.  Every one of us is thrilled to be here and very excited for our first clinic tomorrow!  Our bus leaves at 6:30 am to take us to our first location, which is about 30 minutes away.  We love all of your comments, thanks for writing to us!  I leave you with a photo of our team wearing the required face masks in the Argentina Immigration.  Just a precaution they do, and we thought it was a great photo op.  --Later!

We are in ARGENTINA!

Hello!  This is Leah, blogging from Buenos Aires, Argentina!  The team is here in the airport waiting for the last flight, which will finally bring us to Uruguay.  It has been 25 hours since we left Las Vegas.  What a ride it has been!  We had a nice stay in Miami, thanks to the McMillan's who got us some wonderful suites to rest in.   Here in Argentina we are enjoying shopping, coffee, and playing cards.  We board in about 20 minutes, the team is very excited!  Thanks for your prayers for traveling mercies, so far everything has been great!  SEE YOU IN URUGUAY! 

Training Camp

Hey everyone this is Richard. We are all here together at our Uruguay mission training camp. Our team is incredibly excited and ready to go to see how we can serve and what the Lord has for us in country.

I'd like to share with you some of the trials and the amazing miracles that have already taken place. I hope you will see the hand of God as much as we have.



When the preparation for this trip began over 1 year ago, we were asked to step out from the countries we had been called to in the past and go to Boliva instead. You will notice I did not say Uruguay. The destination was changed because of the amount of work already being accomplished in Bolivia, versus the lack of work being done in Uruguay. There are no official FourSquare churches in Uruguay. Plans for a FourSquare church have been underway and origianlly our trip was going to assist in the construction. When we found out the church building had finished early, plans set into motion for a medical missin trip. We will as help prepare the church for it's grand opeing which is set for Decemeber 2009.



We contacted the Doctors that have accompanied us for the last several years but they were unable to join us due to financial reasons. We continued to plan and and move forward knowing full well the Lord would provide in His time and not ours. At this point we had a medical trip with no U.S. doctors and only a few local doctors. In the course of the next two days the wheels really fell off...or so I thought. (Oh me of little faith!) I called our airline to confirm our 15 flight reservations. I was told by the ticket agent that they had cancelled all of their flights into Uruguay for economic reasons. I was told "We can't help, sorry." All other airlines had flights that were either way out of our budget, could get us into Uruguay but not back to the States, or were fully booked! Wow what a blow!



Later that day I got an email from our contact in Uruguay and was told that since we had no US doctors coming the local volunteer Doctors were going to cancel. The question all mission coordinators dread was asked... "Are we going to cancel the trip, or what?" All along a peace that the Lord can only explain (I did not know why then) about this trip was evident and we continued to move forward. As if that wasn't trial enough, one of our leaders had to get a new passport and he had not recieved it yet.



Keeping in mind the peace I felt about this trip, I contacted a travel agent for missionaries and she found us flights (with a slight date change) for $100.00 less than our original quote. I went to Pastor Greg and asked him what to do. We prayed and he gave me the name of a doctor in the community. Pastor Greg felt it may be a long shot, but to check and find out. On a Monday afternoon I met with the doctor and he said he would check his other obligations and get back to me by Thursday. I felt at least a small bit of hope, but still had a promise of peace. The next day I got a call and a commitment from the Doctor. Praise the Lord! Thank you Jesus!

In the mean time our number of peaople going on the mission had climbed! God is ever faithful...we now had 23 members, our doctor, and airline tickets, and Jerry's renewed passport arrived in the mail.



Now we had to deal with the amount of money all of the missionaries had to raise. $2200.00 each was an amazing amount of money! Could the missionaries all raise the money needed? They could not, but if the Lord showed up this goal could be accomplished! And through it God would be glorified. We did a bake sale and raised over $600.00! We did a garage sale and raised $2400.00. This was truly a blessing. God was working! The Lord showed up in amazing ways!



When we were about 2 weeks away from training we found out another member of the team had just put in for his passport and it was not here yet. A couple of days later, and a lot of prayers later, the passport arrived! God had shown himself again in a mighty way!

We are finally ready for training and I can't wait to see what else is in store for us. I really can't wait to see how the Lord will continue to show up. And show up he will...for he has covered us with his protection and blessing thus far!



So here they are: The 2009 missionaries to Uruguay, South America. From left to right back to front. Scott Weidner, Richard Farris, Jordon Mynarcik, Tiger Mynarcik, Jerry LaMontagne, Amy Higginson, Paul Meyers, Becca Buchanan, Greg De Simone, Maryann Weidner, Laura Perry, Savannah Cooper, Ricky Farris, Eladio Carrara, Leah LaMontagne, Theresa McMillan, Angel Ray, Kellinee Barber, Jake Jackson, MaKay Novak, Austin McMillan, Jenny Leary and Taylor Jackson.