June Newsletter

Thank You

Thank you again for your tremendous support for the team. Thanks to those of you who brought your dirty cars to the car wash. We made a little over $ 600 and saw a great example of the team working together. We have received approximately $ 500 in change plus a large quantity of uncounted pennies. Thanks also go to the folks that are raising money and purchasing supplies for us to take along.

Progress Report

May has been a very busy and productive month.
Airline tickets have been received and checked.
The three minor birth certificates which were rejected have been redone and are either in the hands of the document service or are on the way.
We continue to have loose change coming in and are presently nearing $500. In addition we have a large quantity of uncounted pennies.
Our materials list is posted and we’ve already had people committing to provide some of the items.
Commissioning service is being planned.
Rooms have been booked in Atlanta for night of July 24.
Packing crates are here and Greg is preparing them.
Nancy has secured a manikin for the CPR training.
Nerick has found a source for the seed beads she will use in the “jewelry making” sessions with the girls.
· We are very close to having all team members fully funded and we are truly grateful for that.

Prayer Needs

Spiritual preparation: Preparing our hearts to serve as a team in whatever way we can.
Travel arrangements: Pray for our visas to be processed without further problems.
Work in Brazil:
Ø Clarity in planning – knowing God’s will in what He plans for us to do
Ø Supplies and materials for the work we’ll be doing
Funds:
Ø Fund raising efforts
Ø Keeping trip expenses low

Answered Prayer: Our airline ticket prices did not go up. Fundraising progress.


Fund Raising
‘Change My World’
We will continue to accept change (and bills) until we leave for Brazil.


Getting to Know The Team

Bethany Ashton Simmons

Bethany is the daughter of Eddie and Cheryl Simmons. She was born in Seneca on Oct 10, 1990 and has been attending BLBC since she was 7 months old. She became a Christian when she was 12 years old. Bethany has 3 older brothers. Bethany is a rising senior, class of ’09 and will be attending USC Upstate and majoring in Nursing (RN). Her favorite color is pink. She is a varsity & competition cheerleader and honors chorale member at Seneca High School.

Hannah Smith

Hannah is 15 years old and just finished her freshmen year at Oconee Christian Academy. She has grown up in Seneca and has attended BLBC as long as she can remember. This is her first foreign mission trip and she cannot wait to see the amazing things God has in store for our team. She says, “I know that we will be used in mighty ways.”

Alan & Susan Hilliard

Alan(57) and Susan(54) are active members of Taylors First Baptist Church, with a commitment to local and world missions. Alan is sales manager of Palmetto Plating Company in Easley, while Susan is a K-5/first grade special education teacher at Brook Glenn Elem. School in Taylors. Alan and Susan grew up in the Greenville area. He is a graduate of The University of South Carolina and she is a graduate of Furman University. Both are excited about the opportunity to serve in Brazil.

Eddie & Linda Schrader

Eddie was born in Six Mile and Linda in Pickens. They lived in Six Mile for 26 years and raised their two children there. In 2002 they moved to Fort Mill, SC because of Linda’s job with Duke Energy. They moved to West Union in 2006. Eddie is retired from Clemson University and works part time there. He also does video engineering work as a contractor and is an artist and teaches art at Blue Ridge Arts Council. Eddie and Linda have been involved in local and national missions work, having been on a mission trip almost every year since 1981. They have been doing mission work at orphanages in Feira de Santana and Fortaleza, Brazil since 2004. They believe they will be serving in Brazil for extended periods of time after Linda retires.

Why Scrapbooking?

Have you wondered why a team of people would travel 6000 miles at substantial expense to “scrapbook?” It might seem a frivolous thing to do but there is a very valid reason behind the idea. Most of us take for granted that we can go to a photo album or a CD of digital images and see tangible items that reflect our family history. We have mementos that we have collected through the years and some of us can even trace our families back many, many decades or even centuries.
That is not the case with the children at the LAR. Many of them have no idea of their history, they don’t know their parents, grandparents, or siblings. They show up at the LAR with only the clothes on their backs and sometimes even those clothes must be destroyed. They don’t know their birth dates nor do they have any items that help them to recall their history. At the request of Paige Anderson, we will be helping the children to build a record of their history at the LAR thru the use of scrapbooks. We will be working with the children to create their scrapbooks, we will take with us photos of past trips to the LAR and we will have the capability of printing photos while we are at the LAR. The scrapbooks will be very scalable and over the course of the next few years, we will be able to work with each child to build their own tangible history and as they grow up and leave the LAR, they will have a history to take with them wherever they go.



Brazil Team Blog Created

We have created a blog to help keep you up to date on what is going on with the team before, during and after the trip. During the trip, if technology works, we plan to do daily audio update featuring one of the team members. This will be posted on the blog so you can click on the update icon and listen to that update. We will also post written comments as we have internet access.

The blog address is:

http://blbcdavislar2008.blogspot.com/




Questions About The Trip

Trip: Linda Schrader 638-8940 Fund Raising: Deloris Campbell 882-4595