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