A Different Kind of New Year

    Having experienced over 40 New Years, I have been inclined to agree with the U2 song that says, "Nothing changes on New Year's Day," until this year. This New Year was promising to be more of the same - getting together with family, eating too much, counting down the seconds, and hugging everybody while the city rattled with fireworks - when my daughter Lydia called me aside and said, "Daddy, I want to be baptized." Gulp. She explained, "I want to start the New Year a new person. I feel ready."
    Yes, this was a different New Year. We went down to the swimming pool and right before fireworks started raining through the sky, Lydia was immersed into Christ.
    It was strange not being with our spiritual family at this moment. We were with Edda's family, most not part of the church. They probably thought the procedure weird, but were supportive, and we were happy they could witness a new birth and reflect on spiritual matters.
    Thank you, God, for Lydia's decision. Thank you for answering our prayers.

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Two Weeks of VBS!

You might think that one week of 60 screaming, starving for attention kids is more than enough for the year, but no, here is João Pessoa we doubled the fun, doing a repeat of VBS back to back: four more days with the Mangabeira congregation. inviting the children who go to the school where the church meets. VBS is indeed a lot of fun, but a lot of work, the kids, though, who love it and who start getting a taste for God’s word for the first time make it worth it. Acting out the story of Joseph in Eygpt, teaching how God cares for us and blesses us, resurrecting King TUT (Jeremy Newlin) and the Mummy in skits that teaching these truths, are all part of creating an experience that boys and girls will remember for years. Lori Hagewood did an excellent job organizing this ministry, and we thank the Joelton church of Christ for ...

Missions In May

I will be traveling this weekend to Cajazeiras to teach an intensive seminar on "Faith and Obedience"over the weekend. Please pray for a safe trip and encouraging, edifying classes. The church in this city has a lot of young people. Most of whom have not grown up around Christian influences. In fact, many of them have seen more drug dealers than people imitating Christ. Helping them understand God's Word and the promises in which their faith is rooted is important for them, as well as any Christian. Helping them understand how that faith will be evident in their lives through words, actions and attitudes will be important for all of those around them. On May 13th , Joe McKinney and I will head out for Patos, returning on May 16th . Our goal is to discover church's needs and how to best help them. We will als...

Unity Through The Word

Thank you all for your prayers for the PORMISSOES meeting last month. It was a great blessing. We sat and studied God's Word together for the entire day. There were some differences of understanding on some passages, but we worked our way through them. In the end, everyone was saying how the meeting was edifying. It started around 9:30 am. We broke for lunch at 1 pm. We started back around 2:30 and went until 6 pm. They wanted to keep going, but the SEARA class started at 7 pm. If every meeting could be as encouraging as this one, we would be in heaven. My goal with these meetings is to teach the church workers throughout the state how to listen to someone who has a different belief about God's Word, try to understand their logic, their thought process...

McKinney Report

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