Family! We love seeing family. A main reason we have done more frequent furloughs is so our families can see each other more often while our girls are younger. However, we were able to fly up to New Hampshire this month to see my brother and his family. Dan has twins Anna Claire’s age and a nine month old. It was our family’s first time to ever see them in person and we all had a lot of fun. We also enjoyed attending a service at their church. 

Our second family trip was to LA! Lower Alabama. Sarah’s mamaw lives down there as well as a couple aunts and uncles. We had some good talks there and were able to visit Silas First Baptist, a church that has been involved in our ministry in Brazil. 

While there I finished a class project for my Strategic Thinking class. These classes have been very practical to ministry and this was no different. I developed a strategic plan for implementing the Servant Leaders ministry in our church plant. When one looks at disciple making it can be divided up into evangelism, discipling and leadership training. The Servant Leaders ministry at our church will help all parts of disciple making, but it is mainly designed for leadership training. Please pray with us that God will already prepare hearts for leadership. 

Servant Leaders for Brazil continues in its development. We have someone translating seminars and then I am working on a new website, power point development and planning for using it. 

On Saturday we leave for North Carolina to visit two supporting churches. Our friend Alison from Brazil is flying in for a few days while we are there and then we will pick up some football equipment in Huntsville, Alabama. After he leaves we head up to Michigan for a couple weeks. Sunday March 19 we speak at our home church, Heritage Baptist. The following Sunday we will be in Appomattox, Virginia. No we will not be ending anything there from our mixed marriage. We will be speaking at our college friend, Jonathan Watson’s church. After that we will head home and should be mostly in Chattanooga until April 20 when we head back to Brazil. Please pray for safety for us as we travel! 

The construction in Brazil is making progress. We are looking to prepare a couple rooms in order to start using the building. There are plenty of details to be working on and we need around twenty eight thousand more dollars to finish this phase. 

We are always looking to the future. If you or your church are interested in going to Brazil, we would love to host trips for VBS, English camps, football, cheerleading or any other specialty. We will have a training building that can be used to teach special skills that can be used as an outreach to the community! 

Thank you all for your sustaining prayers and support! 

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah, my little story writer Evelyn, and her student Anna Claire who is learning to write letters, though not exactly cohesive 

Cousins in South Alabama

Which one is mine??????

Ice skating!

Bits January

Before we left we had one more service. We did not expect many as beginning of the year crowds are generally slim. We had a decent amount, but we had three guests that stood out. One neighbor from the church property came for the first time! Then Gabriel's (who plays the guitar) dad came! Then another gentleman came with his daughter. He normally comes with his ex-wife, but this time she couldn't come, so I was really surprised to see him come on his own!

The day after this service we dropped Evelyn off for her first week at camp! She had fun at our co-worker's camp Paradise. She was able to go with her best friend Alice.

We are back in the states now and enjoying a little bit of rest. Tomorrow we head up to New Hampshire to visit my brother Dan and his family. He has twins that are about the same age as Anna Claire (three and a half) and they haven't met yet! So we are excited about them being able to play together for the weekend!

Last Sunday night we drove down to Atlanta to speak at Yellow River Baptist Church. We enjoyed our time with them and they gave a very generous offering towards the construction of Cetak. We are looking forward to the work of Cetak. The building will serve as our church, but we also look forward to the leadership training that will go on. I am working on a strategic plan for implementing the Servant Leaders program as we head back. We will be looking to have classes there that will cover topics including family, team building, business, English, and who knows what else! It will be a great opportunity to reach our community for Christ! The neighbors that live right around Cetak are already excited about it!

While here I am working on the development of Servant Leaders. Besides putting it in Portuguese I also get to help develop some of it in English. This month we have worked on the Strategic Planning seminar. If you would like to check out the site, click here. We offer free resources for churches that include classes that are different than normal. We also have people that can help set up Servant Leaders in your church to help train. The time commitment is not overwhelming and the program is very practical and helpful. If you are interested in me coming and teaching a seminar one night, please let me know!

I wrote another post about what we are up to on furlough. Feel free to scroll down on the blog or click on this link to read that!

This next month we do not have many meetings, but will go on a couple trips to see family. We are staying in Chattanooga, but still have trips planned to Alabama, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Virginia and Michigan. Please let us know if you would like to meet up!

I have been sad lately with the divisiveness of the country. Let's learn to love more and stop sowing seeds of hate! Watch what you say! We do not have to be so negative, defensive or go on the attack so much! Love God, love others!

All for HIS glory!
David, Sarah, my big reader that loves her Civil War book (we will see how that works with a yankee dad and southern belle mom!), and our cat lover that loves being outside (pray for her as the weather has been cold and she can't go out as much! :)