April ’17 Prayer Letter

[Click here to download the PDF version of this letter]

Aura and I are now back in Portugal after 4 and a half months of furlough. We left Portugal under difficult circumstances. We have been working as a team with Aura’s parents in the city of Castelo Branco since 2014. Not knowing what the Lord would have in store for the Newtons, we extended our stay in the US to raise much needed ministry funds. Thank you for praying. We would like to announce two special blessings:

• Aura’s mom is doing well. Her body responded very well to the chemo and they are considering her to be cancer free! Praise the Lord! Right now, they are still in the US, where she is having blood work and a doctor’s appointment in the end of May. If it all continues to go well, they plan to return to Portugal in the beginning of June.
• Aura and I have been able to raise the amount of support we set out to raise during this trip. The Lord allowed us to partner with 13 new supporting churches! This will allow us the funds to assist in church planting, to print materials, and for transportation costs, among other things.

So, we are back in Portugal. What now? Here are some areas of ministry we will be involved with in the next few weeks.

• Giving pastoral attention to the people in our church. These have been very hard months for our little flock. The Lord was obviously at work while we were gone, but there were also some problems because we were gone. Please pray that these problems will have been resolved by the time you get another letter from us.
• Preaching the Gospel faithfully. We desire that the message of the Gospel of Christ would gain deep roots in central Portugal. This will only happen if we give our full attention to the faithful exposition of Scripture. Please pray that our people will grow by being exposed to Gospel centered messages and that the good testimony of our church will be greatly used to bring others to a saving knowledge of Christ.
• Continuing our contacts in the community. There are many, many people that we have met in the last three years. I must admit that with most of them, we have not yet had the opportunity to have a deep conversation about the condition of their soul and about the One that died so that they could be saved. Please pray that we will be able to share the Gospel with our unsaved friends in Castelo Branco.
• We want to continue to pour our lives into the people that the Lord has given us. We will be continuing the one-on-one discipleship meetings with the teens and seeking to start other discipleship relationships. Please pray that the Lord would use this to grow our people for His glory.

On a personal note, Aura and I will be starting the process towards adopting a child. It is a bureaucratic process and we are leaving it in the Lord’s hands. It will all begin on May 12^th, when we will be attending a meeting. Your prayers are appreciated.

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