Brazil News

Hello Friends and Family,

Just wanted to update you/or inform you of our plans for Brazil!

If this is brand new news to you, we will update you! Luke and I have been called to become missionaries in Curitiba, Brazil. We feel a strong call to show God's love to children in the favelas (slums) and on the streets. In Brazil prostitution is legal, and often starts at a very young age. Many very poor families sell their children into child pornography in order to survive. Many young girls become prostitutes as young as 9 or 10 years old, just like their mothers. Most children in the favelas do not know their fathers. Our hope is to be able to show them that they do have a family, a Father that loves them. We hope to work with Lar Hope, a Brazilian organization which has an orphanage in Curitiba.

Luke's brother Nic, and his family also received this call, and we are a part of the ministry they started, Shores of Grace. (More information can be found on shoresofgrace.com) Nic and his family are moving on September 1st to Curitiba.

The plan is to put our house up for sale next June, and moving after it sells.

So Luke and I have our next mission to Brazil scheduled for June 20th to the 28th!! We are both so excited to be able to go down together and make an impact in peoples lives this year. This will be my first trip and Luke's second time in Brazil.

We scheduled this trip so we could be there when Nic (Luke's brother) wasn't and no other events were happening so that we could focus solely on helping the poor. Our goal while we are down there is to continue to strengthen our relationships with the favelas so that we are able to be trusted by them to provide food and basic medical care.

We have gathered donations of shoes from people in our church and community to take down and give to the kids so they have the opportunity to go to school like normal children and we are working on gaining more monetary support to get as much healthy natural foods as we can for them while we are there. We are still working up a complete itinerary for the trip to know what will be happening when but aside from that Luke is going to be speaking at a church in Curitiba with a 2000 + attendance to raise awareness and gain support from the Brazilian side of our mission for when we move. Everyone has been very helpful both in America and Brazil in trying to get us there.

So unfortunately we could not take the kids with us on this trip because of the cost 3 passports 3 visas and 2 plane tickets would have meant needing an additional 5000 dollars to fly them down. We really wanted to because they play an integral part in our ministry, and we will miss them terribly but thank you to all of you who are helping out with watching them while we are gone.

We are in need of one or two cloth suitcases (not hard shell) to put shoes in to take down with us. We would not be bringing them back with us, and we don't care how ugly they are! hehe.

If anyone is interested in helping through donating money let Luke or I know. We are a legal 501c3 so it is deductible and recognized if that is something anyone was thinking about. Thank you for being here for us through so much over the past year. We love you all very much!

Love, Alisan & Luke