Wrapping up and Back to Brazil

After many, many miles, church visits, and dinners with personal supporters, we have begun the final countdown for returning to Brazil in August. Our furlough year is finishing even busier than it started. Tim will defend his doctoral work on July 24 and, Lord willing, conclude his educational journey to a doctorate of ministry. Also in July, Andrea is traveling with her mom to visit Robert and his ministry in Colombia for 6 days. Levi is working full time through the summer as he saves to pay for college and life in the USA. He is more than ready for this stage of his journey and had a blast this weekend with his future roommate (another MK from Brazil) visiting and planning.

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Through the year, we have continued weekly contact with our leadership team in Brazil and prayed and helped work through many unique challenges.

Building permit update.....we hesitate to even say it........ but we have been told that it may be close. A huge hurdle has been removed as now we have the name and number of the person responsible for our permit. Our architect is working with her to make the changes she has requested to the blueprints, and we are told that they will communicate weekly. After periods of up to 6 months of silence, this is great news. It's hard to not get our hopes up. Please keep praying. We would LOVE to jump right into a building project as soon as we return.

Ministry opportunities abound immediately upon our arrival. In August, Tim will teach a weekend seminary class online, and he will also begin teaching his semester long class in person on missions. During the fall semester, he will also teach a class twice a month on church planting. In addition to teaching and, Lord willing, overseeing a building project for our church, we will assist with the new daughter church plant in a neighboring fisherman village.

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God is at work in Brazil even in our absence

VBS-This week is our summer vbs programming, and a team of volunteers has canvassed the community inviting families. They are praying and preparing for many new families from the community to have contact with our church through the vbs.

Evangelism-A team from the church also traveled interior and spent one Saturday evangelizing on the sidewalks of a very poor and spiritually needy community. Several cars caravanned to this small city, and many people heard the Gospel that day.

Training-Women from church continue a 4-year long course preparing them for ministry to other women, several members are attending a conference on Biblical counseling, and two teens have started studying theology at our local Bible school. One young man who was saved at our church is strongly considering full time pastoral ministry.

Missions-the church gathered donations of ingredients to make a meal to be sold after one Sunday service. All the profits were given to Open Door Ministries for persecuted Christians around the world.

It is a tremendous joy for us to see this church flourishing and reaching its community and the world with the Gospel.

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Financial Update-Praise the Lord, we are at 100% of our needed monthly support. We still need gifts to help with the purchase of a vehicle upon our return since the dollar exchange has been falling rapidly which makes this need a little more urgent now. Abundant blessings have been poured upon us this furlough which include a new laptop and cell phone from our home church. Many others sent in love offerings and gifts that helped make up for our lacking support which bought us time to raise funds this year. Indeed, we are overwhelmed and blessed by God's loving care that has provided more than we deserve as we return to continue to serve Him.

Thank you for your faithful partnership in the Gospel. We are truly grateful, and it is with full hearts of encouragement that we return to Brazil to continue HIS work for HIS glory. --Tim and Andrea

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