The Comunidade Batista (Community Baptist) held its first service on March 31, 2002.  This baby work is the first church plant of Tim and Andrea Blazer and their colleagues, Dave and Valerie Smallman.    In June 2008, we joined with our sister ABWE church plant here in Bauru and chose a new name of  "Comunidade Batista Vida Nova".  This is a combination of the two previous church names.  In joining these two church plants, we also gained new colleagues, Bill and Sue Spoelhof.  Now the story continues as we seek to reach our city, state, country, and world for Christ.

What type of ministries does this church plant have?  

We are still in the process of growing this church and are constantly integrating new things into this ministry. We current offer:  weekly Sunday night service (including a praise band/worship ministry, nursery ministry, children's church ministry), mid week prayer time, several small groups meeting in homes,  Saturday night youth group and a college and career group, counseling ministries, outreach events, and several one on one discipleship studies.  We are developing a new ladies tea/ministry of encouragement,  membership classes, membership growth seminars, and membership ministry seminar.

Have you ever thought, "what exactly does a missionary do?".  In our case, we are church planting missionaries in Bauru, Brazil.  What does this entail? 

 First, we are the pastor and wife of a young church plant.   In this role, Tim preaches on a rotation with our partners, Dave and Bill.  He also leads a small group and attends the weekly prayer time.  Recently he started a Bible study on Saturdays for University students and Sunday nights for engaged and newlywed couples.   The pastors do visitation and follow up with visitors and members in need.  They have planning sessions each week to plan for the next service as well as calendar and future event/direction planning for the church.  In this role as pastor, Tim also teaches several weekly discipleship Bible studies and counseling sessions.  Of course as Pastor, Tim is also involved in the ministry of caring with hospital visits and visits with those with physical and spiritual needs.  Tim is involved in sometimes leading music in the worship service and plays his guitar.  As "president" of the legalized church, Tim oversees most legal matters including taxes and government requirements.  Andrea helps with Tim's secretarial "stuff" and coordinates all children's ministries.  She also works with our colleagues, Val and Sue, to plan any hospitality dinners, ladies' ministry events, etc      and the list goes on......

As we juggle all of these hats, we also have paperwork and reporting required for our mission agency in the states and all of our supporters.  We are committed to the importance of communication with our churches and ABWE and try our best to keep the updates frequent and detailed.

 Above all, we want to serve!  We want to be involved where God is working and be available to be used of Him.  As God allows us to integrate new ministries and train Brazilians to take over current ones, we pray that He will be glorified.  We are here in Brazil, to glorify Him by sharing His word.  Our commitment and prayer is that we keep our focus on the reason we are here.  And as that comes into focus, all of these "hats" that we wear and pressures that we face appear to be nothing in comparison to the joy of serving and obeying!