McKinney Report

On my last trip, I traveled to Cubati to visit the four Christians living in a city of about 6,000.  Last time I visited, Afonso and Vania were spreading the seed of the Gospel through teaching members of denominations how to worship and live Christian lives.  Some of the denominations began practicing things like taking the Lord's Supper every Sunday and studying the Bible more with their members.  Their examples of Christian living seem to be affecting the city in a small way, now.             This weekend, I got out of the car, walked into Afonso and Vania's house and was met with two 16 year old girls.  Both began living with boys or men, I don't know which, when they were 14.  One, Carol has already separated from her boyfriend.  The other, Jessica, is still living with her boyfriend.  Anyway, they have had Bible questions for a long time and no one they asked had been able to answer them.  So Vania presented them to me and told them to fire away with their questi

    Last weekend I traveled to Patos, where I conducted the state-wide plan meeting, spent time with an evangelist, helped plan the Great Supper in October and met with two different congregations.              The state-wide plan is still moving forward.  Their goal for this meeting was to have someone prepared who is able to prepare another person.  Each congregation is still working towards this goal.  They each have someone in place that they are training.  The short-term goal is to train men and women who will be able to train other men and women.  The mid-term goal is to prepare the congregation in various aspects of the work and spiritual life so that it, the congregation, can continue to grow without the current evangelist.  The long-term goal is to prepare the congregation to send out the current evangelist or other men to establish a congregation in a new city.  We are moving slower than I would like to see but we are moving forward.  That is good news.