God has been blessing us tremendously lately and we want you to know how. We apologize for being so long without an update. We thought we should catch you up though on how God has been working in our lives and the lives of people around us since our last blog....
November News:
God brought Matt’s parents Dick and Glenda to Salvador. It was a hard decision for them to come because Dick had had a fever and been feeling under the weather for almost a month before the trip. Finally the week before they were supposed to come, Dick went before the church and said that, “Tomorrow, if I feel like I feel right now, we will not be going to Brazil to see our children.” Glenda said that the whole church was stunned and offered their prayers. The next day God healed Dick – no more symptoms! We had a wonderful week with Dick’s parents, Praise God! And thanks to the prayers of the Flat River Church. We celebrated Thanksgiving week and had our own early Christmas together. Dick went home to report to the church what God is doing in Salvador and all involved in planting a church in another culture with a Christian team.
However, during the joyous time we had with them, we also had quite a scare when we learned that Matt’s brother, Jeff had a heart attack two days before Thanksgiving. It was hard being here and learning that he would undergo a heart cauterization. But God blessed the Mabery family yet again with healing and Jeff got to go home on Thanksgiving day!
As for the work, there were many things going on before, during, and after the Mabery family visit. We had our Portuguese Evangelism training seminar with the team before Dick and Glenda arrived. Matt’s parents were able to meet our Portuguese language teachers (with whom we are studying the Bible) as well as witness one of them commit her entire family to go through an evangelistic Bible study with us that she helped to translate.
Through much prayer and discussion our team finally decided on a name for our church, Igreja de Cristo O Salvador, and an inauguration date, April 2, 2006. As a team we also began working harder to learn and memorize Brazilian Christian songs and music. This added more Portuguese to our Portuguese / English Sunday worship together.
