January 8, 2008

Dear Brethren,

Last month I told you about all the great things happening at Thaumaturgo, 200 miles up the Juruá River. That was only the beginning of our trip though.

On Monday morning we continued up stream to our next destination: Foz do Breu on the Peruvian border. This leg of the trip is another 60 miles. Fortunately the river was up a few feet and we made it without clipping any stumps or shallows.

Missionary José Maia and family were waiting for us. They had just finished building their new house. This house at the mouth of the Breu River is their base, but they are building a house at the Caxinauá reservation several hours up the Breu. Since returning to the field after seminary José has built his house, bought one of our aluminum boats and two small motors. For the past few months he has been staying in contact with the indians, but taking care of our mission at Foz do Breu, at the same time. He has done a really good job.

Now we are proud to announce that he has been freed up to work full time with the Indians. We took Vando and his family, our newest missionaries, to take over the work at Foz do Breu. We tore down the old parsonage and gave the lumber to another missionary. Now we are sawing the lumber to build a new house.

We had several meetings with the congregation to go over their responsibilities to Vando and family. We even had one profession of faith during one of these meetings. Last week Vando reported to me that attendance has been in the 30’s and they are already visiting house to house and starting the planning for the first mission trips down river.

That same week I went on up river, into Peru, to visit Tito and the work at Tipisca. While there, José Maia and I laid out the foundations for the church building. We have it partially framed up.

The trip back down river was one of those adventures that I seem to always get myself into. We left the Breu about 9:30 that morning. I still had several things to do there that morning, so instead of getting away at dawn, the morning was almost gone before our departure. Then I had a longer stop at Thaumaturgo than planned. Once again I had several things to accomplish there. Hudson, Fredson and Emerson were sent off to do some of the errands (buying and getting supplies to our missionaries) while I did the fueling of our boat. We finally got away about 2:30 in the afternoon. It was already getting dark when we passed Porto Walter. That would still leave three hours to go in daylight conditions. At the same time, a major tropical storm was moving in from the north. North was where we were headed! In just a few minutes, lightning was hitting the river just ahead of us and the rain was coming down in true Amazon valley form. A little below the mouth of the Valparaiso River we saw flashlights signaling. It was our other boat that had left the Breu hours before us. They had decided to stop for the night and wait out the storm. They wanted to know what I planned to do. Maybe stay there where they were planning to spend the night? When I told them that I was going to forge ahead, they gathered their things, jumped into their boat and decided to follow in our “tracks”. I had my two million candle power spotlight blazing all the way. We made it all the way in without hitting any stumps or sandbars. The Lord is a really good pilot! By 11:30 that night I was back home. What a great trip it was.

Well I see that I have run out of space for the rest of the news from December. I'll try to catch up again next month.

Thanks for all your prayers and support. Keep praying for us.

In Christ,

Mike Creiglow