Pastor To' Coming (1st Official Letter Still to Come)

Life has really been quite crazy (with that necessary day job), so our first official newsletter is still not ready. I am very excited, however, because Pastor To' is coming to the States the end of April. He will be participating in a number of activities, which include workshops for Portuguese-speaking churches, fundraising, and visiting old friends. He will be spending time in Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. He will be stopping here at our home In VA and I will be joining him for his trip to New Jersey. There we will participate in workshops in NJ, as well as visit my brother-in-law's church outside of Philadelphia. We also plan on making a stop in CT to visit my father's church. For those of you interested in what the workshops mentioned are about, please visit this site: http://www.bild.org/philosophy/Overview.htm. There is some very cool info there, so I recommend visiting.

We covet your prayers as we begin to build a team of supporters, both in prayer and monetarily. I would ask that you would seek God's guidance about possibly supporting us as we move forward.

I truly can't wait to see what God has in store!

Jeff

By the way

The most recent entry was written by Jeff.....

Portuguese-speaking world

(First official newsletter still to come)

I received an email a couple of days ago from Pastor Antonio (To'), who just returned from the Portuguese speaking country of Mozambique. Pastor To' was there giving workshops to local pastors. Mozambique is one of many nations that have Portuguese as either their official language or there is a large Portuguese speaking population. Countries like Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Macau, and East Timor all have Portuguese as their main language. Even places like Luxembourg have a very large population that speak the language. Pastor To' is actually in the process of planting a church there in Luxembourg, and we will share that story in another entry.

On the local front, our pastor here at our church, Pastor Marvin Suitt of Living Word Baptist, has asked me to head up a kids soccer ministry. I am very excited for the opportunity and covet your prayers as we prepare to get that off the ground in the fall.

The Lord is good!

Welcome!

Jeff and I decided to start this blog to keep our friends and family up to date on what's happening in our lives and what God is doing in our family. Most of you know, we have prayed for a long time about opportunities to go to Portugal. For Jeff it means returning to the place of his childhood, and returning to a group of people that he loves and desires to serve. For me, it's an opportunity to serve and be used in whatever way God would have.
Jeff visited Portugal during the last week of January. My brother in law Christian went with him, and they had a great time visiting and exploring. Jeff's primary goal in going was to seek God's face and discern whether or not to continue pursuing a ministry in Portugal. We believe God answered that affirmatively through Pastor Antonio ('To) Figueira. He is the pastor of Antioch Baptist Church in Porto, and has a strong discipleship program and church planting ministry. He specifically invited Jeff and our family to join the church in ministry. We are very excited about this opportunity, a wide open door to serve in Portugal.
Our next post will be our first official newsletter. We will post all our updates here, as well as mailing the actual newsletters.
We love you all and are so thankful for your prayers throughout these years, past, present and future!