Bits November

Thanksgiving lunch with Roger and Marcy Smith

Ho Ho Ho; almost. Crazy how we decorated our tree already signaling another Christmas arrival and year ending. Next year is 2020! Crazy. Sunday we will have our inauguration of our second floor Koinolandia, which links Koinonia, our church name, and landia which is kind of like the end of Greenland, Iceland or Finland…. To get Koinolandia our floor for kids. It is complete with a town look where each classroom is a shop or part of the town and a town square in the middle that is basically a park. Our chapel is the big room where we will have kid’s church, then there is a sweets shop, construction store, pet shop (Anna Claire’s favorite) and bakery. The kids are going to love it! 

This month we also inaugurated our rented building in Tupanatinga. We had a crowd from Arcoverde go and there were plenty of guests from Tupanatinga. Pray that some of those guests will continue to attend! One has come back a couple weeks since the inauguration. We have been doing outreach with English there and that has been neat. 

This month we all went with Sarah to her Master’s class. The drive is about ten hours and we took advantage of Fortaleza to visit the great beach and an awesome water park. We all had a good time and it was a great break for us from the normal routine. I was able to sit in on Sarah’s class as well. Counseling is a very practical course to take for Sarah and for me to be around as well! Whether you or I like it or not, people ask for advice and counsel. We need to be prepared to give them good biblical counsel! 

Amazing view of the Northeast

Sarah spoke to the women about prayer this last Wednesday as they had their monthly prayer night. The women’s discipleship groups are going strong and they are not wanting any Christmas (summer) breaks. The men’s group rejected one as well; so those are good signs that the groups have been meaningful. Pray that out of them leaders will be developed. 

Decorating for Christmas

We hope that your holiday time is full of peace and love! We have great reason as Christians for great joy! May we all focus on Christ this season! God bless!

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah, my Christmas ballerina, and our veterinarian who thought her cat had vanished when we were gone for a week! 

Bits October

Music for children's day!

Children’s Day was a big event at our church again this month. October 12th is aimed at pleasing the kids; actually most schools have events the whole week to celebrate. We had an event that afternoon and had a good amount of kids running around all afternoon and evening. We had a theater group from the church in Recife come and our church people put in a lot of work. We had a great time and even saw some neighborhood kids present. 

This month we planted trees in our neighborhood with some of our neighbors. I try to be involved as I can in the neighborhood so that people will feel more comfortable with us being there. Lord willing we will see them start coming to church. It is a long process though as most are wealthy catholics. They have been fine and friendly but are very reserved about coming to a service. Fortunately we have had lots of opportunities to get to know them. I believe that slowly there will be a greater acceptance. One influential neighbor tells others about us and promises me he will come to church that Sunday almost every time I interact with him but is yet to come. I bet he has made ten promises to attend. 

Service in Tupanatinga

This next month we are going to have an inauguration service for the church in Tupanatinga. They were waiting to get the banner ready to put up until they had an official service. I think they really want an opportunity to invite friends and family. We have a great solid core group. Pray that God will use them to win their friends and family to Christ. I see they have a great desire for that but the field is hard. 

This month we are also driving to Sarah’s master’s class as a family. It is about a 12 hour trip, which seems a little harder than an equally timed trip in the states; mainly because the roads and cars are not as good. We are taking the girls to a big water park they have there (yeah, summer is here and it is hot). We will get a chance to see where Sarah’s classes are, take some books home for our resource center and counseling ministry and then have some family time as well. 

Sarah was one of the main organizers for a baby shower

We have done some counseling this month as well. Sarah is learning a lot in her classes and we see how effective this ministry can be. Pray less people in our church need counseling! Actually, I am kind of serious because our discipleship groups have great potential for spiritual growth that can help avoid some of these crisis that happen. Right now we have about 15 men and 12 women involved in groups but we are hoping these numbers grow for next year and we are deciding on how we want to structure them. 

Anna Claire loved the paddle boats

Partners have been key for us here. Knowing how many people pray and support us as well as all the teams that have come down and been influential here. We have a small team coming next week to check out the work for their trip next summer with a bigger group. Our co-workers Roger and Marcy Smith who have been here all along, but been much more present in the last year and a half, are great mentors for us in missionary life and work. All the work we all have put in has seen fruit and we get to see it up close even though we are just a fraction of all the work it takes to have a ministry here. Thank you for your service! 

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah and my ballet girl (Evie started ballet again last week) and my little painter (Anna Claire was helping paint yesterday on our second floor which is almost finished and ready to use! 

We enjoyed a trip to visit our missionaries in Triunfo, that also has some tourist things to do!