Pastors Gilmar and Eliane Alves, along with their two teenage daughters, recently packed up everything and moved from Massachusetts to Orlando, Fla., to plant a Brazilian church there. This church is being founded with the help of the Lowell House of Prayer in Lowell, Mass., where Marco Romeiro, one of Cornerstone Church Network’s Vision Architects, is Senior Pastor.

The Lowell House of Prayer has a heart for mission around the world. In 2006 they spent more than $80,000 on mission and expect to do the same this year. Their Brazilian church plants include Martha’s Vineyard, Boston and Fitchburg, Mass., and now Orlando. Another is planned soon in Charlotte, N.C.

Since 1985 thousands of Brazilian people have immigrated to the U.S. seeking work and a better life. Approximately 120,000 people of Brazilian heritage now live on American soil, including Catholics with a nominal connection to the church, spiritualists (those involved in witchcraft), and the unchurched. In fact, less than 5 percent attend church at all.

The Alves family is eager to establish the Orlando House of Prayer and minister to the more than 25,000 Brazilian people living in the Orlando area. Their most urgent need is an appropriate place to meet for services. Currently Gilmar is bivocational, but he hopes soon to be able to devote himself more to the vocation of pastoring he feels God has called him to. He says, “The most exciting thing is preaching the gospel and seeing people give their hearts to Jesus. That’s the only mission of the church.”

Gilmar and Eliane were ordiained to pastoral ministry in 2003 and are financially supported by the Lowell House of Prayer and by Cornerstone Church Network. If your church is interested in participating in church planting on a scale larger than you could as a single church, consider giving to this vital church planting ministry. Contact Marco Romeiro at prmarco@comcast.net or phone him at (978) 970-3869.

INTERNATIONAL LEADERSHIP ACADEMIES
ILA, a project of Campus Crusade for Christ, is looking for churches to partner and "adopt" national church planters being trained in Nepal, Bangladesh and India. International Leadership Academies (ILA) has been equipping national church planters, pastors and church leaders in Russia, Belarus, Nicaragua and South Asia since 1992.

The partnership in South Asia is six years. The partner churches are encouraged to send their pastors or leaders to teach for a week or two during the academy and to provide ongoing training, teaching and encouragement for the church planters during the church multiplication process. The partner churches fund the nine month training cycle and the church planters-on a declining scale over a five year period-as they establish new multiplying churches. The low cost of living for the national church planters ($80-100/mo./church planter) make it feasible for North American partner churches to adopt a number of them in a region. Financial and ministry accountability is overseen by Campus Crusade for Christ South Asia. Short term mission trips utilizing people from the partner churches to do evangelism or other projects are also possibilities.

For more information check the ILA website at www.ilaccc.org. You can also contact David Neibling at (651) 459-7379 or email dneibling@comcast.net.

TEAM
TEAM is an evangelical, nondenominational, international mission whose purpose is to help churches send missionaries to establishing reproducing churches in other nations to the glory of God. TEAM has approximately 750 missionaries serving in more than 40 countries. TEAM is clearly about helping churches send missionaries, but the responsibility for sending them lies squarely on the shoulders of the local church. The missionaries work to establish churches, but they also promote the missionary-sending efforts of those churches. To quote TEAM, “Our work is focused on the church from beginning to end. We engage existing churches in cooperative efforts to establish new churches worldwide and then encourage those churches to establish even more new churches.” For more information, please visit their web site at www.teamworld.org or call toll-free (800) 343-3144. TEAM is headquartered in Wheaton, Ill.


WORLD RELIEF
Cornerstone is pleased to partner in ministry with World Relief. For more than 60 years, World Relief has provided life-saving aid and development for countries throughout the world. The organization believes the church must be the “hands of Jesus,” and that the local church offers the best context for reaching those in need of spiritual, social or physical aid.

World Relief works through local churches to:

• Reach – Bridging distance and lack of awareness to link suffering people and those who are eager to help.
  Respond – Mobilizing and equipping local churches to be God’s agents of healing and restoration in times of disaster, war, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.
  Invest – Training and educating marginalized people and their communities, and teaching them to pass along these skills to others.
  Transform – Providing opportunities for churches to engage themselves in their communities, leading to physical, social and spiritual transformation.

World Relief in action
In 2001, a fire destroyed Huy Meng’s home when it swept through a Phnom Penh slum; the family lost everything. The government relocated them to the village of Sain Sok, providing only a small parcel of land and a tarp, which the family still uses as their main shelter.

Things began to change for the positive when Huy Meng met Darline, the CREDIT Program promoter in Huy Meng’s neighborhood. Darline introduced Huy Meng to World Relief’s microfinance program, CREDIT, and showed her how to make soybean milk using a large grinding stone. Now, every day, Huy Meng rises before the sun to grind soybeans into the white liquid that is a popular drink in Cambodia. She says, “I get up in the morning around 3 o’clock to help my husband.” She fills the small plastic drink bottles and loads them into the family’s small cart. Her husband sells the soybean juice at the village schoolyard allowing them to make about $1 to $1.25 a day.

Right now, most of Huy Meng’s income goes toward buying food for the family. But, Huy Meng dreams of one day expanding the business. “I need the money to build a home,” she said. Her goal is to one day build a wooden house for her children instead of the tarp shelter. Darline and Huy Meng are still friends and have built their relationship over the years. Over the course of their friendship, Darline shared with Huy Meng and other CREDIT group members about the teachings of Jesus Christ. As Huy Meng saw Jesus’ love being demonstrated before her, she accepted Jesus and attends a local church along with her family.

World Relief’s CREDIT Program’s results are dramatic. CREDIT's role as a witness of Christ's love is strengthened through investment in staff who meet weekly for bible study and devotions and receive teaching at an annual staff retreat. CREDIT Cambodia promotes not only social and economic change, but also spiritual transformation.

For more information about World Relief, to read about others who have been helped or to see how your church can become involved in this dynamic organization, visit their web site at www.wr.org. You may also e-mail at worldrelief@wr.org or phone toll-free (800) 535-5433.