TUESDAY, JANUARY 1, 2008
FELIZ ANO NOVO (Happy New Year)
Happy New Year everyone. I hope your holiday season was wonderful.

School's out for summer in Rio (remember, it's summer in Brasil right now), so everyone is on vacation until the first week of February. It gives our teachers a chance to rest a bit and it gives us a chance to gear up for the new school year.

The last day of school. Here's a photo of our last day of school (December 21) in which we had a Christmas party and handed out course completion certificates.

The really tall guy is Guna, Beatriz' fiance. I mentioned a couple of months ago that they were planning an October wedding, but Guna is German and there was a paperwork/permissions snafu, so the wedding date has been moved back until it can be cleared up. (It's not serious, just typical bureaucratic stuff.) As a result, Beatriz was able to stay in Brasil a little longer. I'll keep you up to date with her plans.

New website. I'm building a new website for Project Brasil with expanded descriptions of our work and a few other items that our friends and supporters will find interesting. My goal was to have it ready to launch today, but you know how that goes. Realistically, we're looking at January 5.

We'll be announcing several new things -- the expansion of our ministry into a new neighborhood, the development of our medical clinic, a new sponsorship program, a new English teacher, among other things. Don't forget to drop by early next week and see what I've come up with.

Looking at last year. Everyone it seems is posting "year-in-review" types of articles. I've taken some time over the last few days to evaluate the last year. 2007 was good, and it was also challenging. We were blessed with great volunteers and we have continued to see growth throughout the year. We finally got started on the medical clinic, which had been my goal from the beginning. We endured some hard times, a bit of a financial crunch, some heart-breaking tragedies in the community -- all things that come with doing ministry. 2007 was a year when the Project Brasil team proved to ourselves and to those close to us that we will not give up and we will not turn back.

Sometime around last July I put Tom Petty's I Won't Back Down on my MP3 player and I haven't taken it off. I listen to it just about everyday. It's become something of a theme for us. If I thought the RIAA wouldn't sue me into oblivion I would stream it here for you. Instead I'll just print the lyrics...

Well I won't back down, no I won't back down
You can stand me up at the gates of hell,
But I won't back down

No I'll stand my ground, won't be turned around
And I'll keep this world from dragging me down
Gonna stand my ground
And I won't back down

Hey baby ... there ain't no easy way out
Hey I will still stand my ground
And I won't back down

Well I know what's right, I got just one life
In a world that keeps on pushing me around
I'll stand my ground and I won't back down

Thanks for the inspiration, Tom.

Oh and one other thing, I dropped more than 40 pounds in 2007. I'm in pretty good shape, and getting better. I still have a way to go, but I can walk up the hill in Morro Azul now without the rest of the team wondering if they'll need to call a paramedic before I reach the top.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 8, 2008
WEBSITE UPDATES
Did I say the new website would be up on January 5? I think I meant January 15. Actually, it's all but finished, with the exception of converting the pages of this blog -- which, looking at the index on the left column, you can see that there are a few of them. I'm working on that right now, when I'm not writing sermons.

I created a media presentation of the song "Rain" by my friend Josh Brown.  Though it's not specifically about Brasil, I used several photos from Brasil in putting the presentation together. Here's a correct link to it. It's a 3:30 minute video of a great worship song. I hope you can take a minute to watch it.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2008
WEBSITE UPDATES

We hope you like to the new web design. We haven't yet converted all the blog files yet, but they'll be available here soon. Thanks for visiting the site!

We still have some bugs to work out ... there might be a missing page or a bad link, but we should have those cleared up by the end of the weekend.

By the way, you can help me with the fine-tuning. If you find a mistake, please let me know! You can send it to steve@stevemay.com

SUNDAY, JANUARY 20, 2008
WEBSITE UPDATES
I'm still fine-tuning the new website, so you might find an error here and there. The video presentations aren't working in all browsers, but I'll figure that out soon. Hopefully it will be operating at 100% in the next couple of days.

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