December 5, 2006

Dear Brethren,

Greetings from a way below freezing place called Lexington, Kentucky. Yes, Beverly and I are now in the States. After five and a half years on the field we finally got away for a short furlough.

A couple of weeks before leaving Brazil I was back up river on one of my mission adventures. This trip was to beyond the border into Peru. One of our native missionaries, Brother Hudson, went with me. The first leg of the trip is over 200 miles and took us over eleven hours. It got dark just as we arrived at the rapids and the last ten miles is all shallows and rapids. That one section took us about three hours. God was with us and we made it without breaking anything.

The next day Hudson took one of our aluminum canoes and headed for two small tributaries further up river. I stayed and visited with our congregation at Thaumaturgo. We started the foundations for the new brick building there. A church in Louisiana bought the materials for the first wooden building when we started the mission there. Now the congregation has grown and they have purchased all the materials for the big building we just started. The new building will seat over 400. Back in 1992, Horn Lake Baptist Church provided the funds to jump start the work in Thaumaturgo. Now the work there is self sufficient. Even though Horn Lake no longer supports us, we are grateful for how they helped get this work going. This is a good example of how the work should be conducted. A church in the States provides funds to get started, then we teach the Brazilians to carry on. The congregation at Thaumaturgo has already started two new mission points.

Two days later I went on upstream to visit our work at Foz do Breu. Brother José Maia is filling in there until we can find a replacement for our former missionary to that location, Aésio, who did a great job there for six years. When I arrived José was smoking a goat. We had smoked goat, boiled goat and boiled goat tripe for the next three days. Thank the Lord for goat. The mission there is doing fine and growing a little. The village is small, but we are winning them over a few at a time.

During the week I took out a day to go visit our work at Tipisca, Peru. Our worker there is Brother Tito. He was saved at Contamana, baptized by a Baptist missionary, trained for a while in our Bible institute in Iquitos, when the Lord called him to go as a missionary to Tipisca. Our church has just decided to take him on as another of our full time missionaries. He is our ninth. We already have all the lumber and roofing ready to put up our first building there. That will have to wait until I get back down home after our furlough.

The river was very low when I went up stream. Then the rains came. It rained fourteen hours one day and twelve hours the next. The river came up over thirty feet. The logs started floating down and made navigation a little difficult. It is still better to have lots of water. The trip back downstream was pretty fast.

Hudson and I met up again at Thaumaturgo. He went to the last house on the Caipora River preaching from house to house (eleven in all). There were four people saved. He also visited forty-six homes on the São João River. Fourteen more were saved. We now have only four more rivers to cover to complete our goal of taking the Gospel to every home on over twenty rivers of the upper Juruá River in 2006.

This letter is already longer than it should be, BUT let me give you one more challenge before I close.

Baptist Faith Missions provides me with $500.00 every month for my expenses. In November I made two trips. Those two trips cost me over $800.00. Gasoline is costing from$5.80 to $6.00 a gallon in Cruzeiro do Sul. These trips are absolutely necessary. Some months I have to decide which trip will be made and which trip doesn't get made for lack of funds. You need to know that the motors I use are more fuel efficient than the ones the natives use, but mine still have to have gas to go. The distances I cover are huge, too. My only source of funds for these trips is the offerings you send. When I go over budget, like in November, the extra has to come out of my pocket. That is fine, but sometimes that is not possible. Most of you already give sacrificially to hold up the General Fund. Thanks. Maybe, just maybe, a few could find a way to help out more each month to help us get the Word out there. Please pray with us about this.

Thanks so much for all your prayers and financial support. We still have a few dates open if you would like for us to present our work to your church. We will be in the States until March 2007.

The phone here at the mission house is: 859-277-3716. My email: mdcrieg@aol.com

In Christ,

Mike Creiglow

Brother Mike Creiglow baptizing new believers

Tito and Idelia, serving at the work in Tipisca, Peru