September 20, 2006

Dear Brethren,

We just had our annual pastors and workers meeting. Although we meet at least every two months we have our big meeting at First Baptist Church in the middle of the summer. This year, because of all the activities, we were a little late. I didn't see the report on how many workers were present, but we usually have between 80 and 90. Sometimes we have over 100.

As host pastor I always bring a lesson on one specific area of mission methods. This time was about feedback from the field and the importance of keeping stats. At this point we really need this because of the kind of mission projects we are working on together among the churches here. Our coordinated project for this year is to reach every house, on every river and stream from Cruzeiro do Sul to the border. Half of our twenty churches are working together on this project. Each church or, in some cases, group of churches, select which rivers they want to cover, when to make the trip, and who is sent. There are the Juruá and Moa Rivers and eighteen small tributaries to be reached in 2006.

The project is over half finished. Here are some samples of the results that are in so far. The Ouro Preto River had over 900 people hear the gospel. Forty-six were saved. Between Porto Walter and Cruzeiro do Sul over 1,400 people were presented the Good News. There were forty-nine professions of faith. On the next section of the river almost 2,000 people heard the gospel and ninety-seven were saved. These two sections of the river have already received follow up visits to confirm and encourage those who were saved. These follow up trips are shorter, about a week. The regular trips take from two to three weeks each. Since several churches are working simultaneously on different rivers it has become possible to give this kind of coverage in a shorter period of time.

Just before lunch at the close of our preacher’s meeting we presented one of our missionaries with a brand new River Craft aluminum canoe. Brother Raimundo Vieira was grinning ear to ear. The following Monday we presented another one to missionary Rivaldo who works at the Nukini Indian reservation. He got in late for the preacher’s meeting, but went back to the tribe with a smile on his face, too. The canoes are built at my son Andrew’s boat factory. One of our goals in setting up the factory was to produce boats for the mission work. We built my two boats and boats for four of our missionaries so far. We sell the boats to the churches for the cost of the materials. The churches are going in together to buy these boats for our missionaries. Andrew’s factory has produced over 100 boats in the past two years. All of the employees are church members who Andrew has trained. Here is a good investment opportunity for you. Think about that.

Brazilian missionaries with a new aluminum canoe for taking the Gospel to remote areas.

You have no idea how pleased I am with the results of three years of hard work meeting with pastors and doing the final planning for this year’s mission project. For the past three years I have had to work closely with our pastors to try to get them to stop their fussing and politics in favor of doing missions. I have taken a lot of flack, but it is worth it. It would be easy for me to just say, “Forget you guys. I am just going to go ahead and do the job with my church, which is more than willing to do missions.” The churches and pastors are finally starting to awaken to missions. If I can be used by the Holy Spirit to get other churches, pastors and missionaries really moving, then that makes me happy. I sure would like being used by Him to get you more excited about the job at hand. We need you to come on board, too.

God bless you and, as always, thanks so much for your prayers and support.

In Christ,

Mike Creiglow