Hello

As promised last month, we have great news to share with you below.  Thanks again so much for your prayers!  If we can pray for anything for you, please let us know.

We are so blessed to be able to celebrate the church opening in Belem and finally have our first church service outside of our home.  We have been working for over a year through our home church to build up a body of believers to start a church.  Now, that has become a reality. 

We had many brothers and sisters from other Vineyard churches come and celebrate with us.  They came as far as Altamira, Santarem, and Portel to support the new church plant opening.  In addition, Milton, our National leader of the Vineyard church association, shared God’s Word. 

The Xingu Mission is about planting churches and training leaders to expand the Kingdom of God.  Many great scholars have affirmed this as a best practice.  Peter Wagner asserts, “Church planting is the most effective form of Evangelism known under heaven.”  Tim Keller also claims, “A vigorous and continuous approach to church planting is the only way to guarantee an increase in the number of believers and is one of the best ways to renew the whole body of Christ.”

We continue to meet at the reception hall below every Sunday, and it has been doing well, but it has its limitations.  We have not had the same amount of people as our first service in the subsequent weeks, but we are hopeful and utterly dependent on God to do what He does.  Obviously, we would love to have a church building, but that will take a miracle.  Thankfully, we believe in Jesus, who loves to do miracles. 

I wanted to share a remarkable story that I got to experience at the end of one of our church services.  Elba and I went to pray for a family.  The husband, Anselmo, was crying and looked so broken and hurt.  I felt like I got a word from God about forgiveness.  I thought maybe the couple had deeply hurt each other, and forgiveness was needed.  I shared that word with Elba, and she got the impression that Anselmo did not receive Christ as His savior and needed His forgiveness.  I thought he had already done this because Anselmo had been coming to our group for months.  Elba asked Anselmo, and he shook his head “No.”  Elba asked if he would like to do that now.  He accepted, and we prayed for him.  After I opened my eyes after the prayer, Anselmo’s face completely changed from agony to the happiest person on earth.  It was amazing!  It was like looking at a different person.  I have seen many people accept Christ, but his whole countenance changed, and to this day, Anselmo has changed.  WOW!  We were so happy for him, and he is elated!  (The picture below is from our inauguration.  He accepted Christ the following week).

Here is Camilly in her lab jacket.  She is enjoying college and studying biomedicine.  Alyssa is doing well as she starts her Junior year in high school.  She pretty much plays volleyball and studies every day.  They are both acclimating well to their new changes. 

We appreciate your continued prayers:

Please pray that we will identify the new senior pastor of the Belém church plant.

Please pray that the Lord will continue to reveal His plans to the church and us.

Please pray for our church, leadership, and congregation to help people draw close to God.  

Please pray for our family, especially our girls, in this phase of our lives.  

Please pray for our spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, and financial health.  

Please pray for the rejection of this virus from your loved ones and its eradication.

Much love, Steve, Elba, Camilly, and Alyssa

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