Bits December

Visit with Sarah's Mamaw

Since December is generally slower for missionaries visiting churches, we were ale to be at our church in Fort Oglethorpe, GA for all the Sundays. We were able to be involved in the Christmas program at the church and the girls did a great job. The play was about a missionary family being overseas for Christmas and looking to Jesus for happiness. 

Missionaries Pascal and Becky

We also received lots of visits this month! Missionaries to Mauritius Pascal and Becky Grenade were in town and we were able to catch up with them and see how similar are lives are! Jason and Pam Horton from Oregon visited us in the US for the first time, rather than being in Brazil. Sarah Rogers finished her time in Brazil this month and drove through with her boyfriend Samuel. We just arrived home from a visit to south Alabama to see Sarah’s family. 

Sarah’s counseling has gone full swing and she has more counselees than she was planning on having. It is going well for her though. Pray that she can manage the heavier load and for wisdom.

The Tupanatinga church held the annual Christmas tea for the women. In past years the number was capped to 24 because of space, but this year in the new building they had 46! They also ran it with Sarah far away. I preached via video call the following Sunday and noticed faces in the crowd of women I did not recognize, so it seems it is already seeing fruit. 

A new year always brings a certain excitement. What can happen this year? What will the new year bring? A furlough year has some of the same feelings. As we return to Brazil we know that we have some changes we will need to make because our situation will be changing. We will have the task of pastoring two churches in two different locations but that have service at the same time. While it might be more convenient to be able to have different service times, it can be positive because it will force us to develop more leaders. Right now, Roger and Marcy Smith are mentoring leaders in preparation for this. Pray for them as they pass their many years of experience on to our current leaders.

Anniversary trip

In January we have several opportunities for ministry. We go to supporting churches in Indiana, North Carolina and Alabama. Please pray for our travels and that we would be a blessing in the churches. I will also be preaching at our church in Fort Oglethorpe on the 15th. 

Because of your giving to ABWE through which we receive our salary, we have been sustained all year. We also finished two phases of our building in Tupanatinga! We feel so blessed and so very much appreciate it. Even though we are down in our projected support, enough came in by the end of each month for us to receive our salary. 

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah and our organized two girls Evelyn and Anna Claire 

Evie and her friends going 
to a school social

Bits November

Let it snow! Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Or maybe Merry Christmas. We had a great family trip to Michigan over Thanksgiving. We were able to see lots of family and had a wonderful time doing so. We arrived the Saturday before Thanksgiving to a snow storm and the snow stayed most of the time we were there. The girls and I had a couple snowball fights; the pictures don’t include the hits to their face, but they did forgive me. 

While in Michigan we connected with our sending church, Heritage Baptist Church. We were able to speak to a few different audiences including preaching the morning service.

December is a holiday month which has several implications. We do not have any meetings. Our church while we are in the US, Cloud Springs Baptist in Fort Oglethorpe, GA is doing a kid’s Christmas play. They asked us to write the play this year and the girls have parts in it as well. The play is from a missionary’s perspective on the holidays. We are excited to be in the US for the holidays for the first time after 3 years spending Christmas on the field. 

The end of the year is upon us! Usually we get a boost in our funds from end of the year giving. This year we need it as our accounts are pretty low! Some have asked about our need to raise funds during furlough, a norm for furloughing missionaries. We have a 400 dollar a month need at the moment as well as a need for a car upon our return to Brazil. 

Thank you for your prayers for the churches in Brazil right now. The Tupanatinga church has visitors every week and two preachers that are more and more comfortable. This month they are putting on a women’s tea again, but this time without Sarah and Cindy Cook’s presence. Sarah, instead, was able to attend the tea of the church in which we received the idea. She took the girls to Silverdale Baptist Church this past Monday night and they all really enjoyed it. 

Thank you for your prayers and support!

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah and our two snow angels

Bits October

She is done! Sarah turned in and defender her dissertation for her Master’s degree in Biblical Counseling. We are all excited for her to be done with her school work, but the real work of counseling will just continue as normal. While counseling sounds pretty formal, many aspects of it are just active discipleship. She uses the skills in her own life, in our family life and in ministry. She was also asked to publish at least a booklet with her study on Women and technology and so she is looking into what that would entail as it will take some editing and rewriting to put that in book form. 

We were on the road the first half of this month. Actually in the air! We went back to a different part of Brazil for nine days to attend the All Brazil conference, a gathering of ABWE missionaries from all over Brazil. Before the actual conference we had a security training to take over three days time. This helped us be more prepared for any assaults, online security amongst other security situations. 

At the conference we were able to hear from Paul Davis, the ABWE president. It was really encouraging for us to hear the direction in which ABWE is headed as well as good spiritual challenges from the Word. During the conference we were able to fellowship with all of our friends and colleagues around Brazil. We have a great group of missionaries and a great challenge in Brazil.

One question that is asked about Brazil is why we still need missionaries as there have been so many missionaries in the country in the last century. While Brazil has had a lot of evangelism, there are many areas that haven’t. South Brazil has many cities considered unreached (less than 2% evangelical). Where we are targeting we consider underreached (less than 5% evangelical). 

The bigger problem to me is the lack of doctrinal purity. There are few churches that are not charismatic or not preaching the prosperity gospel or another watered down version of the gospel. ABWE missionaries want to provide mentorship in theological education as well as support in reaching the unreached and underreached areas. After the conference we had one more meeting to attend, a leader’s meeting. In that meeting we talked about working as a team to reach the Hunsrick people, a German influenced culture in Rio Grande do Sul that has very little gospel influence. Pray with us for this project and that there would be unity and excitement in working together for the gospel.

Evelyn has been able to teach kid’s church in 4-5 churches since we have been back. This month she taught at Calvary Raleigh Church in North Carolina while her dad preached in the main service. Then she repeated the following week in Ringgold at Crosspointe community church. After that service during announcements, one of the kid’s workers used Evelyn’s lesson to get his point across. It was neat to hear. 

Thank you for your prayers and support as we reach Brazil for Christ!

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah and teacher Evelyn and my little cheerleader Anna Claire

Bits September

Evie's birthday dinner

The gospel has been my meditating point for this month. How does the gospel directly affect our daily life? You probably say, well you are missionaries, so the gospel is pretty big as you need to take the gospel to all the world. Yes, that is true. But I have been more and more convinced of our daily need for the gospel. The gospel should affect how we live our lives, how we relate to others, how we treat our families. So if you have been around me this month, chances are you have heard about the gospel.

Tupanatinga church meeting

We started the month speaking at our church we attend in the Chattanooga area while we are here, Cloud Springs Baptist. On September 18 we went to Prattville, AL where we taught Sunday School and preached the morning service. Then this last Sunday I spoke at Alaska Baptist Church in Caledonia, Michigan where my friend Mike serves. Each church has been very receptive and in each church I have been able to preach about the gospel transformation going on in our lives.

We got hooked up with Bama tickets!

I am grateful for some other opportunities this month. Sarah has been able to encourage a friend in ministry as well as be encouraged by this same friend. She and I are also leading a small group at our girl’s school. Then last Wednesday I spoke at chapel as well. I am rather encouraged by the attentiveness and interest shown by the youth at that school as well as my brother’s youth group where I spoke on Sunday night. I pray that this generation will be a difference making generation! 

My brothers! 

I am writing this while in the middle of a ten day trip up north. I had a brother’s weekend where I connected with five of my brothers for three days and had deep conversations and Carrel competitions/activities. I have missed this being gone in Brazil and it really was a great time to connect. I am then going to a Servant Leader’s connect time where I can be with that community and connect and participate in what God is doing through Servant Leaders. On Sunday the 2nd we fly to Brazil as a family for the All Brazil conference. This every three year conference was pushed back two years cause of Covid and fell on our furlough. Since we have a required security training to do (that was supposed to be done by last year) as well as another meeting after the conference, we decided it would be good to go. We won’t be going back to Arcoverde, but a different part of Brazil. Pray for our safety! 

We are grateful for you! I don’t think I express that enough. Traveling to churches we hear of people who love getting these updates and are consistently praying for us. Many of you support us financially and we know that takes sacrifice and we really appreciate it. Thanks for your love!

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah and our now teenager who is taking advantage of being able to raise her hand and answer questions in class, and our youngest who already has classmates bummed out that she won’t be there next year

Bits August

 School! The girls have been excited about going to a real school for months, actually years. This month they have finally experienced what it is like to be in an actual school with classrooms and other kids their age. They are doing really well. To say that they are loving it might be a slight exaggeration, but they are certainly adapting well and making friends. Evelyn is trying not to answer all the questions and make up for six years of not being able to raise her hand and respond to her teacher on screen. She has a little group of friends that got together on the first day of school and has been a blessing for her. Anna Claire makes friends wherever she goes and school has not been the exception. 

Sarah and I are in a different spot in life in which we have never been before. The girls are in school all day and we are not directly taking care of a church or having full time ministry at our feet. But we still seem to keep busy. Sarah is counseling in person as well as online. We both keep in touch with our churches and friends down in Brazil, offering counsel and organizational help. We have enjoyed catching up with friends and family. 

We finally met some famous missionaries
that Cloud Springs supports along with us

During August we stayed fairly busy on the weekends with updating churches. On August 7 we went to Marietta, Georgia with Eastwood Baptist. Evelyn taught the teen Sunday School class and I only heard from all four adults in the classroom as they loved her lesson. She also taught the kids class at Blackburn Road Baptist in Athens, Alabama when we went on August 21. I was able to present and preach at this church who has supported us for so long. Then this last Sunday we spoke to our Sunday School class at Cloud Springs Baptist in Fort Oglethorpe, GA where we attend church while we are on furlough. This upcoming Sunday we will be interviewed as well as preach the morning service at Cloud Springs. 

My college roommate and his family 
drove through Chatt town! 

Furlough has several purposes for us. Rest and reporting are usually the main ones. Putting the girls in school has been a main one for us this furlough and so that has been a big focus for us. We have worked on the rest some (see what I did there?) Another purpose is raising funds if need be. This furlough is not bad at all compared to previous longer furloughs and probably the average missionary need when on furlough. We need to raise about 430 dollars in monthly contributions before we leave for Brazil next June. We will also need to raise around 11,000 dollars for a car (yes, cars are more expensive and less reliable in Brazil). As we speak at churches the gifts will go towards this fund and if it goes over we can use it for Phase three of construction in Tupanatinga. (Phase two is just about paid for!) We also might do some odds and ends jobs while here that can go towards those funds as well. 

Finishing up the kid's room
in Tupanatinga! Awesome!

Friends are good for the soul! It has been wonderful catching up with some this month and we look forward to seeing many others! Thanks for your prayers for us as this month we travel to Prattville, AL to talk about the gospel in Brazil and I will be going to Michigan (and may present to a new church up there). 

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah and our seventh grade Oakwood Eagle Evie, and our fourth grade Anna Claire (she might be getting used to being called Anna). 

Puppies at the farm! 

Bits July

We made it in the building in Tupanatinga before we left for furlough! I originally was hoping by December, then by February, then Easter and alas, we at least had the inauguration before our scheduled furlough. Such is construction; it takes longer and costs more than you expect. But from our building in Arcoverde we understand that in the end the wait will be worth it and it will be hard to remember what it was like before the building. 

We used the building for services starting July 1st and we did an official inauguration service July 15 with Pastor Roger and Marcy Smith present as well as Pastor Claudio and his wife who travelled all the way from Recife to be present. It was really special and emotional. The message was on the gospel as we plan on Koinonia Tupanatinga being a church based on the gospel. We have several attenders who have not yet made a decision to follow Christ, and that is ok. We keep preaching the gospel and do not trumpet salvation as an easy decision. It is easy or simple, but at the same time, truly turning your life over to Christ to follow Him should be something to think through. 

José tells his testimony

In the message we define the gospel as “What the Bible says about God, man, sin and Christ that requires a response of faith and repentance.” A true acceptance to the gospel will change our outlook on life. Praise the Lord there are members who are experiencing transformed lives because of the gospel. 

The girls went to camp this month and had a wonderful time. We had a little retreat with our leaders from Tupanatinga as we leave them for a bit. That went really well. Also Evelyn had a great in person study with her Wednesday night study group. 

In the airport headed out

On July 23 we left Brazil for our furlough. We were able to spend a week in Orlando with David’s family which was a big blessing. In the next couple of weeks we will mainly be prepping the girls for their year at Oakwood Christian Academy. We have school shopping, orientations and other organizing to do. God blessed us with a car through a friend who owns a used car lot in Florida. He is from a missionary family and so understood our needs and wanted to bless us. We were able to sell our car in Brazil to our colleagues Roger and Marcy, which was a huge blessing as far as all the details go. We used the money from that sale to buy the one in the states. 

Our prayer requests for this month have to do with our furlough and the churches while we are gone. Please pray for us to get situated as we live with Sarah’s parents in their barn. (Yes, it is a barn, but it is a cool house in a barn). The church in Arcoverde will have Roger pastoring it for the year and we have asked leaders in the church to step up as well. In Tupanatinga, José, who is looking into ministry, will be helping with preaching, as well as Chico who lives there. We should have some others that go as well to help out. Pray that this will be a time of stepping up and strengthening for our friends there. 

We love you all and hope to see some of you soon! (I still need to resolve some meeting dates, but if you would like to meet up, let me know!)

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah and our seventh grader Evelyn and fourth grader Anna Claire who are now OCA Eagles

Evelyn is doing a Bible study using the book
"Lies that girls believe." 

Bits June

Lunch at the new church in Tup!

Friday night, July 1st we plan on using our new building in Tupanatinga for the first time! We had a long day of work today (Thursday) and are pretty close to ready for tomorrow night. It has and still is a battle to get some of the workers to come out. That has been a little sad, but par for the course. We are really excited to get in and use some much more space. With time we will be able to use more of it, but for now we will be happy with what we do have. 

Baby Jade and mom 
Shayenne

On Tuesday afternoon we had a couple over who we had done premarital counseling with before they got married and had a child less than a year after their wedding. Sunday night he said he missed meeting with us and our time together. As we set things up for Tuesday we both wondered what we needed to talk about. Lately it seems like we just put out fires and that takes it’s tolls. Edson and Shayenne arrived and said they didn’t have any problems we needed to talk about. Their life is going smoothly and they have been using some teaching from the church to really help (they mentioned “attack the problem, not the person”). They expressed willingness to help more often and already are more and more involved. What a blessing our time together was and one plan for our return to Brazil will be the same kind of meetings in which we just see how families are over a cup of coffee or tea.

Evelyn is going strong on her study for 7-10 year old girls using the book “lies that little girls believe”. The girls have been faithful and even done their homework! We are grateful for Evie’s willingness to serve in this way and the adults who here her teaching all say how well she does. 

Arcoverde women's study

Sarah did a technology study this month for her dissertation. She had two groups, one from Arcoverde and one from Tupanatinga. They both finished in the last week and the study was a great success! The ten women learned biblical principles about technology and learned enough to where each of them seems to have changed how they manage their phones and social media. Sarah is now writing the conclusion to her dissertation while most of the work is being translated and she should be able to turn it in soon, which will mean the end of her four years of work on her master’s degree. She is scheduled to formally graduate in October! 

Tupanatinga women's study

So July is here and July is the month our furlough starts. We leave Brazil July 23 and the girls start school August 10 at Oakwood Christian Academy in Chickamauga, Georgia (outskirts of Chattanooga, TN). We have a good bit of meetings scheduled already. We shouldn’t need to raise too much monthly support. We plan on heading back to Brazil after the school year. Please pray as we are in the final prep for leaving a couple of churches in Brazil. Fortunately we have our coworkers Roger and Marcy in Arcoverde. We also have José from the church in Arcoverde who will be helping out quite a bit with Tupanatinga. Pray for him as he is mentored by Roger. 

Thanks for your love and prayers!

All for HIS glory!

David, Sarah, teacher Evelyn and faithful student Anna Claire who is enjoying the study with her friends

Bits May

Building teams module

“The purpose of a team is to make the strengths of a person effective and his or her weaknesses irrelevant.” - Peter Drucker

Matias, a youth from Equador did a short
internship with us and we did a youth
worker seminar

This month we cast the vision for team led leadership within the church through a module. Cam Woolford the director of Servant Leaders came and taught the module with me as we would like our ministries to work as teams as well as be an elder led church. Being team led I believe is biblical and ideal and sounds great, but actually practicing it is very difficult. People are messy and we all make mistakes, are selfish and working together is against our nature. Fortunately the gospel can help that process. The gospel is unselfish, shows grace, mercy and forgiveness as well as requiring us to be dependent on someone besides ourself (Jesus… much more reliable anyway). 

We host a Pastor's breakfast for local pastors

A key for team to work is spiritual formation. Mature Christians are humble; a key quality when it comes to working well together on a team. No wonder team leadership is so difficult to implement! So pray for us here in the Sertão, Arcoverde and Tupanatinga; pray that we will grow spiritually so that we can work well together and shine the light of Jesus in the community around us. 

Our family feels more and more like a team as the girls are growing. Sarah and I are walking with several families with all different types of difficulties. Marriage is tough; raising kids can be challenging; navigating one’s youth and major decisions in life can all be helped by God’s Word. We seek to not only provide counseing in the difficult times, but try to form a Biblical worldview before going through those times so they do not turn into crisis but turn into growth moments. 

A group from our church in Tupanatinga 
came to visit the church in Arcoverde

Some choose to equip themselves in that way by humbly studying God’s Word and seeking application, while some choose to feel better about themselves because they go to church fairly regularly. It is a joy to see those who swallow the gospel hook, line and sinker and gain a worldview in which they learn to choose love, joy and perseverance in tough circumstances. Pray that we will take advantage of all opportunities to spread the gospel as well as ears to hear and transformed hearts. But include us in those prayers for transformed hearts as well. As missionaries there is a temptation to think we have arrived to give the gospel and sometimes we forget that the gospel needs to constantly transform us as well. 

Thank you for your love and support!

All for HIS glory,
David, Sarah and my youth group attender Evelyn and organizer Anna Claire who recently had her blog updated! 

Bits April

Interaction at the
marriage retreat

How does the gospel reflect in our family life? A marriage retreat surged as a result of marriages in trouble in our church. If the gospel saves us from sin, does that mean it can save us from our own home life where we tend to relax and let our ugly self come out? We seem to have a disconnect between the gospel and our home life and so during the five hour marriage retreat we held at our church, we tried to bridge that gap. 

In the last year we lost a couple to divorce and almost another one. Marriage counseling to one degree or another is a constant. Worldwide the pandemic saw many divorces and the church wasn’t necessarily saved from those statistics. We can be saved though cause we have the divine power of Christ working in us and empowering us with the elements (characteristics) of the gospel like love, forgiveness, grace, mercy and a possible attitude of service that can uplift our marriages. 

Chico and Bia giving
their testimony

The retreat seemed to be a success for marriages as well as bonding time between church members. Evelyn helped out with the kids during this event and did a great job. She is increasingly involved in different ministries as well as still trying to get her friends together for discipleship. Anna Claire seems to be more and more sensitive to making disciples as well. 

Sarah is halfway done with her paper and going stronger than she imagined which has encouraged her greatly. 100 pages is no easy task but since she has read a bunch of books and done a lot of study the words have flowed easier. Her mom is helping her edit and that has been neat as they have had a project to work on together. Sarah continues to have counseling opportunities both formal and informal and has seen success through following God’s Word as well as people who have decided not to follow the counsel of the Scriptures. We all make our own decisions in life and there is the narrow path that leads to life and the wider path that leads to destruction. I think watching people choose the broad path is probably the hardest element of ministry.  

Baby dedication! 

The church in Tupanatinga is so close to being in use! So close, yet so far away it seems. It could be next week or it could be another month if people do not come to work. We are learning patience! Surely next month there will be pictures of us using the building. This last month I continued a powerful study on Processing Life Biblically with the men’s group there and it has been really good for us as a group. 

Evie with the youth group

In May we will be developing more in terms of team leadership as we have a module on building effective teams that will taught by the director of Servant Leaders, Cam Woolford and myself. We are also hosting an Equadorian intern for 9 days to talk to him about ministry. Also this weekend we will be talking about elder led churches and the idea of team and in a couple weeks more about church planting and how our churches can be involved. 

Thanks for your love and prayers!

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah and our kid’s ministry worker and our nine year old (April 6), who are now in a reading competition that will go through the summer 

Anna Claire during 
crafts at her bday party

Bits March

Church anniversary month this past month! We celebrated four years of having an organized church in Arcoverde with a ministry fair and some cake. The church is starting to get some of the pre-covid momentum back which would be great! One of our main objectives this year has been to develop our leadership and we have been working with a group that will be able to take growing responsibilities. Sometime soon we are planning on hiring one of them so that he can stay with the church, join ministry, help with administration as well as receive training in ministry. He is a very capable guy and we are excited. He will help with the church in Tupanatinga as well during our furlough.

The construction in Tupanatinga is in the final stages for our main meeting building. The other phases are happening simultaneously. As we do this we are seeing that it would be easiest to do the third phase now rather than cover the building which would cost a lot and then uncover it later. We have enough money to keep going for a little more time, but not much. Help! If God leads of course. We have been very blessed on the project up to this point. We started it by using saved up ministry funds and then several generous gifts that really got us going. Then we had one main generous donor for the second phase that really allowed us to purchase great material and build it right the first time. As much as I have been a tight wad in life, cutting corners in construction is not good in the long run! We have a do it right the first time philosophy which is more expensive on the front end but more efficient in the long run. 

My main project for this month was building a playground. We had a little mission trip in the begining of the month and put the structure up. Then each week since I would take another person to continue to work on it. Sarah and Sarah R. painted it last week and now there are just a few more details to finish. The slides are supposed to be delivered on Friday! While I was sleeping some nights in Tupanatinga to work on the playground, I scheduled our men’s study which is normally online. We had a good group of guys present as we study how to process life biblically. We are over halfway through it and I plan to continue it this month.  

Sarah continues to grind out her dissertation as well as counseling several women and then leading a couple small groups. We have had conversations with people within our own church as well. On April 9 we are putting together a marriage workshop for about five hours. The prep for it is intense! Pray God uses this study in the life of the church to strengthen our family units. 

Evie with her youth group and
leader (Sarah Rogers)

Thanks for all your prayers and support!

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah, my nursery volunteer/babysitter who is a bit help during all these studies and our friendly last born that is a play leader for all her friends