Dear Prayer Partners, January 2018
[Click here for PDF version of this letter]
Our first Reach Portugal Conference was a real blessing. It was well attended with participants from all over Portugal and also Spain. Our pastor, Todd Stricklin, was one of the speakers and brought a group from our church in Rhode Island. A dear brother from a supporting church in Illinois, himself a longtime supporter of the ministry in Portugal, came to secure all the multimedia and online streaming of the conference. We have started to plan for the next one in 2019 and pray that this conference will become a hub to encourage and provide practical training as new churches are started and more people accept the call for the ministry.
We have had some new visitors in our services in Castelo Branco and we continue to pray to see more souls saved and Christians added to the church.
We have chosen as our 2018 theme “Confident Sowers of the Word.” We plan to increase the amount of “seed sown” in our city, via personal testimony, gospel tracts and creative outreach activities. We will have training opportunities for our church people that desire to discuss how to better express the Gospel to others. We will have special seasons of prayer to water the seed that is sown. And also, we will have a special evangelistic campaign in October where we will be expectantly and trustingly “harvesting” the results of the what God would do through the power of the Gospel of Christ. (We will be ready and happy to “harvest” any time of the year, though.)
In June we will be having the second edition of the Reach Portugal Offering, if you would like to start praying about being involved in this ministry. This year’s offering will go towards developing our Training Center / Camp Property. More information on that to come soon.
Like we shared on our last letter, we have officially applied for adoption. Even though we had already shared with the government officials that Aura was not a Portuguese citizen yet, only now they have indicated that this might be a problem. We have this week began to gather the needed information towards Aura’s citizenship request, but it would be a big blessing if that was not a requirement for adoption. Thank you for praying.
Feel free to contact us any time about Portugal and what the Lord is doing here. We have frequent short time ministry opportunities in Portugal. Ask us about that.
Thank you for your love and support for the ministry in Portugal.
In His Service,
Mark and Aura Pereira