Category Archive for ‘Lives’ at Nate and Ruth Reutter Blog

Archive for the 'Lives' Category

Here We Come!!!

Published on July 25, 2010 in Lives, Music and Prayer & Praise. 3 Comments

We're coming!

Ready or not, here we come!!! On August 9th, we set out on our long awaited 2-month furlough! Needless to say, we are very excited and looking forward to showing off our precious girls to everyone (because honestly, I think everyone is most interested in seeing them than us – hahaha). Anyway, here is a quick overview of our schedule for the time we are in the US. We hope to see as many of you as possible.

August:
9 Leave Brazil
11 – 21 Road Trip Out East
23 – 28 Reutter Family Reunion
29 First Free Church (Moline, IL) — Nate’s preaching

September:
5 Geneseo Free Church (Geneseo, IL)
12 Crosspoint Community Church (Eureka, IL) — Nate’s preaching
14 – 23 Canada Trip
24 Open House at New Life Christian Church (Morton, IL — all Central Illinoisers welcome!)
26 New Life Christian Church

October:
5 Leave QCA for Florida
11 Leave for Brazil

So there you have it. If you’re in any of these areas when we’re around, we’d love to have you out when we’re visiting or during an open house.

Congresso 2010 Recap

If you haven’t read the update I wrote on this years’ Congresso da Paz, I encourage you to click here and read it! It was a huge success as 1,374 people made first time decisions to follow Christ! Two of those people came straight from our cell group and are now being discipled. Please pray for them during this critical time of their Christian walk.

What a thrill to lead tens of thousands of people in worship!

This year was also a big step for our worship team as well, as we were the headlining worship group and we launched the church’s first CD which I produced, Por Ti. Sales of the CD have been going well, in fact I’ve been told that you can buy pirated copies of it downtown Santarém, along with Hollywood’s latest movies. I guess that’s how you know it’s a success. When we get back from furlough, our team will be launching the CD nationally in Brazil as we will be leading worship for the 2010 MDA Conference in Santarém.

Next time you hear from us, it may just be in person! Until then!

Blessed and Legal!

Published on June 25, 2010 in Lives and Prayer & Praise. 4 Comments

Our new (to us) GM Zafira — half mini-van, half car, totally awesome.

Praise the Lord, thanks to your generosity, we are now driving a car that fits our needs and makes us legal — all without going into any debt! Yes — we were able to buy the Zafira after selling our old car to fellow Brazilian missionaries. They have been walking and riding the bus everywhere, so they are just as thrilled (if not more so) than we! We love the new car and it serves our needs juts perfectly. I can’t say THANK YOU enough to each and every one of you who donated and prayed for our car situation. God has once again proved faithful!

The Reutter fam piles in the car!

Anna digs the new car.

In one week begins our Congresso da Paz 2010, and I am heavily involved in leading praise and worship and launching our new CD during this huge evangelistic event. We have been fasting and praying for months in preparation for this event. We are praying for 2,000 people to come to know the Lord, so pray right along with us for a huge outpouring of God’s grace and salvation! The harvest in Brazil is great, and this is our biggest single evangelistic event all year long. Be praying also for the friends that we’re inviting — that they would feel compelled to come and for the Gospel to find fertil “heart” soil.

We are so very thankful to God for you and the impact you’re having in our lives and through our lives. May God continue to bless you and your family richly.

Following our PAZ missions theme, the new CD gets ready to launch with this new, big banner!

Car Update: Visa Commercials in Brazil

Published on June 17, 2010 in Lives and Prayer & Praise. 2 Comments

UPDATE: Since posting this blog post yesterday, we have reached our goal! Praise God! Now pray with us that our car sells quickly and for a fair price so that we can buy our new car.

Do they still run these Visa commercials in the States?

New Basic Ford Fusion in Brazil: $47,167
New Basic Ford Fusion in the U.S.: $19,695
New Basic Toyota Corolla in Brazil: $33,939
New Basic Toyota Corolla in the U.S.: $15,450
New Chevy Zafira Elite (full-size car that taxi drivers prefer) in Brazil: $38,328
Used 2005 Zafira Elite in Brazil: $16,667

Legal and safe transportation for the Reutter family in Brazil: priceless.

And I’m not making up these prices. Welcome to Brazil, where most things run at least twice as expensive as they do in the States. But thanks to your generosity, as of June 9 we have raised $6,100 towards our car and are much closer to being able to purchase a vehicle that we need. The owner of the car we would like to buy has lowered his price from R$35,000 to R$30,000 (or $16,667 at the current exchange rate of R$1.8 per dollar)! He is giving us to Monday before sending it to a used car lot, where the price will once again go back up. If we are able to sell our current car for $8,300, it leaves us just $2,300 more we need to raise by Monday! There are already some buyers interested. Praise the Lord!

Zafira: a cross between a mini-van and a car — just perfect for our needs.

A quick recap for those tuning in now: Brazil recently announced that starting June 9, they would enforce the child-seat safety laws that says each child under 7 years old needs to be in a car seat. This would make us illegal, because we drive a compact car around that only one car seat fits into (Ruth holds the other girl in her lap behind me, the driver). We immediately sent out an email to begin raising money — something we had planned on doing over our furlough, but due to the new law we had to start right away.

So many have already given, but if you haven’t yet, there’s still time to bless us and help us reach our goa by Mondayl! The success of our mission depends on our ability to get to the different places we minister.

CLICK HERE TO GIVE

Now, for some other interesting cost of living in Brazil facts:

Power

Energy in Brazil: $.27 per kWh (kilowatt hour)
U.S. (2009 yearly Illinois average LINK): $.03 per kWh

This one is tough! We Americans are used to air conditioning everything, but when you’re paying so much per kilowatt hour, it makes you think more than twice about turning on the air, even when it’s just a window unit.

Gas

$5.91 per gallon

Whoa! Next time you see $3.00 at the pump, thank the Lord that you don’t have to pay Brazil prices!

Other Odds & Ends

Pringles chips: $6.67
iPhone 3G: $1,200
Basic Netbook: $667

Note: all conversions are based on the recent exchange rate of 1.8 Reais per dollar

The CD is Ready! Now Comes the Congresso!!

Published on June 17, 2010 in Lives, Music, Prayer & Praise and Videos. 1 Comment

Our Wonderful Worship Team

Two months of intense work have paid off as I just sent off our worship team’s first praise & worship CD entitled Por Ti (For You) for duplication. Ten thousand copies are being made for the launch of the new CD as our worship team leads the worship for the annual Congresso da Paz, the huge 3-night evangelistic event featuring impressive dramas, sets, dances, skits, praise and worship, preaching and — most importantly —salvation! Thousands upon thousands pack out our local soccer stadium to be impacted by the phenomenal event. It is always a highlight in our year.

We covet your prayers as we ask the Lord for a powerful manifestation of His Presence that inspires worship and praise and opens the doors for the salvation of hundreds — even thousands of people! The event will happen Friday, Saturday and Sunday, July 2-4. The whole worship team has been fasting and praying since we started preparing for the event two months ago and we continue to fast until the event happens. Check out this short video of highlights from last years’ Congresso.

Another exciting aspect of this years’ Congresso is that all of the proceeds from the CD are going to help the church build its new building that will hold over 10,000 people. Our church right now has an estimated 42,000 people that meet in 45 services all over the city, so this project, we pray, will greatly help the church build it’s new, badly needed building. We don’t want growth to be stagnated because of logistics like building size!

The Girls Grow and Cheer

Aunt Hannah visits!

The girls continue to grow, grow, grow and are a huge success wherever we go. They have both learned how to shake their heads “no.” Needless to say, we are trying to teach them “yes.” They grab for everything, so going into certain stores has now become scary. They talk and talk and talk, even though no one understands them, but we pretend that we do. They love car rides and Anna has a new-found love for dogs.

This month is their first true introduction to soccer in Brazil as they compete in the World Cup. The girls wear their green and yellow colors proudly as we cheer Brazil on to what will be their 6th World Cup win!

The girls cheer on Brazil to victory!

Let the Praises Ring

Published on May 17, 2010 in Lives and Prayer & Praise. Closed

Since my last post I (Nate) have been super busy working on the new praise & worship CD for the PAZ Central Church in Santarém. We have reached the last week of recording and while we are close to finishing, there is still a lot to record (or re-record in some cases). Recording a CD is a lot of work — for example, for the last couple of months I’ve been working on all the arrangements for the songs, recording them as the arrangements were finished. Just to get an idea of how much time it takes, we spent over an hour just recording the base guitar part for a song on Saturday. That’s just one of the instruments on one of eleven songs! It’s a lot of work, but we are getting excited because we can start to hear the final product and are encouraged!

How we record depends on what we're recording. In this case, we recorded both guitar parts at once.

All the team members have been fasting and praying since the beginning of recording so that we — full of God’s Spirt — can make a CD that honors His Name! I really covet your prayers in these last couple of weeks of the CD production. Next Monday, we will begin the post-production process of mixing and then finally mastering. The CD needs to be ready by the end of May so that we can send it off to be mass-duplicated and have it ready in time for the Congresso in early July!

For God’s blessing and direction on how we prioritize our time and organize these last couple of weeks
That the recordings would be full of God’s Spirit
God’s blessing on our health, our families and our other responsibilities
For the Congresso — that many would come to know and worship Him!

We can’t thank God enough for you — your support, love and prayers that make a difference in all that we do. We look forward to soon announcing the new CD! Also stay tuned to our upcoming announcement on our late summer/early fall furlough schedule, which is near completion! We’d love to see you while we’re back visiting the States in August and September.

Nate and Ruth Reutter Blog