Update from the de Arrudas in Brazil

Dear Loved Ones,

Greetings from Aquidauana!! We are now in the middle of Carnival season and also our rainy season. It rained so much the other day that we got rain in our bedroom! (There must be displaced or broken tiles on our roof!) But it sure feels great to have cool weather for a change.

We started this year with many blessings and new challenges, and we rejoice in the Lord for that. As soon as we returned from Sao Paulo and from our Christmas break with family and friends, Onesimo, Larry and Fay, along with other Terena brothers were off on a two-day trip to visit a village that was started by the Terena Indians in northern Brazil. Onesimo came back very excited about the work there and plans to return to help those brothers in Christ. They need a pastor who will take over and work full time teaching them and doing discipleship. That group has already reached three different tribes and is receiving 40 new students at their school. Please keep them in your prayers.

Discovering French Guiana - Gordon Woolard

I want to let you know, my dear friends, that I had a marvelous trip last week to French Guiana. Teaching sessions were set up each day by my host, Jean-Michel. You see him in the picture with the first pioneer of the evangelical church in Guiana after WWII, Joachim Larive.

Joachim lived in the days when people were forbidden by the church to read a Bible let alone even own one. He furtively read a Bible as a teenager. It got him thinking about how he could get right with the Lord. Some years later he came to faith in Christ and became an itinerant church planter even though he is almost paralysed from the waist down since his youth. I love being around men like him.

Bringing Hope - Billy and Sherry McKillop - Jamaica

When you can’t…

When we are the neediest
He is the most sufficient

When we’re completely helpless
He is most helpful

When we are the least secure
He is our Rock and Fortress

When we feel the most useless
He is preparing us

When we can’t
He can!

“Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine…to Christ be the glory forever…” (Eph. 3:20-21)

Goodbye Tent - Faith Baptist Church - Cole Bay, St. Maarten

Last Saturday night, after almost a day of flying, I arrived in Sint Maarten, a small island nation in the northeast Caribbean. I was accompanied by Bresile and Marie Vita St. Germain, Ministries In Action’s Director of Evangelism and Church Growth - French, and Hyacinth Urquhart, MIA’s Director of Project Ebenezer, and we were there to attend a dedication service for a new church building the following day. We were met at the airport and ushered in to a couple of waiting cars by two very friendly Haitian gentlemen named Fremont and Alvin. As we rode along we were informed that we were heading to a church service. I have to admit that I wasn’t thrilled. After the long trip, I would have preferred to settle in to the room that was waiting for me at the guest house, but I played along. I had no idea of the blessing I would receive that night.