August, 2003

Dear Brethren,

This month we held our annual preacher’s conference at First Baptist Church. We had 67 preachers for this meeting. Every 2 months we have a smaller meeting at one of the other churches. At the last 2 we had 55, and 45 workers.

The week preceding the conference we had a missions workshop for our missionaries. There were 25 present. We sat in a big circle for 5 days and went through a refresher course on our mission philosophy and methodology. I also took time to help them with specific problems they face in the field.

Paul and Wanda Hatcher came in for the weekend. Paul spoke for us during all the services Friday through Sunday. That was a total of seven messages in three days!

We paid expenses for our missionaries to come in from their fields for the conference. On the last night we brought all of them together, with their families, and gave each one an offering of $100. This doesn’t sound like much to you, but in this economy this is quite a bit more than an average worker earns in a month.

There were some more people saved during the conference. Two more young men surrendered to preach, also.

The last day of the conference was also the day we chose to launch a second evening service on Sunday. Our larger services here are at night. We had over 250 in the 5:00 pm service and over 700 in the 7:30 pm service. Since then we have averaged 200 in the first . The second service is growing back to the level it was before we split the services. (about 750-800 people) 

Since the conference we have started sawing lumber to put up buildings at Caipora and Vitória on the Juruá River. One village is 100 miles up the river and the other is about 200 miles. Our missionary Aésio, that works at the Peruvian border, visits and takes care of Caipora once or twice a month. Mário, from Porto Valter, started and takes care of the mission at Vitória. He goes there once a month. I have preached in all of these places since I was still a single man back in the 60’s. It is great to see Brazilian missionaries living, working and establishing works in many of these villages.

Thank you for all of your prayers and gifts.

In Christ, 

Mike Creiglow

Brother Mike Creiglow, introducing the missionaries and their families