Cactus Flower

Last night, October 28, 2017, Pastor Antonio Máximo Neto was installed as the first official Brazilian pastor of the Maranatha Baptist Church of Sobradinho.  There were well over 150 people present for the occasion.   It was a joyous day to be able to see the end of a work. Many times missionaries don't get to see the fruit of their labors in a particular place.  We have been in Sobradinho since 2004, thirteen years of service and care. Pastor Máximo and his wife, Lidiane, have two children - Neemias pictured here and Noemi who was sleeping on a pew at the time.  They are from the state of Ceará and he is a graduate of the Cariri Bible Seminary. Deacons of our work's mother church in Casa Nova and area pastors dedicated the new pastor after Pastor Victor Bruno gave a challenge to the pastor with applications for all that were present. Each deacon from the Casa Nova church prayed a specific prayer for various needs of the new pastor as he starts...

Part of the great missionary call is deciding where to go.  When Byron and I went to missionary candidate school way back in 1991, we heard speaker's from many different mission fields talk about the great necessities of their regions.  We were both convinced beforehand that God wanted us to work in the country of Brazil.  We left with the same conviction. BMM Candidate School, 1991 Fast forward 26 years to 2017!  Here we are nearing the end of five terms of missionary service in Northeast Brazil.  We've worked with churches in a big city of millions.  We taught at a MK school.  We helped with a camp ministry.  We've worked with a small congregation in a little interior town.  And now we look towards the future and ask,  What's next?   To help answer that question, Byron recently attended an inter-agency missionary conference near the city of Belém on the mouth of the Amazon River.  He heard about the needs o...