Dear Friends,
Praise the Lord for a good couple of months! The church hosted a Ladies spectacular at the end of April for several other churches in the region. We had a very good turnout and were able to use our current seating to its limits. Pray for our delivery of new church chairs. They are several months overdue and we have had difficulties getting a strait answer from the vendors. Pray that the Lord would work our their swift delivery so that we can increase our seating capacity.
We also had a ladies tea for our church ladies on Mother’s Day weekend. The ladies had a good time of fellowship and we even had a woman attend that had only come to a couple of services before. She has been coming almost every week since and has been bringing her daughter as well. Pray that the Lord would ground them in the church and that her husband would start attending as well. Praise the Lord he was able to attend our new monthly men’s meeting, but he has not been able to come for church due to his work schedule. While at the men’s meeting, he mentioned adjusting his hours to make it to some of the services. Please pray that the Lord would bring him into church.
We have been enjoying our weekly teen meetings and have started to see fruit from them. We have been practicing the plan of salvation with our teens and one of them was able to lead a lady named Elena to the Lord! We have also been encouraging them to give out tracts during the week and have been seeing great involvement throughout the week. Speaking of the gospel, Lily was also able to lead someone to the Lord in Portuguese for the first time! Her name is Sophya and she is 10 years old. She was so happy and said she will always remember that day (Mother’s Day in 2024).
I had the opportunity to preach at a men’s camp in Franca, SP about 5 hours north of here. It was an amazing time with a great group of men. We killed a ram as an illustration and were able to cook it on the grill the next day. It was a sobering reminder for everyone of the consequences of sin and what Christ did for us. We were reminded that the Jews had to make sacrifices every day, but that Christ was the final sacrifice. Praise the Lord for His blood that was shed!
Work on the church building continues, with only one bathroom left to finish. We still have a few kinks to work out with our audio-video system for the church, but are ready to focus all of our energy on bringing new people into the church. Pray that the Lord would continue to increase the number of visitors and that the church would begin a period of rapid growth. We are so excited to see what God will do!
Also, please pray for our upcoming events, as we have a busy couple of months ahead. Our teens will be attending a conference later this month, which will be immediately followed by our church’s missions conference. The following week is our Brazilian mission board’s conference. Just two weeks later, we will be attending a leadership conference where our sending pastor will be speaking. Thank you so much for your continued prayers and support. We cannot tell you how grateful we are for each of you.
God bless.
David and Lily Johnson
Missionaries to Brazil
São Caetano do Sul – SP
Psalm 139:14