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

Bits February

The kids pitching in painting

Last week I started a Servant Leaders course called Processing Life Biblically with the men in Tupanatinga. During the month of February the Servant Leaders group has been going through it again online and it was a great opportunity to work through it with the group in Tupanatinga. The basic premise of the study is that God allows circumstances in our lives, both good and bad, to mold us into the character of Christ. The study shows how we can learn from what happens in our life. I have taken the course a couple times and taught it a couple times and it is always a good reminder of our need for growth.

But it is also bad because it seems like God likes to give up to date illustrations to use. Last week’s theme was patience that He seemed to be teaching me. The last couple of days really worked on my ego and selfishness. I am not sure I can take 7-8 more weeks of this beating! haha. 

Biblical Counseling Module

This month we were able to have another module; this time Biblical counseling with our new boss Randy Richner, who also taught a couple of Sarah’s modules for her Master’s. The course got a couple people interested in counseling and there are always opportunities for it. Especially when it comes to family life. Pray for our families in our churches! Living together can be hard but the Bible has answers! Sarah has been diligent in her courses as she dives deeper into how God’s Word can transform the heart and in how people can see that for themselves. 

The youth kickoff luau

Speaking of family, the girls are doing great. Evelyn takes all our training courses. This month three of us took a training for kid’s ministry. Evelyn is already helping out with nursery and does a great job. We always get great comments from adults in our lives about the girls. I would love for the girls to one day come back with us as missionaries as they would be great to work with! 

The last couple of days I have been in Tupanatinga working on a park for the kids just like we have in Arcoverde. We have a lot to do to get the church ready. I am planning on painting and being the main person on organizing the park. We got a good dent in it today. I plan on going on Monday afternoons for the next few weeks, doing that study Monday night; working during the day on Tuesday and then coming back. Please pray that we can get the building done and usable maybe even this month! (then we will still continue on to the second phase of the project). 

My brother Philip was here for two and a half weeks and we had a great time with him.  We did a few hikes in some of the natural beauty points of interest around us. We got a little taste of what it is like being around family as we are realizing how close our furlough is (August) and it seems to be affecting us a little as that date approaches (or as we realize how long we have been going hard in ministry in a foreign country since having a good break). Pray for our steadfastness as well as preparing the different ministries for our absence. 

Philip and the family in Catimbau

Matheus and Evie wearing the same camp shirt

Thanks for your prayers!

All for HIS glory,

David, Sarah my long fish doing swimming lessons and my English curriculum designer (yes, Anna Claire developed her own english lessons so she can teach a friend)

Church based training

Today I heard some good news. A church in the Northeast USA decided to start up some in church courses. They had 28 signed up and I am thinking it is a church of a couple hundred. That is a great group! I am encouraged because it seems a few weeks ago I had a conversation or I saw that most churches are not getting many out for anything besides church, and sometimes not even for church. It is my understanding that there is not a lot of biblical training going on in the US.

Here in Brazil in general I think it is a little different. In some places it is different in that there is some training happening; in other places or church denominations members  barely leave the church. Of course there needs to be some kind of balance, as we should be striving to know the Scriptures and then go out and put into practice what we have learned. We can't just spend all of our time in the church and we shouldn't just barely be in church or go only when it is convenient. 

It seems like a shift is happening with pastors as many pastors have been burnt out. The role of a pastor is a do all job in the church. Yet in the Bible the saints are charged with doing ministry. The church should be a large group of workers serving one another and the pastor is the equipper of the saints for the work of the ministry. So church based training should be a thing. Are you prepared for ministry? What types of ministry? Does your church have leaders who can step up if and when the pastor is absent? 

The shift with pastors is that some see value in being bi-vocational. Another part of it is that there are less and less pastors available and churches are closing. Some have called it a leadership crisis. So where are we going to get our leaders from? This is an argument for church based training. Historically we ship off our youth to Bible colleges and they become pastors and leaders and that is good too. Yet what about possible leaders within the church who have jobs and families or financial difficulties. Is the only route Bible college? While certainly it is a good route and helpful, in the biblical requirements in I Timothy and Titus you won't find Bible college on the list. You will find character traits and skills that can be developed with proper training and mentoring in a local church. 

So I am excited that there is some vision for church based training out there, and I exhort you to think about this and see what is happening in your church. This last weekend we had a training module on Counseling and it was awesome! We try to do four modules per year. Doesn't seem like much, but over years you really see all the subjects covered. In August we will be starting a year furlough; if you are interested in what your church can be doing or how I can help, please let me know!