June 12, 2007

Dear Brethren,

Today Beverly and I celebrate our 37th anniversary. Also, today I am running around among three building projects. At the end of the day I will have a meeting with several of our ministry leaders. After all that is done, if we’re “lucky”, we will go out to dinner at a really nice restaurant. Well, forget the really nice restaurant part. That is still a few generations in the future in Cruzeiro do Sul. We are still having fun after these short 37 years.

My trips this month were to Assis Brasil, Barão, Paraná dos Mouras e Porto Valter. The visit to Assis, Brasil was to teach a practical lesson on how to do local missions. While there the church asked me to do a dedication ceremony for their new boat and motor. Andrew built their boat and sold them their new Mercury outboard. They have already made two mission trips with it since the dedication. One of our missionaries went with them on both trips. The last trip was part of our 2007 mission project. They went to the Liberdade River. They witnessed house to house to over 2000 people. There were 217 professions of faith. This was our first ever trip to this river and that would explain the large amount of professions of faith.

Dedication of new mission boat at Assis, Brazil

My trip to Barão was for our regular preacher’s meeting. Although Barão is about two hours by pickup truck out of town we still had just under 50 preachers present. The church there has just finished her new brick building. This village has now been turned back over to the Indians. The pastor there, Brother Amos, is full Poyanaua Indian. Way back at the end of the 19th century the founding father of Cruzeiro do Sul enslaved the indians to work his rubber plantation. We have had a work there for many years, but for most of that time the family heirs would not allow us to put up a building. The church met in homes. Now that the federal government has returned the land to the Indians, our church has its very own nice building. The village has grown at a surprising rate. They have a good school, health center, running water and electricity. Many of the homes have concrete bathrooms. My last trip was to Porto Valter. I took one of our young preachers with me. This was Benjamim’s (that is how it is spelled in Portuguese) first trip with me.

Preachers meeting at Barão

Most of our preachers, old and young, dream about an invitation from me to go on a mission trip. The river has gone down a lot and the only motor that I have running while the river is at this stage is the 15HP Merc. It was a little slow going, but it was fun. We stopped and visited the work at the mouth of the Paraná dos Mouras River. Brother Jean and Dos Santos take care of this work that was started by Faith Baptist Church. We had a pretty long walk with our gear across the beach, then a stretch of mud. The river has just gone down and it rained most of the day, so it was pretty messy. Although this visit was unannounced, the congregation wanted to have a service. There were almost fifty present. The lesson was about the security of the believer.

We got up the next morning to continue our trip to Porto Valter. It was raining again, though, so I decided to wait until it let up. We got away at about 7:30. The visit there was good, but I am concerned about our missionary Mário. His wife and kids are getting out of hand. It looks like we are going to have to ask him to step down. We don’t have anybody to take over, so please help us in prayer. These are the tough decisions and times that are not at all pleasant.

Thanks to all of have contributed toward the equipment and gasoline. It is coming together slowly. I will keep you posted and send pictures as soon as it happens. God bless and THANKS.

In Christ,

Mike Creiglow