Bits March

The book is live. I am super excited to start the distribution of The Gospel Transformed Life. Here is a link if you would like to order it.  

If you are not sure about getting a copy and want a free digital copy. Let me know! I am more than happy to email the PDF to you. There are lots of book marketing strategies out there. My strategy at this point is to get it into the hands of the people around me and if the book helps, it will spread. If not, that is ok too. It has already been helpful to me and encouraged the few people around me who have already read it. Actually, it would be helpful if you read the book to leave a review on Amazon.

Sarah continues to counsel. Pray that she can graduate some of her counselees before we leave for Brazil as that will be a busier transition time. Some have already learned the biblical principles they need to navigate how God is molding their lives to be more like Jesus. 

Kids jump park night

The girls have done well in school. They have made friends and good grades. Evelyn is playing a team sport for the first time in her life, middle school volleyball. So far they are undefeated! Volleyball keeps us busy. We don’t know how many friends keep up with year-round kids’ sports. 

This month we are excited to put on a Marriage Workshop. We will focus on applying the gospel to marriages. The Workshop is not just for Cloud Springs Baptist, but is open to others. If you are interested in attending, let us know! 

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah, and our two wonderful children. Anna Claire won a canoe this month! 

Bits February

Valentine's Day on the farm

We have been working on our planning for post-furlough. Upon arrival, we will be pastoring two churches which will be difficult logistically. We are finding ways in which we can be present weekly in the life of the congregation. Since they both have services at the same time on Sunday nights, we have to organize our time better. We are planning other activities during the week, as well as opportunities for one on one time with church members. We want to mentor our families toward developing gospel-centered homes. While this can be encouraged in church, we also look forward to visiting homes and having purposeful conversations.  

My 40th bday

We have openings for our support team we are looking to fill. We have lost some supporters for different reasons. Also, every once in a while we receive a raise due to inflation, or years of service at ABWE. Between those two reasons, our monthly support coming in is down by 590 dollars per month. ABWE maintains a policy of missionaries being fully supported before returning to the field from furlough. In the past, we have gone after new support and during this furlough, we have been able to speak in a couple new churches, but as of now, we are still praying for that support to come in. 

In February we have been busier with counseling opportunities. We also have had other opportunities for ministry through chapel speaking, visiting a church, teaching Sunday School, and discipleship opportunities. 

Her friends received gold medals too

Anna Claire had a couple fun activities this month. First, she participated in 4H, which is a speaking competition in Georgia. She presented on Brazil and went to the regional competition where she received a gold medal. Later in the month her class was responsible for chapel and did a musical on Ruth. She did a wonderful job being very expressive and participative. She also finished up her season of cheerleading in which she did well yelling her lungs out. We are grateful for the opportunities she has had in school.

Evelyn chose to try out for the middle school volleyball team this year. She made the team and is now looking at getting into a practice rhythm and will soon have games. Both girls have done well adjusting to school life, having friends, and adapting socially. 

AC in play about Ruth

We are excited to prepare for a marriage workshop in April that we will be organizing and teaching. Pray that we have a good time preparing and teaching. If you are in the Chattanooga area, we are planning on a Sunday evening either April 16 or 30 and I will post more later. 

Thank you so much for your prayers and support! God bless!

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah, and our middle school volleyball player and artsy fourth grader

Out on Valentine's

Bits January 2023

 

Down by the creek

After the holidays it is common to have some January blues. We broke down one day on the way to school. Anna Claire woke up missing Brazil. Then on the car ride, she received some bad news about her cat. By the time we arrived at school, we parked and were all crying and hugging outside the car in the parking lot. I am guessing we were quite a sight! We are over halfway done with our furlough now and we are all missing Brazil. Fortunately, God has given us purpose here in the USA. We have been able to minister and be ministered to.

Date trip to speak

We have ministered through our travels to churches as well as counseling. This month we were in Indiana, North Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia. We loved spending time with friends, Pastors, and speaking about Brazil. On the counseling end, Sarah has been busy. God has blessed and some of her old friends and new friends are learning Biblical ways to cope during hard times. Some friends told us they know God had us here at this time and we felt really encouraged by that. Sunday we started teaching one of our courses, Processing Life Biblically, in our Sunday school class. We are excited to open up about God’s difficult work in our lives as He conforms us to the image of Christ. 

This month construction started on an auditorium for the Arcoverde church. We are blessed to be here and not over the construction at this time as our colleague Roger is handling that. He also raised funds for the project and so we have not needed to worry about raising funds or construction oversight! Pray for a smooth project. 

No power, no problem
toasted bagel 

“Preaching the gospel to yourself daily” has been a new idea to explore while being on furlough. We have done a good bit of reading and study. Those of you who have heard me speak this year have probably heard something about the gospel for our daily life. Out of the impact of that message, I ended up writing a book. I have finished the manuscript and it is now being read by a few people and I will need to decide on how to publish/self-publish. Please pray for the message of the book, the gospel for daily life. 

Creative discovery museum!

Let me close with a link to a Gospel Coalition article regarding missionary kids. Evelyn read it and said it was 100% correct. I thought it was pretty short, simple, and accurate and if anyone would like to understand our girls a little more, this is a great resource. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/missionary-kids-want-you-know/ 

Thank you so much for your prayers and support! We are a few hundred dollars short on our monthly support. Pray that comes in soon!

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah, and our two great students; both received good grades for their first semester of school in the US.

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