Dear Praying and Supporting Friends,
December
We were pleased to have many visitors for our Christmas cantata. We were even more excited that we were able to lead one of the visitors to Christ. After our cantata we flew quickly to America with Timoteo Araujo. If you remember from our other prayer letters, his father is the one who died of Covid complications one year ago. He enrolled in Bible college in the states. We took him in place of his father. We arrived about 2 weeks before he had to be in the dorms. We travelled through 7 states with him, visiting some supporting churches and having new meetings as well. Praise the Lord he is doing well and learning so much. HIs plan is to return to Brazil as a church planter.
We also had a regional homeschool meeting. We were thrilled how many Christian mothers are seeing the need to homeschool. We have many more mom’s who are beginning to use our curriculum.
January
We returned to Brazil after getting Timoteo settled. January is always a low month in attendance here because it is summer break. We had good services however. One of our families was on vacation and met another homeschool parent. This family is religious but do not appear to be truly saved. They have purchased our material which means that they will hear the gospel presented in every subject. Pray this will lead this family to true salvation.
February
We were finally able to have Gustavo’s baptism. We had been waiting for warmer weather since we did it in a little blow up pool. Gustavo was so excited. On the day of his baptism, Esther, whose father brings her to church, finally understood salvation and accepted Christ as her Saviour. We are praying now for her mother, Patricia, to be saved as well.
February brought us a little difficulty. Rebekah fell down our stairs. In the process she damaged her knee, ankle, and wrist on the right side. She was in recovery for most of the month. Because our kitchen is behind our auditorium on the first floor and we live on the second floor she was not able to do much of the cooking or cleaning. This kept me fairly busy into March.
March
Praise the Lord, we had two more Brazilian missionaries join our Brazilian board, MBIB, as missionaries. The Gurgel family will be helping to start a church for now. They are considering going to Mozambique in the future. Mario joined the board with the desire to build and RU style ministry here in Brazil. He will include a recovery home as well. We are very excited about these two new Brazilians who are raising support to share God’s word.
Our radio station is reaching out across Brazil. We have had people writing in to us from the far north of Brazil thanking us for the programming. We now have a website dedicated to the radio only, www.radiocompaixao.com. We are praying and planning on launching this online radio station in every Portuguese speaking country in the world by the end of this year. It will require us to buy ads and advertise in each of the countries. We are also adding more time slots with the gospel message before we launch out. Pray that this will be able to happen so we can reach the unreached in Mozambique and Angola through the radio website.
Family News
Rebekah is still recovering from the fall. While she is much more mobile she is often in pain. She has also had a flare up of a dental disease she has. Her jawline is slowly disappearing. As the bones dissolve her teeth are damaged. Recently her dentist had some blood work done to see if she could discover the cause of the illness. It can be very painful. Pray that some answers can be found so the disease can be stopped.
In His Service,
Bryan & Rebekah Johnson
www.bryan2brazil.com
www.johnsons2brazil.com