Dear Prayer Partners,
The Lord has been doing some exciting things here in Portugal. Since our last Prayer Letter we have had 9 people pray to receive Jesus as Saviour in the church in Albufeira! We have now more people in discipleship than we’ve ever had before! Thank you for praying for us. A few months ago we were concerned with all the people leaving our city and church because of the economy, but the Lord has been bringing others in. Please pray that we will be faithful in teaching these new converts and for their growth.
Since our last letter many things have happened it terms of our church planting plans. We were able to secure a store front in the city of Castanheira do Ribatejo (North of Lisbon). Here we have two families already and others have mentioned they would start coming as soon as we started services. We are planning to start services there in May. Tito Pereira and his family will be leading the evangelistic work there. Tito is finishing our Bible Institute courses and believes he is called to preach. By the grace of God he will be the pastor of this new church when the time comes. Our church in Albufeira is supporting the rent costs of this new building through our Faith Promise program and there are other churches in the country supporting some of the other expenses. A military church in the Azores is closing and donating all the furniture for this new church. The transportation costs of this furniture will be about 500 euros and we still need to raise this money. Please pray that the Lord would provide for this need.
The new church plant is about 3 hours away from us. We are planning, in the initial stages, to have a van with our church people, on a rotation basis, make the trip to attend the services at the new church, and do some evangelism. Our people are excited about this! We believe our church in Albufeira is in an ideal position to start a church planting movement in Portugal. We believe that this model of ministry will be very beneficial as more people graduate from our Bible Institute. Lord willing, Lenildo, a man in the church in Albufeira, will be graduating and getting ordained soon. In order to have the man power to assist in the evangelizing and church planting efforts, Lenildo will become Assistant Pastor in Albufeira, fully paid by the church (indiginous principle).
Because of all this, Aura and I are now booking meetings in churches, both in Europe, Canada and America. We think this national led, local church based, church planting effort is a worthwhile missions project. To help with overseas accountability, we are now sent by Narragansett Bay Baptist Church, in Rhodes Island. This church will process any funds coming from Canada and the US. If everything goes well, we would like to try to go to America this Fall season. Feel free to recommend us to any churches you might know. Thank you for your prayers and support to the ministry in Portugal.
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