Hello Friends!
Merry Christmas! We are praying that you all have a wonderful Advent and Christmastide filled with the joy of the Lord, the anticipation of Christ Incarnation and Return, and a deep and abiding sense of the wonder and mystery of God’s love revealed to us as we celebrate this season.
November was a whirlwind-month for us and we have some updates on that below.
We are having a wonderful start to celebrating Advent and Christmas with our churches here, and look forward to continued growth and renewal in the year to come. We have some good traction, our folks are growing in their faith, and heading into the new year we need to have a baptismal service to celebrate the new disciples among us.
To that end we need to raise some one-time funds for the year ahead to help us purchase some sound equipment for our Equip Gatherings, and we need to cover the fees associated with setting up the church as an official non-profit entity with the government. Would you consider us helping us with these one time needs?
Merry Christmas,
The Blaylock Family
Donations:
If you would like to donate to the ministry you can do so through through the mission’s secure giving portal here:
Donate Here
Prayer Request
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Friends and language learning for the kids.
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For salvations, baptisms, and “doing the stuff” in our simple churches.
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For continued faithfullness in the intercession practices we are fostering in the churches.
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For God to begin bringing together a group of students for the launch of our Portuguese Spiritual Direction training program.
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Pray against the spiritual warfare for our churches.
For discernment in the purchasing a house next year.
November Ministry Highlights
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Thanks for praying for our November BBQ outreach. We had the largest turnout of new people that we have had, and had some rich conversations leading us to be able to begin discussing spiritual matters with a few folks.
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Our partners- The Snells – had a team come down from North America. We spent two weeks engaging with the team and doing ministry with them in multiple different context:
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The street ministry was impactful! Several women were open to prayer ministry and the North American team got to experince one of the key ministries here.
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This team also got to visit one of our Equip Gatherings where I taught on the intimacy with Christ available to us through the ministry of intercession. We taught a simple intercession technique and over 80% of our folks have been following through with this practice in the following weeks.
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There was a retreat for some of the ladies and their families that included a sharing of the gospel, and breakout group’s focusing on God’s intention for marriage and family.
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In addition to the church planting efforts, Amanda and I are seeking to setup a system of pastoral care for burnout and wounded ministry leaders. We had our first couple come into João Pessoa for this purpose and they had a good time of prayer, rest, and rejuvenation with us.
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Amanda and I have also started leading worship more often and have enjoyed the process of learning new songs and following the Spirit’s leading in worship for small groups and our Equip Gatherings.
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There has been some traction and growth in the group you all have been praying for about the spiritual warfare. Please keep praying!
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My (Derek’s) apprenticeship for the Spiritual Direction program is picking up in earnest and this last month I aided our master instructors in interviewing several new candidates for the school and in discerning fit. I also did quite a bit of teaching in our last module that was deeply impactful for the students.
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We traveled to a city that 2 hours south of us to celebrate the 21st anniversary of one of our sister churches! It was a wonderful meeting and a testament to God’s faithfulness. That church has been through the wringer in the five years.
Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year celebration! We love and appreciate you all.
