DEAR C.B.M. PARTNERS AND FRIENDS, December 20, 2013
Greetings from a rainy but warm Brazil. We bring you Holiday Greetings and wish you a blessed and victorious 2014. After almost 45 years here in Brazil, and the last 13 working in the Amazon, our blood has become very thin and we prefer the hot weather over the snow and cold! That´s why we scheduled our furlough for 6 months (April-September) in 2013 and the same 6 months in 2014 to visit and report to our supporting churches. I (Earl) will be doing most of the U.S. traveling and visiting of churches while Ruth Anne comes and goes on all the Amazon Boat Trips. She is still working with and training Cydiana in the pharmacy on the boat to make sure she can distribute correctly all the U.S. medicines (English to Portuguese) to the Brazilians that are treated on the boat. We must be very careful when distributing these medicines.
We have found out that with the new boat we can treat and visit more villages, but that has caused a good but difficult problem for us. There are a number of new villages wanting churches and help and we could build a new village church every two trips. But, we don`t have enough Amazon missionaries yet to do this. Our greatest need right now is for God to raise up from the villages those individuals that will become the spiritual leader and missionary for his own village. Ronaldo and Lucimei will begin living and using the old remodeled boat (Francis & Anne) to rise up and train more village missionaries. Please make this need one of your special prayer requests.
Please check out the dates on our web site (www.cbm.org.br) for future Amazon Boat Trips making sure you know when your church is coming or when you would like to join one of the teams. We are now scheduling trips for 2017! We need to do 10 trips a year with at least 10 individuals on each trip.
If you haven`t heard, David Sanders, the first Christian Church missionary to Brazil passed away December 2. David and Ruth had been here for over 65 years. Ruth had died just about a year ago. They had come to Brazil to start a church in the new capital, Brasilia, in 1948. David was loved and admired by all and was an example of a faithful, loving servant of his God.
Thanks again for your faithful partnership with us in praying and supporting our CBM Ministry and especially now with our Project Amazonas: Christ, Life and Health Ministry. Please pray that God will continue to bless us with good health as we continue serving Him here in Brazil.
With your partnership we continue……Working For A Greater Harvest,
Earl and Ruth Anne