July is vacation month here in Brazil. The PAZ base here in Santarém always kicks vacation off with a blast: Congresso da Paz — 3 nights of lights, cameras and action for the Kingdom of God! Praise and worship, preaching, huge sets, choreography, drama, dance — it’s like a great big Christian olympics! This year Ministério Paz (our worship team) had the privilege of leading worship at this great event. Watch the video I made to see how it went, but I’ll give you a little bit of a teaser: 647 lives were changed forever!

Our worship team has been traveling more and more, ministering all over Northern Brazil. In July our team led a praise and worship conference in the MDA vision in Fortaleza. Not only did we minister praise and worship, but Pastor Welson and I ministered 2 sessions each (for a total of 4 sessions). In addition we held workshops and several other practical sessions. My friend Pastor Welson is responsible for praise and worship at Central Church in Santarém as well as the youth. He also plays acoustic guitar with us on the team. He is a small guy of humble origins (a river community) with a HUGE God! Under his covering there are more than 900 cell groups (that’s almost 10,000 people)! He inspires me so much.

Then this last week our worship team led worship for the week-long MDA Conference in Southern Brazil. This conference is based off of the conference we have in Santarém every October that teaches the vision of cell-groups and one-on-one discipleship. Interest in the MDA Vision is just exploding all over Brazil. For example, last year (the 2nd year of the MDA South Conference) there were a little over 200 people signed up. This year there were over 800 pastors and leaders from all over the South, hungry to learn.

I was able to share our testimony of losing our first daughter Anna Rebecca and how God worked so powerfully in our lives when we continued to seek and humble ourselves before Him. Our testimony is directly tied to the song “Uma Vida” (One Life) that is on our church’s CD. It is based off of the powerful phrase Ruth’s grandfather Melvin Huber used to quote:

Only one life to live, ‘twill soon be past;
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

I finished the song two days before we lost Anna Rebecca, and it stood as a prophetic message to me to keep going on no matter what.

It’s been so wonderful to see people respond with open hearts to the vision that burns in our hearts — that making disciples of the nations is the priority of every believer, whether pastor, teacher, musician or groundskeeper — then ministry in your field comes next. When this vision catches on, your regular “Joe Blow” Christian can do all things as he is equipped with the Holy Spirit to testify to the nations and make disciples! How exciting! It’s easy to get caught up by how people respond to the big Congressos, events and conferences, but they all exist because of what’s happening on the daily basis — regular people, filled with the Holy Spirit, leading cell groups, winning souls, discipling — growing the Kingdom of God. It’s the bread and butter of what we do, all stemming from a healthy time along with God.

While I travel, Ruth stays home with the girls. It’s always so wonderful to get back to them and hug them all! The girls are growing so fast and learning new things every day. Life with them has been a little bit of heaven with a lot of work! But it’s all worth it!

This coming week I prepare to head out on the rivers with our team from New Life Christian Church which is here to minister to a local river village and help build a church! So please pray for us while we minister and pray for Ruth while she stays at home to take care of the girls. We couldn’t do what we do without your support and prayers, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We appreciate that so many of you give, even sacrificially, so that the work of God can continue in Brazil while the Spirit is moving so powerfully. Those of you who are reading and not yet participating financially — we would love to have you join us with a simple donation. We could really use the gift, as the dollar has dropped significantly and we are at about 60% of what we were originally. We love you and appreciate you,

Nate — for Ruth, Rebecca and Anna

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.

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!

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

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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!

We had such a wonderful Congresso da Paz last weekend. Along with playing on the worship team this year, I also filmed, edited and produced a highlight video for the amazing event! This video was played for tens of thousands of people in all the local PAZ Sunday services – 33 locations altogether! Now, without further chatter, here’s the Congresso video!!

Praise God for such a wonderful Congresso! It makes producing a highlight video much easier when so many great things happened! I had almost an hour of footage of lots of great moments, so I selected some of what I thought was best and got it down to 10 minutes. I continued to whittle away, moving different sections around, intersplicing the Prodigal Son drama with the responses of people until it felt tight. It was then that I could write the music to go along with what was happening in the sound track. I only had one afternoon to work on the music, so I was quite happy with how it turned out. I’m posting the track here for you to download and listen to. Enjoy!

Congresso 09 Soundtrack | 5MB | by Nate

Click here to see great photos and read more about the Congresso.

This morning as I was working on an update for the Project AmaZon website (it’s a great update- go check it out!), I was listening to my music in iTunes. Set to “Random,” the song When I Survey came on – a piano solo/arrangement I did several years ago while I was worship pastor at First Free in Moline. It and another Easter Hymn I love called Were You There? made their way onto the 1st CD I ever produced, Sing the Power: A Collection of Hymns As the lyrics of the wonderful hymn went through my head, I was filled with praise and wonder at the love of God all over again! Hallelujah! I wanted to share these two songs with you today, on Good Friday, the day we especially remember what God did for us. May your Easter be filled with powerful worship to the Risen King! Enjoy these arrangements. (You may want to right-click these links and choose to save the files.)

When I Survey | 4:49 | 6.8MB | Arranged and played by Nate

Were You There? | 7:18 | 10.4MB | Arranged and played by Nate