August’ 16 Prayer Letter

We want to thank all that have prayed over our last letter sent out about 3 weeks ago. Also some of you have sent replies and words of encouragement. We appreciate those very much.

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As you know, the Lord as led us to the city of Castelo Branco where I have been given the responsibility of pastoring over the small group of believers that we pray to see one day organized into a church. This is also where the camp property is and Aura’s parents lead that work. This means we can work as a team and that has been very beneficial. There were two camps this year including a Spanish camp. Because we are so close to the camp, we had two teens that were at both camps. One of those teens was Lean who preached his very first sermon during camp. The two of us have just finished a one-on-one study of the book of Revelation and we are now moving on to a new study, at his request. Please pray for him. It is not easy to be a young Christian anywhere, much else in a place like Portugal, and he struggles sometimes.

The other one of our teens that was in both camps is a 15-year-old girl named Sophie. Her family is a strong Christian family and they have joined our church a few months ago. The camps had a deep impact in Sophie’s life and very soon after camp she asked to be baptized. We had some talks that also included her 21-year-old sister Sarah. They shared with us their testimonies of salvation and we went over the main doctrines of the faith. By the grace of God we will be baptizing them on Sunday, August 28^th.

In a little over a week we will be getting on a plane for a two hour trip to the island of S. Jorge (Azores). This is the island where I grew up in and where most of my family is from. We will be a total of 10 people, including several young people from different churches in Portugal. We will be spending a week there, passing out Gospel literature, meeting people, and inviting them to attend an evangelistic service at the end of the week. Invitations have started to go out and we have some people that have already committed to be at the service. We have 5000 pieces of literature for an island of less than 9000 people. Please pray for this trip. We are leaving the results in the Lord’s hands as to what to do in the future, but I am excited about the opportunity to preach, at least once, in a place and to people that mean so much to me.

We have purchased our tickets for a short furlough. We will arrive in the US on November 17^th and stay until the end of January. Praise the Lord we have meetings in new churches booked for all of the available Sundays. As you know we are still in need to raise support and we are praying that we will be able to get to 100% of our needed support. That is why we will not have much time, on this trip, to come by and report to supporting churches. If you want us to come by, please contact us because we still have mid-week services available and might be able to come depending on where you are in the country.

Please continue to pray for the young lady named S., for Aura’s upcoming surgery and for the faithfulness of our believers.

Thank you for your love and support for the ministry in Portugal.

In His Service, Mark and Aura Pereira