November 3, 2004

Hello Brothers & Sisters,

We greet you in His Name once again from sunny Central Brazil.  The hot humid weather has set in again.  Ursula is having some difficulties due to it.  Pray for her.  This past month our daughter Michelle came down for a week during her school break.  It was good to have her with us.

Ursula is having contact with her two brothers and sisters for the first time by telephone in forty-four years.  Also, they are exchanging letters and pictures.  They are desperately wanting us to come over to Germany to see them.  Her two brothers are not in good health and cannot travel long distances.  We are praying about trying to go there for a short visit the first part of April of next year after the coldest weather is past.  Pray with us about this.  It will be an expensive trip but we feel it is so important that we do this.  I am getting ready to brush up on my German so I can talk to them about their spiritual needs.  I understand a lot when Ursula talks to them on the phone but can speak hardly anything anymore.

We are kept very busy trying to pastor the Altos do Coxipo Baptist Church and at the same time help out in the new works.  We baptized three this past month into our church.  Tomorrow we will go to Novo Diamantino for two days.  The preacher's wife has been sick and now is better.  We are still trying to finish up the Sunday School rooms that have been built there.  Here in town the pastor of the Boa Esperanca church is back in the Intensive Care Unit and we believe is about to leave this old sinful world for a better place.  Remember that church as they go through this experience.  It has been a long hard ordeal for his family and church, not to mention his physical and emotional suffering.

The Thanksgiving Conference will be history by the time you read this.  We are praying it will be a good one.  We thank all of you who give to our work and to the work of all the other missionaries.  May the Lord bless America and all of you is our prayer.

Harold and Ursula Draper

Harold Draper with worker and young people at Nova Diamantino work.