Dear Friends of ministry, Greetings from the UK! It is always a pleasure to be able to write to you telling you the things that God has been doing in our midst. As a matter of fact the things that have been happening here can not have any other explanation except that the Lord we serve is at work. In this report I would like to sum up what has been happening in our ministry (mine and yours) since we arrived in the UK in July of 2006. As you might know the aim of the Amigos Project is to serve in a holistic way the Portuguese speaking migrant community living in East Anglia. We estimate that there are over 200,000 thousand Portuguese migrants living this area of the UK. We have been working through local Baptist churches that are willing to reach out to this community and share with them the love of Christ and help them to integrate in the local society. We also are working with local authorities and NGO’s making sure that the voice of the vulnerable migrants is heard. At the moment we are serving the Portuguese community in four ways: Services and Bible studies in Portuguese The aim is to provide opportunities to Portuguese speakers to get to know and worship God in their own language and integrate into church life in UK. Listening ear Opportunities for people to come and share about their problems, difficulties and concerns. Food programme Food parcels to help those who are facing financial problems as a result of debt, low income or just being new to the country. This programme aims to attend urgent needs rather than creating dependency. ESL programme Because the Portuguese community needs to integrate and have a better quality of life, ESL (English as a second language) can be a powerful tool to achieve this objective. At the moment we are running the project already in five different cities through local Baptist churches. Each one of them has already a bible study group in place. I would like to single out what God is doing at Dereham Baptist church which has been running the project since September of last year. We started there with a small group of five people and now they are about forty five people at attendance. We are having our first water baptism in May. Testimony Ueder, is a living testimony of what God is doing here and the importance of such a project. The following is his testimony. My name is Ueder, I am a Brazilian with an Italian citizenship. I came to the UK in July of 2005 looking for a better quality of life and to make some money to help my family which had a small business bankrupting. When I arrived in the UK I hoped I could stop with my drug addiction that I have had for nine years, but on the contrary things here became worse for me. I became more and more dependent on drugs since here I felt more lonely. Life for me was a misery. Sometimes I would go to work and even there I had to use drugs to fill up my empty life. For some reason I had this feeling that I was Mr. Nobody even God did not care for me. Life was a disaster for me. Things started changing a bit when I met my partner Sheina. She was very loving and caring for me even though I could not leave the drugs. One day I heard that at the local Baptist church there was a Portuguese speaking service. I had been living here for two years and that was the first time that something like that was being put in place. I went to the church and there I heard how special I was to God, about His love for me and about the power He had to transform my life and set me free from drugs. I immediately accepted Him as my saviour and was set free. I went to the listening ear program to have emotional support which helped me a lot. I have been serving him now for nine months and away from drugs. I play drums and the bass guitar in the worship band and I now feel very special. God transformed my life! Please keep praying for me as I want to serve Jesus faithfully. The aim of the project is to have lives transformed as the life of Ueder was. Please keep praying and supporting this ministry through the World Mission Offering. It is a pleasure to have you and your church as partners in what God is doing here in East Anglia through the “AMIGOS PROJECT”. May God bless you richly. In Christ, Jorge and Hermelinda Damasceno IM/ABC Missionaries in the UK Amigos Project coordinators Bringing the community together after the service ESOL classes