Furlough time is coming … again! January the first of 2004 we arrived back in Brazil for another term. After some months of getting settled in we took this picture.

The Lord has been merciful to use us in His vineyard. He used us to not just organize churches but to also begin other ministries with the children’s help. Daniel set up a better website – www.PalavraPrudente.com.br – with not only 1,000 Bible Studies in texts, but in mp3 and video as well. David edits many of the recorded sermons in the churches and uses them in the Thursday night two-hour radio program – Radio Globo 1380AM. By God’s grace we developed a four-year Seminary-level series of Bible Doctrine classes for the brethren in the churches which David is now supervising in an Online Seminary. Joy supervises the Book Room of the Imprensa Palavra Pruudente which is the distribution arm of the CDs, DVDs and books we produce. Joy, David and I review the material that translators do for us, which then supplies the printing and website ministries. Charity takes care of the bookkeeping for all that this work.

The six years of the 2004-2010 term have been busy and we look forward to reporting to many of the churches whom the Lord has used to provide the prayerful and financial backbone for all that was done.

I forgot to post this earlier!

After getting everything set up we wanted to have a service in our home. I had many workers in and out oft house preparing it for the family. I wanted to preach the Gospel more completely than I could just through tracts I had given most everyone during their work on the house. There were painters, metal workers, carpenters, plumbers, window installers, brick layers and others.

The garage was set up to receive the invited guests. I expected 50 guests. There were some problems with some but as you see, we had a good number come. Some came early and browsed the books shelves in my office.

After a hymn I recognized the former owner, the realtor, the painters and all the others who came.

A view of the forty or so who came.

We then sang some more hymns and then Marcelo preach a wonderful Christ-centered message.

We were greatly blessed with so many friends in our home to hear the Gospel in the hymns and from the Word of God preached.

It is hard to get a picture that shows the outside of the house. The walls are so high the house itself would be hidden except for the roof. However, here is a shot or two from outside the house that may give you an idea of how things are outside.

There is Charity coming out to the garage. The garage door is automatic and the garage is big enough for two cars. My office is right inside the door that Charity just came out of.

This shot is from the downstairs looking up the driveway ramp. The first metal grating is a kennel, and up from it is a small area that houses the liquid gas, or propane, tanks. A copper tube connects to the kitchen directly above it.

To get a better view of the house the Lord has blessed us with, you’ll have to come give us a visit!

The Lord’s blessings are upon us and we desire to let you know of it by way of pictures.

After five year of paying rent, the Lord blessed us with churches helping us to get a down payment and the bank to finance the rest. The cost of the house payment is only about $100 over what we were paying in rent. Only now, if the Lord blesses whenever we sell, we will see our investment return to us.

The land on which this house was built has a very steep decline from the street-side level to the back of the property. This was why the builder built a basement. Basements are very unusual in this part of Brazil. The builder, who was the previous owner as well, has a business selling teas made from all kinds of herbs, plants and roots. That which he used as a drying room became a sound and filming room:

That which was the weighing and packaging area for herbs and teas became our print room:

That which was a stock room for dried plants and roots became our book room and computer stations for editing video and audio:

There was a room that which was full of portable metal shelving. This was adapted into a family room:

There is even an area for two bedrooms plus this open area for a game room which is suitable for hosting meetings. As you can see this open area was used as an exercising area for the former owner/builder. The space for bedrooms became Daniel and David’s space for reposing (not shown):

Upstairs was to be just for our residence. However, the family thought best to use the front living room for my office. It worked out very well. I was able to set up shelves to display our books and CD/DVD production. Pastors Ciro and Josué visited and were blessed with books and Bibles.

There is of course a garage and there are bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen and a dining room:

There is a Winter Garden too. This is an area planned for ventilation and illumination inside the house. We adapted it to include a staircase to the basement.

To get a better view of the house the Lord has blessed us with, come visit us!

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The first time I came to Brazil I came to work with the deaf. Since then my ministry expanded to all, deaf and hearing. We are in church-planting work mainly but also do related ministries, such as Seminary-level classes for eight men; preaching in the four new churches to strengthen them in the faith; making visits in the homes here in Presidente Prudente and having home Bible Studies; counseling the brethren; handling the correspondence from the Website Ministry; managing the Printing and Book Ministries already mentioned as well as the CD/DVD Ministry. I do not do these alone as David supervises our on-line Seminary classes and Daniel films and edits our preaching and Seminary classes putting them on DVDs and the Website.

My hobbies include Stamp Collecting and Gardening. My favorite pastime is spending time with the family. My personal goals are to fulfill my calling faithfully to the end. An important verse to me is hard to pick out of the many that mean so much to me, but this one is very special: 2Co 8:12, “For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not.” Since my diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease in 2003, this verse continues to encourage me.

Among my favorite memories of the USA is the dear moment in September of 1978  when Peggy and I left for Brazil our first time together. My mother, grandmother, Mrs. Temple, Clara B Taylor and several young ladies from the church in Irving sent us off at the DFW Airport with their love and prayers. My favorite memories in Brazil center on either the births of each child or the organizational services of the churches the Lord has blessed us to be a part of.

As for advice to anyone desiring to come to Brazil for a visit, I would advise all to come with an open heart with a readiness to do whatever the Lord brings before you.

You can say what you want about Brazil being a third-world country and that is why their National Health System is so deficient. You can tell me about Sweden’s cradle-to-the-grave wonderful Nationalized Health System as a model (not to mention withholding tax of 55% of ones gross salary – Revista Epoca, 2006). However, anyone wanting “change” from private to Nationalized Health Care, would you send them to me here in Brazil please? And if they could have a very high fever from a kidney infection that was caused by the flu a week before, the lessons learned would be more profitable. Who will be the first, please step right up!

This last Monday Bro. Hirialte called me at noon on his first day on the job to tell me his condition was as described above. Seeing we were his family until his real family could move in to their house, we immediately stopped what we do on our day off top care for him. He and I went to our neighborhood health center where every citizen is promised health care. However, while Bro. Hirialte shivered from his high fever he had to listen to the head nurse on duty, “Sorry, but there is no doctor on duty this morning” You should go to the 24-Hour Hospital in such-and-such neighborhood.” Nothing could be done but that very thing, so off we went. Its just as well. The night before he was examined by a dermatologist when he had kidney pain. He could have been examined by a gynecologist. Pr Figueiredo was when he recently went to his neighborhood care center.

At the referenced 24-Hour Hospital we signed in and took our seat. The indicated seats lined the corridors that served as waiting rooms. Did the long corridors presaged a long wait? I asked the fellow next to me in line how long he had been waiting. He answered dryly, “one hour”. Guess the wait would be at least as long as the corridors. But we had company! A husband’s lap served as a pillow for his wife to lay her feverish head; a father’s shoulder supported his daughter’s tired body; many young ladies and men shifted on the chairs, tired from sitting so long, discomfort augmented from their sick condition; a stretcher used as a make-shift bed for one lady who could not sit any longer. No TV, no refreshments available, no air-conditioning. There were posters on the walls however. I refrain from describing them since this is written to a mixed crowd.

We were finally waited on and sent on to the city University Hospital for further care. Further care meant exams. To make a long story short, we did not get Hirialte back to our guest room until ten o’clock that night. Yes, his care was without charge. So were his exams. He footed the bill for the medication he would need to take for the next seven days. The visit and care verily was low-cost monetarily speaking. But figuring in the disrespect of being herded around like cattle, the time spent waiting to be attended, to have exams performed and read, somehow the cost really paid seemed great. Bro. Hirialte is much better now and completed his work-week in much better health than he began. We thank the Lord for the Health Care in spite of the costs. But, had he been financially able to choose private care, which IS available, he would be happier. Now that he is doing better, he needs a check-up upon completion of his meds. Thank you, we know where to go. We will go right to our neighborhood health care center of course. We hope a doctor with adequate experience in what he needs will be there this time.

You may object that the deficient health care here is because of gross corruption by the politicians here. You may claim that this would not happen in America. If America adopts nationalized health care, she’ll catch up with us in this area I am sure.

Babylon, probably because of what the book of Revelation has to say about this city, has always been synomomis with corruption and graft to me. The mention of Babylon always brings to mind a city where it makes no difference what virtue you may or may not have, who you really are, nor what your objectives are but how much money you have to grease the palms of any who are or seem to be the representatives of “justice”. The discovery of this modern-day Babylon happened while taking care of the Bro. and Mrs Justice and Bro. and Mrs Zuhars this week. You may ask, “Babylon is in Brazil?” I answer that it is not in Brazil but a very close neighbor. I and my beloved visiting brethren discovered that there is a Babylon in the Southern hemisphere and it is a country mistakenly called Paraguay. Whatever it is that describes Babylon to you, I am sure that Paraguay will fit the description.

Paraguay has the reputation of having bargains galore, providing contraband of any type and giving asylum for international criminal, dictators, and people with otherwise questionable characters. I usually figured that these surely were in the minority. As oftentimes is the case I believed that the media had painted sensationalistic word pictures of this neighboring country by leaving out any mention of the caring and moral population that must make up this neighboring country. Well, such wholesome people may exist in Paraguay, but they do not live in the city where we visited. We visited a city that is situated right on the other side of the Western border of Brazil in the country of Paraguay called City of the West.

Our adventures began as a whim some two years ago. I suggested naively that it would be fun and enlightening to take the visiting Justices and Zuhars to Paraguay on our way to visit the brethren in far Southern Brazil. And furthermore, perhaps it would be educational and fun to take a trip to Argentina as well. In the end we DID visit these countries and we did get an education but I’m not sure it was all that fun.

Now that that long-ago-planned trip is a reality, we stopped at the border Brazilian immigration office. As any foreign traveler would expect, we found out that to visit Paraguay we would need to officially leave Brazil and enter Paraguay with our passports duly stamped. We got the Brazilian exit stamp without much problem, and at no cost. So far, so good.

The real education began as we crossed the Bridge of Friendship out of Brazil and into Paraguay. What is it with all the teenage boys dressed in vests that looked “somewhat official” trying to help us find parking. Please notice the phrase “somewhat official”. In a city of corruption and contraband, to appear “somewhat official” is vastly important. But I ramble. For the life of me I could not understand why everyone was preoccupied with my finding a place to park. I came to visit and see the city, not stop and park. Time after time my half-opened window was filled with a hodge-podge collection of eager faces chatting away in Spanish & Portuguese hoping to sell me on the idea of using a referenced place to park. Consistently I firmly refused to fall into what I perceived as a tourist trap. I thought everyone else in the car was just about as confused as I was.

By the time we were across the Bridge of Friendship an official policeman told me to pull over. I did. As I got out I was swarmed again by more of the “somewhat official” collection of chattering teenagers of Paraguay-Indian-Spanish extract. They informed me that I needed to get my passport stamped by the Paraguay custom officials to prove that I was entering the country of Paraguay. This I knew but why were they so interested in telling me? Later I learned that the reason that they were so eager to do me a favor was to get a tip for the favor. It began to look like money was king and getting it was the name of the game. For some reason I began to feel we were in another city where graft ruled, namely: Babylon. The only difference is that this one is south of the equator.

Trying to do things legally, I led my entourage to the badly-lit, ancient office of the immigration department in Paraguay. We found the proper line and duly waited. When Sister Lee Ellen and another one of our group of sitting ducks had given their passports to the lower-level officials at the window an excited air of interest began to buzz among the higher-level officials sitting at desks in the back of the room. Soon the highest ranking official motioned for all of us to come into his trap, excuse me, I mean office.

We all dutifully filed in. He asked us our business, looked at our documents, made a quick Babylon-styled calculation and dropped the bomb: if we desired to have our innocent passports graced with a visa to permit us to visit Paraguay we would have to cough up a humble $200. Having checked on this procedure previously to our trip we all knew better. There should be no official cost. We refused to pay. Our decidedly negative attitude to fork over $40 a piece encouraged this high official to have an equally negative response: No pay? No entry stamp in your passport! We left without any negotiation. Cooperating with graft was not acceptable to our mindset, at least not yet.

As we left the immigration department feeling quite upset, once again we were among the teenage tip-seekers. They informed us that the high official was a liar and would you please tip us for the information? Wondering about the problem of our not getting an entry stamp in our passports I asked another border custom official what I should do. He said, “Come on into the country and do what you want.” He informed us openly that officially we were not in the country, but to not worry, “when you leave you need no exit visa since you really did not enter. You are not here”. Thus was our welcome to Paraguay! With the absence of legal absolutes was it any wonder that I thought we were in a Babylon?

Back in our car and a little more confused, but more decided to be independent, we set off to explore the city before us. With the city before us and we tourists ready to enjoy the sights, all would be well if it were not for the traffic. In the hour that we had entered the immigration department to have our passports stamped, until the time we stoically left the Paraguay Border office, it seemed that everyone who owned a car in South America had arrived in Paraguay and were stuck in the traffic right in front of us. Being stopped we were an easy target for those dear teenagers chattering away wanting to help us find a place to park while we shopped. It began to dawn upon me that in this city we probably needed the help they could offer. Very clearly this part of the world danced to the tune of a different drummer. Thus fifteen-year-old Juan Carlos became our guide for the rest of that morning.

I figured the rest of our group could get out of the kombi to shop while I waited in traffic with 15 year old Juan. I would catch up with them later. Juan, I learned, was one of 12 children whose father had “taken a trip” 4 years ago. Several of his siblings worked as guides with him also. The Lord blessed the time stuck in traffic with grace to preach unhurriedly of Christ to Juan. He admitted he had never heard of Christ before. I planted, we pray another will water even as we all seek the Lord to give the fruit of salvation in this soul. We pushed and shoved our way through the traffic until we finally made it to the beloved parking lot. There I paid the daily rate to leave my car in a protected place. Out of the Kombi we were soon rubbing shoulders with people of all ages and ethnic backgrounds who were either eagerly selling or fanatically finagling the price. Vendors had their wares attractively displayed in booths set up halfway on the sidewalk and halfway in the street. The intersections provided an added opportunity of gouging the unsuspecting and naive tourists from all over Brazil. With the street virtually blocked with traffic, making a way slowly through the opportunists salesmen, I was reminded of doctor reports describing the dangers of cholesterol buildup in the arteries of a pre-heart attack victim. Juan carefully negotiated me through this mass of humanity and goods and soon I was rejoined to the rest of our group.

The group had done pretty much most of their shopping while Jaun and I waited in traffic so back we went to the parking garage. No one had messed with the Kombi, so either this garage was really an honest place to park, or no one had time to do anything. What could anyone do to our Kombi anyway you ask? There is no radio to steal and no luggage to pilfer. However, there are four tires to steal besides the Kombi itself. The Lord kept us and our Kombi safe.

Back out in the traffic, Jaun told me that he could bribe the two traffic guards at the traffic circle to get our lane moving. We thought that was in order so we burped up about five dollars worth of Brazilian currency. After Juan returned our lane began to move while the two guards huffed on their whistles and aggressively directed traffic. With a wave of their hand here, whistle, and a hand flapping there, whistle, they moved the traffic through chocked arteries ever so slowly. Because we misinterpreted a signal from the second policeman, we had to go through this ordeal twice.

Soon we found ourselves at the Federal Police parking lot beyond which our guide could not go. We bid him farewell with a twenty-dollar bill and found our way out of the country being directed by official uniformed policemen through a back entrance onto the Bridge of Friendship and into Brazil again. We did not need to get an exit stamp in our passports since we had not received an entrance stamp. Remember? We were not there.

Later I wondered if the choked traffic was actually provoked by the same policemen who benefited from the greasing of the palms by those who needed to get somewhere. If this were true perhaps the burglary of the vehicles parked on the street was orchestrated by the owners of “safe” parking garages. There is no reason for this not to be as it seemed.

Back on Brazilian soil, and I being still shook up with all the shenanigans in our Babylon, I drove right through the Brazilian customs department without stopping. Only later did I perceive that we all would someday have a problem with not having our passports duly stamped with a proper entrance stamp. A day later and several miles down the road we stopped at the border of Argentina and explained our problem to the Brazilian Federal Police there. They understood our explanations and kindly got our passports up to snuff thus closing this chapter on our trip to Babylon and back.

Written and edited by Missionary Calvin Gardner with helpful commentaries from his traveling companions

After at least one year, Peggy, Charity and Joy can now live normal lives. The buckets and mops have been put away in their proper places, the beds positioned in their rightful places, and the dining room table does not need to be pushed up against the buffet and they can watch the storm clouds gather without adding extra work. to their already full agenda.

What can make so many changes? Why, its the answer to many prayers, both here and there!

What is that answer? A new roof. All new rafters and a few new major beams plus 2,300 brand new tiles was part of the answer to so many prayers. The other part of the answer was the heart of the landlord being open and made willing to spend almost $2000, for all the material and labor. Now what are we waiting for? For the rains to come tumbling down! Enjoy the pictures.

The weather report said we had a seven-day window of no rain. The builder said he could do it in that time. So we were all programmed for them to start on Wednesday and finish the next Wednesday at the latest.

First they order the materials. No one can do anything till the materials are delivered. Not even preparatory work. The real estate office was supposed to order things a few days ahead. To their credit, the rafters and beams were ordered and delivered before the start date. But what about the roof tiles? Cement? Sand? I almost ordered that myself, but one more call to the Real Estate office got these ordered and finally delivered. One no-rain day wasted.

By the end of Friday, the back half of the house was uncovered, old rafters pulled off, two new crossbeams added and new rafters nailed into place. Nice going. The whole back-half was finished by Saturday afternoon. Could the front-half be done in three days were up and the rains began?

The old tiles were removed, old rafters pulled up, two new beams added. Monday came and went when the work ended with only the front half uncovered.

Tuesday came and went with the work undone, so did Wednesday. The sky was gathering clouds but there was no rain. By Thursday noon, the work was done! Now you can pray that the rains come again.

The Lord’s Day of October 14, 2007 was an especially blessed day for the Bible Baptist Church of Três Lagoas.

First of all, about ten young people and visitors of the Independent Baptist Church of Pereira Barretos were visiting. They were there to encourage the brethren in Três Lagoas by helping to pass out tracts. It is always nice to have visitors!

Secondly, the church in Três Lagoas was to observe the ordinance of baptism this very day.

Bro. Eduardo Martins was recently called out of his sins by the Gospel and desired to confess his faith publicly. He had been brought up in a Christian home but did not know what it was like to have a new nature. After moving out of his father’s home for reasons of employment and to follow the dictates of his deceitful heart, he delved into the living according to the flesh. Then, feeling empty, he began to seek for answers for his lack of fulfillment. He was brought to the realization of his lost condition through the reading of a book by Richard Baxter. By God’s grace he sought pardon before the Righteous Judge pleading the blood of Christ. Fruits worthy of repentance have been manifested clearly before the world and God’s people alike.

I had the assistance of Bro Eliseu Martins, Eduardo’s father, as we baptized in a small pond on the outskirts of the town. Following the baptism we gathered again for a message of God’s Word.