February 7, 2006

Dear friends,

January was a great month. We had our daughter, Mary Katherine, here with us for 30 days, but to be truthful she did not only come to visit us, she came to continue a courtship with a young man here in our church. There are times that parents take a back seat when there is love involved. While on this visit, Mary became engaged to Walmir and we are rejoicing with her. He is a young preacher boy that has just completed four years of seminary in Sao Paulo this past year. He is working here with us in the main church. His desire is to become a pastor. As a father you want the very best for your children and especially a daughter -- well, God has sent His best; she fell in love with a preacher! While she was here this is what I saw: they wanted to be together and when they were together they saw only each other, and together they didn't need anyone else. How awesome is the power of love. Saying this, we see how much our Lord and Savior loves us. Enough to die for us, then we see that saving grace has no boundaries of countries. Then we see because of that love we must reach the world for Christ and even more as we see the day approaching. So rejoice with us as it looks like we will be getting an extra worker here in Caraguatatuba, Brazil. Pray for Mary and Walmir as they plan their future together. As a father I could not be more proud of our daughter and her future husband. I know that they will be serving the Lord together here in Brazil and it is good to have another member of our family serving alongside us.

The mission building is 95% completed as I write this letter. How AWESOME is the Lord we serve!!! Myself and one brick layer and six young men have done the construction. Here I see even more the importance of the vocational school. We are training young men to build physically and also spiritually. It has been a very rewarding two months of labor and I see a multitude of benefits being harvested. Pray for us as we will be needing four dorm rooms constructed on the grounds of the school, with two baths. To have young students you have to have a place for them to sleep, eat, and shower. This will be the next project for us as we have the students and the school, but not the facilities for them to live.

As we send this letter, we are packing our bags to come Stateside for six weeks. We have a schedule packed with conferences and church visits. I hope you and your church are one of the churches that we have on our schedule. If not, know that we would have loved to visit you but time did not permit. We will take a few days to visit with our family and then return to Brazil and the wonderful work God has given us here.

The dates for us to be in the States are fixed and what about your dates to come visit us in Caraguatatuba? Our doors are always open for you to visit the work that you so faithfully support through Baptist Faith Missions. Keep up the good work.

In His service,

AJ and Barbara Hensley

Sunday School group singing before going to classes at New Life Baptist Church