Despite the lockdown, we have managed to create a board for our new non-profit, ATV (Associação Transformando Vidas – Transforming Lives Association). Over the last couple of weeks, we (Ted, Patricia, Robert, and Roxanne) have met with each of the candidates for our board and all of them have said yes! We also made the decision to leave the current school as is, and build the middle and high school on the new property we’re in the process of purchasing under the new association. The children from the existing Mãos Unidos school (United Hands) will graduate from grade five (the end of their elementary school cycle) and move to the new school for middle school (sixth through ninth grades) and then high school (tenth through twelfth grades). The new property (we trust the paperwork will be completely finalized this month!) has a house on it, which we can adapt to be used for our upcoming sixth-grade class next year, while the middle school facility is being built.
TOP: Property we are purchasing to build the new school.
BOTTOM: Our interview with Fatima and her husband (center).
Roxanne has been asked to be the Director of the new school. We interviewed Fatima about the possibility of being Assistant Director and she readily accepted. With tears in her eyes, Fatima explained that she has been buying lottery tickets over the last couple of years (her sister won the lottery a few years back!) with the hopes that a jackpot win would allow her to build a school like the one we described to her. Fatima is a math teacher, she served as Secretary of Education here in Vera Cruz for several years and is about to graduate from teacher’s college at the age of sixty. She has heard in her teacher’s college classes of a system where the students have an extended day at school to include other topics like music, gym, and art, but has never seen such a school! That which so many take for granted in North America would be her dream come true in the rural Northeast of Brazil!
Left: Pastoral couple, co-laborers with our new association.
Please pray for:
The property sale to be finalized so that we can take possession of the property and begin renovations on the house.
The government approval for our new association.
Our residency to be approved before our trip North at the beginning of August for Ted and Patty’s wedding.
Solid, healthy relationships with all those involved in the ministry here.
For God’s provision and protection over our children and granddaughters back in Canada.
P.S.:
The Lord just gave us two precious additions to our family. Three-month-old kittens, Copper and Daisy, are brother and sister. Their mother was a pregnant Siamese rescued from the street. Though obviously mixed, they have some Siamese traits, the blue eyes and darkened tips. They live up to the term “Scaredy Cats,” as they only allow the two of us to get close to them! They curl up at the foot of our bed each night and they wake us up each morning by nipping at our moving toes and chasing each other over our sleeping bodies! It is surely a sweeter wake-up call than our noisy neighbour blaring his music!
In Christ's love, from Northeastern Brazil,
