August 1, 2003

Greetings from Brazil,

This month has been an exciting and busy month for the ministry. We started the follow-up on some of the commitments that were made during our city wide youth evangelism week done in the public schools.

But before I tell you about that I want to tell you about one family in our Church. As it is here in Brazil, the family that I am talking about, the daughters are in Church but the father and some of the others are not. The daughters that are saved and I got together and prayed for this father. Then on an appointed date I went to visit him. He was not at home but due to the hospitality of the family I entered and drank coffee and sat talking for a while. The father returned home and I was able to talk to him. He had a very hard countenance and a very hard heart towards Christ and religion. But due to fervent prayers and the will of God, this man accepted Christ as his personal Savior on this day. I believe that God had prepared his heart to hear the word and receive Christ as his Savior. Sunday two weeks ago he and another of his daughters came forward in Church and made a public profession of faith. There was not a dry eye in the congregation, as the church people had been praying also for this family. Is it not AWESOME what our God can do and does it not make it more evident that we need to pray without ceasing.

Sometimes we revert back the way the world thinks and we forget that our God is a God of miracles. I did this the other day, I thought about all those people that made decisions during that week of youth evangelism and wondered if everyone of them had been true professions of faith. Then I thought, if only 10% of them were real that would be 110 people now that know Christ as their personal savior. What a victory!!! But remember one thing, our God is able to have saved those 1134 people.

As I said in the beginning we are starting the follow-up on each of the commitments made - to date this month we have visited more than 30 different homes. The visits are going great. We have been a little slow getting started because of the volume of commitment cards we received and organizing them into neighborhoods for us to visit. You see, here very few people have cars so we must make the visits within walking distance of the homes of our people. Then on Saturdays we do catch up because then we get a group of youth and adults together and we go in the Volkswagen vans (1979) to transport to the distant neighborhoods.

We have had to make another faith purchase this month. You see, after we purchased the two vans we were still having to make decisions about who could not go to Sunday school and Church because there was still not enough space for all to go (we were putting 20 people in each van) We now have a 1975 bus!! What a blessing, we now have room for all to go to Church. Our Sunday School had doubled in the last 3 weeks. You may ask how many we are able to transport on the bus. Well we have about doubled our number and now there are no children crying on the street because we did not have room to take them to Church. To purchase the bus we put a small down payment and in the next three months we have three equal payments. If God is touching your heart to help with this ministry please feel free to make a contribution to the bus fund here in Caraguatatuba.

Here permit me to preach to the choir for a little bit. You know that I am in the ministry only because of the commitment of BFM to missionaries and to missions. Because of BFM I can effectively minister. As a person who took an early retirement and saw the need in another country - the need being that people in other countries need Christ also. Here is what I am trying to get at.....Maybe there are others out there that are nearing retirement and are thinking--What an I going to do with all the time I will have when I retire? Answer: plan on helping in some mission work. Maybe you only want to serve for 3 months. GREAT! GO GO GO. However, maybe you want to serve more; then.....GO GO GO. The commission in Matt. 28:19 is for all we Christians, then why not GO. Be a foreign missionary maybe for only a week or two---but expect miracles.

See you here in Brazil.. Call first 011551238884189 and we will meet you at the airport.

In His service,

Aj and Barbara

P.S. We got news back on our permanent visas last week The decision is UNDECIDED. This means that we will have to find out what will help them make a decision and begin with the process again. Please pray for this process.