My girls are stuck watching the series When Calls the Heart that is one of those love series from the early 1900’s. The setting is Hope Valley. Hope has been a theme for us lately here. As we preach through Romans we often talk about Biblical hope (not an uncertain longing, but a certain future) and how God will one day complete the good work He is doing in us. Hope is a key word in counseling as well. As Sarah studies more and more and we counsel a little more as well we are seeing just how key that is. After counseling recently Sarah was so excited to say the counselee had reached that point of having hope. Just a couple weeks ago we were at a point with little hope.
The women had a mid week prayer meeting this month and had almost 30 present! They were pretty excited and said it went very well. They plan on doing those once a month or so. Even the men have gotten on this band wagon. We have had a couple of these times together, although ours is not as focused on prayer. Both men and women combine the discipleship groups on these days. After the last one we added a couple more men to the groups. On a weekly basis we focus on a chapter of the Bible (going through books like James or I John) and talk about what we learn and how it applies to our lives. We have a group of younger guys and decided to do Story of Hope with them. That seems to be going well. 
The Tupanatinga group is alive and well. They are doing discipleship groups on their own during the week. The time we used before (right before the service on Saturdays) I decided to do an outreach using English. We have some contacts from when the big American group went and have reached out to them. Pray that some of those contacts will be disciples of Jesus soon!
Next week I get to go teach at Word of Life Recife on missions in Northeast Brazil. I believe there are around 20 students there and I am excited to be able to dream with them about their future as well as in some way influence how they can be involved in the future. I am using material from my college professor as well as from the Servant Leaders Missions Academy. This reminds me! Next year the Missions Academy will be in Equador July 25- August 3. We have spots open for college age or young adults that have an interest in missions! It is a great time as well as lots of learning and students could possibly even earn college credits for going! If you have someone interested, or are interested yourself, please let me know and I can send you the flyer.
Your prayers are a blessing to us and we know that our ministry would not exist without such great and faithful partners! God bless!
All for HIS glory,
David, Sarah and my ten year old Evie (Sept 20) who had a wonderful American style birthday party with eight of her friends and my cat loving, jewelry adoring, energy spending Anna Claire.
