Pamela's Misadventures: A Special Presentation

Back in January when my adopted Brazilian Brother, Victor, was in Canada he came to one of our first LST training sessions. This was before Lucas had started coming and Katie was not there that night. That night we were talking about the whole process of fundraising. Victor, with the great big heart that he has, came up with the idea that the church in Itu should help with our fundraising efforts. Andrea explained to Victor that the host congregations help by providing housing, advertising and a location for the reading sessions to take place. Victor was adamant that the congregation in Itu should get involved. His idea was to get everyone from the church here in Itu to start saving their loose change. Andrea told him that if he spoke to the elders here and that they were in agreement than whatever was raised could go toward our weekly parties so that maybe we could have some food and drinks at them and things like that. When Victor went home he got right on his fundraising plan. The elders were in favor and soon the church was saving all of their loose change in little tin cans. When we arrived two weeks ago we were blown away to learn that the congregations had saved almost 800 Reais in coins to help with the weekly parties.

Victor took this picture of all of the money that was contributed for our LST parties. His mom bought these little piggy banks for him to save his money in. :)

Even more impressive than the amount of money that was raised was the story of a young brother and sister, Izaías Jr. and Ana Luísa Gomes, and the initiative that they took in helping out. These two precious children decided that they would make homemade popsicles and sell them to the kids living on their street. They gave all of the money that they made from their popsicle sales to help with our parties. When Antenor, the preacher here, told me their story I was practically in tears. It has been so wonderful how the congregation here in Itu has gotten involved in the work that we are doing and it was so encouraging and moving to see the great big hearts of these two young children. This is just one of many ways that God has been providing for us and taking care of us. Antenor and our team wamted to honour Izaías and Ana Luísa in some way, we wanted to acknowledge their hard work and big hearts in front of the whole congregation. We made some certificates and I presented them to them on Sunday morning during the worship service.