Bits March

I am pretty sure April will be moving month and I am even more sure that we are excited. Construction has taken up too much of my time and finishing will be a big relief for us. We are hoping that we will have enough money leftover to throw a party and invite all those who helped on the house, whether by working on it, or the store people with which we have built relationships to other friends as well. We will see what happens, but we would like to use it as a platform to invite people deeper into our lives. 

This month we were able to have a new family come over for dinner. We are hoping that they will be interested in coming to the study some time. We are on our 6th week in a new study out of the Purpose Driven Life book and it is generating some good discussion. We have had some family members from some of our participants show up at our study and we weren't really expecting it.

The football team participation has died down in both the studies and in the team practices. I am hoping that a church group coming in July will help give a good shove to the team in both areas. West Huntsville Baptist will be here July 17-25. This is our first mission team ever! We are excited about them and have been planning for ESL, VBS, football clinics, construction and a beauty night. If you are interested in coming down here on a trip; it could be a game changer for making contacts here! 

This month I have been able to teach a couple times and preach a couple times. I went with our co-worker Dan Cook to a city a few hours away to teach the Good Soil course. It went well and we get to teach it here in Arcoverde in a couple weeks. Pray it fills up and that all the materials arrive on time. 

Evelyn has been sick over half the month with four different types of sickness. Pray that she can build up her immune system soon and avoid any more sickness. Her being in school has helped us with meeting people here and we are hoping to make some more personal contacts as the year rolls on. In her homeschool she has worked hard to get ahead and this month will be done with her first year. 

We were hoping to set up a little field this month, but a neighbor behind us decided to put all his bricks on our lot. Then they decided to store all the sewage tubes exactly on our lot as well. The good thing is that proves we have the central lot in the neighborhood. We are dreaming of what we can do with this piece of land God has given to us. Please pray about giving towards it! 

We have been blessed with your financial faithfulness and it is humbling to see how you all give so generously. To the anonymous donor this month, thanks! And to all of you who read and say a simple prayer, to those of you who wear your knees out interceding for us, we love you and thank you.

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah and our hard working, intelligent, talkative 5 year old Evelyn, and our energetic, bouncing, climbing, mess making birthday girl (next Monday is her birthday).

Bits February

Launch time is coming! I am going to use the excuse of being in Brazil (or latin america for that matter) as to why I do not have exact dates, but we will soon be launching several new ministries. Our land will soon be planed with a small field to be used for soccer, football and maybe some other events. This will be the first step in using our church property! We are excited! There are also several houses shooting up around the church. We bought in an up and coming neighborhood thinking mainly in the future, but it is neat to see that we will already have neighbors to the church.

For the past few months we have been looking into a Servant Leaders training program for developing leaders in churches. This has been developed in some Spanish speaking countries and now in English but are both a work in progress. We have been working on it in Portuguese as well and are hoping it will offer training to Portuguese speaking churches around Brazil and even beyond. We are hoping to have enough on the site to feel good about launching it this month. I have already emailed some files to China for a Brazilian deacon in an international church that has a small group of Brazilians. He is hoping to do studies in Portuguese there, but is not trained. Another Pastor from South Brazil is looking for a training program they can do in the church that will train his members to reach out into dozens of surrounding cities. A friend Maicol who is signing up for long term missions with ABWE is working with me on this project and we are looking for all the help we can get.

Servant leaders uses short courses through modules, seminars (2-4 hours on a specific topic) and discipleship to mold leaders in the church. The main job right now is putting together courses (hopefully already written) and seminars and getting them online. We then hope to have videos available. The goal is for Pastors to have material available at their finger tips without having to develop everything before teaching. The project is big and I am sure will take years of development. Pray for us as we develop one seminar at a time. The first seminar slide show (Constructive Conflict) has been through the first translation. The next seminar (Finances) will be given by a Pastor from Koinonia in Recife. We hope to use these topics as high quality seminars to use as outreach as well as maturing those who are in the church.  

In February the whole family went to Word of Life camp in Recife and I was the morning speaker. We have continued our small groups and been involved with football. Finishing our house has also taken up a lot of time and we should be in it within a couple of months. Evelyn has started school in a Brazilian school this month and we are keeping our eyes open for contacts through the school. We have already scheduled a dinner with a family of a girl from her classroom.

I don’t think our account at ABWE has ever been better as it has been lately. Hopefully some of it will be able to go to the church construction project, but we need much more! Please pray about sponsoring a part of the construction (it will cost around $50 a square foot). This month we will be meeting with the Pastors and wives before we present something to an architect! God bless you all!

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah, my schoolgirl who does Brazilian school in the morning and online homeschool in the afternoon, and the pre2year old bouncing marathoner who could make us a lot of money if we could figure out how to bottle her energy.