Hello

Isaiah 9:6 “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders.  And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”  Thank you so much for your prayers, and kindness.  Merry CHRISTmas and Happy New Year!!! 

We wrote last month about the Vineyard Columbus team and that we expect the Lord to continue doing great things in and through them to draw His people to Him.   The Lord did not disappoint.  The Vineyard Columbus team was the last team in the year in late November.  The team did many activities with the church, such as our weekly church service, healing on the streets, English pizza night, building water filters, and distributing water filters and food baskets to people along the river.  We also got to do some sightseeing and go to the zoo. 

Here are a few pictures of some of the events.

The English pizza night is a big hit.  Our Brazilian friends love the opportunity to practice their English and get to know our American friends.  Most of the people who participate are not a part of our church, and it is an excellent opportunity for us to get to know them. 

TJ preached at the church, shared with our home group, and prayed for our neighbors. 

Building water filters and delivering them to people along the river.  Sleeping quarters are tight!

Using the restroom in these areas takes on a whole different meaning. 

On a separate trip, we prayed for this man’s knee in the morning due to a significant fall he experienced several days before.  He came back in the evening saying he was completely healed!  Praise the Lord!!!

Doing the OHIO in the local zoo, plus additional wildlife in the city.

Again, Merry CHRISTmas and Happy New Year!!!

We thank you and appreciate your continued prayers:

Please pray that we will identify the new senior pastor of the Belém church plant.  (We believe that this has been answered!  Thank you so much and bless you!)

Please pray for our church, leadership, and congregation to help people draw close to God and reveal His plans for the church and us. 

Please pray for our family.  

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

Please pray that we can find permanent land/buildings in Belem. 

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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Hello

We pray this update finds you well.  Thank you so much for all your prayers for us.

This last month has flown by, and we wanted to give you a short update about two teams joining us in ministry.  We had a team from Vineyard Cleveland and Vineyard Lancaster.  It was a great time with each team.  Short-term teams offer encouragement, love, respect, and support to the local church, ministries, and missionaries.  We have experienced short-term teams gaining a global perspective of God’s Kingdom and the spiritual growth of their team members.

The Vineyard Columbus team will be coming this Monday.  They will be visiting two locations, Palmas and Belem.  We expect the Lord to continue doing great things in and through them to draw His people to Him. 

We will share many pictures to help get a glimpse of their time here with us. 

Below are pictures of the Vineyard Cleveland team praying for people in front of the church for healing. 

Below are pictures of the Vineyard Lancaster team constructing an area where the water filters will be built.

Each team was privileged to go on the boat and distribute water filters to a community along the river.  Delivering the filters proved to be very challenging due to the weight of the sand and the walkways into their house.  The pictures are a mixture of both teams.  We also had the honor to preach the Word of God, pray, and give a basket of food and clothing. 

In addition to all the above, the teams also participated in English night at the church, Men’s retreat night, Small group ministry, testimonies, and street evangelism.  The Belém church felt blessed by the teams, and relationships were formed. 

Nature Pictures:

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, as several teams are coming in the next few weeks.  Pray all goes well, that the Spirit uses us to expand His Kingdom, and that we work as a team connected to Him and us all.

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 that we can find permanent land/buildings in Belem. 

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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Or you can send a check to Xingu Mission at the below address:

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Hello

We pray this update finds you well.  We have three more teams coming soon to help with the work.  Please pray for the expansion of the Kingdom and great experiences.   Please enjoy the update below.

We have been at our new location for over two months, and watching the Lord draw people to the church has been exciting.  People have come because of our exposure on a busy street, word of mouth, and online videos.  We have experienced people receiving salvations and healings.  Our new place has 70 chairs, and we have experienced the church being almost full.  It is excellent, and I pray that it will continue.  Thanks for your prayers. 

We are also starting to train the church on how to pray for people and how to pray for healing.  Elba taught them and then walked them through the general practices of praying for someone.  Interestingly, while we were training, people were healed of headaches, pains, and someone having an allergic reaction.

After a successful time in a more remote city called Portel, the water filter and the boat arrived in Belem.  As a group, we decided that the water filter project would serve the Brazilian well in Belem.  There are many Islands surrounding Belem.  We are told that 50k families living along the river and bay would benefit from clean drinking water.  I will keep you posted as we move into this great work to share the Gospel and clean drinking water.  The other picture is water that comes to our house.  We have to clean our filter every week.  It looks like this every time.  Gross!  As you can imagine, we do not drink water from the tap. 

Alyssa and Camilly are doing well.  They are nearing their school year, which ends in December.  In January, Camilly will start her sophomore year in College, and Alyssa will start her senior year in high school.  Camilly has been putting together the social media videos for the church, and Alyssa has been teaching the kids.  Whoops, I do not have a picture of Camilly.  I guess that is what happens when you are behind the camera.  Smile. 

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 as we have a teams coming these next couple of weeks.  Pray all goes well and the Spirit uses us to expand His Kingdom and that we work as a team connected to Him and us all.

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

Please click the donate button to make a secure online tax-deductible donation:

Or you can send a check to Xingu Mission at the below address:

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Hello

Pray this update receives you well.  We had 2 teams come and participate in the Lord’s work.  We have 3 more coming in the next couple of months.  Please pray for expansion and great experiences.

As promised in the last update, we will share more about two recently visited teams.  We had a team from Vineyard Community Church led by Chip Richardson.  Then we had Midge Shaw and Renee.  We will have three more teams joining us in October and November.  This update will be more pictures than words. 

The Vineyard Community Church has been bringing a team for many years, and they have supported the water filter project.  The team came to Belem for several days, and then we went to Portel.  We had an English pizza night at two locations during their time in Belem.  It was a big hit as Brazilians wanted to learn and reinforce their English.  It was also great for the church to get to know more people. 

The team then went to Portel.  We had the opportunity to share the Word at the church and to a community along the river.  Alyssa translated for Chip and some team members as they gave their testimonies.  We love the picture of the little girl who was praying for Douglas. 

In addition, we built some filters and delivered them to some houses along the river that did not have them yet.  The water filter project moved to Belem, and we will distribute filters soon after we get established. 

Midge Shaw has been coming to the Amazon region for over 25 years.  She is a pioneer dedicated to serving the Brazilians and spreading the Gospel.  It is always great to have her in Brazil with us.  She was accompanied by Renee, who had also been coming to Amazon for many years.  During their time here in Belem, they lead another English night.  However, we did it at the church this time and had a good turnout. 

The other nights, Midge preached at the church, and we visited individual homes to have church.  Midge shared about the love of Christ and the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit was active, and we saw people receive healing and salvation.  It was awesome, and everyone felt so blessed.  We can see us doing more home visits with other teams. 

Then Midge, Renee, and Elba flew to Altamira for a Holy Spirit conference at the Mirante Church.  It was excellent, and the Spirit moved among the participants. 

Our biggest struggle was to keep up with both Midge and Renee!  Smile!!!

We appreciate your continued prayers:

Please pray that we will identify the new senior pastor of the Belém church plant and a permanent place to meet. 

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

Please click the donate button to make a secure online tax-deductible donation:

Or you can send a check to Xingu Mission at the below address:

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Hello

James 5:16: “The prayers of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” God hears and takes action.  Thank you so much for praying that the church will find a more permanent meeting location.  They were heard, and we give praise to the Lord!  We pray you enjoy the below email update.

We are so grateful to have our own space to utilize at any given moment.  What a blessing.  We had our first church service last Sunday, and it went exceptionally well.  The opening of the church did not happen all by itself.  Many people participated in a dash to get the church ready.  We had to remove a large wall, put down new tile, do electrical work, signage, paint, etc., all in about ten days.  Fortunately, we had a team from Vineyard Community Church, led by Chip Richardson, to work to open the doors for our Sunday service.

I look forward to writing more about all the great things the team did next month.  In the end, and thankfully, we got it all done with about 1 hour to spare. 

The first church service went well, and we had two new people come to the service.  We look forward to seeing more new faces.  We are next to a large neighborhood, and we are excited to get to know the beautiful faces of this community.  Alyssa did children’s ministry and created a makeshift tent to watch a biblical video.  The kids loved it. 

We signed a lease for 2 years for the new church.  We will continue to keep looking for something to purchase that can be more permanent and be able to integrate all of the ministries in one location. 

We appreciate your continued prayers:

Please pray that we will identify the new senior pastor of the Belém church plant and a permanent place to meet. 

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

Please click the donate button to make a secure online tax-deductible donation:

Or you can send a check to Xingu Mission at the below address:

If you want to unsubscribe from this email, please reply with “Unsubscribe,” and I will remove you.  Thanks

Hello

We pray that you are excited and encouraged by some of the things happening here in Brazil. 

We have a special prayer request.  Could you please pray that the Lord will show us where to plant the church permanently and provide all the resources needed to make that happen?  Thanks and bless you!!!

We are so happy to have our first baptism at the new church plant in Belem.  We asked our neighbor who has been coming to our church if we could use his pool.  Our neighbor’s wife has been going through brain cancer, and it has been challenging.  Please pray for Elizangela.  Given those circumstances, our neighbor graciously allowed us to have the baptism.  The baptism was filled with excitement.  There were many tears of joy for the men being baptized and for us. 

We sang and worshiped God before the baptism and during. 

Anderson was considering being baptized but was struggling with the decision to get baptized.  Then God spoke to him and said you need to be the first to get baptized because you will open the door among thousands to get baptized.  As you can imagine, that was very encouraging for us as a new church. 

As I have shared in previous updates, the symbolism of letting the person be wholly immersed in water, being baptized into Jesus’ death on the cross, and no longer being captive to self or sin.  When raised out of the water, they are raised into a new life in Christ and are with Him forever.  Praise the Lord, and may His transforming power be upon them and us daily.  

In Brazilian fashion, we had a big grill-out afterward.  YUM! 

Elba and Alyssa both celebrated their birthday in July.  Alyssa was not with us here in Belem but was in Altamira.  She got to celebrate with her friends.  Camilly and Alyssa stayed longer after Elba’s twin sister married earlier this month.  Many people from our neighborhood and the church came to celebrate Elba’s birthday.  Brazilians love to be together and grill out! 

We appreciate your continued prayers:

Please pray that we will identify the new senior pastor of the Belém church plant and a permanent place to meet. 

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

Please click the donate button to make a secure online tax-deductible donation:

Or you can send a check to Xingu Mission at the below address:

If you want to unsubscribe from this email, please reply with “Unsubscribe,” and I will remove you.  Thanks

Hello

We pray that you are excited and encouraged by some of the things happening here in Brazil.  Be blessed!

This month we were privileged to have our bi-annual national conference called InterVinha.  Because of the size of Brazil, we held the conference in two locations.  One was in Pirantinga Sao Paulo, and then in Altamira Para.  Elba went to both of the conferences due to her role in the National Vineyard.  The conference in Altamira was well attended with close to 300 people in attendance.  There was great worship, many different workshops, and sharing of the Word of God.  We were fortunate to have our friends / National directors from the Vineyard in Chile come and share, Claudio and Priscella. 

These events are very magical times because they allow everyone to be together.  This can be so energizing, refreshing, and uplifting for everyone who came and participated. 

On a mission note, the Mirante church continues to do well with the transition and the church is very healthy.  It is always nice to come back and visit.  The Mirante also continues to visit a community called the Suribim.  It is a community that is about 120 kilometers from Mirante.  The community loves it when the church comes and has church service.  The church does have leadership in the Suribim, but it loves it when more believers come and encourage them with their presence.  They do not have a church building so they have the church services in the open air.    

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

Please click the donate button to make a secure online tax-deductible donation:

Or you can send a check to Xingu Mission at the below address:

If you want to unsubscribe from this email, please reply with “Unsubscribe,” and I will remove you.  Thanks

Unexpected guest

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Hello

We are so grateful for all your prayers and support.  Be blessed with the below email.

Again, thank you so much for all your prayers and support.  It was a blessing to be able to go back to the States to be with family for my Mom memorial.  Thank you!

For the last 3 years, Elba has been working on getting her Master’s degree in missional leadership at Trinity University.  We are very proud of her and her accomplishments.  Especially doing it all online and in English.

Here is a short God story.  Elba was already planning to come to the USA for the graduation by herself because of the cost of airfare.  Before learning of my Mom passing.  Elba woke up in the evening with someone shaking her saying that she was going home.  She thought it was really strange and thought that her own Mom passed away.  She called her Mom and all was OK, so she blew it off.  The next day at church just as we were ending in prayer.  I had a vision of me being at Elba’s graduation.  I thought that would be awesome but finances would not allow for this to happen.  An hour later, we learned of my Mom passing away.  Lo and behold, we went back to the US for my Mom memorial and I got to go to Elba’s graduation.  What a surprise gift from the Lord and my deceased parents for allowing both Elba and me the opportunity to be present at her graduation which was in North Dakota.  It was great a great experience. 

We got home last Sunday and it was great to see the girls.  The girls wanted to come to the USA but they could not miss school. 

Elba preached that night and it was good to back to the church.  This weekend we will be having a couples conference at the church.  Angelita will be leading the conference called Partners or Rivals.  She will be focusing on tools for marriages to help grow together. 

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

Please click the donate button to make a secure online tax-deductible donation:

Or you can send a check to Xingu Mission at the below address:

If you want to unsubscribe from this email, please reply with “Unsubscribe,” and I will remove you.  Thanks.

Happy Easter, and praise the Lord, for He has Risen!!!  We got to celebrate our Easter service at the church, and we are pleased to have many known and new faces come and celebrate with us.  During the service, we had a time of worship, followed by Elba preaching the good news of Jesus and His resurrection.  During the preaching, Camilly and Alyssa led the children’s ministry.  After the service, we had a dinner and celebrated together as a community of believers.  As a new church plant, we are still trying to get to know people and put Jesus in front of them.   It has been a slow trudge, but we keep keeping on. 

In addition, Elba, Angelita, and Deanna held a women’s conference last month for International Women’s Day with the theme of giving strategies for stress and anxiety.  Elba, Angelita, and Deanna have been educated and trained in these areas and were able to impart their wisdom to all who participated.  We were pleasantly surprised by the great turnout.    

We will be back in the States because my Mom died suddenly on Sunday, April 7^th.  My sister Lynn wrote about our Mom on Facebook, which I will share.  “Our amazing Mom, Phyllis A. Dolan peacefully went home to be with Jesus.  She was such a bright light in this world.  Always willing to step in and lend a hand to whoever needed it.  She was loving, kind, had a great sense of humor.  She was very creative, artistic and a great seamstress.  Mom I miss you so much already.  Thank you for all you did for us! .”  Lynn articulated it well, which was way better than I could have. 

Having my Mom pass away while being on the mission field for over 20+ years has been a struggle.  The distances of being apart and the time being separated with long stretches in between visits make it all the more tough.  Love you Mom!

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 the whole Dolan family for comfort and peace. 

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

Please click the donate button to make a secure online tax-deductible donation:

Or you can send a check to Xingu Mission at the below address:

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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

Please click the donate button to make a secure online tax-deductible donation:

Or you can send a check to Xingu Mission at the below address:

If you want to unsubscribe from this email, please reply with “Unsubscribe,” and I will remove you.  Thanks.