We are pleased to announce that as of August 2007 Anderson Maestri has accepted the position of minister at Overland. We are pleased and fortunate to be able to hire a person with Anderson's credentials. We have known Anderson for the past 1 ½ years as he worked in the capacity of our associate minister.
   Anderson was born in Brazil, came to the United States in January 1998 to pursue a college career. He graduated from Freed-Hardeman University Cum Laude with a Bachelors of Arts in Bible in May 2002.  He has since then been living in St. Louis where he met his wife, Allison. She is currently finishing her accounting degree at UMSL.
   One advantage which Anderson brings to the table is his knowledge and experience with diverse cultures. We see his trilingual abilities as an asset to the work at Overland, as you can probably deduce, he is fluent in English and Portuguese. Spanish comes naturally as it closely relates to Portuguese (in his words: "I like to say that I can communicate in Spanish, my 'Potuñol' gets mixed up a little.")
   We are glad to welcome him to the family at this new position, and we are confident in his knowledge of the Scriptures, his soundness in preaching, and his care for the souls at the congregation. Anderson also has been involved in missions work. He organized and took a group down to Brazil in 1999 and 2001. This past summer he preached at Vitoria Church of Christ. As youth director, he took our teens on a mission trip to Northern Illinois where they assisted and fellowshipped with the Freeport congregation.
   During his years at the Christian Academy, he was highly involved with the athletics program. He coached soccer 4 out of 5 years, and taught private lessons on both soccer and volleyball. If your team is not playing on a Sunday, he would love the invite to come play with your team.
   We see Anderson as a highly motivated, knowledgeable and great common sense guy. We hope that you will have a chance to meet him as you decide to pay us a visit. We are sure that he would be glad to simply meet you, or even sit down for a Bible study.